Once upon a time, there was a television show entitled "Car Trek". It was about the adventures of a guy named Kirk who crisscrossed the American heartland in the mid-seventies. He drove a 1975 Chevy Monte Carlo, which the show's devoted fans nicknamed "Ol' Constitution."

The show would spawn a movie franchise, and the producers decided to freshen the look of the "Ol' Constitution" by this time using a 1979 Monte Carlo.

In Car Trek III: The Search for a Short-Cut, we caught a glimpse at the future of car design when we saw the "Excelsiorific" 1985 Ford Taurus, which was far sleeker and more modern-looking than anything that had come so far.

The show's producers went a step further when they put together a sequel show, Car Trek: The Next Gas-Station, jumping a whole twenty years to the mid-nineties. In accordance with this, they used a car a whole 20 model years in advance of the original "Constitution." This time, a curvier, larger, and more comfy car was used, the "Galaxy" 1995 Oldsmobile Aurora

This show was wildly successful, and between it and its numerous spinoff series and films a whole family of cars from about the same time would be introduced...

One was the smaller and sleeker lines of the "Intrepid" 2000 Ford Focus.

Another, the longer and still-sleeker "Sovereign" 2001 Chrysler 300M.

Often, the show's production staff would look for ways to create a unique-looking car. One way they came up with was to radically alter the back end of the cabin by removing the back roof altogether, resulting in something called a "convertible." One such car, a little older in vintage than the Galaxy-Aurora, was the "Akira" 1992 Chrysler LeBaron.

And then word came that there would be a new "Car Trek" show, taking place in the distant and primevial mid-fifties, and with a car as much older than the original as the "The Next Gas-Station" was ahead of it. Now, the fans had never actually seen a car from before the seventies, but by now the show's devotees had figured out a pattern to the design lineage of these cars... as time went by they got bigger and sleeker looking, while preserving the same basic shape. So they all guessed that the car in this show would look like this.

But, no, a picture of the car leaked, and it didn't look anything like that. It was a Plymouth, apparently from 1955.

And there was outrage online! "It looks all curvy and modern-looking," said one. "It's just a ripoff of the Akira-LeBaron," said another, "I mean, look, the entire arrangement of the back of the cabin is exactly the same!" "There's no way this could predate "Ol' Constitution," they all howled.

And honestly, this is just another example of how Paramount tries to give something the fans will like, and we ram it down their throats. It's clear that the fandom loves the Akira class - there are hundreds of fanboy "WHY DON"T U MAKE A SEREZ BOUT AN AKIUH CLASS SHIP????????" proposals that attest to it. So when TPTB gives them something that looks like one for a main ship even if only in general arrangement, we go nuts. Sow and reap, gents.

Regardless, I'm still gonna wait until we get a decent five-view or three-quarter view before rendering judgement on the ship. And certainly until after a few episodes air before judging the series on the basis of its ship.

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Originally posted by TSN:
Hm... Would've been more accurate if, instead of a '55 Plymouth, you'd used another LeBaron, but w/ different rims and a different paint color... :-)

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and

We saw the Cheyenne and did not consider it a rip-off of the Constellation. We saw the Nebula and did not consider it a rip-off of the Miranda. That was because they shared only general design similarities and there was a visible lineage.

A convertible Lebaron and a convertible '57 Chevy are nowhere close to the similarity between Akira and Akiraprise.

[ July 09, 2001: Message edited by: Stingray ]

And it figures of all those pictures, the Miata is the one that shows up.

[ July 09, 2001: Message edited by: Stingray ]