Giugiaro's Mid-1970s Production Cars' Theme

Master stylist Giorgetto Giugiaro (Wikipedia entry here) designed concept and production cars in a variety of styles over his career.  During the early-mid 1970s and thereabouts his theme for production cars emphasized a near-universal shape for rear side windows along with tall, airy passenger compartment greenhouses.

These similarities likely had to do with maintaining brand identification because those production automobiles were almost entirely from only three carmakers: Volkswagen, Alfa Romeo and Hyundai.  However, to some degree his designs were for competitive models, so brand image consistency was a casualty to fashion at times.

These are discussed below.  Most images are from the manufacturers.

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1971 Alfa Romeo Alfasud
The Alfasud ("South Alfa") had to do with a government project to stimulate economic growth in Italy's south.  Alfa Romeo built a factory in the Naples area to produce the new design.  Note the tall passenger greenhouse.

Rear quarter view.  The aft side window features a small frame reversal ("dogleg') on its rear edge.  In this case, it was related to the functionally necessary shaping of the rear side door.

1973 Alfa Romeo Alfasud Ti
But the dogleg was retained when a two-door Alfasud appeared.

1973 Volkwagen Passat
Giugiaro used that shape again when he styled the aft end of the Volkswagen Passat.  (The front half of the car was existing styling from an Audi model.)

Rear quarter.  This design is angular, a Giugiaro sub-theme seen on some of the designs pictured here.

1975 Volkswagen Golf
The Golf marked VW's departure from rear mounted, air-cooled motors.  Golfs and later Volkswagens had front-located fluid-cooled motors and front-wheel drive.  The Golf's shape is "thicker" than the more airy Passat, but the greenhouse is tall and there's that window dogleg in softened form.

1974 Volkswagen Sciroccos
Giugiaro continued his Passat theme of crisp surfaces.  As usual, the greenhouse is tall, but the dogleg profile is missing for once.

1974 Alfa Romeo Alfetta GTs
The sporty Alfetta has a softer lower body, but Giugiaro's greenhouse theme remains.

1975 Hyundai Pony
This car can be considered a "thinner" Golf thanks to its flatter side sculpting.

1976c. Alfa Romeo Alfasud Sprint
This sporty Alfasud  comes off as a smaller, more angular Alfetta.

1981 DeLorean - BaT auction photo
A somewhat later design in the mould of Giugiaro's 1970 Posrche-based Tapiro concept, it retains the theme elements discussed above.

Imaginative 2022 Hyundai Tucson

In this post's title I used the word "Imaginative" in reference to the redesigned 2022 Hyundai Tucson.  But that's not the same as saying the design was "beautiful" or "superb" or some other positive term.  I might have used the word "interesting," because that's another aspect I found.

Stepping back for a moment, let me say that nowadays stylists are largely unable to create new body shapes, unlike things were in, say, 1950s USA.  That's because of arbitrary government fuel economy numbers that resulted in body shapes being dictated by wind tunnel testing -- the most efficient shapes prevail.  So stylists have been reduced to becoming decorators of those aerodynamically-efficient bodies.

What interests me about the new Tucson design is that it incorporates some front-end touches that are far removed from the usual cliché details we see on streets and roads these days.  Perhaps they will become the next clichés.

Let's take a look.

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Recent Hyundai designs are featuring sharply angled sculpting.

That expanding chrome strip on the passenger compartment greenhouse, along with the black backlight window framing creates a more logical separator for roof two-toning as compared to that of Toyota's RAV4.  Though the details are fussy, not meshing well.

This image accentuates the side sculpting.  In theory, I like the idea of having faux- front and rear fenders à la 1940.  Right now, I'm withholding judgment on the Tucson's version.  That's because a variation might be better.

Those tail light shapes are unusual, though the rest of the design composition is fussy and disconnected.  As usual, nowadays.

Now for those front end details.  Note how low the headlight assemblies are placed -- must be legal.

And here's what the running lights look like: covering swaths of the grille zone.  Imaginative.  Interesting.

Hyundai Palisade's Vertical Detailing

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.

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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.

Rogues Gallery of Busy Grilles and Front Ends

I've been hammering away for a while now about the current fashion for overly decorated designs.  I think an important reason for this fad or fashion is government fuel efficiency regulations that have driven engineers and stylists to wind tunnels in the pursuit of high aerodynamic efficiency.  The result is car bodies with nearly identical basic shapes, and this has led to the use of excessive ornamentation and aerodynamically irrelevant body surface sculpting as means to establish brand and model identification.

Another -- probably lesser -- reason is the normal pendulum swing from one extreme to another that is common where fashion is concerned.

This post presents examples of overly-busy looking grilles and front end ensembles on American cars of the 1950s, an era noted for extravagant styling themes.  Then recent and current examples are shown, illustrating that we now seem to be in a period even more extreme than the '50s.

The 1950s images are of cars for sale.  The others are manufacturers' publicity photos.

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1950s American Examples

1950 Buick
Classic overstatement that was toned down for the next model year.

1952 Packard 400 Patrician
This is a modernized version of the traditional Packard grille intended to better blend with post- World War 2 styling trends.  The sculpting is rather Rococo, but the overly decorated part is the "teeth" that thankfully disappeared on the 1953 facelift.

1958 Buick
If the decorations on the face of the hood were eliminated, the design would be a lot more coherent.

1959 DeSoto
A three-level grille-bumper ensemble, each level having a separate theme.

1959 Dodge
This design approaches the confusion seen in some of the recent images below.


Current and Recent Examples

2015 Nissan Juke
A small car with intentionally funky styling.

2016 Nassan Maxima
The Nissan badge and its chrome nest serve as brand-wide identification.

2017 Lexus IS
Variously termed as "hourglass," "spindle," and (by me) "back-to-back Lexus Ls, this has been a Lexus theme for several years now.  And, as seen farther below, Toyota seems to be adding it to its mass-market brand.

2017 Renault Mégane sedan
That enduring, yet somewhat inexplicable Moebius-diamond symbol reinforces an already somewhat cluttered design.

2018 Audi A8
Audi pioneered the theme of draping the grille over the front bumper.

2018 Genesis
Count the textures on the face of this Genesis by Hyundai.

2018 Honda Accord
This car has some interesting sculpting, but it gets carried a little too far on the front end.  The sweeping element atop the grille and its details do not relate well to what is below.

2018 Hyundai Sonata
This design is cleaner than most shown here.  But the faddish fake air intakes flanking the grille add to the clutter.

2018 Infiniti Q50
An odd, droopy look to the front.

2018 Toyota Camry
As mentioned above, Toyota's mainline American sedan is now getting a Lexus-like frontal design.  The hood face, the faux air intakes flanking the actual grille and the dark, two-level apparent grille segment do not work well together.

Five Car Brands With Similar 6-Sided Grilles

For more than 100 years it has been obvious to even casual observers that the front of an automobile is, in effect, its face.  For that reason, it has always been a major consideration when styling a car.

The "mouth" part of a car's face is its grille, or opening(s) to admit cooling air to the radiator that is normally placed at the front.  (Yes, mid / rear engine cars, air-cooled motors, and the new breed of battery-powered cars have different requirements, but for now they remain exceptions to the rule.)

A truly "functional" grille would take the shape of a rectangle, coinciding with the radiator's shape.  To style this, various bars, moldings and other ornamentation might be added.  At the other extreme would be grille openings with non-geometric outlines.  Someplace towards the first example are grilles that have a geometric basis but are more elaborate than rectangles.

Such a case would be a six-sided grille in the form of a distorted hexagon.  Both distinctive and quasi-"functional" in the sense noted above.

But a problem arises.  A car's "face" serves to identify the brand, something usually highly important from a marketing standpoint.  Therefore, it normally makes marketing sense to have a distinctive grille that potential buyers recognize.  An exception is when a lesser make borrows elements of a more prestigious brand's grille in an attempt to increase prestige, though the result can be a confirmation of cheapness.

Another possibility is that different car makers stumble on a design more or less independently, possibly because there might well be a limited number of basic grille opening shapes and one has to use what one can use.

Below are presented the faces of 2016 model year cars from five different manufacturers, each using an essentially six-sided grille opening.  Efforts were made to add touches of distinctiveness, but there remains the risk of reducing brand identity.

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2016 Audi A4
Audi is the brand with the most prestige of those shown here, but I'm not sure that the other brands were trying to copy Audi.

2016 Dodge Dart
Well, this Dodge does have the Audi "slop over the bumper" motif that is more commonly seen on some Valkswagens.

2016 Ford Fusion
Some observers think the Fusion's grille was inspired by Aston Martin.  Maybe.

2016 Hyundai Genesis G90
Maybe I'm changing my mind.  The Genesis is Hyundai's attempt at creating a luxury brand, and that grille looks a lot like an Audi's without the interlocking rings.

Even lesser Hyundais seem to be getting the six-sided grille treatment.   This is the 2016 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid.

2016 Subaru Legacy GT
This is a new grille shape for Subaru.  It's too soon to tell if the brand is going to go all-out Audi, but it also can be found on the Subaru Impreza.

Fussy Styling: Lutz and I Agree

Loyal Readers have probably noticed that I fairly often grumble about the current fashion of baroque or rococo styling.  But it's comforting to have one's ideas reinforced by respected persons.

It seems that the latest Road & Track magazine (June 2015) features some remarks by famed Car Guy Bob Lutz on the matter.  It's on his end-of-the-book page "Go Lutz Yourself" where a Portland, Oregon reader asks "Why do so many cars seem overstyled these days?"

To which Lutz replied: "'Not a surface left untouched' seems to be a design tendency today.  I also find it deplorable.  The Lexus LF-SA concept at the Geneva auto show looked like an origami swan done by a waiter in a Japanese restaurant.  I think it's seen as visual excitement, but usually, it's just awful and superimposed on cars that are so wrong in basic proportion, the result is about as attractive as a 400-pound woman in a Mardi Gras costume."

That said, here are some examples.

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2015 Lexus LF-SA concept car
This is Lutz's bête noire.

2012 Hyundai Veloster

2011 Nissan Juke

2014 BMW i3

Note that all the examples shown above are small cars, which are indeed the worst offenders.  A large car offers a broader canvas for sculptural and ornamentation overkill, whereas a small car with the same frills content serves to concentrate and exaggerate the resulting mess.

Styling by Wind Tunnel

Thanks to apparently arbitrary (because round numbers are specified) and increasingly harsh government fuel economy requirements, car makers seem to be exploiting every aerodynamic advantage they can find.  One result of this is in the profiles of many standard-size 2015 four-door sedans sold in the USA.

Consider the following:

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2015 Hyundai Sonata

2015 Chrysler 200
What caught my eye and inspired this post was a Chrysler 200 parked next to my rented Sonata in a parking lot in the Palm Springs area last month.  The roof profiles looked strikingly similar, particularly where the roofline blends into the trunk area.  Other details such as window shapes, metal sculpting patterns and so forth differed.  That seems to be what stylists are allowed to work with these days, and not the basic shape of a car.

2015 Ford Fusion
The Fusion's profile is also quite similar to those of the Sonata and 200.

2015 Chevrolet Impala
Starting with the Impala, the next several examples feature a slight more dinct transition from the roof to the trunk.

2015 Nissan Altima

2015 Honda Accord

2015 Toyota Camry

2015 Mazda 6

2015 Volkswagen Passat

2015 Volvo S60
Volvo often goes its own way, though not as strongly as its late Swedish friend SAAB.  Here the roof-trunk blend is more an ogive curve than the other examples.