Yes, you know what I’m talking about! The way that some cars, when you look at them, appear to have a front end that looks like it has another, smaller car emerging from it, like the car has somehow absorbed another car, leaving only the smaller car’s face peering out, possibly in terror. Perhaps the most famous of these cars is the 1969 Ford Mustang:
…and perhaps the most infamous is the 1962 Dodge Dart: You see what I’m talking about, right? These cars have two faces, a face inset into a larger face. There’s a surprising number of cars that I think fit into this category, and there’s also some edge cases I think we need to use to define parameters. I think the key component here – pointed out by our resident Real Car Designer Adrian Clarke – is that the inner face must be clearly delineated by some manner of border or trim or the boundaries of the grille. That’s why quad-headlamp cars like the ’70s and ’80s Jaguar XJ, which can sort of be seen as having a separate inner face:
…don’t really count, because even if you can separate out a plausible-looking inset smaller car face, the lack of a delineating visual boundary around the inner lights and grille means that the XJ itself doesn’t actually have the jarring, face-in-a-face look of these other cars. So I think some kind of inner-face border is required. Just for fun, let’s quickly extrapolate out what the inner-face cars on some examples could look like; we’ll start with the Dart:
That could have been a fun, smaller Dart-like coupé! What’s smaller than a dart? A needle? That could have been the Dodge Needle. Here’s another good one, a ’70s-era Mazda Rotary pick-up:
I feel like the Mazda’s inner face would have made a great front end for some sort of Mazda Kei van. Like Mazda’s answer to a Honda Life Step Van. How about the Mustang: That inner grille still feels muscle-car-ish, almost like a Camaro, but the smaller scale makes me wonder what if Ford made an MGB roadster competitor? I could see that inner grille serving as the face for the Ford Palamino, or something like that. Let’s get a little weirder, and look at the Argentinian Renault Torino:
Honestly, that face reminds me a lot of a Renault 12. Or maybe a Renault 6:
It’s definitely some kind of small Renault stuck in there. So, we’re back to the question of what should we call these cars? Face-in-face cars feels too clunky, as does double-face cars or twin-face or anything like that. I want something punchier. Oooh, I have an idea! Let’s name them after this guy:
Janus! That’s the Roman god Janus, doorkeeper of the heavens, god of beginnings and endings, and a famous haver of two faces. We could call these Janus Cars. Sure, there’s a Zündapp Janus already, a car with a door at each end, but I don’t think in context it’ll get confusing.
I mean how often are you seeing Zündapp Januses around? So, I propose Janus Cars for these; it incorporates the idea of two faces, it’s easy to say, and, best of all, it rhymes with “anus cars.” I’m open to hear your naming suggestions, though, and eager to see more Janus Car examples you may have. Man, it feels good to accomplish something. https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/jjba/images/3/3d/King_Crimson_crop.png/revision/latest?cb=20200107155942 https://jojo.fandom.com/wiki/King_Crimson I would also like to place my Ford Palamino order now please. Latin has very strict pronunciation rules (as it should, being a dead language that isn’t growing and changing) and the letter a is always pronounced the same way. That way is the same way the a in “father” sounds. Never the short vowel as in apple, the long vowel as in snake, always the broad sound. U is similarly shackled, but its simpler, just a double-o sound like in “boo” or “food”, not as in “foot” So, “Jah-noos” This language lesson brought to you by my high school latin teacher, Dr Singh. All mistakes are mine, not hers Brought to you by several years of Latin as an undergraduate and as a graduate student; my college years weren’t entirely devoted to the unfettered joys of geology.
