Maybe Fuller meant a race car from the 1970's. Those nacelles look like the rear lights off a 70's car. Even the Refit is also reminiscent of 70's auto-esthetics in ways, and of Art Deco. Heck the Abramsprise looks like an Apple Store mated with a hotrod or Harley-Davidson.
I'd describe the Discovery as the mating of McQuarrie,
a 70's car, and some steampunk, as presented by the CG artists at Babylon 5.
When are we going to see more from the new series? I'm hoping
something will come out of it that will give me some of that hope for the future Fuller was talking about at Comic Con.
EDIT: What really annoys me about this design (retro steampunk gold, and Bussard Collector cover pipes, and fan around the saucer, and square sausage nacelles, and... aside) is that god damn triangle secondary hull. Even if you're going to do McQuarrie, why are you making those lines straight like that, like you're using a middle school kid's lunch time doodle as your final version? God I hate this design so much. I feel like we're living in a dark age of nostalgia and amateurism.