Cars With Asymmetrical Faces
Vehicles are generally a study in symmetry. Whether it’s for ease of assembly on the line or simply because stylists generally like things to line up properly, one can draw an imaginary line down the center of most cars and be relatively certain each half will be a mirror image of the other.
But not always. Sometimes stylists get to color outside the lines and return with a vehicle which has details which are anything but symmetrical. The choices may have been made for practical purposes such as cooling or to make extra room for something under the hood. Yet there are also times when asymmetry is deployed simply because they can. Those are the best.
[Images: Ford, Wirestock Creators/Shutterstock.com, Nikonysta/Shutterstock.com, GM]
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Ford Escort GT
Fans of fun but compact Blue Oval cars know the Escort GT we got here in North America actually did have some meaningful changes compared to trims which were focused on economy (read: all the rest of them). While models like the Pony and LX tried to lure customers away from cars like the Cavalier and Sundance - and maybe the Civic if they were lucky - the GT, at least the second-gen car, had a more powerful engine tucked behind its asymmetrical grille. This is one of the cars which used non-symmetry for styling purposes only. The second-gen car set itself apart from mainstream trims by offsetting the Ford logo and adding a series of angry diagonal slashes on the driver side, while the first-gen car displayed a huge ‘GT’ badge on its offset area.
Chevrolet Sprint Turbo
Placing a more powerful engine up the nose of a very small car has been the hotrodder’s mantra for decades. Chevy deployed that idea to some effect in the ‘80s when it took the diminutive Sprint and added turbocharging to its three-cylinder engine. Intercooler guts were added to this Japanese-built captive import, leading the design team to carve an offset intake just above the grille to gift the model an asymmetrical face.
Chevrolet Sprint Turbo
These changes were good for a nearly 45 percent jump in power, so don’t laugh when we tell you that total output was a heady 70 horsepower. After all, curb weight was only about 1,600 pounds. In true ‘80s fashion, the word ‘intercooler’ was stamped on the intake area in block letters. The next-gen car moved its intake up onto the hood area.
Diamond Star Rockets
Speaking of asymmetrical hoods, the trio of Eagle Talon, Plymouth Laser, and Mitsubishi Eclipse all had a camel-like hump in their bonnets on the driver side. For cars which were relatively attainable, this was heady stuff back in the day. Its reason for existing is actually a practical one, since a particular engine option had timing pulleys which wouldn’t clear the impossibly low hood without the extra clearance.
Diamond Star Rockets
Base cars still got the cool bump, mainly for cost reasons since stamping out two different panels would have been prohibitively expensive. It certainly added an aura of cool factor to even the base models, though, and was carried over to the second-gen cars.
