“Grilles serve as a car’s face, so it is important to use them as marks of identity, and they should be big enough to be recognizable. But there’s a limit that necessarily comes into the single most important element in car design: proportions.
In the past, European critics considered American cars to sport ‘the dollar grin,’ and in the case of early 1950s Buicks with their chrome-tooth ‘bumper-grilles,’ that was a fair comment. Then people criticized some Asian cars for the little pursed-mouth grilles that their company executives believed to be ‘modest’ — which they were, to excess.
But now the glittering acreage of gigantic, shiny grilles has gone past — far past — reasonable equilibrium to wretched excess; that is, to wonderfully well-made ugliness. And ugly cars are an insult to the design profession and to customers asked to buy them. Car design right now is, seemingly, driven too much by fear, with too little imagination being exercised. Simple beauty is sacrificed to being ‘different’ — but not too different. It’s time to revert to the mean.’
— Robert Cumberford, Automobile magazine (2019)
RE:SOURCES
- Cumberford, Robert; 2020. “How’s It Lookin’? The Best and Worst Automotive Design Trends of 2019.” Automobile. Posted Jan. 31.
Also see ‘Yes, but WHY do today’s automobiles look so similar?’
Very well stated, especially the part about ugly cars (and trucks, too), being an insult to the design profession. My question is, with so much ugly and tortured sheetmetal on the road today, can we fairly call their creators designers?
Yeah, that’s a great quote. I found Cumberford to be one of Automobile magazine’s best writers.
The irony of today’s car design profession is that it is far more technologically advanced and educated than, say, back in the postwar era. So what’s gone wrong? DeLorenzo kind of gets at it in a column from a few years ago (I write about it here).
Another thing to consider is that the designers have never operated in isolation. So terrific designers can end up having their names attached to cars that are mediocre, if not worse. For example, a while back I mentioned that a consultant for Chrysler in the 1990s argued that SUVs and trucks would sell better if they looked menacing (go here). In more recent years that attitude seems to have infected car design as well. If you are a designer who needs to make a living, what else can you do besides going along to get along?
Interestingly, the rise of EV manufacturers may have helped to mellow out car design. The main reason may be that aerodynamics are at a premium, so that discourages adding lots of doodads. But even Tesla, who’s cars have had exceptionally clean styling, has gone apocalyptic with its Cybertruck.
I miss the simple, elegant textures and lines of the grills of the cars in the 1930s that were successfully adapted into the late 1940s and 1950s. Okay, the over-the-bumper grill of the 1950 Buick was excessive, but the 1952-1955 toothy grill for the De Soto gave the car distinction vis-a-vis the Chrysler. I have always thought that an egg-crate grill was distinctive as was the waterfall grill. The B-58 1958 Buick and 1959 Cadillac grills were too much, as if the ran out of ideas. While the 1961 Lincoln Continental grill has become a favorite of mine of that model, as the “Kennedy Continentals” evolved, the grills became more cluttered. Part of the problem with grills is that the element is a piece to be changed in the planned obsolescence model-year cycles, rather than keeping continuity. For all of Virgil Exner’s excesses, one of the most enduring grills, ranking up there with Rolls-Royce and Bentley, is the grill continuity of the Chrysler 300s between 1957 and 1964.