Automobile design history – what can we learn from the behavior at the edges?

The paper is developed from a larger evaluation of the history of automobile design. This evaluation used categorical principal component analysis to analyze the direction of the product history, investigating how automobiles developed from 1878 to the present (2013), particularly focusing on whether automobile designers appear to be working within what are termed product paradigms. Rather than looking at how design thinking and paradigms became established in automobile design, this paper takes a sideways look at the variations and quirky automobiles that have been built by investigating the outliers of the analysis and categorizing them into three categories: those that are always outside of general trends, those that are throwbacks to earlier thinking and those that are innovative and ahead of later thinking. The paper ends with a brief look at how and why novelty might become innovation and hence alter the course of the greater product history rather than remaining outliers, interesting as they are. This is where the novelty demonstrates significant advantages for the customer and manufacturer. The conclusion is that the process of investigating statistical outliers is useful and may lead to insights when investigating changes, developments and innovations and their causes.