When I was a teenager in the early 1950’s my brother and I would get the new issue of Mechanix Illustrated every month and read it cover to cover. I particularly liked to read the automobile reviews written by Tom McCahill. Every month he had some choice words and he didn’t hold back in telling the reader exactly what he thought about the new cars. I will never forget the review he wrote about a new car that he rolled when he took it to the test track. I miss him.

Today we have the Automotive Section in the local newspaper every Saturday morning with equal length articles written by Don Adair and Teresa McCallion so that we can have balance of both the male and female opinions of the new car reviews. Baloney, few women know diddlysquat about new cars… and care even less. These inane reviews without exception are complimentary to the manufacturer. No matter what a steaming pile of crap the car may be, it gets a rave review that leaves you wondering just how much these people are being paid by the car manufacturers to write this drivel. The next step, of course, is to have equal length reviews written by a black and a Hispanic reviewer, so that we can have diversity of opinion.

So, I think that you understand that I owe nothing to the auto manufacturers. But I have been a car nut for the past sixty-eight years. Currently my brother and I own some 30 cars, and we are rather picky about what we like.

The obvious question is “What is good automobile design?” Let’s start with the dictionary definition of the word, “design: “1. To plan out in systematic, usually graphic form. 2. To create or execute in an artistic or highly skilled manner. (Emphasis is mine)
For the purpose of this writing I will focus upon the “graphic form,” and “artistic manner” of automobile design.

No question about it, from a design standpoint, an automobile is a rolling work of sculptural art. Just recently one of the top brass at General Motors (I believe that it was Bob Lutz) stated that, “We are in the art business.” Now that’s a breath of fresh air… that someone with authority to call the shots has finally figured out that what an automobile looks like has a huge impact upon sales.

It is encouraging that someone at GM has finally figured out that, Harley Earl, Bill Mitchell and other automobile designers at GM were drawing what the public wanted. Yes, they were called “stylists,” and perhaps not enough emphasis was put on engineering… but the cars looked great. They designed automobiles that the public would beg, borrow or steal money to buy. Why? Because they looked great.

There is a fair analogy between a great looking automobile and a great looking human. How do we define a beautiful woman or a handsome man? That’s not an easy question to answer, yet everyone has their standards in mind and they will respond with almost instantaneous “first impression” judgements as to whether a person is “good looking” or not. You do this, I am sure.

Consider the face. Note that currently Chevron is running television ads that have talking cars with the design elements of the car becoming the faces that are cartoon articulated. Importantly, the headlights are the eyes, and the grille or bumper the mouth. I believe that it was Harley Earl that said, and I paraphrase here, that the design of the cars is made or broken by the “face.” The Edsel by Ford was certainly proof that he was correct. Compare the good looks of the “face” of a 1955 Chevrolet with the ugliness of the “face” of a 2002 Pontiac Aztec, or a 2003 Chevrolet Avalanche, and you will see exactly what I mean.

How ugly can they get? The headlights are the “eyes” of the face. The huge slurred headlight shapes with the chromed plastic inside look like someone wearing a garish pair of sunglasses with “mirrored” lenses. The eyes are the most important part of the face. That is where your attention is drawn immediately upon meeting someone. Notice that the pig has a huge head with little bitsy eyes that are far apart. Little bitsy headlights look just like little pig eyes. God, but this does visual damage to the appearance of new Corvette. Worse yet, the darker inner lights give the front of the Corvette a cross-eyed look whereas the rest of the car is beautiful.
The headlight is a visual element of the design. If the headlights are not to be concealed such as that on previous Corvettes, for heavens sake, lets make the headlight look like it is intentionally there.

It is particularly uglifying to draw a hood, fender, grille, bumper, and let the headlight just fill an otherwise leftover vacant space in the design. The Ford Focus is an example of this that speaks for itself.

Another important aspect of the face of the car is the shape of the face, including hood, grille and bumper. Most people find that the human face with receding chin line, or buck teeth, to be less than good looking. A sloping forehead may look good on a chimpanzee or gorilla, but it detracts from the beauty of the human visage.

Most folks find that the car with a bold, forward thrusting face just looks more attractive than a soft slumping face that reminds them of Mr. Wimp on a bad day. Example: When Ford came out with the new F-150 pick-up in 1997 it had that slumping wimpy look that just shouted, “weak and puny.” This did not appeal to buyers that wanted to buy a truck that had guts and stamina. Dodge had it right with the big, bold face on their pick-up truck. The Dodge sent a message that said,”Get outta my way or you’re gonna get crushed.”

Where did Ford get the goofy designers that did this to their popular truck? It didn’t take long for the sales people to figure it out and demand that the Ford look more like a copy of the Dodge.

I am convinced that a slumping hood on the Lowey Classic 1953 Studebaker Coupe was the stumbling block for Studebaker. The coupe was a classic that brought rave reviews from design and style critics, but Studebaker needed a lot more sales to the public. This car is truly beautiful, but it has the beauty of a 14-year-old female gymnast or ballerina. Look at the “face” on the 1953 Ford, Chevy or Plymouth, and you will see what the public wanted. All three have that graceful yet solid look, similar to a 26-year-old woman that would make a great wife and mother.

Much of what was said above applies to the rear of the car as well. The taillights are an element of the design that needs to be integrated into the overall design such that the observer senses that shape, size and placement all meld into the overall coherent design.

Consider the ugliness of the Pontiac tail lights that are too big and bulging, giving you the feeling that you had been caught up in the horror movie, “The Fly.” Some recent Chevrolet Impala models had a rear end with swollen tail light lenses that appeared to be under some sort of pressure and about to burst.

What really looks goofy is the placement of the taillights up on the roof. The Ford Focus is a good example of this. In my opinion, The Ford Focus is one of the most UGLY vehicles to be foisted on the market since the disaster of the “All New” Ford Taurus in 1996.

Another design element that “looks like tits on a boar…” as my dad would say if here were still living…. is a huge wing on the trunk. This thing does nothing from an aerodynamic standpoint if you are traveling at less than 100 miles per hour. But it does look as fake as fake wire wheel hubcaps.

The ugliest rear end on the new cars today is what I would call the, “bustle butt.” The rear of the car looks like an egg shape with the rear window slumping down into the hatch or tailgate. The overall effect is a fat or bloated look that leaves you wanting to stick it with something sharp to see if it will deflate. My selection as the new car with the ugliest rear end would be the 1998 Lincoln Town Car. God, it’s awful. I get the same reaction when riding up an escalator behind an obese woman with a huge rump and fat sagging from her upper arms.

Ford had one of the best selling cars in America with the Taurus. What did they do to screw it up? They put some mad man to work designing one of the ugliest cars in America; the 1997 Taurus with oval shapes everywhere. Worst of all, they turned the negative space of the windows into ovals that made the rest of the car body appear to be no more than a frame for the windows.
This thing was truly a designer’s nightmare. With a little nostril hole up front to serve as a grille, The front looked like some sort of strange catfish that had just been pulled out of the slough.

The side view of the car is equally important to good design. Where did this idea come from that a “wedge” shape with the ass end of the car hiked up into the air and the front bumper scraping the ground looks good? You begin to wonder if some teenager has torched the front springs or hiked up the rear end with some sort of shackles. Lee Iacoca had it right when he demanded that his designers make the car sit level.

The first time that I saw the “wedge” shape was in 1976 when I spotted the first Fiat X1 9 sports car. I thought it looked goofy then, and my opinion has not changed.

The worst part of this “wedgie” shape is the belt line rising higher and higher until we have nothing but little gun-port slits for windows and just the driver’s head seen above the door. The result is interior claustrophobia. It is as if one were sitting in the bottom of a huge bathtub. This was a design element that was not good for the “bathtub” Hudsons in the early 1950’s, and it is not good today. Oh, sure, you got this bathtub effect when riding in an old Porsche with your bottom side sitting about 4 inches above the pavement…. But this is NOT want I want in my daily driver car.

I want to sit high enough to see out over the hood and rest my left arm on the door… with the windows down and no air conditioning, thank you. This is the reason that those Chevy Belairs and Ford Victorias in the 1950’s were always seen driving around with all of the windows rolled down.

I distinctly remember the first time that I discovered that the rear windows on a new sedan would not roll down all the way. What? We can’t roll the windows down? I would have taken the thing directly back to the dealer and demanded a refund. We just can’t live with a car that has to have the air conditioning on to ride in it.

I can remember during World War II when I was a little kid, seeing pictures of the “Car of the Future.” Without exception the car of the future was always depicted as a teardrop shape that looked like a blob of honey. I thought that they looked ugly then, and they still look ugly. I remember thinking during the 1950’s, through the 80’s that the new cars looked pretty good when compared to those “blob” dream car designs from the 30’s and 40’s. Well, the ugly things are here today!.

For this writing I have been referring primarily to GM and Ford. Both have come to market in recent years with cars that I would describe as weak and ugly in design. Some examples that come to mind include the Buick Rendezvous, Chevy Impala, and Pontiac Aztec. Ford has also brought us some new cars that look like the design nightmare of a team of incompetents. The worst of the lot was the Mercury Cougar. Hey, in past years I have purchased a new Cougar (1978) and I own one now. But the silly substitute that they brought to market as the 1998 Cougar was the most butt ugly thing that I have seen in years.

So what, you may ask, do I like that has come from Ford and GM recently? First, the new (retro) Mustang is a winner, no question about it. Similarly the leaked photos of the Camaro and the Challenger show cars look fabulous. The new Ford Fusion is pretty good except for those ugly slurred headlights. The new Pontiac Soltice is a knockout. Now, if they would just give us the Ford Forty-Nine, and if GM would give us an updated version of the 1956 Nomad, I would back off and be a happy camper.

By comparison, the recent designs from Chrysler have been a cut above the rest. The new Chrysler 300 has a belt line that is too high and the side windows are too small for me, but overall I very much like the looks of the car. It has a mean and businesslike look to it that is consistent from one end to the other. Yeah, I would buy one and be proud to own it.

In the US, I look to GM, Ford and Chrysler to lead the way. Recently they have not done that. Yes, I know that Honda, Toyota and a raft of other makes are made in the US…. But not really. They are still the product of foreign entities. Sorry, but I still have not recovered from WWII. The one car that they have come up with that is currently commanding so much attention is the Prius.

The Prius looks like it was designed by a complete Dufus. Lordy… I could get a group of Third Graders to paste up a car made from sheets of cardboard that would look more attractive. Take a good look at it. Is this the sort of dust-bin that you would like to be seen driving around in? If so, I suggest that you have some yummy tofu and sprouts before you drink the kool-aid.