Car buyers typically view prospects at dealerships -- inside showrooms or outside on dealer lots. Their interest might well have been primed by seeing examples of a given model out in nature: streets, highways, parking lots, garages and such.
Most of this viewing takes place at normal eye-level. The images I use to illustrate this blog often come from auction houses or used car dealers, sometimes from the manufacturer's publicity operations. Many such images were photographed from perspectives at or fairly near eye-level.
All this suggests that proposed automobile designs are usually approved or rejected for production based on how they appear as seen at eye-level.
Yet cars are three-dimensional objects, subject to being viewed from above eye-level. Plus, design models at less than 1:1 scale are usually seen from above eye-level perspective. Which suggests that stylists can be tempted to pay more attention to how a car is seen from a high level than is strictly necessary.
I happen to enjoy finding images of cars taken from higher viewpoints, and use many of them in this blog. Often the designs aren't especially interesting. Sometimes they are. One such case is that of a set of photos of a 1971 Pontiac Grand Prix found on a car-for-sale website and an auction one. Examples are shown below.
The design as normally seen. It stems from the era when Bill Mitchell was at the peak of his powers as styling vice-president at General Motors. I don't include it with Mitchell's best efforts such as the 1963 Pontiac Grand Prix or the 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado. But it's still pretty nice.
From here, the roof- C-pillar combination seems rather heavy.
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