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Archives for January 2017

Industry Jargon: Development Mule

2018 Ford Mustang test mule
A 2018 Ford Mustang test mule, replete with razzle-dazzle camouflage, and Velcroed front grill and rear end disguise. Photo: AutoMotorBlog / Spy Photographs.

I recently came across the term “development mule” in an article at Jalopnik, and several Ford Mustang “mules” were featured in director David Gelb’s A Faster Horse, which documents the design, production, and development of the 2015 Mustang. I was fascinated with the term, so I did a little research, and according to Wikipedia, a development mule, test mule, or (simply) mule in the automotive industry is,

a testbed vehicle equipped with prototype components requiring evaluation. They are often camouflaged to deceive competitors and thwart a curious automotive press.

So what is the difference between a “prototype” and a “development mule?” The “GM Guide To Terms Used In Auto Body Design” defines a prototype as,

The original model during the evaluation stage in automotive engineering.

An automotive forum at eng-tips.com offers this definition for prototype,

A pre-mass production vehicle of new design that is used for testing and development purposes.

The following explanation from Wikipedia does a great job of defining the unique purpose and specific characteristic of an automotive development mule, test mule, or (simply) a mule:

Mules may also have advanced chassis and powertrain designs from a prospective vehicle that need testing, which can be effectively concealed in the body and interior of a similarly sized production model.

If no comparable vehicle is available in-house or an external benchmark is being used mules may be based on another manufacturer’s model. For example, in the 1970s the new powertrain package of first-generation Ford Fiesta was developed using mules based on the then class-leading Fiat 127, as Ford had no comparable compact model of similar size to utilize.

Mules are also used to conceal styling changes and visible telltales of performance alterations in near-production vehicles, receiving varying degrees of camouflage to deceive rival makers and thwart a curious automotive press. Such alterations can span from distracting shrinkwrap designs to substituting crude cylindric shapes for taillights, non-standard wheels, or assemblages of plastic and tape to hide a vehicle’s shape and design elements.

Perhaps the key to the meaning and use of the term mule in this context, is the vehicles purpose of “carrying” various “hybrid parts” for testing its “handling, roadloads, and powertrain” characteristics. After all an actual Equus mulus by definition is a “hybrid” of a male donkey and a female horse, and is valued for its sure-footedness, strength, and endurance. Mules also tend to be more independent than most domesticated equines, and can be effectively packed with various loads.

Etymology

Mule – I discovered several origin stories for the term at Stack Exchange:

In French or Italian, car racing teams were/are called “écurie (de course)” or “scuderia”, literally racing stable: the race cars are the horses and the replacement car is called in French “le mulet” (the mule) and in Italian “il muletto”.

Both in French and in English, the sense of mule/mulet later extended to development cars (testbed vehicle equipped with prototype components requiring evaluation).

Chevrolet’s practice car had fiberglass body, was called ‘the mule’ – 1956 Road & Track

…while the SS in both “Mule” and “show” variants ran they went like stink. The officially released lap time set by Fangio at Sebring in the prototype Mule was 3:27.2, a very respectable figure. – 1957 Car and Drive

With a rough fiberglass body this became the “Mule”, which went down to Sebring for on-the-spot trials while the actual race car was completed… the Mule was revised and cleaned up in detail to be exactly like the race SS, but the ax fell on the project before the ex-Mule could be assembled … this car, the Mule… – 1960 Car & Driver

…had built a pair of muletti — “mules” — whose design had been hastily roughed out by the same internal talent that had drawn up the Dischi Volanti and many other “house” designs. The workmanship of these muletti also was rough as they were never intended to be seen by the public. – 1964 Road and Track

In the comments section of the same post at Stack Exchange a reader contributed this observation,

My understanding is that a “mule” is a crude vehicle used to test engines and other components. Likely from its resemblance to a mechanical “mule” on a canal — basically a small locomotive with no cab, just frame, engine, and wheels. And that term, of course, comes from the animal it replaces. (I first read the term ca 1965. Likely it goes back at least 20 years. prior to that.

Charles Darwin, who knew a thing or two about the Origin of Species, wrote: “The mule always appears to me a most surprising animal. That a hybrid should possess more reason, memory, obstinacy, social affection, powers of muscular endurance, and length of life, than either of its parents, seems to indicate that art has here outdone nature.”

Automotive Industry Jargon: Bonus Glossary

Audi TT GT1 full-size seating buck
Audi TT GT1, full-size seating buck. Photo: Peter Stevens / Fourtitude.com.

Beltline: the line going from the hood which usually follows the bottom edge of the windows and continues to the trunk. The beltline is a major component of the vehicle’s overall appearance, as well as the safety aspect of blind spots.

Bubble Up: a preproduction stage of design. Also know as the theme stage or concept stage.

Brightwork: anything reflective added to a car to enhance appearance. May also be called chrome.

Buck: a full size model of a vehicle used to evaluate comfort, entrance, egress, vision; usually made of wood, metal, foam and/or fiberglass.

Clay Buck: a full size mock up of a vehicle made from a clay covered armature to show vehicle shape.

Down the Road Graphics: the styling of the front end of the car, which people will instantly recognize and associate with a manufacturer.

Concept Car: A Full size vehicle made to illustrate a design concept or idea, usually with futuristic components and faetures; often shown at auto exhibitions and shows.

Greenhouse: the glassed-in upper section of the car’s body.

Oscar: a mannequin representing the 95th percentile male and used in packaging a vehicle.

Proveout Model: a clay model developed to verify surface drawing conformation with the appearance of the model originally approved by management from which a recorded fiberglass cast is subsequently made.

Show Car: a car having features or shapes not offered in production cars, and designed for display.

Trim Buck: a fullsize model showing interior design finishes of a specific model of automobile.

Tumblehome: refers to the way the sides of a car rounds inward toward the roof, specifically of the greenhouse above the beltline.

Tangents

A Faster Horse: the title for David Gelb’s documentary was derived from the adage “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” which is often attributed to Henry Ford. (For more on that story see our “Debunking Henry Ford’s ‘faster horse’ quote” blog post.

Giuseppe Mulè: was an Italian composer and conductor.

Headless Mule: is a character in Brazilian folklore. In most tales, it is the ghost of a woman that has been cursed by God for her sins… and condemned to turn into a fire-spewing headless mule, galloping through the countryside from Thursday’s sundown to Friday’s sunrise.

Hinny: is a domestic equine hybrid that is the offspring of a male horse, a stallion, and a female donkey, a jenny. It is the reciprocal cross to the more common mule, which is the product of a male donkey and a female horse.

Mule: is a small electric tractor used for hauling over short distances.

Spinning Mule: is a machine that makes thread or yarn from fibers.

Twenty-Mule Teams: were actually teams of eighteen mules and two horses attached to large wagons that ferried borax out of Death Valley, California.

Sources

A hermetically sealed spherical inalienable maze of light and sound: The intricate musings of A.G. Rizzoli

A.G. Rizzoli - Margaret E. Griffin, Symbolically Sketched
A. G. Rizzoli, “Margaret E. Griffin, Symbolically Sketched,” 1939, pencil and ink on paper. Collection of Bonnie and Sy Grossman and The Ames Gallery. Installation view, “Architecture Of Life,” Berkeley Art Museum, 2016.

Besides being a drawing savant, Achilles G. Rizzoli was a playful, inventive, and idiosyncratic wordsmith. His visionary drawings are densely and compulsively layered with a language and vocabulary of his own making. Anagrams, puns, neologisms, and solecisms run wild amidst the voluminous inner monologue that he mistook for the voice of God.

Rizzoli was also an ambitious namer. He created over one hundred names for himself in his drawings, including: Abettor, Agent, Arbitrator, Conformist, Contender, Conveyor, Crusader, Decorator, Delineator, Edifier, Embalmer, Hack, Idolator, Jelly Maker, Journeyman, Kapellmeister, Kibitzer, Kingfisher, Limner, Magnifier, Messenger, Neophyte, Observer, Paraphraser, Promoter, Questioner, Rescuer, Retriever, Romancer, Scrivener, Suppliant, Translator, Witnesser, and Zealot. He also had a staff of imaginary “Delineators,” which he named Angelhart, Bellarosa, Grandocosti, and Maidenburg.

Rizzoli’s charismatic titles for his drawings — “Amte’s Celestial Extravaganza;” “A Bit of Architecture Requested by His Prince the Virgin;” “Expeau of Magnitude, Magnificence and Manifestation;” “Irwin Peter Sicotte, Jr., Symbolically Delineated / The Sayanpeau;” “Mother Symbolically Recaptured / The Kathedral;” “Sonnet Jesus Added;” “Virginia Ann Entwistle Symbolicaly Sketched / Virginia’s Heavenly Castle;” and “Y.T.T.E. The Expositon of Superior Beauty and Permanency” — are further evidence of his unhinged ingenuity.

I find it curious that several critiques of Rizzoli’s work take exception to his writing skills, as if they were reviewing a conventional novel, or perhaps an instruction manual:

Also, like many Outsider artists, Rizzoli ultimately proved inept in communicating his visions to the world. Both his prose and poetry are unreadable. Meaningless phrases strung together apparently verbless go on and on and then go on some more. Even his partisans admit that the soft surfaces of his texts are as impenetrable as if they were chiseled from stone.

~David Bonetti, San Fransisco Examiner

The delirium of styles in Rizzoli’s buildings and the drawings’ precision make them an astonishment. The drawings are blazoned with acronyms, titles, verses and pronouncements so grandiloquent that at times they seem to tip naturally into self-parody.

~Kenneth Baker, San Fransisco Chronicle

But as Kenneth Baker goes on to say, “Yet Rizzoli believed that his visions and inscriptions were dictated by God,” so you can hardly question Rizzoli’s source material, can you? Nor his unbridled and uninhibited enthusiasm for language, and the aesthetics of meticulously (and/or compulsively) rendered text.

A.G. Rizzoli — A Timeline

1896 – Born in Port Reyes, California. His parents, Innocente and Emma, were Swiss Italians who immigrated to the United States in the 1880s.

1915 – A sister got pregnant without benefit of marriage, his father “disappears” with a stolen gun after his wife and children fled to Oakland in disgrace, and an elder brother ran away, never to be heard from again.

191(?) – He attends the Polytechnic College of Engineering in Oakland, taking classes in mechanics, geometry, magnetism, and electrical engineering.

1915 – The Panama Pacific International Exposition took place in San Francisco. He visited the Exposition on several occasions and the next year began lessons in architectural rendering.

191(?) – He was recommended for membership to the San Francisco Architectural Club.

1923-1933 – He wrote short stories and novellas about a group of architects attempting to realize various utopias. He collects 280 rejection notices from various publishers in the process.

1933 – Under the pseudonym Peter Metermaid he self-published a novel entitled The Colonnade.

1933 – He and his mother Emma settle into a small four room house in Bernal Heights, San Francisco (some sources claim he lived in the Mission District).

1935-1944 – He produces a body of architectural portraits that symbolically represent people that he knows as monumental buildings, and creates another series of architectural work entitled Y.T.T.E. or “Yield To Total Elation.” According to The Biography Project, “Y.T.T.E. develops over the years into an island complex with over eighty buildings (‘The Toure of Phallism,’ ‘Palace of Relaxation,’ ‘The Temple of Dreams’) and twenty monumental sculptures of such abstractions as poetry, happiness, and peace. The ‘Acme Sitting Station,’ A.S.S. was the toilet’s designated name. And if you so desired to shake off this mortal coil, there was: ‘The Shaft of Ascension’ where you would be pleasantly and painlessly euthanized.”

1935-1940 – Rizzoli held annual exhibits in the front room of his home, charging ten cents admission, which he called the Achilles Tectonic Exhibit Portfolio (A.T.E.P.). A few neighbors, relatives, and two curious co-workers attend these exhibitions.

1936 – He is hired at an architectural firm, where he was regarded “merely as a competent draftsman.”

1936 – After twenty-one years, the remains of his deceased father are discovered. He refers to his father’s (apparent) suicide in an architectural portrait entitled, “The Dark Horse of the Festival Year.”

1937 – Rizzoli’s mother dies due to complications of a leg amputation from diabetic gangrene. At the funeral, Rizzoli is remembered to have stood by the casket trying to open his mother’s eyes.

1945 – He experiences visions which he considers to be the third testament to the Bible.

1958 – After an unproductive phase, he initiates a new project called the A.C.E. (Amte’s Celestial Extravaganza). The 350 drawings of the A.C.E. series were comprised of architectural renderings, quotations, and musings on falling snow, the election of John F. Kennedy, the celebration of saints, and the metamorphoses of deceased relatives, among other topics.

1977 – While working on a piece from the “Amte’s Celestial Extravaganza” series entitled “Rest in Peace Awhile,” Rizzoli suffered a stroke. Other accounts suggest he had a stroke while on a walk in his neighborhood.

1977 – He is moved out of his home, many of the items in it are auctioned off to support his last years of life in a nursing home.

1981 – Rizzoli dies.

1989 – A woman found several examples of Rizzoli’s work in a dumpster and brought them to art dealer Bonnie Grossman at The Ames Gallery.

1990 – Grossman tracks down one of Rizzoli’s nephews, who had a garage full of his “uncle’s stuff” in storage.

Factoids

He never married and slept on a cot at the foot of his mother’s bed.

Quotes

“I live in an unbelievably hermetically sealed spherical inalienable maze of light and sound seeing imagery expand in every direction.” – A.G. Rizzoli

Sources