The J Craft Torpedo… and 10 more torpedo-shaped design classics

Just like its namesake – the electric or torpedo ray – the J Craft Torpedo is an exercise in sleek and stealthy aquadynamics, propulsion and performance. The Gotland-based boat builder created the Torpedo to weapons-grade precision – its sleek hull and missile profile facilitating remarkable stability, and a capability to take it fast, deep and far into the ocean. Engineered in the seductive streamline vernacular, the J Craft Torpedo now joins a family of other torpedo-shaped, style paquebot, design classics.

PEN

Since the popularity of Art Deco in the 1920 and ’30s, many writing implements have mimicked the torpedo silhouette – the tapered shape that moves so smoothly through the water also sits comfortably in the hand, sweeping nib across page with grace, style and stealth. Dunhill is one brand to have experimented with this, producing Torpedo ball-point and fountain pens (as well as a limited-edition torpedo Dunhill cigar from its Aged Centenas range).

A shared aesthetic and inspiration aren’t the only things joining the London house with the Swedish boat builder. Adding to the Torpedo’s quay-appeal, J Craft is also collaborating with Dunhill on a cocktail case. Handmade from traditional bridle leather, the bespoke case’s colours complement the colour schemes of J Craft owners’ vessels and contain a hand-crafted silver-plated cocktail shaker, crystal martini glasses and drinks flasks in sterling silver. Figures adorning the cocktail sticks are silver Dunhill “Tweenies”, scaled-down versions of the mascot Alfred Dunhill had on his car bonnet in the early 20th century, a devil thumbing his nose at the policemen who had given Dunhill’s founder speeding tickets.

ARCHITECTURE

Sir Norman Foster has long been fascinated and inspired by the missile form. When the “starchitect” curated the Motion. Autos, Art, Architecture exhibition at the Guggenheim Bilbao back in 2022, pretty much all the vehicles on show were styled as if for space travel. Like a boy obsessed with the jet-age aesthetic, Foster even went to the trouble of painstakingly recreating one of his favourite-ever bullet-cars – Buckminster Fuller’s extraordinary, back-to-front, Dymaxion Car – in 2010.

Another tribute to the torpedo form is London’s 30 St Mary Axe, otherwise known as The Gherkin, completed in 2003. The architect’s homage to neo-futurism maximises the amount of natural lighting and ventilation via aerodynamics. This significantly reduces the building’s energy consumption – but also lends a dynamic, vertical latency… as if it is about to take off on a mission to Mars at any moment.

CONFECTIONERY

Invented in the UK by the Bassett family back in the 19th century, the “Liquorice Torpedo” is the Liquorice Comfit’s larger sweet sibling, and a bona fide confectionary classic. A length of soft black liquorice in a carapace of coloured candy, the invention and popularity of these teeth-straining delights neatly coincides with the world’s first-ever weaponised iteration of the deadly, piscine form: the Whitehead Torpedo. The British navy’s maverick early experiment with underwater missiles was perfected by engineer Robert Whitehead in the 1860s, and armed Russian boats during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878.

CAR

The Torpedo “shape” blasted onto our roads in 1908. Not a whole car at first, but a car body. A London-based importer of French Grégoire motors called Captain Theo Masui pimped up existing four-seater touring cars with his faster, low-sided, B-pillar-free, streamlined designs and started a trend. The Bertone-designed 1912 Fiat Type 3 Torpedo, the Pontiac Torpedo, the Georges Roy 12-HP Touring Sport Torpedo, the totally extraordinary 1951 GAZ Torpedo from Russia et al.

The most prized road missile of all? In 2012, a restored 1928 Mercedes-Benz 680S Torpedo Roadster by French coachbuilder, Carrosserie J Saoutchik, sold at a Pebble Beach auction for $8,250,000.

JEWELLERY

Torpedo-shaped earrings by the likes of Cartier, Tiffany & Co and Harry Winston, were all popular during the 1930s and ’40s. Diamond-studded gold, silver and platinum, this statement earring style remains a dazzling classic almost 100 years later.

CIGAR

The Montecristo No2’s distinctive torpedo shape has made it an icon among discerning cigar aficionados. At over six inches in length, the Montecristo No2 is tapered to a closed point at one end, facilitating a smoking journey, precise in its flavour concentration and olfactory story. Legend has it, the torpedo-shaped Montecristo No2, first rolled in Cuba by Alonso Menendez in 1935, was the inspiration for an alleged plot by the CIA in the 1960s to assassinate cigar-loving leader Fidel Castro with an exploding stogie.

WRISTWATCH

Now a genuine collectors’ item, and fetching serious money, the Jetsons-tech Torpedo wristwatch – conceived by sport’s eyewear behemoth Oakley – was launched in the space-appropriate year of 2001. Deploying a fluid transition of sculptures that Oakley achieved with the then-new and cutting-edge 4D design language, the timepiece’s injection-moulded, stainless-steel case was cradled by a band of advanced “Unobtainium” rubber.

AIRCRAFT

Designed and developed by American startup Otto Aviation, the Otto Celera 500L is a light business and utility aircraft and possibly the most torpedo-esque aircraft ever built. The tech is transonic super-laminar, a fluid dynamics phenomenon that reportedly achieves twice the efficiency of traditional aircraft through laminar flow, reducing drag by an astounding 80 per cent. Shaped like a Montecristo No2 and styled by Sir Norman Foster, the game-changing, super-aerodynamic, diesel-powered form enjoyed a first test flight back in 2018 and is expected to enter service in 2025.

DART

Phil “The Power” Taylor knows about the propulsive, target-seeking power of the torpedo. The sport legend’s signature 9Five G2 dart, is 95 per cent tungsten and fashioned like a naval weapon; bulbous, titanium nitride-coated pixel grip technology fused with the unique Quattro grip and a Power-Titanium gen 2 shaft.

LIGHT

During the 1950s and ’60s, when space travel and sci-fi were obsessions in the west, pretty much every motor car on the road was designed as if on a mission to the moon. Orange indicators and red stop-reflectors, bolted-on wheel arches and oversized wings were styled, in the atomic aesthetic, as “torpedo lights”. Even bicycles were fitted with chromium-plated, after-market “torpedo lamps”. The look lives on with resto and retro-model vehicles, hot rods and beloved low-rider classics.