Earlier today I posted a picture of a car with the grille blacked out so that people couldn’t tell what manufacturer it was. Your job was to guess the manufacturer. That was earlier in the day. Now, from PT in comments:
OK Swade, c’mon now. Time to put those of us interested enough to care but not enough to Google out of our misery….What is it?
Between the guesses here and on Facebook you had most of the major companies covered, with the exception of Ford and Toyota. There were nominations for GM, Hyundai, Kia (quite popular), Peugeot, Jaguar, Audi, Lexus, Chery, Geely, Honda and Chrysler.
A few of you made the correct guess – Subaru.
I fibbed a little when I said it was due for release quite soon. It’s actually a concept called the 2015 Subaru Legacy Concept and will show for the first time at the LA Auto Show, which starts this Friday. Subaru say – and recent trends with ‘concepts’ back this up – that the car speaks to the new design language that the brand’s models will have in the near future.
As someone pointed out in comments, the breadth of guesses pretty much proves the point I was trying to make: cars are getting more and more generic in their design. The shape of mainstream brand cars is very similar with just the ‘face’ they draw on that shape providing the difference.
For most carmakers, the days of the distinctive silhouette are pretty much over.
Car designs are getting more and more generic. That’s only partly the fault of the car companies. Safety and design rules place some restrictions on what can be done with car design these days.
You may have noticed car companies designing their cars with very flat fronts on them, for example. That’s courtesy of the pedestrian safety requirements, which have received heightened importance in crash testing over recent years. You want to go to market with a good crash test result? That doesn’t just mean protecting the vehicle’s occupants anymore. It means protecting those on the street, too.
And that influences what shape your car must be.
A vehicle’s silhouette used to be considered important in a time when you could identify what sort of car you were looking at when it was 100 meters away. People used to like that because their car was distinctive – it was a shape that they engaged with. You can’t mistake a classic Saab 900 from that distance, for example, or a Porsche 911.
Today, various rules and goals (e.g. aerodynamics) dictate what a car should be and vehicle design is becoming increasingly generic as a result. It’s like they’re all chasing the same magic formula, leading every company’s vehicles to adopt the same basic exterior shape. It’s the face they draw on the shape that’s different from company to company.
I saw this image online a few days ago. This car is a new release and will be shown at a motor show in the near future. The question is: can you identify which manufacturer makes this car?
Don’t go googling or checking the recent automotive headlines. Just have a look and see if you can pick who makes it.
I’ve deliberately blacked out the front grille, for the purposes of this post.
——
It shouldn’t be that hard to find, or guess.
The point of the post, however, is that in 2013 the vehicle in that photo could be made by any one of ten different companies and no-one would be surprised.
Motor vehicles have come a long, long way over the last four or five decades. The advances in technology have improved all areas of car making – from manufacturing to safety, amenity to capability, reliability to fuel economy.
I’m just not sure that aesthetic design has been one of those areas where it’s been all forward progress, that’s all.
An addendum to recent stories about the genesis of the Saab Convertible. This came in from Ed Iawanicki, a former employee of Saab in the USA back when the convertible was launched.
….I had to pick the car up from a photography studio in LA and drive it to Carson on a Sunday morning – this car was supposed to be secret and here I am driving down the 5 in a one-of-a-kind 900 convertible in a VERY cool color (that was never used in production) with the top down because at that point it wasn’t too clear if I put the top up that it would go back down. I was 21 years old and never so paranoid about my driving as I was that morning. Steven Rossi used to refer to it as “my girl Pearl”. 26 years later and I remember it like yesterday.
Speaking of Saab wagons, ABC News reports that the Saab 9-3 SportCombi has been noted by the IIHS in the United States as being one of the 15 safest SUV’s on the market there.
Personally speaking, I’m a little surprised by the SUV classification for that car, but we’ll take it.
It’s an early 1970’s Saab 99 fitted with a 16V turbo engine and making somewhere around 300hp.
I was meant to be at Kinnekulle today, too, for a Saab Turbo Club of Sweden event, but a time mixup saw me miss it. The photo was sent to me this morning by Peter S, the owner of Saab tuner Speedparts (his brother owns this 99 and Peter has a matching one in the same spec, but in red).
It’s 900+ kilometers north of where I’m sitting right now, but I’m heading up close to Umeå to help a friend pick up his Saab 9-5 (a long, sad story involving some ice and a telegraph pole).
