Bring back the pretty cars

The Studebaker Lark and the Avanti were pretty cars. You can even see
beauty in VW Rabbit and the Chevy II. But there is only ugliness in
today's crop of automobiles.

December's issue of Consumer Reports features the lineup of subcompacts
from Toyota, Nissan, Kia, and Hyundai. They're butt ugly, uglimobiles.
For various reasons they turn me off.

Front ends. Most look like they're grinning faces. Cars like the Lark had
a radiator opening and a tasteful, simple grill. These cars have no
discrete bumpers, no grills and the openings for air intake look arbitrary
and out of place. The mind interprets this disordiliness ugliness. There
is a reason for these unartistic envelopes: They are cheap, cheap, cheap.

Rear ends. What's this ass in the air look? Funny looking rear lighting?
Lack of real bumpers?

Bring back some chromium and I don't refer to pimp wheels. Brightwork has
its place, particularly on bumpers because paint is easily marred; chrome
can take a lickin' and keep on shinin'.

Tires are all wrong. Those -55s have to be a engineer's nightmare royale.
Hit a brick or pothole and they'll cut themselves to pieces or even break
the wheels. Rough and noisy riding. Scrubbing on turns has got to be the
norm -- just roll one by hand and try to turn its direction. They won't
turn. Try it with a motorcycle wheel assembly and you will see difference.
Even if everything else on these new cars would be correct, I wouldn't buy
one just because of those ethnic tires. Have I said it clearly enough,
Chrysler and General Motors? They stink to high heaven.

Sure, the 50's had their problems. Cars were bulky and heavy and
unstreamlined. Some had obsolete and troublesome engines carried over from
the '20s (Chevrolet inline 6 and Ford's flatheads, and Buick's inline 8,
for example). They were full of rococo and junk tacked on like Pontiac's
chrome stars and Buick's portholes. But just look at the lovely Jag XKE or
even the 120. Eye the lowly Austin or its snazzy cousin, the Austin-Healey
and one could only say they just looked like cars should. The Triumph TR-4
was a little gem. All these models are timeless and are still identifiable
and desired right up to this day. But it can also be saie cars today are
at a low point in styling and their sales reflect that fact. Not even kids
can tell one make and year from another like we used to. In 20 or 50 years
from now today's models will be long gone and long forgetten with virtually
no one feeling one iota of sentimentality towards any of them. Let all the
makers go under if that is what it takes to bring back inspirational
designs.

 

See the Chrysler 300 and Magnum for ugly, also the Audi for more ugly on
the front.
But look at the Mercedes cars, they are actually very nice looking.

To so degree I say. My '95 Concord has a small chrome strip on the
upper part of the bumpers. The bumpers are a practical matching color
matt paint which doesn't easily scratch.
The bumpers painted shiny as the body are just cheap manufacturing that
leads to you not liking your scratched up bumpers after a few years.
Total chrome bumpers become ugly very quickly where road salt is used in
the winter.

Also very wide tires are sheer hell driving in snow, regardless of the
tread. They FLOAT on the snow.
There are much worse tires than 55s, I've seen 35 and even 25/295 on
BMWs. These excessively low profile tires and even the rims are failing
when a sharp pot hole is hit.
The cost of replacing worn tires is something else; I can get a set of 4
for less than what they cost each.

Sensible tire profile also allows them to store a full sized spare or
equally as important store the flat tire.
A recent Consumers Reports covered high end sports cars, with extremely
low profile tires. Several solved the spare problem by not having one.
Obviously toy cars for just urban driving. Run flat tires don't meet my
highway driving requirements.

 

The Avanti was...
You can even see
Not me, sorry.

More than a Rabbit, anyway. But its no Barracuda

Not ALL of them. I like the current Mustang. The Dodge Magnum is a
*wonderful* interpretation of a wagon. The Charger is OK (though
calling it a "Charger" was wrong, wrong, wrong.) Studebaker had some
pretty butt-ugly beasts in the past, too (the bullet-beaked
monstrosities, for example...).


Styling is cyclical- we're back in a hard edge/square lines phase now,
not unlike the 60s and 80s. The 70s and 90s were about curves. I find
pretty and ugly cars in both categories.

 

yeah, I'm with you there. "cute" is the nicest adjective I can think
of to use for a Lark.

Scirocco, though... (the original)

Bite your tongue! Bulletnoses rock!

I have to say that if you picked a random car from the 60's and a
random modern car, without knowing what you picked, I'd wager money
that I'd find the 60's car more attractive. So the OP, while obviously
trolling, has a point.

nate

 

Very few modern cars are enjoyable to look at.

A few of the exceptions are retro-look cars like the Mini and the
Mustang. The new Saturn Sky is pretty cool as well and looks much
better than the Solstice to my eye.

It can be fun to try and imagine what cars of today are likely to be
sought after and restored 20,30,40 or more years from now. I suspect it
is a very short list! Maybe first generation hybrids will someday be a
collectible novelty for technology reasons. I suppose that Escalades
may some day be sought after as a retro-look at the days when Gangsta
Rap was all the rage. Ferraris and Porsches will always have their
fans, but don't expect a Vintage Cayenne club to be very active though .

John

 

For a second I thought you were referring to the Cayman, which I would
love to have. Then I reread your post and realized that I actually
agreed with you

nate

(currently has a 944, which is retro for me anyway - it's one of the
cars I wished I had when I first got my license and finally it's
depreciated enough I can afford it <G>)

 

What? Where have you been? You're too late. It's true that there are a few
jellybean-shaped cars left, but there is a current general trend toward
actual style that is already in full swing. Seems like the big selling cars
always have the most boring styling (Camry), but in spite of that cars are
much prettier now than they were, say, any year between 1980 and 2000.

 

(snip)

V-series Cadillacs

Tesla electric car

the new Alpha Romero (also called the rolling orgasm)

A new Bentley, you pick the grill style, exterior color scheme, interior
wood type, interior color, you pick everything.

Chrysler made a HOT looking car, saw it on Discovery channel, very high
tech, but cant remember the name. I do remember it was expected to sell for
around a million $ if it ever went into production (not!)

Theres still some eye catching styles, but you
better bring money.

I saw a picture of the 2008 Camero at a newstand today,
it looked very nice.

 

http://www.brera.alfaromeo.com/

 

Call me weird, but I liked the Pacer. Particularly the wagon. Awful
mechanics tho.

As to today's cars, I like my Focus wagon (pre-2005), the new Jeep Compass
and the Chevy HHR. I think Chevy has also done a good job with the recent
Malibus (except the Maxx, which I can take or leave). Loved the PT cruiser
when it came out, but to me looks dated now.

On the other end of practicality, the Miata (MX5) has got to be a styling
classic.

I wince a little when I see an Element and some of the recent Caddies and
BMWs. But it all comes down to taste. As long as the Aztec disappears from
the roads as soon as possible, I'm happy.

 

Erratum: These were all 1930s designs...Chevy "Blue Flame": 1936 Ford
flathead V8: 1932 Buick "Fireball" 8: 1933.

Pontiac's "stars and stripes" hailed directly from Harley Earl's 1954
Pontiac concept car, the original "Le Man," of which only one is known
to exist. You'll also see a lot of the 1955 grille treatment in the
Le Mans.

Points are well taken, but don't say one thing...you're old. The new
cars are designed to titillate the "Gen Y" losers, including the baby
buggy like "pimp" wheels. You might recall when Ford adopted
Kaiser-Fraser's "fenderless" slab sided styling in 1949, many old
timers decried the move, because it didn't look like "a car."

Not all new is really new, either. Look at the Nissan SUVs...that's a
1959 Rambler Ambassador wagon roofline, as are many of the others.
Some of the jap mobiles have also stolen the GM "slant" roofline of
1950-51, with the cut-backward rear window treatment. Still others
stole the '51-'52 squared off rear quarter window treatment found on
junior GM products, notably the Pontiac.

I recognized these styling thefts the minute I saw them, because I
remember the originals. But yes...all the new crap is cheap...and
ugly...and designed to appeal to the current generation of a
throw-away society.

 

Probably true. The total absence of chrome and the presence of so much
plastic on modern cars would be an instant put-off, even without knowing
the context. too much body color makes any car look like a jellybean,
and plastic looks like plastic no matter what color its painted.

 

'Scuse me? There wasn't a THING wrong with the Buick straight-8. What a
magnificent piece of engineering.

The Chevy straight-6 was a splash-oiled POS that shouldn't have made it
out of the 1920s, let alone lived until the 50s, I'll agree with that.
But even the Ford flatties had some redeeming characteristics.

 

Long crankshaft gave it torsional twist, limiting its output, but
other than that, it was one of the best engines GM had in the '30s and
'40s, until the Olds and Cadillac V8s hit in 1949. The other good one
was the 347 Cadillac flathead, which also came from the late '30s.

The first Chevy 6 was the air-cooled dog from Franklin, which quickly
went away. The "Blue Flame" came about in 1936, with "Boss"
Kettering, as was practice for the loss leader Chevrolet Division,
helped design the "cheapest thing we could and still have overhead
valves." How it lasted until 1962 is beyond me.

Yeah...overheating, inefficiency, poor oiling being among them. Mine
got 140K miles on it on the original engine, though, which was more
than a Chevy 6 could get....or V8, for that matter. It was just a
sign of the archiac engineering that the thing got 14 MPG around town,
16 on the road, maybe 18 with overdrive, while contemporary Cads and
Oldses could get better all around with a lot more power. My '50 was
100 HP. The last year, '53, was 110 in the Ford line. Although the
OHV 239 of '54 was a rather uninspried design (as were all the
Y-blocks), they certainly were a welcome relief after the flatties.
One bad memory of Y-blocks from '56: That horrid, HORRID side draft
Holley 4V!

Strong Ford point all the way through the FEs: Y-blocks. Nothing
from GM could be as strong. That's why the old 390HPs, 406s and 427s
could race and race some more while their competing Chevy 409s and
427s would fly apart after a few runs.

 

'Scuse me? There wasn't a THING wrong with the Buick straight-8. What a
magnificent piece of engineering.[/QUOTE]
Harmonic vibration, far too long an engine.
It's a credit to the engineers it was so good.

GM sticks to out of date form factors far too long, recent evidence
being the sawn off V8 90? V6 engines, instead of the proper 60? V6.
Obviously too many tools that are difficult to change.

True, a miserable engine that GM used far too long.
My Father had a few, I knew them too well. >

 

The HHR will be looking dated, same as the PT Cruiser. Retro is nice for a
little while, but it is not what I want to look at every day.

The Ford Five Hundred has all the excitement of a slice of Wonder bread.
The Mercury Milan looks OK, but the Ford version looks cheesy, the Lincoln
version looks like they added some extra trim just to raise the price.
Chrysler has nothing I'd want to be seen in, especially the 300 with the
huge grill. Pontiac has some OK looking cars but they are getting tired
looking and need a freshening up. The Impala looks fresher than the
previous models.

My favorites today are the Nissan Maxima, Infiniti G coupe, Lexus GS. The
new Altima looks good in photos so far. BMW has lost it styling edge.
Mercedes is staring to get it back, but they still made a lot of plain, boxy
and even cheap looking cars for a few years.

I don't see as many ugly colors as there were a few years back. Our parking
lot at work has a rose colored Neon that is ugly, as are some of the
lavender and purple cars of just a few years ago. Buick has a Crimson Pearl
that costs an extra $500 and makes the car look $5000 cheaper. Aside from
Corvettes and Ferraris, I don't like red on any car.

 

Maybe, but to me it looks less extreme and more logical than the PT, and I
suspect will outgrow any category and simply look like itself. They're at
the top of my list to replace my 2000 Focus wagon next spring. Having a
really great interior layout is really what's attracting me, more than the
styling.

 

Strange, that the Chevy V-6 is such a poor engine. I have one running past
280 thousand miles, with no noticeable loss of performance, burns no oil
between oil changes, and has never had anything internal worked on. They
are not easy highway miles, for the most part, either.

Chrysler has to look back to the slant 6 to find an engine that can claim
those kind of figures.

 

I agree. The 4.3 is pretty good, and while the 3800 was excellent, the
"proper" 2.8 was a piece of shit. There's a lot of other factors
involved...

If you want to talk about engineering elegance, an I-6 kicks a V-6's ass
any day.

nate

 

George, I did as well. Owned 4 of them - 75, 76 & 79 hatchbacks, 80
wagon. The mechanical problems of the Pacer where no better or worse
than other cars of that same vintage - can you imagine how nice a
Pacer would run with an AMC 4L FI I-6 and a modern 4-speed electronic
control transmission?

Biggest pain in the butt I ever had with any of the Pacers was the
PLASTIC (yes, I'm not joking) pistons in th front disk brake cailpers
in the '80 wagon. Had the brakes lock up soild on me in downtown
Indianapolis - in hot weather in heavy downtown traffic the pistons
expanded in their bores and locked up the front brakes. That was no
fun . . . Took it back to the dealer and demanded that he put in a set
of pistons from a '79 (which where metal) and no further problems.

I'm still pissed off at my ex-wife for selling that car and not
letting me take it off her hands first (she bought a damn Alliance -
what a piece of frog crap that car was).

Regards,
Bill Bowen
Sacramento, CA