Midnight Ride of a Patriot

How to design for a town full of history and brimming with antithesis?

Today, in areas of Boston, opponents of the very “automobile” itself are legion and manifest in car sharing cooperatives who pledge to wipe the idea of automotive retail off the map. But deep in the heart of Beantown, there is another story percolating.

We at Local Motors take exception to such kingly dogma and pledge to rebel. Join us as we retrace the path of a fellow rebel and Patriot by mapping the course of history and progress alongside Paul Revere.

When our community is done, we will spit in the eye of the royal auto-haters and show them that a small crowd of patriots can defy expectation and launch an automotive revolution in a virtual Tea Party of forward-thinking design.

For those who know the story well, Revere’s ride began with a signal cast from the Steeple of the Old North Church in Boston’s North End. “One if by land and two if by sea” was the instruction given to his accomplice who was to warn Revere of the path of the advancing British so that our Patriot might warn the colonial militia and thereby allow them to orient best their defenses.

“Two if be sea” it was, as the redcoats mounted Men-of-War and sailed from the North End into Cambridge to follow Rt 2 out to the future Battlegrounds of Concord and Lexington.

The dark night of 1773 which cloaked Revere in secrecy gave no glimpse of the future progress that our fair city was to display over the next 235 years.

Starting in today’s North End, Revere’s world is still palpable, his cold Puritan house, leaning atop hard lumpy cobblestone. The Old North Church is still very much in use surrounded by today’s Italian American population and some of the best pasta and cannoli that America has to offer. Streets are tight as a cow cart, and cemeteries abut townhomes that both overlook the old wharves.

The harbor that the redcoats forded while bristling with muskets, bayonets and cannon is almost unrecognizable as the Charles River itself is damned by a Science Museum and the entire inner harbor called Back Bay has been filled in by some of Boston’s most tony real estate and shopping from Marlborough Avenue across to Newbury Street.

Textile manufacturing, Mills, furniture, machining, business business business was the history of the Boston regional area throughout the 1800’s and 1900’s. Now this world of sweat shops has given way to another economy.

Where the ‘Coats would have landed in Cambridgeside, America’s biotech and genomic giants have sprung up amongst a mass of universities and venture capitalists. Inside the beltway of the Rt128 corridor, our Patriot could probably have predicted the spirit of innovation that would grow and thrive.

And high-tech startups are not the only leaders here in our historic city. Sports franchises have grown to perhaps the strongest and most elite status right here in Boston. Last year alone the Patriots, the Red Sox, and the Celtics dominated their leagues by winning the NFL, the MLB,  and the NBA highest honors (well, almost, as the undefeated Patriots lost in the Superbowl to a team from somewhere south of Boston.

Boston is a town and has a history of revolutionary winners. This competition is offered to the LM Community for someone to design a car for this area that embodies some or all of this history. This must be a car which works naturally within the regions physical constraints.

Listen my friends and you shall hear

Of the car designed for Paul Revere!