There’s a great article on The Autopian where the author drools over old Freightliner brochures from the ’80s. The artwork lands right in Demaras Racing’s wheelhouse: retro futurism with work boots on. Not exactly a Lamborghini Countach poster. More like your uncle’s long-haul rig reimagined as a space freighter with woodgrain trim.
So what do we call this style? We’d call it Dieselwave.
Not synthwave exactly. Not vaporwave. Not cyberpunk. Dieselwave is synthwave’s hard-hat cousin. It has the neon sky, alien sunset and impossible moon, but instead of a DeLorean, the hero object is a cab-over Freightliner with a Caterpillar-yellow engine and a dashboard full of analogue gauges.
The word feels like it already exists. You hear Dieselwave and immediately picture chrome wheels glowing under a blood-red horizon, amber marker lights, mountains cut from black paper, and a brochure writer somehow connecting frame rigidity to mankind’s journey across the cosmos.
The interiors are just as wonderful. Woodgrain. Beige cloth. Black plastic. A Panasonic radio. The cab feels like a 1980s rec room bolted to a million-mile machine.
Outside, the Freightliner is crossing some neon dreamscape. Inside, it’s coffee thermos, cassette tapes, CB chatter and another hundred miles before dawn.
That’s Dieselwave.
Why is a member of Daft Punk working on that rig? If that’s the only work he can find, they should get back together!
Its tough finding work in this economy. A robots got to do what a robots got to do!