I get angry every time I see an older Mercury Mariner, because for some reason they decided to put vertical slats on the grill, but horizontal slats on the taillights. Why? It makes the back look like a completely different car than the front.
I always thought that was a stupid fussy detail also. It's ironic because the Escape was actually a rather good looking little trucklet. The Mercury Milan, though...
I rather liked the front of this car. I think it was the best of the Fusion/Milan/MKZ trio. It's odd, kinda alien, kinda fishy, but I like that because it's simpler and unique compared to the other two which had tradition 6-box front end treatments.
In fact, I find a lot of cars have very poorly designed rear ends. Especially with a lot of modern, everyday cars, the taillights tend to be randomly shaped blobs with no relation to the design of the rest of the car.
This is what I was getting at with Rolls Royce and the tail lights that seem to have been forgotten about. Often the rear end ruins the rest of the car. But there are some good ones. *flamesuit on*
Wing shapes have been an integral part of Lincoln's design these for a few years now. Their front grille and headlight shapes are very wing-like, I feel helping to give the car a regal but athletic look. The rear lights echo this wing shape theme. They're very wide and horizontal, helping to increase the car's perceived width and reducing its perceived height.
The MKT in particular is a great design all-round. Nobody ever agrees with me but that's only because they have no design sense. It's not perfect, it's it's still elegant, appearing very long (it is), but wider and lower than it actually is. The raised shoulder is an obvious nod to Lincolns past, especially the early-to-mid 60s Continentals like I posted earlier. The rear hatch slopes downward, as has been a feature on high-end luxury cars for nearly a hundred years (Rolls Royce and Bentley still do this). It's somewhat of a boat tail and you'll find it on anything from antique wooden speed boats to giant cruise ships, all obviously very expensive and luxurious. The Cadillac Ciel I posted earlier does this also. The hatch also has an odd bump on it, obviously a nod to the 40s when that was a common feature, like on this 1940 Continental...
And look what it has in the interior...
The peak running the entire length of the body also runs through the interior. These plaques on the front seatbacks echo the wing shape of the headlights and tail lights.
The Aztec's name fit its design very well. It was ugly, but it was cohesive. I think it was a good bad design if you know what I mean.
It was a good retro design. A little bland and undefined as you said, but good.
Overall, I'd really like to see design turn to the past for inspiration, not just to bring back old models with modern styling, but to create new models based on the design principles of the past, as you said Keef.
There are numerous retro details that could be used, like in the MKT above. A little design heritage goes a long way. Most car companies do have notable designs at some point in their history that could be used to influence modern ones.
Or maybe just a personality about the design language - Mazda's new direction is 100% Japanese and I love it. For some reason whenever I look at some Suzuki cars, concepts especially, I instantly think "Samurai", which is funny because they made a Samurai and of course the company is Japanese. Mitsubishi conjures similar images. When I think of Nissan I think of brutish, powerful, strange designs, obviously influenced by the GT-R and Ghosn's handywork. But when I think of Honda and Toyota I don't feel anything in particular. Just generic, frail but reliable, simple, economical. Boring.
Audi, brilliant at making every car look exactly the same...
That's actually a good thing. Audi has a very simple, elegant design language for their sedans in particular. They're very handsome. It's excellent design etiquette to base all the cars on the same language - why ruin a good thing when you've got it? Plus, they're all instantly recognizable as Audis. Audi has always made handsome, classically German-designed cars as far as I can remember and they're the only German company besides Porsche that hasn't strayed too far from a simple, elegant formula.
The use of a "generic" profile design:
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Any more to add to this list?
Uh, pretty much every sedan ever? What the hell do you want them to look like, a damn cargo van? Sedans are sedans bro. You could stretch the roof but then you'd have a stationwagon and you'd probably complain that all stationwagons look the same. There's only so many ways to build them without looking completely retarded.
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) and he agrees.
