🏆 Best of Design & Industry

Imagine a car company with an unusual product strategy: it makes one car.

Not one car at a time, or one car until the next model year. One car, as a continuing design. The company improves individual components when technology advances, but it treats the underlying vehicle almost as an industrial standard rather than a fashion product. A door made fifteen years from now still fits the mounting points on a car built today. Suspension assemblies can be replaced without redesigning half the vehicle. Body panels are available individually. Engines, motors, batteries, computers, seats, lights, switches, and interior pieces can be removed and replaced without turning a repair into an archaeological expedition through discontinued part numbers. Technical documentation is public. Independent companies are encouraged to manufacture compatible components. Junkyards accumulate an enormous supply of interchangeable originals. Owners learn the architecture because the architecture stays put.

The result would be something like the automotive equivalent of the Fender Stratocaster. A Stratocaster made today is not literally the same object Fender sold in 1954, and musicians have spent seventy years changing pickups, bridges, necks, electronics, finishes, and virtually everything else attached to it. Yet the basic design has become less a particular year's product than a durable platform. Its longevity creates its own ecosystem. Parts manufacturers can confidently build for it; repair knowledge accumulates instead of expiring; secondhand components remain useful; and an old instrument need not become technologically orphaned simply because its manufacturer would prefer to sell another one.

Imagine a car company with an unusual product strategy: it makes one car.

Not one car at a time, or one car until the next model year. One car, as a continuing design. The company improves individual components when technology advances, but it treats the underlying vehicle almost as an industrial standard rather than a fashion product. A door made fifteen years from now still fits the mounting points on a car built today. Suspension assemblies can be replaced without redesigning half the vehicle. Body panels are available individually. Engines, motors, batteries, computers, seats, lights, switches, and interior pieces can be removed and replaced without turning a repair into an archaeological expedition through discontinued part numbers. Technical documentation is public. Independent companies are encouraged to manufacture compatible components. Junkyards accumulate an enormous supply of interchangeable originals. Owners learn the architecture because the architecture stays put.

The result would be something like the automotive equivalent of the Fender Stratocaster. A Stratocaster made today is not literally the same object Fender sold in 1954, and musicians have spent seventy years changing pickups, bridges, necks, electronics, finishes, and virtually everything else attached to it. Yet the basic design has become less a particular year's product than a durable platform. Its longevity creates its own ecosystem. Parts manufacturers can confidently build for it; repair knowledge accumulates instead of expiring; secondhand components remain useful; and an old instrument need not become technologically orphaned simply because its manufacturer would prefer to sell another one.

Imagine a car company with an unusual product strategy: it makes one car.

Not one car at a time, or one car until the next model year. One car, as a continuing design. The company improves individual components when technology advances, but it treats the underlying vehicle almost as an industrial standard rather than a fashion product. A door made fifteen years from now still fits the mounting points on a car built today. Suspension assemblies can be replaced without redesigning half the vehicle. Body panels are available individually. Engines, motors, batteries, computers, seats, lights, switches, and interior pieces can be removed and replaced without turning a repair into an archaeological expedition through discontinued part numbers. Technical documentation is public. Independent companies are encouraged to manufacture compatible components. Junkyards accumulate an enormous supply of interchangeable originals. Owners learn the architecture because the architecture stays put.

The result would be something like the automotive equivalent of the Fender Stratocaster. A Stratocaster made today is not literally the same object Fender sold in 1954, and musicians have spent seventy years changing pickups, bridges, necks, electronics, finishes, and virtually everything else attached to it. Yet the basic design has become less a particular year's product than a durable platform. Its longevity creates its own ecosystem. Parts manufacturers can confidently build for it; repair knowledge accumulates instead of expiring; secondhand components remain useful; and an old instrument need not become technologically orphaned simply because its manufacturer would prefer to sell another one.