Design Theory 1: Small Is Where the Action Is

Theory:

Look at the designs from any manufacturer, and I find that their smaller cars are better looking. And by that, I mean more fun, distinctive, and a pure expression of a design theme. And yes, I think fun is important. Cars should be fun. Fun can be serious too, as in serious fun, as in what is probably the best looking car ever: The entire BMW 6 series. Even the new ones with that funny business going on out back. But my real favorite:

Evidence:

Toyota - Yaris looks better than a Corolla, Camry or Matrix.

Honda - The Civic is a more pure, clean design than the overly busy Accord.

Chevy - The Malibu sure is better than the Impala. (sure the Aveo and Cobalt are dogs, but there has to be some exceptions)

Caddilac - Their relatively small CTS looks better than any of their other beasts.

MINI - The regular Cooper, over the Clubman any day. I can't even look at that SUV prototype.

Mazda - The getting long in the tooth 3 is still better looking than the new 6. The 7 over the 9.

Ford - Fusion has a more aggressive look than the 500, I mean Taurus. And again, look no further than previous posts to find me railing against the Focus.

Nissan - I even like looks of the much maligned Sentra over the overworked Altima and Maxima.

BMW - I am a sucker for the aforementioned 6 series, and the Z4 coupe. I like the 1-series hatch, but the 3, 5, and 7 series all look way overworked to me. 

Audi and VW - All of them look pretty bad in the past few years with that huge gaping grill. It looks equally bad on the big ones and the small ones. Although, I could come around for an A5. Nice looking car, grill and all.

Mercedes - I confess: I cant tell them apart. Between confusing letter number combos, and so many models, I gave up a long time ago. There are some nice looking 2 door hardtops out there though that are pretty slick. 

Volvo, Lexus, Infiniti - All better in their smaller models. Period.

And then there are companies who dont make any good looking cars, big or small. Chrysler, I am looking at you. You too Saab, Lincoln, and Suburu.

Corollary:

When setting out to design a smaller car, there isn't as much room to put in a lot of bad stuff. The resulting design is more pure, and when well done, can be more powerful. And more fun!

Toyota = Ugly

Now, I don't want to get all mean, but what is going on at Toyota? Sales are down, and the cars, well, I wouldn't want to lay claim to authorship.

Have you seen the Corolla? It went from a bland kind of somewhat ugly, to an overworked, "look-at-me" kind of really ugly. They seem to have tried to fit each and every one of the Camry's curves and bumps onto the smaller car, and it looks like it just barely survived. And sibling Matrix was never much of a looker. Poor thing.

Not that the Camry was such a great thing to try to copy. It so badly wishes it was born a BMW it hurts. In the end, the design is not bad, but seems more scatter brained than its arch rival, the new Accord. And languishing off to the side is the Avalon. Not getting a whole lot of attention now that Prius and Yaris are stealing the show.

I don't even want to start on the CUVs, SUVs, and trucks. Not that I am much of a fan of any of these sorts of vehicles, but if I was needing to teeter up high in some sort of cart-wheeling, leather padded cell, well, I'd look for one that I didn't feel sorry for.

The bottom line: Toyota's sales are down at a time they should be taking off. Toyota is mighty happy it isnt GM, but if they had cars that looked like something you'd want to wake up to in your driveway, they'd be in an even better position.

Waiting...

Well, am I all alone on this? It kills me that Toyota is the only one with a really viable, profitable hybrid. Where the hell are the technology leaders, our German friends at BMW and Mercedes?

BMW has a "concept" hybrid that is based on the no-one-can-quite-figure-out what-it-is-for X6. They have some "efficient dynamics" features that are on the corporate site, but not on the USA site. And the features there are not listed as features on US cars. They have also created a small fleet of some 100 hydrogen cars, in their largest, luxury model mode, and are having them driven by invitation. Hardly getting real world use. This is all nice and good, but, we wont transition to hydrogen overnight, and so what we need are all the steps to get us there. Hybrids.

Mercedes is even worse off. Visit their site, and you can get more information about their classic car program than any new efficiency technologies. I honestly dont think anyone is going to get excited about Blue tech diesels. Diesel isnt running efficient enough to overcome the price gap.

I'm not impressed. These guys make GM look good.

If only GM could make a car that looks as good as the BMW 1 series hatchback...

Tail lights Aglow

You might think me fixated on tail lights, but these days they are almost all too big, too similar, and add very little distiction to the design of the cars they grace. I remember as a kid, riding in the car at night and being able to ID the cars going the other way by the tail lights. Forget about trying that these days.

Here are a few schools of design in the current crop of tail lights:

1) Completely Random Shapes: I think Infiniti really got things going in this department with the G35 Coupe. But others have jumped in, notably BMW, and Honda (Civic sedan). A large subset of this school is the random intersecting blobs, a fine example of which grace the back of Toyota Avalons these days. What is that stuff doing on the trunk lid? Why are they that odd shape and size? Did they shrink in the wash?


2) Tail light as fender: Initially part of the Completely Random Shape School, this movement has broken off with designs pioneered by Lexus and Toyota. Currently, Nissan takes the prize at this with the new Nissan Altima Sedan. The entire top and much of the side of the fender is part of the tail light, aft of the C-pillar. Why not build the whole car out of plastic?


3) Clusters Under Glass: These are almost passe now, but were cool when Lexus did them on the RS400 crossover. Once again, the Nissan Altima Sedan seems to have the biggest, most over the top example.

4) Anything LED: Caddilac got this going a while back (who'da thunk it) but now Audi, Land Rover, and BMW are getting on the bandwagon, and with a dollop more creativity than the guys at Caddy ever thought to use. I saw a Land Rover LED light cluster just today, and its pretty cool. You cant tell in the pic below, but the top lens is both the brake light, with red LEDs clustered in the center, and the directional signal, with yellow LEDs circling the edge. I think the bottom lens is the backup light. I like the understatement, alot.



So, you may ask, anything else good out there? Well, I like the HHR solution. Oddly similar to the Land Rover, but about 10,000 times cheaper. The '97 Toyota Camry had slim, horizontal red bezels that were simple and elegant. That was just before they moved towards the Completely Random Shapes school of thought. The current Honda Civic Coupe has tail lights that are not too big, fit their context, and work to reinforce the identity of the car. Anything else? Ummmm.... lets see now.

At least LEDs have a lot of promise of bringing more elegant, svelte solutions to tail lights. Lets hope it happens.

GM Hybrids: +2 MPG!

Poking around on AutoBlog Green, I saw that your nice new Chevy Malibu (and its fraternal twin, the Saturn Aura) both are offered with hybrid technology. Cool, I thought.

   

What is not so cool, is that for a $2500 upcharge on the Malibu, or $3500 on the Aura, you can look forward to an improvement in your gas milage of exactly 2 MPG. That is awesome. No wonder Toyota, Honda, and even Ford are actually selling hybrids. They actually deliver some benefit to the owner, and the planet. Even Nissan is getting into the act with a limited number of Altimas, with parts bought from Toyota. 

If GM is going to bother, they should be able to do better than a hybrid system that gets you 32 MPG vs. 30MPG delivered by their 4-banger. 

Hell, I've said it before, but my '95 Volvo gets 30 on the highway if you treat it nice. If you really want to save money, you can buy an older (and I mean ~1997) Volvo sedan with 100K miles (that means another 100K miles left in it) for about 2 grand. Get the wagon if that makes your pants tight. Think of all that metal and other resources you'd be re-using. That in its own way is pretty "green". And, you save some green on your next car purchase. 

If you want to save the planet, well, thats not so cheap. Just don't throw money away on GM hybrids.

When Cute-Utes were cute

So who remembers when "Cute-utes" were in fact, cute? Well, cute is hard to define, but it at least implies the fact that they were smaller than the regular SUVs. 

Consider the Toyota RAV4. I just learned that is supposed to mean "Recreational Active Vehicle", while the 4 suggests either 4 passengers, 4 cylinders, and in some models (I assume) 4WD and 4 doors. There, 4 things that the 4 might mean. Nice symmetry.

Ok, so this RAV4 thing started out quite small. As a two door, and later, as a two door convertible, it was in fact, tiny!

So what happened, as typical in the US auto market, if a car is popular, it gets bigger. As the soon to be largest car company ever ever on the planet, Toyota sagely followed the GM playbook, and has progressively made the thing bigger. Now, 10 years later, it is the size that Ford Explorers were back when the RAV4 was introduced. Not so cute anymore!

I dont even want to think about how big Ford Explorers have gotten. Anyone remember the International Harvester TravelAll? The shiney new Explorer I saw the other day had to be as big as one of those!  Just about as pretty, too. No wood though. Too bad.

Is Toyota the new Chevy?

Ok, for our first regular posting, lets fire up the way back machine...

Back in the '60s, when I was buying Hershey bars for a dime, it was the "Big 3", and then everyone else. Now, it is pretty much the reverse of that. Toyota is the new Chevy, aping the styling cues of its luxury cousins. Lets call Honda the new Ford, with its luxury divisions not quite ever getting it together. The new Ford (Honda) and the new Chevy(Toyota) still seem to be trading off who is winning the styling wars (personally, I am voting for Honda right now). And who gets to be the new Chrysler? Probably Nissan, since they have their "Imperial" line up all worked out now, and a bevy of trucks to boot. 

My point is that American cars are pretty irrelevant these days. Ford seems like those loose conglomerates of Britain, circa 1963: the Austin/Sunbeam/Healy mess that no one could ever keep straight who is in and who is out. GM might as well be the Toyota of those days, turning out odd looking vehicles that seem to linger in your peripheral vision. Not sure what the hell Chrysler is these days. Foreign cars are where the action is now. That part of the picture is kinda sad. Will these former greats make their comeback? Not if they keep turning out vanilla milkshakes on wheels.

The bright spot these days, is there seem to be more options to choose from. Gone are the small american independents, but we have an increase overall of makes available, giving us some great choices. The wierd thing is that Hyundai makes better looking cars than Chevy (yes, even the new Malibu), and Mazda made the greatest sales advances in '07, arguably a result of pretty good styling overall. 

Style-wise, the fun stuff is happening in the smaller car segments... Land-yacht and truck buyers are stuck wanting their Cordobas and 98's, with or without a cargo bed out back, regardless what it costs to send our boys to secure our energy future.  Oops, I wasnt gonna get political.