Rogues Gallery of Busy Grilles and Front Ends

I've been hammering away for a while now about the current fashion for overly decorated designs.  I think an important reason for this fad or fashion is government fuel efficiency regulations that have driven engineers and stylists to wind tunnels in the pursuit of high aerodynamic efficiency.  The result is car bodies with nearly identical basic shapes, and this has led to the use of excessive ornamentation and aerodynamically irrelevant body surface sculpting as means to establish brand and model identification.

Another -- probably lesser -- reason is the normal pendulum swing from one extreme to another that is common where fashion is concerned.

This post presents examples of overly-busy looking grilles and front end ensembles on American cars of the 1950s, an era noted for extravagant styling themes.  Then recent and current examples are shown, illustrating that we now seem to be in a period even more extreme than the '50s.

The 1950s images are of cars for sale.  The others are manufacturers' publicity photos.

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1950s American Examples

1950 Buick
Classic overstatement that was toned down for the next model year.

1952 Packard 400 Patrician
This is a modernized version of the traditional Packard grille intended to better blend with post- World War 2 styling trends.  The sculpting is rather Rococo, but the overly decorated part is the "teeth" that thankfully disappeared on the 1953 facelift.

1958 Buick
If the decorations on the face of the hood were eliminated, the design would be a lot more coherent.

1959 DeSoto
A three-level grille-bumper ensemble, each level having a separate theme.

1959 Dodge
This design approaches the confusion seen in some of the recent images below.


Current and Recent Examples

2015 Nissan Juke
A small car with intentionally funky styling.

2016 Nassan Maxima
The Nissan badge and its chrome nest serve as brand-wide identification.

2017 Lexus IS
Variously termed as "hourglass," "spindle," and (by me) "back-to-back Lexus Ls, this has been a Lexus theme for several years now.  And, as seen farther below, Toyota seems to be adding it to its mass-market brand.

2017 Renault Mégane sedan
That enduring, yet somewhat inexplicable Moebius-diamond symbol reinforces an already somewhat cluttered design.

2018 Audi A8
Audi pioneered the theme of draping the grille over the front bumper.

2018 Genesis
Count the textures on the face of this Genesis by Hyundai.

2018 Honda Accord
This car has some interesting sculpting, but it gets carried a little too far on the front end.  The sweeping element atop the grille and its details do not relate well to what is below.

2018 Hyundai Sonata
This design is cleaner than most shown here.  But the faddish fake air intakes flanking the grille add to the clutter.

2018 Infiniti Q50
An odd, droopy look to the front.

2018 Toyota Camry
As mentioned above, Toyota's mainline American sedan is now getting a Lexus-like frontal design.  The hood face, the faux air intakes flanking the actual grille and the dark, two-level apparent grille segment do not work well together.

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2018 Honda Accord

This post analyses some styling features of the redesigned 2018 Honda Accord, one of the top-selling standard size cars in the North American market.

No preliminary essay here.  Instead, we go straight to images and captions.

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The 2018 Honda Accord has an interesting mix of body sculpting and current styling clichés.  The latter include the now-common slightly downwards curving band running along the prow of the hood incorporating headlight assemblies.  Another fashionable touch is the faux air intake below the headlight.  Unlike other brands, the Accord has a light there, conceding that the false-opening is not really a functional item.  The overall facial appearance strikes me as that of an angry monster, mouth open, ready to devour pedestrian prey.  As for the sculpting, note the bulge extending abaft of the headlight assembly that incorporates part of the front wheel opening and then curves downwards slightly as it blends into the rest of the side.  It evokes the spirit of fade-away front fenders of 1940s Packard Clippers, though the shapes are not the same.

This frontal view helps explain the sculpting just mentioned.  Aside from subtle character creases atop the hood, we find stronger creases where the top of the hood translates to a bevel dropping to just below the cut line.  The previous photo shows that this bevel terminates about at the A-pillar.  The hood side cut line runs close to the lower edge of the bevel that becomes a character crease extending to the tail light assembly.  The front of the wheel opening related bulge is at the extreme edges of the car's front.  The overall frontal ensemble is very busy, but current fashions dictate that.

Rear sculpting is also very busy, but in line with current styling trends.  The sides of the car are cleaner than today's average, though the dished in door panels and related bulges are more clichés.  The detailing around the quarter window abaft of the C-pillar seems a little fussy, but actually helps tie together the top/fender/trunk merge sculpting, as can be seen better in the image below.

To me, the most interesting design feature of the new Accord is that it is essentially a fastback.  Not in the 1940s sense where the roofline smoothly curved down to the rear bumper.  But a smooth, downwards roofline curve that, almost Kamm-like, ends at a tiny hood-lid-cum-spoiler surface before the chop-off.  Many other current sedans have similar profiles, but the Honda is subtly more fastback-looking.

For comparison, here is the previous Accord, from 2013.  The roofline is more typical of current wind tunnel influenced shaping where the trunk area is more distinct.

The Mercedes CLS might have been something of a benchmark for near-fastback styling.  This side view is of the 2005 original version whose profile is seemingly nearly matched by the '18 Accord, yet has a trunk lid area more in line with the '13 Accords and other recent cars.

Here is the new 2019 CLS. Its profile is little changed from 2005.

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2017 Honda Civic: Return (to the USA) of the Hatchback

For some reasons, hatchback (or five-door) cars have never sold well in America.  That feature never bothered me, having owned a 1973 Volkswagen Dasher and a 1984 Civic Hatchback, so I have trouble understanding why it bothered many other car buyers.

Nowadays, crossover SUVs seem to be the hottest market segment in the US, which implies that lift-up back doors are acceptable.  Perhaps for that reason and possibly because Honda Civics share the same platform worldwide, Honda is now importing Civic Hatchbacks from England.  That last detail makes economic sense.  Hatchbacks sell well in Europe, so the production line in Swindon is justified for that reason alone, and additional production sold in American becomes icing on the cake, even if sales here are not huge.

And what of its styling?

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The Civic Hatch in this photo has an aggressive design.  Note the black spokes on the wheels and the low-profile tires.  Then there are those apparent air scoops below the headlights.  And of course there is plenty of the current fashion for overdone, angular detailing on body panels and ornamentation.

Zig-zag angularity is especially evident in the zone that includes the C-pillar and taillight assembly.  Three distinct angular features here are (1) the sheet metal at the rear of the side window ensemble, (2) the leading part of the taillight assembly, and (3) the rear door aft cut line.  All snuggled together along with a door handle and fuel access door to heighten the clutter.

Rear over-decoration is evident in this view.  Honda stylists made a strong effort in the area of line-continuation, something almost always helpful in tying design elements together visually.  Here the pains they took are overwhelmed by the number of elements they had to deal with.  There is simply too much happening. It's too intense.  Changes of visual pace are needed here.  A place to start might be to disassociate the busy aero-bar running across the backlight from the taillight assemblies.

The front view reveals that those massive air intakes below the headlights, such as can be found on high-performance cars, are bogus.  They actually are largely flat panels with raised areas that mimic grilles.  If you look closely at the left-hand panel you will see what seems to be a small hole to the right of the running light -- so a little air might get through.  The sweep of the headlight assemblies and connecting material is yet another example of an automobile industry styling fad.

The rear has what are supposed to be massive air outlets styled similarly to the faux intakes up front.  This photo clearly shows that they are purely decorative, not at all functional.  Form follows fad, it seems.

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Honda's First-Generation CRX Sporty Car

The Honda CRX (in America, CR-X -- in Japan it originally was the Ballade Sports CR-X) was a very attractive sporty car marketed for model years 1984-1991, the first-generation years being 1984-1987. Wikipedia background information is here.

The first-generation CRX was in many respects a major facelift of the third-generation Honda Civic hatchback shown immediately below.

Whereas the hatchback could seat four people if back-seat passengers weren't very large, the CRX only accommodated the driver and one passenger.

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The main frontal differences between the hatchback and the CRX were the headlight housings and the narrow grille bar seen here.

Due to its small size, the CRX was not awe-inspiring.  On the other hand, I see no design flaws worth mentioning.

Second-generation CRXs arrived as streamlining was beginning to be taken very seriously by the automobile industry.  The result was a softened look, especially in the headlight-hood zone and the shape of the side window abaft of the B-pillar.  A result of that result is a loss of style character: I prefer first-generation CRXs.

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Honda's Del Sol Targa

I'm not an automobile racing buff.  Well, I did follow Formula 1 in the pages of Road & Track in the days when the cars sported national racing colors and not scads of product decals.  So please try to excuse me if I have trouble connecting the famed Targa Florio road races in Sicily with a car body style.

Actually, it seems that in 1966 Porsche first marketed a 911 convertible featuring a fixed roll-bar combined with a rear window where the open-air zone was directly above the driver and passenger seats.  The Porsche Targa name was taken from the race where presumably Porsches competed in its postwar iteration.  Actual classical (pre- Word War 2) Targa Florio racers never had such appendages.  Not even roll bars.

The comparative marketing success of the original Porsche Targa and the circa-1970 Porsche 914 (where Targa top was integral to the design and not an add-on) has led to later Targa applications. One of these was the Honda Del Sol (Wikikpedia entry here) using a Honda Civic platform.

The Del Sol was produced 1992-97 in Japan and first sold in the USA for 1993 model year.  It was moderately successful in America, the link stating that total sales were a little more than 75,000 -- an average of about 15,000 per year.  The car's un-aggressive styling soon led to its reputation as a chick-car (an automobile more appealing to women than men), and this might have affected sales.

All that aside, the Del Sol was pleasingly styled, and in the spirit of the new, aerodynamic styling trend that began in the 1980s.  It is certainly far removed from the busy, angular ornamentation Honda and most other brands are featuring nowadays.

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The Porsche 914 was an early successful affordable sporty car with the Targa feature.  Its motor was located between the passenger compartment and the rear axle line.  Del Sol engines were at the front, leading to better proportions than 914s had.

The Honda Del Sol.

Clean styling, but not distinctive if the Targa feature is ignored.

Showing the top in place.

Frontal view of a right-hand drive Japanese market version.

The same car with the top in place.  The tail light ensemble is not well-integrated with the surrounding folds and cut lines.

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