Worst Car Designs Revisited: Computerized Conformism + Fear of Color

The vehicle pictured below is a current-model Lexus RX. It appears here because it summarizes a number of prevailing fashions in today's car design. These include computer-derived (and perhaps computer-driven) forms dominated by a profusion of unrelated slashes and creases, cartoonish exaggeration of lights and grilles into hostile-looking robot faces, and use of blackout graphics to erode visual clarity... for example the curving black shape behind the rear door masquerading as a big window under a cantilevered roof where neither exists. Oh, and one more thing: a generalized avoidance of anything like real color...

At the other end of the size scale (and the environmental concern scale too) the latest Toyota Prius manages a bit more visual coherence, but the lights and air intakes are contorted into the same kind of robotic grimace we see in products from lots of car makers these days. Subconsciously, anyway, the publicity crew at Toyota seems to have found the nondescript light gray color boring, judging by where they parked it for a shot of color...

Even Mazda, whose recent design efforts stand out for their directness, simplicity and clarity, seems to be a bit nervous about color.  Their Vision Coupe won the award for best concept car at the 2018 Geneva Show, but the color seems to have been chosen to blend into the gray background of the exhibition hall…

It wasn't always thus. When Bertone offered color choices on their Marcello Gandini-designed bodies for the startling transverse V12 mid-engined Lamborghini Miura in 1967, they included phosphorescent shades of lime green, yellow and orange that suited the car's extroverted character...

…and that visage, with its eyelash vents framing the headlights over the sly grin of the air intake, faces the world with way more optimism than the robotic frown of the Lexus.  It's enough to make you want to go for a drive, isn't it?

When this 1968 specimen was restored, the owner decided to abandon the white paint job for a period-correct lime green, and wisely decided to go with the blue interior, so the result is a bit like something out of Josef Albers' Interaction of Color.  It's not a car you could ever lose in the monotony of a shopping mall parking lot...

Studio Bertone was a scene of restless creativity in this period.  The year after the Miura was released, Gandini went off in a completely different direction, forsaking the harmonious, balanced curves of that car with this wedge form for the Alfa Romeo Carabo. Another mid-engined effort, this time based on the Type 33 chassis with its 2 liter longitudinal V8, the glassy Carabo with its signature scissor doors wound up displayed on the bedroom walls of school kids everywhere…right next to their posters of the Miura.

The bright green scheme with orange stripe was another color choice straight out of Josef Albers. It's too bad Bertone and Alfa Romeo only managed to cough up one Carabo. If they'd built more, they might've gotten around to building a bronze one with a blue stripe.  Even a mouse gray one would've made plenty of drivers happy.  It wasn't like this car was ever going to fade into the background...

Over in the world of road racing, theories of pure form yielded to the demands of boundary layer air control and downforce.  By 1973, when BMW got serious about racing their CSL, they had to interrupt the simple planes of the standard car shown below…

They added an air dam to counteract front end lift, warped the fenders to cover wider tires, placed a boundary air control device over the rear window, and added the famous finned spoiler to the deck lid, transforming the somewhat minimalist coupe into the Batmobile...

Fortunately, the graphic designers at BMW Motorsport were  ready with a splash of color that tied this zany mix together, emphazising one of the few features remaining from the original, that horizontal ledge running around the car.  There wasn't much anyone could do to distract from that cow-catcher of an air dam, though...

Meanwhile, the different worlds of art critics and road racers collided in 1975 when racer and auctioneer Hervé Poulain convinced Alexander Calder to paint the first of a series of BMW Art Cars. Calder had already become famous for his series of abstract mobiles, but his CSL proved itself to be even more mobile than those works when Poulain, Sam Posey and Jean Guichet entered it in the 1975 Le Mans 24 Hours.  Sidelined by a prop shaft failure after 7 hours, it was one of the last works completed by Calder, who died the next year without ever crossing the threshold into design by computer, and apparently without ever experiencing the slightest fear of form or color...

*Footnote:  We last visited the overall state of car design in "Worst Car Designs Ever: Late Entries in the Sweepstakes", posted August 1, 2017.  This revisited a theme we explored in a 4-part series beginning with "Worst Car Designs Ever: A Tale of Two Darts", posted July 29, 2016.   

Postscript:  One reader thought the new BMW M4 rated inclusion with our examples of angry-looking robot transformer cars.  The BMW USA website extolls the "unmistakable frameless vertical twin-kidney grille" of the new M4 Competition Coupe.  Road & Track notes that there is already an after-market nose with less cartoonish effect available.  When your new car spawns a cottage industry offering a better front end design, your "unmistakable" design may be a plain old mistake...

Photo Credits:
Top:  Toyota Motor Sales, USA

2nd:  wikimedia

3rd:   newatlas.com

4th & 5th: the author

6th:  LT Jonathan D. Asbury, USN

7th:  youtube.com

8th:  wikimedia

9th:  the author

10th & 11th:  LT Jonathan D. Asbury, USN

12th:  BMW Art Car Collection

Postscript photo:  BMW USA