It seems like every time I venture out on the road, these days, I see yet another ugly new car. Whether "Crossovers" or just regular sedans I have not seen anything that I would say was ,even, good looking .... much less beautiful or even handsome.
Thank God, the auto manufacturers seem to understand this and only paint them in the least offending colors imaginable.
I know "fashion" is fickle and beauty is not always an attribute of a current fashion trend or fad, but I am amazed but the current trends which can be described as mediocre at best and downright ugly at worst.
It's not just you i can assure you. People bitched about the greens from the 70s...
I consider myself pretty good at vehicle recognition buy most of the crap on the road now I gave up trying to figure out what is what and who copied from whom.
Look at Mercedes. IMO their new cars look worse than the ones they replace, the S-Class and CLS being major offenders. The new E-class sedan, bleh, its so ronded, bubbly, looks like some sort of 90's chrysler product, or a throwback to the 2000 S-Class.
And as much as I love to death the idea of the Subaru BR-Z, its styling just does nothing for me. Its not that its bad, or even good. Its just neither here nor there, it doesn't provoke any sort of emotional response from me. This is a car I really wanted to like, based on the reviews and driving dynamics, and I might own one some day when they become cheap enough. But it doesn't speak to me enough to part with some serious dough for a new or slightly used one.
And a side note on Subaru, you want to talk about a car company that has an ugly and frumpy looking lineup otherwise. Of course Subaru kind of has a proud history of selling ugly cars, but the people who buy them could care less.
Mostly, I agree. Manufactures seem to try to make models "distinctive" rather than attractive...BMW still hasn't recovered from the Bangle years. Granted, I think it's hard to make an SUV attractive though Range Rover seems to do those the best. A good number of Fords are at least nice to look at, though I'm still not completely convinced their long term quality is better yet. Toyota is coming around to the "styling excitement" table but they need different front ends. Nissan is hit or miss with the only really good looking car being the Altima.
I think the bigger question might be why they're making cars that are so busy visually. Someone must be thinking younger buyers have the attention spans of gold fish (which is about 9 seconds, incidentally) and maybe it's true for some, but that ain't me. I think it has to do with dropping IQ levels and needing to appeal to "bling" buyers.
I was depressed by the color board at the Cadillac dealer the other day. Most of them looked like colors for military equipment, with metallic and clear coat....:nono:
Like how? Were there half a dozen shades of black and maybe a white, red and silver? Kinda like the Germans have been doing for the last 15 or so years?
Could the colors offered o today's new cars be a result of their styling failures? Maybe the "Art and Color" guys are ashamed of how the cars look and just don't want to draw any attention to them!
I also think its a generational thing. Baby boomers(the guys currently running the car companies) have a lot more conservative tastes than their parents. And most of my generation could give two shits less about what they drive and cannot afford a new car anyways.
IMO the Greatest Generation had a much greater sense of style. The cars of the late 40's, 50's, 60's, early 70's reflect that, back when they ran the car companies and bought new cars.
The GMC is sweet no doubt, it's just the Silvy has the quintessential tough as nails, badass pickup truck look. The Sierra looks great too, it just doesn't look as "trucky" as the Silvy.
Originally shooting brakes were just British Station wagons (just look at some of the original pre war Rolls-Royce "shooting brakes." The first of the two door haul friendly "hatchbacks" to be fashioned from sports or gran turismo cars, that I remember, was one fashioned from an Aston Martin DB5. This was an aberration of the first hatchback coupes offered by Aston in the for of the DB2, 3 and 4. The DB 5 version was the car that really first brought the term "shooting brake" into usage by American automotive cognoscenti. Although not called a shooting brake, Volvo's wagon style hatchback was, to my knowledge, the only car of this style to be marketed as a regular model.
As I recall, the last decent-looking American car was made in 1992 and even it featured an ugly facelift for the last few years of production.
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