Phil Patton reports on the specialized vocabulary of automobile designers.
Now that designers often move around the globe, their language has become more eclectic. Earlier in his career, [Peter] Davis [director of interior design for global compact utility vehicles at G.M.] worked in Europe for Fiat and G.M. In Germany, he learned gummidingers, a name for rubber thingamajigs that have no name. Mr. Davis defined the British-sounding mucketts as “complicated rubber moldings that hide nasty window-door frame areas or direct water drips to appropriate places.”
“In Italy,” he said, “what we call the plenum, the area at the base of the windshield where the wipers sit and run off is directed is called the vasca di pesce, or fish bowl.”