Director (pronounced dih-rek-ter
or dahy-rek-ter)
(1) A person or thing that directs others or other things
(Director of Engineering, Director of Sales etc).
(2) In corporate law, one of a group of persons chosen to
control or govern the affairs of a company or corporation, usually as a member
of a board of directors and sometimes also including executive functions.
(3) The person responsible for the interpretive aspects
of a stage, film, or television production; the person who supervises the
integration of all the elements, as acting, staging, lighting etc.
(4) In musical or other artistic productions (stage, art
galleries, opera etc) one in charge of all artistic (and sometimes
administrative) matters (in larger operations the roles sometimes specialized:
sound director, script director etc).
(5) The manager or chief executive of certain schools,
institutes, government bureaux etc.
(6) In military use, a mechanical or electronic device that continuously calculates firing data for use against an airplane or other moving
target, configured usually graphically to display (in real-time) the
targets of a weapons system.
(7) In chemistry, the common axis of symmetry of the
molecules of a liquid crystal.
(8) In music, a synonym for conductor (US use, now less
common).
(9) A counsellor, confessor, or spiritual guide (now less
common).
1470-1480: The construct was direct(us) + -or. A borrowing in the sense of “a guide” from
the Anglo French directour & the
French directeur the agent noun from
the Latin dirigere (set straight,
arrange; give a particular direction to) and its source, the Late Latin directorem, from the Latin dīrectus, the perfect passive participle
of dīrigō (straighten, direct), the
construct being dis- (asunder, in
pieces, apart, in two) + regō (to
direct, to guide, keep straight; make straight; rule), from the primitive
Indo-European root reg (move in a
straight line). The -or
suffix was from the Middle English -our,
from the Old French -eor, from the
Latin -ātor and reinforced by the Old
French -or and its source, the Latin -tor
& -tōrem. It was used to create an agent noun, often
from a verb, indicating a person or object (often machines or parts of them)
that do the verb or part of speech with which they are formed. In electrical engineering it has the specific
use of being appended to the names of members of classes of components,
especially those that have an extensive property name of the same root suffixed
with -ance (eg to convey the sense that resistors possess resistance and
inductors possess inductance). The alternative spelling directour became rare in the
late eighteenth century and is long obsolete.
Director, directorate & directorship are nouns, directing is a verb,
directed is a verb & adjective, directorial is an adjective and directorially
is an adverb; the noun plural is directors.
The feminine forms of the noun (directress
& directrix) were always rare and
are now thought extinct (and by some probably proscribed).
Lindsay Lohan with Spanish fashion designer Estrella Arch (b 1974), on the catwalk, Emanuel Ungaro's Spring-Summer show, Paris, October 2009. Ms Lohan was employed as a creative director at the House, founded in 1965 by French fashion designer Emanuel Ungaro (1933–2019).
The noun director (corporate sense of “one of a number of
persons having authority to manage the affairs of a company” was known as early
as the 1630s; the theatrical sense of “the leader of a company of performers”
dates from 1911 and it was from here the use was picked up by those in charge
of the artistic or technical aspects of movie-making. The noun directorship (condition or office of
a director) has been in use since the 1720s, the adjective directorial known since 1770. The noun directorate
was used first in 1834 of “a body of directors” and may immediately have be used
individually of the “office of a director” but this was certainly first
documented in 1837. Director is a word
defined both by its history of use (film director, director of football etc)
and law (company director) so although titles like supervisor, head, manager,
leader, administrator, chief, boss etc certainly implies “one who directs”,
they’re traditionally not used as direct synonyms because “director” is a “loaded
word”. It’s also modified as needed (art
director, managing director, sub-director etc).
1967 Imperial Crown Coupe with "Mobile Director Package"; note the rearward facing front passenger seat.
Although the brand had since the 1920s been used for some of Chrysler's more expensive lines, between 1955-1975, the corporation re-created
Imperial as a separate, stand-alone division (albeit with
some intra-corporate sharing of engines, transmissions and
certain other components), the way Ford positioned Lincoln (GM's (General Motors) Cadillac then still with unique engines although much else was shared). In the early years, the approach yielded some success (most notably with the dramatic 1957 models) but the separation didn’t survive the troubled
decade of the 1970s (by which time the platform and body-shells were shared
with the other divisions and much of the earlier distinctiveness had been
surrendered); a couple of subsequent, half-heated, revivals proved abortive.
Bowing to economic reality, the Imperial in 1967-1968 had switched
from the separate frame used since 1955 to the unitary construction of the full-sized
ranges offered by other divisions but maintained a certain degree of difference
by virtue of a unique body, albeit one with dimensions slightly reduced (not seen by all as a virtue at a time when things were again trending larger). While styled with an elegance derived from its simplicity of line, the Imperial
continued to not quite match the timeless modernity of the Lincoln or the indefinable
but incomparable allure of the Cadillac and although sales did improve in 1967, volumes were only ever a fraction of its two competitors. The basic engineering though was sound, the
TorqueFlite 727 transmission as responsive and robust as any (although it didn’t quite slur as
effortlessly between ratios as the Cadillac’s TH400 Turbo-Hydramatic 400) while the 440
cubic inch (7.2 litre) V8 was a notch better, something the others wouldn’t match
until 1968. Significantly, reviewers at the time often were prepared to acknowledge the Imperial was the more capable road car although, given it
operated in a market where quietness and isolation from the environment were afforded
more of a premium than handling prowess, among potential buyers, any perception of real-world advantage probably was marginal.
The more stylish if less roadable opposition: 1967 Cadillac Coupe DeVille (left) & 1967 Lincoln Continental Coupe (right).
In those years however, the Imperial did offer something truly
unique. The “Mobile Director Package”
was available exclusively on the Imperial Crown Coupe and reflected (within the
limits of what the available technology would then permit) what Chrysler thought a company director would most value in an automobile being used as a kind of “office
on the move”, including (1) an extendable walnut-topped table (secured to the floor by a stainless-steel stanchion) able to be unfolded over the rear seats, (2) a Tensor high-intensity lamp with a gooseneck mount enabling the light to be directed anywhere in the cabin and, most intriguingly (3) a front passenger seat mounted on swivelling base enabling it to rotate 180°, the apparatus permitting someone comfortably to use the table and interact with those in the rear. Conveniently, in a sign of the times, the car was supplied with four cigarette lighters and the lamp could be plugged into whichever was closest to need. The package was available only
for those two seasons and in its first years cost US$597.40 (some US$6,000 adjusted
for 2026 values) but only 81 buyers ticked the option box and even reducing the price the next season to US$317.60 did little to stimulate demand; only 70 ordered as a dismal swansong. Even if the threat of new safety regulations hadn’t been looming, it’s
doubtful the Mobile Director Package would have appeared on the option list for 1969 when the new “fuselage” Imperials debuted.
Imperial's advertising always emphasised the "business" aspect of the package but the corporation also circulated a photograph of the table supporting a (presumably magnetic) chessboard and another with silver compote holding a shiny red apple and a bunch of grapes, dangling seductively. The latter may have been to suggest the utility of the package when stopping for a picnic with one's secretary; at an advertising agency, once someone suggested using the motif of "forbidden fruit", nobody would have been able to resist.
The advertising copy at the time claimed the package was “designed
for the busy executive who must continue his work while he travels”, serving
also as “an informal conference lounge”.
The Imperial was a big car (previous generations had been larger still) though “lounge” was a bit of a stretch but “truth in advertising”
laws were then not quite as onerous as they would become. More accurate were the engineering details,
the table able to “pivot to any of four different positions, supported by a
sturdy chrome-plated pillar and in the forward position, it can convert into a
padded armrest between the two front seats while extended, it opens out to
twice its original size with a lever on the table swivel support to permit adjustments to the height”. It was noted
“a special tool is used for removing the table and storing it in the trunk” the
unstated implication presumably that in deference to the secretary’s finger-nails,
that would be a task for one’s chauffeur.
The US$597.40 the option listed at in 1967 needs to be compared with the
others available and only the most elaborate of the two AC (air conditioning) systems was
more expensive.
Imperial option list, 1967.
1967 Imperial Crown Coupe with Mobile Director Package. Note
seatbelt mounting point.
The publicity material associated with the Mobile Director Package did suggest the
rearward-facing seat would likely be occupied by a director’s secretary and, as
one might imagine, the configuration did preclude her (in 1967, secretaries
almost always were women) using a seatbelt but she would always have been in
arm’s reach of at least one cigarette lighter so there was that. The (male) end of the front
seatbelts sat on the sill panel, adjacent to the seat’s squab (back), a
placement dictated by the need not to restrict access to the rear-compartment
and that worked well for the standard coupe but, obviously, rendered the belt
useless when the seat was rotated. While
Chrysler can be criticized for not providing rearward-facing secretaries with
what’s now regarded as an essential safety feature, the rest of the US industry
and legislatures (federal & state) were in 1967 little less cavalier. While some state registration authorities had
during the decade mandated the provision of seatbelts for front-seat
passengers, no US jurisdiction then compelled their use.
The
familiar modern three-point (lap & sash) seatbelt evolved in the late 1950s
with much input from US designers but it was Swedish manufacturers that first
made them universal (Scandinavia being often dark and icy, drivers
sharing the roads with large elk). The
modern seatbelt design (conceptually unchanged to this day) is credited to
Swedish mechanical engineer Nils Bohlin (1920–2002) who was employed by Volvo,
the company making them a standard fitting in 1959, following the example of
Saab that had added them the previous year.
During the 1960s, US states gradually imposed a requirement they be
fitted until federal law mandated they be installed in all passenger vehicles produced
after 1 January, 1968. The laws
requiring people actually to use the things proved more difficult to implement
but other countries quickly made both fitment and use compulsory, initially only for those seated in the front but eventually this extended
to all passengers. Although examples
existed early in the twentieth century (fitted often by those with experience
in aviation) rudimentary seatbelts first appeared in US production cars during
the 1950s but the manufacturers must have thought the public indifferent
because their few gestures were tentative such as in 1956 when Ford had offered
(as an extra-cost option) a bundle of safety features called the “Lifeguard
Design” package that included:
(1) Padded
dashboards (to reduce head injuries).
(2)
Recessed steering wheel hub (to minimize chest injuries).
(3) Seat
belts (front lap belts only)
(4)
Stronger door latches (preventing doors flying open in a crash)
(5)
Shatter-resistant rear-view mirror (reducing injuries caused by from broken
glass).
In Western
popular culture and advertising, there have been many friendly bears, including
this one happily buckled-up with a “Ford seat belt. One third stronger than
required for airliners.”
The
standard features included (1) the Safety-Swivel Rear View Mirror, (2) the
Deep-Center Steering Wheel with recessed post and bend-away spokes and (3)
Double-Grip Door Latches with interlocking striker plate overlaps. Optional at additional cost were (4) Seat
Belts (single kit, front or rear, color-keyed, nylon-rayon with quick
one-handed adjust/release aluminium buckle) (US$5). There were also "bundles" (always
popular in Detroit), “Safety Package A” consisting of a Padded Instrument Panel
& Padded Sun Visors (US$18) while “Safety Package B” added to that
Front-Seat Lap Seat Belts (US$27). On
the 1956 Thunderbird (with a significantly different interior design) the
options were (1) the Lifeguard Padded Instrument Panel (US$22.65), (2)
Lifeguard Padded Sun Visors (US$9) and (3) Lifeguard Seat Belts (US$14).
Years
later, internal documents would be discovered revealing conflicts within
the corporation, the marketing department opposed to any mention of
"safety features" because that reminded potential customers of car
crashes; they would prefer they focus on new colors, higher power
outputs, sleek new lines and such. So,
with not much done to promote the “Lifeguard Design”, public demand was subdued
and soon the option quietly was deleted. At the time, apart from improving the quality
of roads (resulting in higher average speeds with obvious implications) the
government had done little about either safety or vehicle emissions but both
the rising highway death toll and the worsening air quality in cities was
attracting attention, meaning things would change, decades of legislation soon
to unfold. The first decisive step came
as a provision in FMVSS 208 (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 208)
requiring all passenger cars manufactured from 1 January, 1968 onward be
equipped with seatbelts at the designated seating positions though this was a federal
manufacturing requirement, not a law requiring motorists to buckle up,
something not imposed until 1984 when New York made their use mandatory, other
states following the lead.
FMVSS emerged
from the US NHSB (National Highway Safety Bureau (that in 1970 became the NHTSA
(National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) under the newly created DOT
(Department of Transportation), established by an act of Congress on 15
October, 1966 and beginning operation on 1 April, 1967). That alphabet soup of activity in a field
previously little explored by government came in the wake of the publication of
Ralph Nader’s (b 1934) book Unsafe at any
Speed (1965) documenting the flaws in the design and construction of US
automobiles and industry’s indifference to the consequences. Regulation ever since has been a growing
industry, something emblematic of a theme in Western political culture since
the end of World War II (1939-1945): The erosion of personal freedom in
exchange for perceived (or dictated) benefits (in the case of the FMVSS, safer
cars; other agencies gave us cleaner air).
All of this is fought out in various fora (legislatures, the streets,
social media, Fox News etc); sometimes the state giveth, sometimes the state taketh
away.
The profound recent shift in this mechanism
is not the process but the participants: As “big tech” became dominant, that
collective gave much to consumers who benefited from what appeared
substantially to be “free” while surrendering much that was once by
philosophers and political scientists thought precious but which clearly is
regarded by many as an abstraction, the loss of which is a price worth paying
for TikTok, Instagram, generative AI (artificial intelligence) and such.
In that, big tech’s model is essentially the same as that of the CCP
(Chinese Communist Party) and that seems to have worked well so we should
imagine, as the twenty-first century unfolds, we’ll get “more of the same”. In political theory, what the social contract
theorists at big tech are doing is right because we all have clicked on the
boxes agreeing to their 30-plus pages of terms and conditions and have
certified we have read and understood every clause. The political process handling this societal
overlay is neither static nor lineal; structurally it follows much the same
pattern as earlier contests between power and individuals: As governments react
to pressure groups by seeking to curb the worst of the consequences, fixes, work-arounds
and obfuscations will interact with a flow of money into the coffers of
governments, parties (and, now and again, pockets) in a way that will permit most of what big tech plans to do while
giving the appearance things are being done to stop them doing at least some of what many people think they
should stop doing. To anyone who remembers
the maneuvers and compromises that for more than a decade would flow around the best-laid plans of the NHTSA, it will all be familiar.
1968 Imperial Crown Coupe with Mobile Director Package. The seatbelt (lap only) was now attached directly to the frame. Imperial’s
designers were compelled by the law to be more imaginative than most. For the swivelling front seat in the 1968 cars,
the seatbelt mounting points were integrated directly into the steel frame of
the seat base itself, rather than the vehicle's floor pan. To achieve the necessary strength, (using
techniques borrowed from the seats in airliners), the engineers had both inboard and outboard lap-belt ends bolt directly to
reinforced anchor points on the lower structural framing of the seat. This made seat, mechanism and belts wholly
self-contained (a la a military aircraft’s ejector-seat!) and permitted the 180o swivel effect, belts rotating seamlessly with passenger. Chrysler did however obtain from the
authorities a partial-exemption. While FMVSS
208 required front-seat shoulder belts, that would have been difficult to
implement for the swivelling seat (not impossible because ejector-seats have frame-mounted
shoulder-belts) so the restraint system was limited to the two-point lap-belt (admittedly an improvement over what she'd been provided in 1967: nothing). Secretaries on the move
presumably were grateful but the safety feature didn’t see sales improve, despite the slashing of the price.
1966 Chrysler 300X show car.
In 1966, the “swivelling seat thing” must have been exerting a powerful influence in Chrysler’s design offices because also shown that year was the 300X, based on a 300 Convertible (and despite the appended letter, a vehicle not in the tradition of the just-retired “letter series” 300s (1955-1965), the “X” believed a reference to eXperimental) and although mechanically unchanged, the cockpit was packed with “futuristic” ideas, some of which did eventually enter mainstream use (although the swivelling front seat remained one of history’s unwanted orphans). Rather than a conventional steering wheel, the driver used handgrips and the “steering unit” included button controls for lights, wipers, turn signals, and door locks, enabling use of all functions with a finger or thumb, all the while keeping a both hands on the mechanism. Door handles were replaced by a keypunch card used also for the ignition while a truck-lid mounted TV camera and monitor on the dashboard replaced the rear-view mirrors. Rear-seat passengers (and the front-occupant when “swivelled”) were able to enjoy watching a small television, mounted on a bracket allowing it to be stowed away when not in use. Construction of the 300X was out-sourced to the prolific customizer and fabricator Roger Winfield (1927–2025) whose creations became well-known from their appearances in film and television including Blade Runner (1982) and Get Smart (1965-1970). The 1965 Sunbeam “Tiger” be built for Get Smart was actually a visually almost identical Sunbeam Alpine, chosen because its compactfour-cylinder engine left sufficient under-hood space for the “special accessories” (including a retractable machine-gun) whereas the Tiger’s Ford V8 filled the space to the brim. To solve the “aural deficit”, the distinctive burble of a Tiger’s V8 was added during the editing process.
The most
obvious thing that might puzzle those first seeing the Mobile Director Package
is why it was available only in a two-door model when four-door coachwork would
seem to make the configuration more obviously functional. Had Imperial in 1967 sold several thousand of
the things it’s at least possible Chrysler would for 1968 (or even mid-way
through 1967) had extended availability but that would have been a more demanding process
than it may appear, the existing swivelling mechanism unable to be used. The difficulty was the four-door models (both
sedan and hardtop) had respectively a full or partial B-pillar, the latter ending at the belt-line where
the greenhouse begins, the structure required to provide a secure anchor
point for the rear door's hinges. The
coupes used doors longer than front units on the four-door models, meaning the
B-pillar sat further forward than the trailing-edge of the coupe’s door; there
was thus a sufficient aperture for the seat to rotate when the coupe’s door was
open but the gap would have been too narrow on the four-door cars. So to offer the package in the four-door body
it would have been a matter either of re-designing the doors or the swivelling
seat and while the former would have been an expensive exercise (prohibitively so
if the only justification was to accommodate a low-volume option), the seat and
its base could have been re-engineered but after finding only 81 buyers in 1967 and 70 the next season, investment would have been hard to justify.
1960 Facel Vega Excellence EX1 (left) and 1959 Lancia Appia Series III (right). Facel Vega produced France's finest cars of the post-war era but while undeniably glamourous, the flaws in the design of the Excellence's door-latches were never resolved and by the time the factory was shuttered in 1964, total Excellence production stood at 148 EX1s (Series One; 1958-1961) & 8 EX2s (Series Two; 1961-1964). Lancia perfected pillar-free body engineering, using doors with sturdy window frames, permitting latch points at both sill and roof, the configuration offered on a number of sedans including the Ardea (1939-1953), Aurelia (1950-1958) & Appia (1953-1963). The locking mechanism was intricate but the engineering was simple and proved reliable. It's sad the company's later attachment to FWD (front wheel drive) ultimately doomed Lancia because in every other aspect of engineering, few others were as adept at producing such fine small-displacement vehicles.
1969 Ford Aurora II Concept Car.
Ford's 1969 Aurora II Concept Car gave an indication of quite what what would have been required to make the Mobile Director Package conveniently functional on the platform of what was then the standard "full-size" four-door US automobile. The "wrap-around" rear seat was an idea borrowed from the Ford Thunderbird, contemporary reviewers praising the visual impact but noting that as something for humans to sit on it was less comfortable than a conventional design; in the Aurora it probably worked better and certainly lent the cabin the desired "lounge-room" vibe. The problem of providing (1) space for the seat to swivel and (2) allowing elegant ingress & egress was of course afforded by the the four doors (in "suicide" configuration) and elimination of the B-pillar. That combination provided unprecedented ease of accessibility but its doubtful it could successfully have been implemented in series-production. The French concern had earlier tried the approach with their Excellence model but, despite retaining a vestigial hump where a B-pillar would have attached to the sill, the company never solved the problem of the door-locking apparatus "springing open" while the car was in motion, usually when the mechanism was subject to lateral forces such as when cornering. Because these forces could be exerted at high-speed, having doors suddenly "flying open" was an obvious safety concern. Lancia in the 1950s solved the problem of doing without a fixed central pillar buy using doors with conventional, full-height frames, thereby enabling locking mechanisms to be fitted top & bottom. Curiously, the Aurora was based on the LTD Country Squire that came only with fully-framed doors so Lancia's approach could have been adopted but there's no indication Ford ever contemplated series-production, the "concept car" created just to generate interest on the show circuit.
1967 Imperial Crown Convertible (with subsequently added Mobile Director package).
Imperial over two seasons might have managed to sell only 151 of the Mobile Director packages but one owner of a 1967 Crown Convertible was so smitten they cannibalized a coupe to create a unique (if wholly fake) "convertible Mobile Director". Exactly emulating what the factory did would not have been as simple as it may appear because the floor under the passengers swivelling seat needed to be strengthened with additional bracing and a "baffle" was welded to the transmission tunnel where the table's stainless-steel stanchion was attached (off-set to the driver's side to avoid the drive-shaft). Although apparently as significantly pointless as the original, it's a novelty that would attract interest at events like "cars & coffee" and may even be more functional in that it would seem an ideal place comfortably to sit and enjoy one's picnic while watching something like polo (on the model of the way the Country Life set re-purpose the tailgates on their Range Rovers). That said, had the factory in 1967-1968 made the package available on the convertible, almost certainly it would have been just as unsuccessful as the coupe.
Stewart-Warner's desk-based DataFax (circa 1958). The process of miniaturization in electronics was by 1966 still embryonic but enough shrinkage had been attained to make a fax fit in Imperial's show car. Unlike fax machines, the
pencil skirt never goes out of style.
The specification of Chrysler's package as it appeared in showrooms for the 1967 season was actually
modest compared with the “Mobile Executive” car the corporation sent around the
show circuit a year earlier; that Imperial had
been fitted with a telephone, Dictaphone, writing table, fax machine, reading lamp and stereophonic sound system; a typewriter and portable television also used in many displays although neither were "fitted". Also a Crown Coupe, the 1966 show car was much more ambitious, anticipating advances in mobile communications that would emerge over the next quarter-century.
At the time, car phones were available (the first service in the US
offered in certain cities in 1946) but they were expensive and the nature of
the bandwidth, combined with a lack of data compression, meant the range was
limited as was capacity, only several dozen calls able simultaneously to be
sustained. In the 1966 car, there had even been the novelty of a Stewart-Warner Datafax, able to send or receive a US Letter-sized (slightly
smaller than A4) page of text in six minutes.
That sounds unimpressive in the 2020s (or compared even with the 14.4 kbit/s
for Group 3 FaxStream services of the 1990s) but the appropriate comparison is
with the contemporary alternatives (driving, walking, a courier, or using the US Mail) and six
minutes would have been a considerable advance. While more expensive than a stamp and envelope, for the target market the costs would anyway have been a legitimate business expense and thus "a deductible".
As it was, the tempting equipment awaited improvements in infrastructure
such as the analogue networks of the 1980s and later cellular roll-outs, these technologies contributing to an extent of use delivering economies of scale that eventually would make possible the smartphone.
The 1966 car that toured the show circuit demonstrated the concept which, in simplified form, would the next year appear on the option list but things like telephones and fax machines anticipated the future by many years (although fax machines in cars (Audi and Toyota among the handful to offer them) never became a thing). The Dictaphone did however make the list as one of Chrysler's RPOs (regular production options) in the early 1970s and the take-up rate was surprisingly high although the fad quickly passed, dealers reporting the customers saying the hardware worked well but they "never used them". In the collector community, a surviving Dictaphone in something like a Plymouth 'Cuda is a minor attraction; while not increasing value as would something like and original Hemi V8, it is a legitimate "period piece".
Glovebox-mounted fax machine in 1995 Toyota Celsior (the JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) Lexus LS).
The problem with the scaled-down Datafax was even had it been possible to produce the things at a manageable cost, in 1966 the solid-state electronics that would have made the thing reliable when subject to constant vibration and jolts were still years away (Chrysler’s Bendix “Electrojector” fuel injection in 1958 had fewer moving parts and that didn’t end well). However, even if reliability could have been "engineered in", there is no guarantee demand would have existed whatever the price-point. In the 1990s, despite it being installed with Toyota’s typical neatness and attention to detail, there were few buyers for the "fax machine in the glovebox" and if the notion was going to catch on anywhere, it would have been in that nation of early adopters. While there were many features in the 1966 300X truly that were "ahead of their time", the Mobile Direct Package was a genuine cul-de-sac, at least as implemented in a conventionally sized car (and certainly a two-door coupe). In 1966, rearward-facing seats had for some years been seen in the "vis-à-vis" arrangement used in some LWB (long wheelbase) limousines and as child-seats in the rear-most compartments of station wagons but those seats had been either fixed or folding and although the Ford Aurora II presumably dazzled a few impressionable souls, the industry showed little inclination to follow Chrysler's swivelling lead.
2021 "Maybach-Look" Mercedes-Benz Metris. The passenger compartment is a similar configuration as the 1966-1967 Imperials (two forward facing seats, two rearward ("fold-away" rather than swivelling)) and there were folding tables as well as features unimaginable in the 1960s (seat massage, starlight-pattern headliner, flatscreen TV, internet connectivity, touchscreen infotainment system and a Burmester sound system with subwoofers). Unfortunately, a fax machine wasn't part of the build but by 2021, they were close to extinct even in bricks & mortar offices.
Flawed though Chrysler's implementation in 1966-1967 may have been, in the twenty-first century, production-line economics made it possible to realise the concept's implications, "big-box" vans able to be outfitted as genuinely functional mobile offices from which communication can be maintained with just about any part of the planet. Of course, based on the same body used by plumbers, Amazon delivery drivers and such, the Metris doesn't have quite the gravitas of the Mercedes-Benz 600 Grossers of old (it's debatable whether the faux "Maybach-Look" stuff makes things better or worse) but there's more interior space and room for a big-screen TV so it's all a matter of what one wants from life. Noting that, some operations have fitted-out interiors as offices or luxury transports which eschewing the exterior bling, some (often wisely) preferring to travel as inconspicuously as possible.
