UnBeige, mediabistro.com's design blog, talks with Phil Patton, the NY Times's man in the car industry and author of Bug: The Strange Mutations of the World's Most Popular Automobile, about his role as moderator of an upcoming Times symposium on the future of automobile design:

"Energy crises and oil shocks change the way car companies operate. New technologies change the ways cars look. We are in a period of rapid tech change: Hybrids, fuel cells, all the new motive technologies are likely to change the basics of auto design... The early results during such periods are often gawky—think of the first 'downsized' cars of the 1970s—but then the changes produce clever and fresh solutions, esthetically as well as practically. Good designers know that constraints spur creativity."

Read the full interview at UnBeige, and you'll learn why Patton's gearing up to reread The Futurist Manifesto...