Koundalini

In the immortal words of every successful creative person, artist, musician, designer, or world-bender: Fuck the haters.

Here’s your homework for the weekend, should you choose to accept it.

Watch the video below about the Koundalini sports car, and note the feelings that bubble up for you.

Is it not ‘pedigreed’ enough? Is it too far removed, as a car built in a shed, from other sports cars constructed in similar places? Do you think it’s brute-iful^*, or ugly, or some mid-tier kit car that’s been massaged into something…else?

Why? Good or bad, these same feelings are bubbling when we’re looking at any car, not only for the Koundalini. 

These polarizing feelings are what tend to stick around.

This is why once a vehicle like the Pontiac Aztek are labelled by society as an ugly, trash meme car that will forever stain anyone unfortunate to have set foot within its Glad bin-cladded minimum-grade unibody structure (that GM would have replaced with papier-mâché had it been legal to do so)…it becomes difficult to associate the car with positive attributes.

You still don’t believe me. Fine:

The other day, I was coming home from work and came up behind this slick-looking five-door, with a glass hatchback and these really intricate split front headlights. It was kind of tall and narrow like a minivan but kind of swoopy, like a crossover coupé. I think it was a Pontiac.

How’s that look on your face? Something like 🤨?

First impressions matter, and if the first impression of the Koundalini is that it’s a pie-in-the-sky project with little hope of success — as the media and investors did at the time, well, that’s a huge problem. 

24 year old Gaston Cusson is said to have worked on the car for six years to get it to a TV-worthy state. Help came from Manon Beaupré, Gaston’s girlfriend, who contributed the interior design, marketing, and probably a half dozen other things.

In 2024, I look at the Koundalini and think, “Gaston would have KILLED IT on YouTube…”

Showing each stage of the vehicle’s construction, meetings with suppliers and investors, the unique challenge of building a car in a region where half the year is winter or winter-ish…I’m already hooked.

It’s these bite-sized personal interest stories, focused around a low-slung sports car project, that have come to dominate ‘car enthusiast’ media. 

The shame here is perhaps not the Koundalini itself, but in considering how many like-minded small constructors could have benefitted from building a supportive community invested in seeing these projects find success.