Photo: Maserati
As I'm sure that most of you know by now, creating a car from the ground up is a monumental task, one that involves thousands of people from all walks of life and with very different backgrounds.
Most of them can be separated into three broad groups, though: engineers, designers, and marketers. In theory, since they are all working on behalf of a single company that is trying to birth an all-new car, teamwork is essential. Or so we are lead to believe.
Obviously, there is a huge gap between the work of an engineer, that of a designer and even that of the guy in charge of stamping the metal that goes to become a vehicle on the assembly line eventually. That said, I'm not here to furiously point my finger at the hard-working people in car plants but at the total lack of cohesion between the design and the engineering departments.
That's the only plausible reason I can find for the massive increase in so-called fake design elements on modern cars. Exhaust tips that aren't connected to the actual exhaust pipes or aren't even exhaust tips at all, intakes that serve no technical purpose, aerodynamic diffusers that weren't designed in the wind tunnel, you know the drill.
I get it, having total freedom as a car designer is something that can no longer happen, and it's been that way for the past few decades. Penning a new car has to take into account crash test regulations, pedestrian regulations, aerodynamics for fuel economy, interior space, visibility, and so on and so forth. You can't just go all-out Gandini on a vehicle nowadays, not even on a new Lamborghini.
That said, I think there is still room for creating masterpieces on wheels, even when constricted by all the above. Respecting those rules and closely working with engineers instead of against them would most definitely lead to better-looking cars that are also safer, more fuel efficient and better in every way.
In most cases nowadays, this doesn't seem to happen, though, and the covert war between engineers and designers is reaching new heights.
Remember the 2007 Chevrolet Volt concept car, which resulted in GM's first production plug-in hybrid? If you do, you probably also remember that the production model differed vastly regarding exterior design, and for all the best reasons.
While the concept car's exterior had somewhat of Hot Wheels vibe to it, the car you could buy looked like a soap bar with headlights and wheels, or more like a Chinese knock-off of the original. As it happens, the model had to go through some pretty massive aerodynamic changes to the reduce the concept car's immense drag coefficient. To put things into perspective, a 1982 Volvo 740 sedan, which might have been designed by LEGO, is actually more aerodynamic than the 2007 Chevrolet Volt concept car.
So, a car that was supposed to be highly efficient from the ground up had a design team that had no clue about engineering and aerodynamics, that's fine and understandable. But didn't any of them think of asking people from the engineering team if their prototypes have a chance of being aerodynamic or not?
There are tons of examples of cars that looked a certain way in concept car form and entirely different when production models started hitting the road.
J Mays and Freeman Thomas' original Audi TT has one of the most influential car designs this side of a Volkswagen Beetle or a Porsche 911, but did you know that the car's sexy rear end not only made the car unstable at high speeds but downright dangerous to drive.
The two designers argued for months with the aerodynamicist engineers but lost at the end, which is why the first TT was recalled and upgraded with new rear suspension, standard stability control, and a weird-looking aerodynamic spoiler just months after launch.
These are just two examples of a gross lack of communication between designers and engineers, but nowadays you can spot this problem on almost every single car. This results in models that not only look bad when viewed more closely but are also less efficient from an engineering perspective.
In my opinion, the biggest culprits in the looks department are fake exhaust tips, of which there are two different kinds, one more horrible-looking than the other. Physics tells us that the best way for an exhaust pipe to be efficient is for it to be round. Square, rectangular, hexagonal or any other shape is simply wrong, no matter how good it looks.
Designers don't care about what's physically possible or not most of the time, which is why seeing a round exhaust tip nowadays is as rare as hen's teeth, particularly on a performance car. Most have switched to various types of geometric shapes that aren't directly connected to the exhaust pipes. Some - and I'm looking at you, Audi SQ5 and almost any four-cylinder Mercedes-Benz diesel – don't even have visible exhaust tips anymore, just fake rectangular shapes that only emit tackiness instead of burned fuel.
The same goes for “sporty” body kits, which include aerodynamic diffusers that actually induce drag instead of curing it - take a closer look at the Lamborghini Urus when you have the chance - or gigantic and fake air intakes in the front bumper that worsen the car's aerodynamics.
If there isn't yet a petition to stop these design atrocities from happening again, there should be one, and I would be the first to sign it. Marketers are also partly to blame for this since they were the ones who planted the idea of so-called sports packages that have nothing sporty about them in the first place.
Customers who pay big bucks for a larger drag coefficient, a lower ground clearance and overall a sea of bad taste adorning their family cars should take some responsibility for their actions as well.
There used to be a time when form followed function, and even when it didn't - such as the chrome-bumper era - cars still didn't have as many useless design features on them. I hope I'm not the only one who is craving for a return of good taste in car design, despite being a fan of retro-futurism and skeuomorphic design.
PS: while I otherwise loved the Maserati GranTurismo, almost 20 percent of that gaping grille was covered by black plastic and those side "intakes" served no cooling purpose whatsoever. Heck, I've seen electric cars with more functional air intakes.
Obviously, there is a huge gap between the work of an engineer, that of a designer and even that of the guy in charge of stamping the metal that goes to become a vehicle on the assembly line eventually. That said, I'm not here to furiously point my finger at the hard-working people in car plants but at the total lack of cohesion between the design and the engineering departments.
That's the only plausible reason I can find for the massive increase in so-called fake design elements on modern cars. Exhaust tips that aren't connected to the actual exhaust pipes or aren't even exhaust tips at all, intakes that serve no technical purpose, aerodynamic diffusers that weren't designed in the wind tunnel, you know the drill.
I get it, having total freedom as a car designer is something that can no longer happen, and it's been that way for the past few decades. Penning a new car has to take into account crash test regulations, pedestrian regulations, aerodynamics for fuel economy, interior space, visibility, and so on and so forth. You can't just go all-out Gandini on a vehicle nowadays, not even on a new Lamborghini.
That said, I think there is still room for creating masterpieces on wheels, even when constricted by all the above. Respecting those rules and closely working with engineers instead of against them would most definitely lead to better-looking cars that are also safer, more fuel efficient and better in every way.
In most cases nowadays, this doesn't seem to happen, though, and the covert war between engineers and designers is reaching new heights.
Remember the 2007 Chevrolet Volt concept car, which resulted in GM's first production plug-in hybrid? If you do, you probably also remember that the production model differed vastly regarding exterior design, and for all the best reasons.
While the concept car's exterior had somewhat of Hot Wheels vibe to it, the car you could buy looked like a soap bar with headlights and wheels, or more like a Chinese knock-off of the original. As it happens, the model had to go through some pretty massive aerodynamic changes to the reduce the concept car's immense drag coefficient. To put things into perspective, a 1982 Volvo 740 sedan, which might have been designed by LEGO, is actually more aerodynamic than the 2007 Chevrolet Volt concept car.
So, a car that was supposed to be highly efficient from the ground up had a design team that had no clue about engineering and aerodynamics, that's fine and understandable. But didn't any of them think of asking people from the engineering team if their prototypes have a chance of being aerodynamic or not?
There are tons of examples of cars that looked a certain way in concept car form and entirely different when production models started hitting the road.
J Mays and Freeman Thomas' original Audi TT has one of the most influential car designs this side of a Volkswagen Beetle or a Porsche 911, but did you know that the car's sexy rear end not only made the car unstable at high speeds but downright dangerous to drive.
The two designers argued for months with the aerodynamicist engineers but lost at the end, which is why the first TT was recalled and upgraded with new rear suspension, standard stability control, and a weird-looking aerodynamic spoiler just months after launch.
These are just two examples of a gross lack of communication between designers and engineers, but nowadays you can spot this problem on almost every single car. This results in models that not only look bad when viewed more closely but are also less efficient from an engineering perspective.
In my opinion, the biggest culprits in the looks department are fake exhaust tips, of which there are two different kinds, one more horrible-looking than the other. Physics tells us that the best way for an exhaust pipe to be efficient is for it to be round. Square, rectangular, hexagonal or any other shape is simply wrong, no matter how good it looks.
Designers don't care about what's physically possible or not most of the time, which is why seeing a round exhaust tip nowadays is as rare as hen's teeth, particularly on a performance car. Most have switched to various types of geometric shapes that aren't directly connected to the exhaust pipes. Some - and I'm looking at you, Audi SQ5 and almost any four-cylinder Mercedes-Benz diesel – don't even have visible exhaust tips anymore, just fake rectangular shapes that only emit tackiness instead of burned fuel.
The same goes for “sporty” body kits, which include aerodynamic diffusers that actually induce drag instead of curing it - take a closer look at the Lamborghini Urus when you have the chance - or gigantic and fake air intakes in the front bumper that worsen the car's aerodynamics.
If there isn't yet a petition to stop these design atrocities from happening again, there should be one, and I would be the first to sign it. Marketers are also partly to blame for this since they were the ones who planted the idea of so-called sports packages that have nothing sporty about them in the first place.
Customers who pay big bucks for a larger drag coefficient, a lower ground clearance and overall a sea of bad taste adorning their family cars should take some responsibility for their actions as well.
There used to be a time when form followed function, and even when it didn't - such as the chrome-bumper era - cars still didn't have as many useless design features on them. I hope I'm not the only one who is craving for a return of good taste in car design, despite being a fan of retro-futurism and skeuomorphic design.
PS: while I otherwise loved the Maserati GranTurismo, almost 20 percent of that gaping grille was covered by black plastic and those side "intakes" served no cooling purpose whatsoever. Heck, I've seen electric cars with more functional air intakes.
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