Not that many fashion models have worked in machine shops, but most people should know that loose clothing and rotating objects don’t mix, or rather they mix too well. The cape streaming off of her neck may make for a nice photo but it could easily have led to some seriously negative publicity had that cape been snagged by a spinner on those knockoff wheels. Dancer Isadora Duncan’s penchant for long flowing scarves led to her demise in 1927. Riding in a friend’s Bugatti, she was strangled when one of her signature boas got caught in a rear wheel. One would think that at least one person at BMW or their ad company would have known about Duncan’s fate when they started tossing around ideas for a photo shoot to promote their new concept, the 328 Hommage. Apparently that wasn’t the case.
Man, that’s a sad way to go. I once had a Triumph TR-3 with low slung doors and wire wheels. You sat so close to the ground that it made the car seem faster than it was.
I remember being amazed that when I sat in a TR-2 I could put my hand flat on the ground. It made me feel like a trucker or something when I got back into my 1948 Ford.
I remember putting out a cigarette on the asphalt sliding past at 70 mph in a TR3.
NO CAPES!!!!!!
YESSSS!!!
^YOU!, -FTW!
Do you remember Thunderhead? Tall, storm powers? Nice man, good with kids.
November 15th of ’58! All was well, another day saved, when… his cape snagged on a missile fin!
Then there was Dollar Bill, originally a star college athlete who was employed as an in-house super-hero by one of the major national banks. He was one of the nicest and most straightforward men I have ever met, and the fact that he died so tragically young is something that still upsets me whenever I think about it. While attempting to stop a raid on one of his employer’s banks, his cape became entangled in the bank’s revolving door and was shot dead at point-blank range before he could free it.
Excerpt from “Under the Cape” by Hollis Mason
…i very much doubt that the concept was even moving when those photographs were shot, but honestly, faux safety concerns are the *least* of that’s wrong with that image – that ‘flowing’ scarf only serves to emphasise how ridiculously oversized, overwrought, and underdesigned is the hommage concept…
Meh! The safety Nazis have gone too far as it is. People croak. By the hundreds of thousands every day. At least this one looks set to leave a beautiful corpse should she go; matching the car that did her in.
And besides, BMW’s ad agency were probably more concerned about driving home the point that loose women and (non rotating) propeller logos DO mix, than anything related to machine shop safety.
Re. I.D., people often make two mistakes concerning her remarkable death, the quote and the car…
From Wiki:
Duncan was a passenger in the Amilcar automobile of a handsome French-Italian mechanic Benoît Falchetto, whom she had nicknamed “Buggatti” (sic). Before getting into the car, she reportedly said to her friend Mary Desti and some companions, “Adieu, mes amis. Je vais à la gloire!” (Goodbye, my friends, I go in glory!). However, according to American novelist Glenway Wescott, who was in Nice at the time and visited Duncan’s body in the morgue, Desti admitted that she had lied about Duncan’s last words. Instead, she told Wescott, Duncan said, “Je vais à l’amour” (I am off to love). Desti considered this embarrassing, as it suggested that she and Falchetto were going to her hotel for a sexual assignation.
When Falchetto drove off, Duncan’s large silk scarf, a gift from Desti, draped around her neck, became entangled around one of the vehicle’s open-spoked wheels and rear axle. As The New York Times noted in its obituary: “Isadora Duncan, the American dancer, tonight met a tragic death at Nice on the Riviera. According to dispatches from Nice, Miss Duncan was hurled in an extraordinary manner from an open automobile in which she was riding and instantly killed by the force of her fall to the stone pavement.” Other sources described her death as resulting from strangulation, noting that she was almost decapitated by the sudden tightening of the scarf around her neck.
The accident gave rise to Gertrude Stein’s mordant remark that “affectations can be dangerous.”
The Z8 paid better homage to the 508 than this thing does to the 328 of yore. I’ll prolly see a couple of them this coming weekend.
Saw a couple of Z8’s in Como yesterday, but didn’t see this car (btw, I think it is cool.)
A saw another picture of that set where the lady sit in the car with her legs sticking out, as if she was taking a dump in the car…made my day!
Ha ha ha ha ha! THAT made my morning. If I read that last night, I would’ve been on the floor cracking up!
hahahahaha ! great one!
No knock-off, no risk…. right? ;)
That fashion model was probably safe. In all liklihood the car was stationary and a fan used to simulate motion. That’s the way they do it.
Still, long loose hair around a metal turning lathe at a Yale lab or wearing a necktie around a circular saw can ruin your day.
If you’ll look at the “knockoff” wheels, it appears that they are in motion.
1. Circular Select
2. Filters -> Blur -> Radial Blur
3. Ok
4. Save
Wow they went a little overboard on that Camaro convertible prototype.
And shouldn’t it be 327 Homage ? Geez you’d think they’d get the spelling right.