Robert Cumberford, Date of Birth, Place of Birth

    

Robert Cumberford

American journalist

Date of Birth: 04-Aug-1935

Place of Birth: Los Angeles, California, United States

Profession: journalist, car designer

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Leo


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About Robert Cumberford

  • Robert Wayne Cumberford (born August 4, 1935) is a former automotive designer for General Motors, author and design critic – widely known as Automotive Design Editor and outspoken columnist for Automobile magazine. Examples of Cumberford's critiques: The Dream cars of the 50's: "myths created to make people dream about the future." The $2,500 Tata Nano: "perhaps the most significant car since the Ford Model T was introduced 100 years ago." The Jeep Cherokee: "One of the 20 greatest cars of all time." the NSU Ro80: “A handsome, modern-looking car with much cleaner lines than anything of the time.” The Jaguar E-Type "Elegant, extremely phallic and a great middle-aged man's compensation," and "the ultimate automotive expression of phalliform perfection." The Ford Five Hundred:"It's a pretty good trick to make a brand-new car look old, bland and boring right out of the box.
  • No doubt it's a good car, but one fundamentally uninteresting visually." The 2016 Acura NSX: Its "very hard to mess up the styling of a mid-engine sports car...
  • but Acura has managed it." The Tesla Model S: "I would happily own one." The Tesla Model 3: "It is an excellent design."On the automotive industry, Cumberford wrote in 1998 that "a lot of automotive enthusiasm is based on what is undoubtedly immature excitement over excess." In 2014 he wrote that there is "no foreseeable future for the Italian coachbuilding firms," referring to the storied design houses of Bertone, Zagato, Ghia, Pininfarina and Giugiaro. On prominent automotive figures, Cumberford described Alec Issigonis, who received a knighthood "in recognition of his engineering genius," as "not terribly innovative in a mechanical sense." He wrote in 2004 that intensely controversial car designer Chris Bangle is "a man with the courage of his convictions and of solid character, and he is worthy of our admiration for that alone." Noted automotive cartoonist Stan Mott described Cumberford as "an intellectual automotive enthusiast." Automobile editor Jean Lindamood Jennings said Cumberford "is highly opinionated, as every working car designer in the world today knows, sometimes painfully," adding that his design reviews have become "wildly popular." At the 2013 LA Auto Show, Jennings said Cumberford "tends toward a certain cantankerous crustyness just shy of curmudgeonly."Cumberford won the 2013 Best Article of the Year Award from the Motor Press Guild for his article, "GM's Road Not Taken" about the LaSalle II Roadster, published in Automobile magazine in March 2013.

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