“We are experiencing a situation where the number of car fans is constantly decreasing, but at the same time, they demand more and more. With fake grilles and fake exhausts, the car has become a caricature of itself. Its scope is to captivate and amaze a small population of car freaks. In projecting a superfluous and ostentatious image, the industry exposes the automobile to social critique. The public demands objects that make sense. I would appreciate it if the automotive industry tried to go more into the essence of design and define new priorities.”
— Paolo Tumminelli, Form Trends (Laube, 2021)
RE:SOURCES
- Laube, Radek; 2021. “Paolo Tumminelli on How to Keep the Automobile Relevant and Renew Its Emotional Connection With Customers.” Form Trends. Posted June 1.
Also see ‘Is Tesla Cybertruck a brilliant breakthrough or a gimmick?’
I had to look up who Paolo Tumminelli is; he seems to have a rather large body of work. I agree with him that automotive styling in this era has become not only ostentatious and superfluous, additionally it is all about aggression and intimidation on the road. It seems to me that few want a “friendly” faced car like the original Renault Twingo or Chrysler Neon from the 90’s. To paraphrase Bob Lutz, everything has to look like an angry appliance and virtually nothing seems approachable any longer. Even inexpensive cars like my 2024 Chevy Trax have this angry aura about it. To me this begs the question similar to the chicken and the egg conundrum: Which came first? The angry driver or the angry vehicle?
Or are cars just a reflection of our overall attitude? I’ve felt that cars from the 50’s and 60’s were expansive and optimistic and reflected their times. Do we really have this much anger?
That’s an important question. A while back I mentioned a consultant named Clotaire Rapaille, who in the 1990s was instrumental in pushing Chrysler to purposely make its vehicles look more aggressive (go here).
Keith Bradsher (2002) quoted him as saying, “‘I usually say, if you put a machine gun on the top of them, you will sell them better,’ he said. ‘Even going to the supermarket, you have to be ready to fight.’”
Automakers have clearly been tapping into some degree of buyer sentiment, but I suspect that they are now pushing things too far. They always do — that’s integral to the boom-and-bust cycle of automotive fads.
And it was the same Clotaire Rapaille who tricked the city council of Quebec City because he misrepresented himself in his resumé. There’s much more articles in French about that case.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-city-dumps-controversial-marketing-guru-1.938650
I had to re-read your post from 2019 and got another good chuckle from it. Not much has changed in the intervening five years. I think all of this reptilian brain and angry appliance styling is part of what is making me reluctant to finally sell or donate my circa 2009 Pontiac. I know that almost whatever I replace it with, it will have some sort of pissed-off styling.