Do you like new vehicles styling direction?

[Tdbo]

Originally Posted By: SLCraig
Originally Posted By: aquariuscsm
Most I hate. They all look the same. Flea market led light kits,angry grill,bubble shaped body/pregnant roller-skate look,cheap sleazy interiors. Looks like they all came out of the same mass produced mold. Super cheap hardware. Feels like if you open the doors too rough you'll pull them right off. Too must sleazy plastic "bling" garbage. Cars have no individual soul anymore.

Well said, and I agree!
I hate the LED fad a lot, they look so dumb.


+2.
Hate the exteriors and the interiors.
Stuck with whatever audio system because there are really no feasible aftermarket options anymore.
Then, while it is off topic and not related to styling, elimination of spare tires (even donuts.) Nothing like being stranded somewhere with the sidewall tore out of your tire with a can of goo/glop and a $5. air pump for fun.
Then, to add insult to injury," heard on the radio the other day that these "kits" will require "periodic replacement" to the tune of up to $200.
Makes an old Accord, Fox body, or even a K-car look good by comparison

 

[jmb3675]

I really like the look of most of the newer cars, but when I sit in them, I don't care for them. The new crash rules have made the pillars to wide and the doors being so high has really killed visibility. Also the interiors are busy and bright with lights and screens everywhere. I find it distracting. I rode in a car not too long ago and the dash looked like a city skyline at night.

 

[eljefino]

Originally Posted By: jimbrewer


I pulled up behind an older BMW the other day and I could just about read the license plate of the car ahead of him. That's just about right.



I remember sitting in traffic circa 1989 and I could see through five cars worth of glass and see the newfangled center high mount stop light on all of them. I was in a car as well. None of us had outrageous privacy tinted glass and none of us were SUVs or slab-sided sedans.

 

[eljefino]

Originally Posted By: friendly_jacek
Originally Posted By: shiny
Hate it. I went from an 86 Crown Vic to a 95 Grand Marquis to a 2012 Hyundai Accent hatchback. The prominent ridge on the sides looks so contrived. It has horrible blindspots at the A and C pillars. The A-pillar made it hard to see pedestrians. Parking in reverse and changing lanes to the right was a nightmare. I had to spend way too much time looking over my shoulder, not enough time watching what was in front of me. Convex side mirrors and an extra-wide rearview mirror didn't help enough.


low windshield attack angle of modern cars with good aerodynamics will do it. i have the same problem in a different car.


I had a 3rd generation firebird and it was one of the first cars on the road with a 60 degree windshield rake. It had wonderful visibility. Even the blind spot for the C-pillar wasn't a deal-breaker.

A lot of 80's cars had great aerodynamics and drag coefficients just because of the lack of frontal area. They've gotten fat again.

 

[OneEyeJack]

I place more value on function than form.

I'm keeping my Civic wagon and my 4Runner.

I have had lots of other cars but my interest did not last long or someone offered me more than I thought they were worth. It's sort of a process of natural selection. In he end, ones with weird styling are easy to let go. A lot of these new ones are easy not to own.

 

[wemay]

I like most of them. Just as years past, i depends on the specific make, and even then, trim level may play a part.

 

[Trav]

I like most of the new shapes, that old Camry has me looking for the slots in the roof to put the bread in. Horrible lines on those cars, it doesn't get much more pedestrian than that.
This is a nice Toyota. From 1982 no less.

 

[HTSS_TR]

Originally Posted By: Trav
I like most of the new shapes, that old Camry has me looking for the slots in the roof to put the bread in. Horrible lines on those cars, it doesn't get much more pedestrian than that.
This is a nice Toyota. From 1982 no less.

I had that Camry photo to show the low belt line and plenty of glass for good outward visibility from driver seat. Even the 1991 Acura NSX didn't have very high belt line, and that NSX supposed to have very good visibility.

Most newer cars have very high belt line such that the visibility is greatly reduced.

I did have 1982 Supra for few year, it had two-tone paint red on black. It was the best looking sport coup(for less than $15k) at that time, it was also very good driving coupe too.

 

[sleddriver]

The Japanese? No. The Lexus' DO look like the Alien! Eeek! WTH is with that?? The designers obviously grew up watching WAY too many video games and now their designs look like freaks.

Big, wide A & C pillars + high belt-line is just dangerous to me. The 98 sled looks like an aquarium in contrast. Just how is that "safer" overall?

Fortunately, a Porsche still resembles those of old.

 

[Warstud]

Trav...is that a Celica? I also like the Chrysler Conquest from that time.

 

[Trav]

Even something like this has decent visibility but doesn't look like a refugee from a Japanese toaster factory.

 

[fdcg27]

This seems like a bit of a grumpy old men thread, so I'll join in.
There have been some standout lookers of every decade going back to the dawn of the mass-produced automobile and there have also always been some real dogs.
I don't find most current cars to be all that attractive, but other apparently do, based upon the cars that I see on the road every day.
I like the look of certain older models a lot, but time marches on.
Many current passenger vehicles have an unfriendly and aggressively angry look in their front end designs that I kind of laugh at.
So pseudo-tough, just like many drivers these days.
The high beltlines are unattractive and do create larger blind spots.
Side impact protection?
I don't think so, since the impact zone is well below the level of the beltline on even the high greenhouse German cars of yesterday.
The doors aren't all that strong anyway, without regard to beltline level. It's the side curtains that help reduce head trauma that make the difference.
You can also emulate the high greenhouse look with a high beltline design, as GM did with the last generation Nova and its fancy Seville development.
A W115 or W123 sedan remains an attractive and fairly timeless sedan of a type DB no longer builds.
There will never be a BMW sedan more attractive than a mid-seventies five series or a 2002.
Most current Mercedes and BMW cars will look badly dated in five or six years.
Since they won't be economically repairable for too many years beyond that, it won't make much difference.

 

[GenesisGuy70]

I love todays new cars. If I get a good job after graduation I think the 2017 MKZ will be a present to myself. Absolutely sexy.

 

[Pontual]

Originally Posted By: Trav
I like most of the new shapes, that old Camry has me looking for the slots in the roof to put the bread in. Horrible lines on those cars, it doesn't get much more pedestrian than that.
This is a nice Toyota. From 1982 no less.

Kind of a porsche 944 copy.

 

[Johnny2Bad]

Although it is difficult, from the outside, to know the details, I think it's fairly safe to say that the design of automobiles took a fundamental shift in technology sometime during the 1990's ... probably the mid to late 1990's.

The drawing boards and A1 paper is gone, the clay models are no longer built by hand (and I think everyone knows how sensitive the hand is, eyes closed, moving over a car's surface), the computer has taken over most of the work that used to be done with pencils and Stanley Sureform tools.

I don't know exactly when the changes happened ... I do know that in 1995 the power of computers and the software available was not that well advanced, CNC was in it's infancy and everything was expensive, making access to shared resources an issue.

Pixar was making animated movies around the mid to late 90's, but let's not forget that Pixar not only had to write it's own software to do the job, they had to write an OS to go with it (Linux-based) that made extensive use of multiple computers sharing a given task.

Pixar was also very much made in the mould of it's founder and CEO, Steve Jobs.

The design teams would have had their SGI workstations but even GM has to stop and think about hardware at $20,000 a desk.

On the other hand, in the last 10 years you can use hardware that, although isn't cheap, it's certainly cheap enough to have extra, rather than scarce, capacity.

It's good for some things, but this thread does show some dis-advantages that are clearly evident to laymen ... Finite Element Analysis means building stronger and lighter monocoques, but at the same time usability (by the driver) takes a hit when the pillars are made wider and more intrusive, sacrificing visibility for an engineering goal.

There is probably no industry on Earth that has been affected by computing power (which has to include robotic and close-tolerance drivetrain manufacturing) more than the automotive industry. Styling certainly hasn't escaped the unintended consequences that any fundamental changes always entail.

Those Lexus' are ugly, by the way. And I find the interiors of new cars to be in the middle of some strange transitory state that may not age well (like gauges of the late 80's and early 90's).

I like the Volvo XC 90's interior; I like the new Miata's interior, I like the Buick LaCrosse interior, but some are just unbelievably ugly, and usability issues ... what is the purpose of a touchscreen interface for something that might be accessed multiple times on a drive, like the audio or climate controls?

I want to be able to operate the vehicle with my eyes closed, because when driving my eyes are busy so as far as the interior goes, they are effectively closed.

Aircraft have also moved extensively into the touchscreen world for information, and although you don't need to look outside 100% of the time in an airplane (pilots have a scan procedure that has them do visual work in a series, which repeats in a fairly specific time period) they have never abandoned the design fundamental of having controls identifiable by feel alone.

Maybe you've never noticed, but aircraft use unique shapes for knobs, levers, etc so that the pilot need not look to know what control is at hand. We need more of that in cars, not less.

 

[splinter]

NO.

 

[Silk]

Reversing cameras are almost standard now. There is a push here to retro fit reversing cameras as there has been in increase in kids getting run over in driveways. Rear view in modern cars is pitiful.

 

[shiny]

Originally Posted By: sleddriver
Big, wide A & C pillars + high belt-line is just dangerous to me. The 98 sled looks like an aquarium in contrast. Just how is that "safer" overall?

This is why cars are starting to come equipped with electronic sensors for parking assist, lane changes and frontal impact. Because nobody can see out of them properly anymore. In a few years we'll probably be driving in completely enclosed pods.

Edit: sorry, Silk said it before I could.

 

[Delta]

I do like some of today's car styling. I like the sleek flowing lines of our new Camry. However viability can be terrible. It's hard to see through the giant A-pillar. I will say my favorite styling was late 80's to early 90's boxier styling. You could just see everything. My favorite car was my 1987 Oldsmobile.



As you can see, you can see everything around you. Little to no blind spots. Not only that, there was still some class. White wall tires, chrome bumpers and trim, and wire caps. No goofy center console, and you could actually sit three people in front.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

I love the box look of my Cherokee and complete lack of blind spots