It seems that the Hyundai/Kia stylists have pulled off a mini-Switcheroo in the Harley Earl tradition.
These days nearly all ornamentation on cars and SUVs has a horizontal bias, not to mention a lot of zing-zag shaping and overwrought clutter -- especially from Asiatic carmakers.
But the new 2020 Hyundai Palisade SUV and its companion Kia Telluride have some key detailing of a somewhat rectangular kind set in vertical arrangements. I find that refreshing, even though much of the design still follows current fashion. (For more on the Palisade, you can link
here and
here.)
Commentary follows in the image captions.
Gallery
The character line just below the beltline nearly linearly links the car's front and rear, though this effect is moderated by the intrusion of of bulges related to the wheel openings.
Current fashion calls for a slash across the front aligned below a vehicle's front hood opening where headlight assemblies form the side of that slash. Here we see tiny vestiges of the slash, but the headlight assembles themselves are lower and vertical in orientation at the sides of the front. Cadillac is another brand with a vertical theme. Note that the running lights are in upper and lower segments that relate to each other. The grille opening, sadly, is yet more of the zig-zag fad.
Side sculpting below the belt-level character line is in line with fashions of the day.
An interesting detail is these window abaft of the C-pillar. It is large and simple, and it relates to the backlight window. The image above suggests an effect is that of a wraparound in the spirit of (yet totally different from) the 1947 Studebaker Starlight Coupe. Some other SUVs such as the Ford Explorer have a similar treatment with sharp window corners like Hyundai's that strengthen the panoramic effect.
Besides the usual angular and curved jazz in the area of the license plate, we see a vertical theme comprising the tail light assemble that appears to be in two parts above and below the bumper area. Again, this is in contrast with fashionable tail light assemblies that sprawl horizontally across rear ends.
Various cars that have had wraparound appearing rear/side windows in recent years of course are only faking it. Designers learned that dark windows and dark pillars blend visually. And that the actual transparent areas don't have to correspond to the glass area.
ReplyDeleteThe current Honda CRV doesn't do the fake wraparound window thing, but it does have what looks like a large tail gate window but actually has more like a 1947 DeSoto rear window in practice.
https://www.cars.com/articles/top-5-reviews-and-videos-of-the-week-2019-honda-cr-v-creeps-in-403222/
Am I your only blogreaderfan?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the Palisade is stylistically a pile of...uh...poo. There's a couple of good bits, like the brite trim line above the side windows that ends up going down the aft end of the C pillar.
Lately when I'm looking at some car (city resident, lots of street parked cars to walk by) I think "would I be proud of designing that?" In the case of this, definitely no. There's a Nissan Armada in a driveway I walk by all the time. It's appalling, and this thing is close.