Photo: CarThrottle
Everybody knows what a human face is supposed to look like. The eyes, mouth, and nose, attach to the skull in a way that defines who you are. Likewise, the front end of a car defines its identity.
There haven't been any major changes in frontal car design for decades. Oh sure, there are tapered headlights double grilles, but third headlights in the middle have long stopped being used.
Virtually every car out there has at least one grille or two. On Jaguars, for example, it even looks like the wide-open mouth of an apex predator. We take the opening at the front for granted, just like we take the mouth.
However, Tesla figured out that because it will only ever make electric cars, it can stand out from the pack by not having... a mouth. Designers probably wanted to do that to the Model S too, but they weren't allowed to until the arrival of the Model X. Now, all Teslas have a flat piece of bodywork where the grille used to be.
It's a sort of anti-statement, like alien species that don't need to communicate using something as crude as sounds.
In any case, the grille-less car design is bound to catch on sooner or later. As you may have noticed, some BMW electrified cars already have blocked off pieces of plastic to symbolize the grille without telling any air in.
The guys at CarThrottle took eight very famous performance cars that we all aspired to own and taped off their mouths, just to see what would happen.
The result kind of reminds us of Neo in the interrogation scene at the beginning of the first Matrix movie. After he gives Agent Smith the middle finger and asks for a phone call, Smith uses his power over the matrix to make his mouth disappear, asking him "what's the point of a phone call if you can't talk?"
Virtually every car out there has at least one grille or two. On Jaguars, for example, it even looks like the wide-open mouth of an apex predator. We take the opening at the front for granted, just like we take the mouth.
However, Tesla figured out that because it will only ever make electric cars, it can stand out from the pack by not having... a mouth. Designers probably wanted to do that to the Model S too, but they weren't allowed to until the arrival of the Model X. Now, all Teslas have a flat piece of bodywork where the grille used to be.
It's a sort of anti-statement, like alien species that don't need to communicate using something as crude as sounds.
In any case, the grille-less car design is bound to catch on sooner or later. As you may have noticed, some BMW electrified cars already have blocked off pieces of plastic to symbolize the grille without telling any air in.
The guys at CarThrottle took eight very famous performance cars that we all aspired to own and taped off their mouths, just to see what would happen.
The result kind of reminds us of Neo in the interrogation scene at the beginning of the first Matrix movie. After he gives Agent Smith the middle finger and asks for a phone call, Smith uses his power over the matrix to make his mouth disappear, asking him "what's the point of a phone call if you can't talk?"
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