Erlkönige and cars in camouflage
03/25/2012
So that the actual shape of the car is not really recognizable, the new models today are dressed in a wild camouflage suit. This misleading of the eye also includes another important point for the factories. It makes it much more difficult to measure the car on the basis of photos.
I doubt whether copying is really that frequent, because the new models almost always follow similar design trends, despite a great deal of secrecy.
As the design and technology of a model becomes "outdated" after a few years, the manufacturers bring a successor onto the market. The development of the new vehicle naturally always overlaps with the models still in the showrooms. The design of the new model plays a major role for customers, which is why sales figures fall with the knowledge that a new car will soon be released. It is believed that sales figures would fall even further if pictures of the uncamouflaged successor model were to appear in the media at the end of a model series.
To counteract the early airing of secrets, the vehicles are visually modified with the help of covers and painting aids for necessary test drives in public.
The "Muletto" is even used as the first stage. This vehicle is nothing more than a way of packaging the new technology in a familiar guise.
The second stage is a full camouflage of the new model (shown here on a secret VW mid-engine sports car from 1972 that was never produced), ...
... which then loosens over time as the third stage. However, the shape is often still disguised with adhesive applications.
Shortly before the presentation, the basic shape can already be clearly recognized. In the case of the R129 shown in the following picture, however, it took another four years from this stage until the presentation.
In the end, the presentation takes place at the Geneva Motor Show, for example, where the initially still veiled vehicle is unveiled.
The name "Erlkönig" was born at "Auto Motor und Sport" in the early 1950s. Editor Werner Oswald changed the famous ballad "Erlkönig" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?" to introduce the Mercedes Benz 180 as follows:
"Who is that riding so fast through rain and wind?
Is it a road cruiser from over there,
which has only lagged behind in size
or even Daimler's youngest child?
The silent observer would not be surprised at all,
if that thoroughly new model,
which is too fast even for the photographer,
were nothing other than the son of the "Three Hundred". "
Of course, this poem could also have been applied to the later /8, which we can see in the first and following picture.
