There’s Just Something About Big Mid-Century French Work Trucks: Cold Start

Industrial and commercial truck design is interesting; you might think the aesthetics just wouldn’t matter for vehicles like these, and yet, somehow, we still design our working machines to have some kind of visual impact and personalities. There’s all sorts of eras and schools of design of these kinds of things, but I think one of my favorites has to be what was happening in France in the mid-20th century. For whatever reason, it seems like French commercial and industrial vehicle designers couldn’t help but make trucks that looked like big, sweetly-morose animals or strange fictional beasts, just an overall sort of fantasy creature vibe. But not like dragon-fantasty-creatures; more like things that are like hippos crossed with colossal bullfrogs crossed with huge basset hounds or something.

Just look up top there and you’ll get an idea of what I mean; those are all taken from a 1959 brochure for Saviem, a French maker of buses and trucks that was formed by Renault after buying and merging two other truck makers, Souma and Latil; eventually they were merged with Berliet (whom I’ve featured here before), and all of these various companies were building big trucks with the sort of look I’m describing here. They varied in their own ways, of course, but they were all, likely unwittingly, playing into larger themes that maybe we can only really see all these decades removed.

Here, look at these things:

Look at these three big rigs; they all have such distinctive and unique faces, and, at least to me, they all feel like beasts of burden, which I suppose is what they actually are. But there’s a strange pathos there, too, a combination of visual elements that makes me feel like these are strong beasts, capable of doing what’s asked of them, but I also want to unhitch them from their burdens and give them a big pan of diesel to drink.

Look at this guy! It looks like it’s pouting! Someone give this truck a hug and tell it that it’s doing a good job, please.

Even in diagrammatic form, these things feel like animals. Is it the proportions? What are the visual cues that suggest this?

This one even has a face that feels less conventionally laid out, at least in regard to how biological faces tend to work, yet I still get that impression. It has a sort of brow, looks a bit concerned, but still capable. Also, I like how the fuel tanks are angled along the chassis rails there.

This one reminded me of something I’ve seen before:

What does that face look like? Sort of droopy, little eyes…it’s firing some long-dormant neurons in my brain and until I figure it out it’ll be like an itch inside my brain. What does that look like? Oh! Yes! This:

Remember Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal? It was full of creepy and sometimes actually scary Muppets, in some elaborate fantasy set-story? There was a remake or sequel of it not too long ago. Anyway, one of the kinds of beings in that were these little lumpy things called podlings, and that’s what that truck reminds me of.

Whew, That’s a relief. It’s like having a song halfway stuck in your head.