Increasingly Desperate Car Designers Aren't Interested in Bombs, Jets, Rockets, or Pinups Anymore

Take a mental trip back to the late 1950s. Imagine, if you will, a Detroit Three dealer’s lot. Tailfins lifted themselves towards the heavens, slicing through the air in a bid to capture Sputnik 1. Conical headlight assemblies and bumper guards jutted from the chrome-laden fronts of America’s Interstate cruisers, virilely thrusting through the air as the country’s economic climb continued its dizzying ascent.

Sex was everywhere, just not on film. Well, for the most part. Images of Jayne Mansfield mingled with thoughts of powerful rockets and ICBMs in the minds of Detroit designers busily crafting the next jet-age car for nuclear families living in the Land of the Free. Let the Soviets have their gray, uninspired, designed-by-committee Commie runabouts.

While the need to draw eyes to new vehicles hasn’t faded from the automotive business model, the sources of inspiration have changed. It’s much more diverse (and far more PC) these days. While the latest crop of family sedans weren’t sculpted by designers with sex or weapons on the brain, you’d be surprised what object actually held sway over the final shape.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the 2018 Toyota Camry — the midsize sedan’s savior, according to Toyota — is all about that boat. A head-on view of a twin-hulled catamaran, to be exact. Said designer Ian Cartabiano, “I didn’t want to do a vanilla car.”

“We wanted people to say, ‘Man! I really want to get into this Camry,’” added Cartabiano, perhaps not realizing the suggestive language in his statement. Another inspiration for the next-generation Camry? Ballet dancers, because we’re all classy and cultured now.

Volvo has stated the design of its recent S90 flagship sedan emulates a lion. Frankly, I don’t see it. Past Volvo sedans, of course, didn’t draw inspiration from this uniquely Scandinavian animal (serious, though — going with a moose for inspiration would have been a disaster). That’s because past Volvos all coveted the alluring and seductive brick, and perhaps also its cinder block cousin.

Over at Hyundai, a human form once again reared its head, but not in the form of a 1950s blonde bombshell. While designing the revamped 2018 Sonata, Hyundai’s designers focused on a sprinter in the starting gates. Don’t see it? Half sure an insect actually served as the muse? Well, if it’s there, it’s far more subtle than the D-cup bodies of late Eisenhower-era vehicles.

If all this daydreaming about sedans seems more intense than in years past, you’re not imagining it. With the passenger car market falling prey to crossovers and SUVs — traditional cars accounted for only 37 percent of the new vehicle market in the U.S. in 2017’s first half — automakers, now more than ever, need their latest offerings to impress the eye and dazzle the senses.

No longer can an automaker go the 1980s route, building a vastly conservative Olds 88 that looks just like an Olds 98, which looks just like a Buick LeSabre, which looks just like…. you get the picture.

“They want people to give the sedan at least one look before moving on to a more popular body style,” AutoPacific Inc. product analyst Dave Sullivan told WSJ. “Whatever it takes to get you in the seat.

If it means hauling a model of the 2018 Honda Accord across the pacific just to see it bathed in U.S. sunlight, automakers are liable to greenlight any wacky plan dreamed up by a designer. Of course, too much “style” runs the risk of turning off buyers, instead of attracting them like flies to an Amish pie shop. Can automakers succeed in stirring the soul to such a degree that it saves the passenger car segment? All signs so far point to “Hell, no.”

[Image: Toyota]