Sometimes It's Just Nice to Hear a Car Designer Talk About Driving

Ever been to a party where the most interesting person wasn’t the life of the room, but the quiet person in the corner, calmly — perhaps a little shyly — sipping their drink and taking in all the things occurring before them?

Vehicle designers seem like that person. The braggadocious CEOs and upper-level execs can have their carefully scripted buzzwords and future-minded visions of a soulless future filled with robot cars and never not working, but a designer will want to talk about emotion. A feeling. A simple pleasure. A small feature with outsized importance.

Jaguar’s design boss likes to talk about those things, but he’s not afraid to raise the errors of the past.

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QOTD: The Worst a Man Can Get?

In this time of stress, fear, and uncertainty, please forgive the gendered headline, online Millennials. It applies to all genders.

Having said that, this week’s release of the 2021 Hyundai Elantra, a bread-and-butter product for the Korean brand, got this author thinking about design. Specifically, the decisions taken by design teams between major styling revamps.

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Escape II: Ford's Bronco Sport Leaked

Ford’s effort to generate two streams of customers for its Escape compact crossover by splitting the model into two nameplates, each with a distinct persona, is well underway, with the brawnier of the two bound for an April debut.

Unofficially, that debut is today, as leaked images have hit the web of an unclothed Bronco Sport, aka “Baby Bronco.”

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Hyundai Shares Its Prophecy With the World

While prophecies have a habit of coming true in films and books, they rarely come to pass here in reality. Sadly, this will probably be the case with Hyundai’s new concept EV — appropriately named the Prophecy.

Responding to a voicemail left by the God of Electrification, Hyundai has moved on what is arguably one of the best-looking concept designs since the 1938 Phantom Corsair. Black, minimalist and extremely retro-futuristic, both cars rely almost entirely on the long lines of the respective aerodynamic shells to make an impression, with small details providing additional, attention-grabbing flourishes.

Hyundai says the timeless design was intentional, yet it still manages to adhere to the brand’s “Sensuous Sportiness” design philosophy. Truth be told, we’ve had a difficult time finding a common theme among its latest concepts. Some are all angles ( 45 Concept) while others are all about smooth curves ( Le Fil Rouge Concept). The only real through line seems to be that they all look rather good wherever they’re displayed.

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Foretold: Hyundai Prophecy Is Yet Another Glimpse of the Brand's Future

Unlike the 1956 Packard Predictor concept, which foretold nothing but GRIM DEATH for the once-proud marque, Hyundai’s Prophecy is living in happier times. The Korean automaker is on the upswing again, thanks to an influx of crossovers, but the brand’s future shares an uncertainty with other automakers. Namely: will anyone buy their electric cars?

Bound for next month’s Geneva Motor Show, the Prophecy hints at the shape of electric Hyundais to come.

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More Aggression Bound for Hyundai Elantra GT

Though it plays second fiddle to more popular hot hatches from Honda and Volkswagen, Hyundai’s Elantra GT is not without a generous list of attributes. Space, inoffensive styling, and value play a large role here, even if the N Line variant (formerly Sport) can’t match the output of its boosted rivals.

For the coming model year, Hyundai aims to ensure the Elantra GT attracts more eyeballs.

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2021 Cadillac Escalade Exterior Leaked Hours Before Debut

While the next-generation Cadillac Escalade debuts on Tuesday, the cover was pulled off early by automotive photographer Wilco Blok. The model has seen leaks before, helping to validate Blok’s image as authentic. That said, this is probably the best-quality photo we’re likely to see of the model before its official premiere just hours from now.

Visually, the 2021 Escalade maintains its familial resemblance to SUVs from GMC and Chevrolet sharing the same GMT1XX platform and has dramatically scaled back its reliance on bling. However, the de-chromed grille arguably makes it more difficult to tell apart from the Tahoe/Suburban and Yukon, which hardly seems like a wise marketing decision.

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2021 Jaguar F-Type: Refreshed and Refined

Jaguar has revealed its facelifted 2021 F-Type, offering a sleeker body and angrier mug. Headlamps are now oriented horizontally, possessing the LED accenting we saw on the Vision Gran Turismo concept. The rest is more-or-less what you’d expect from the brand. Some of the curves have been smoothed out, an industry trend this writer has very mixed feelings about. But nobody screwed the pooch here. The F-Type remains an exceptionally attractive vehicle, intent on grabbing everyone’s attention without being obnoxiously flamboyant.

Overall, it’s a comprehensive update that transforms the vehicle without making it feel alien or desperate. You might even be fooled into thinking it was entirely new — which is the whole point of a mid-cycle refresh.

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Hating on the Mach-E? It Could Have Been Far Worse

Apologies for another Ford Mustang Mach-E post. Clearly, Dearborn got its wish when it set out to get people talking.

While the brand’s new Mustang-inspired (and now Mustang-badged) crossover has generated both acrimony and praise, often split along generational and ideological lines, the story of what could have been is now leaking out. There’s a possibility of another Mustang family member, too, but let’s stick with the Mach-E’s genesis for a bit.

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The Incredibly Growing Mitsubishi Mirage Gains a New Face

Christmas just came early for many of you. The Mitsubishi Mirage, a truly inexpensive vehicle sometimes seen wearing a worrisome shade of magenta, will soon be even better than before.

That’s because the subcompact hatch and sedan is about gain an even more dynamic and expressive exterior. Brace yourselves.

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QOTD: Searching for Inspiration?

We’ve all had time to think about Ford’s “ Mustang-inspired” electric crossover, a vehicle which seems ready to adopt styling cues — if not whole swaths of real estate — from its pony car stablemate. Imagine an other automaker grafting a close facsimile of the stem and stern of a storied sports car onto a high-riding, four-door CUV. Seems laughable, no?

Well, this exact scenario seems to be what Ford has planned for a vehicle it needs to be successful. If the final product ends up turning heads and not stomachs, can you see the company’s rivals attempting the same?

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QOTD: Has Your Hate Blossomed Into Love?

The heart is a strange animal. One day, it despises something, but give it time and you’ll one day find yourself enjoying something you once turned up your nose at. It happens in the kitchen, the voting booth, and hell, maybe even the bedroom.

As human beings, our individual tastes, preferences, and ideologies evolve slowly over the span of many years, just as the societal trappings around us cast off old clothes for a new wardrobe. Architecture, music, and automotive styling, to name a few examples. Sometimes it doesn’t take long to correct past styling mistakes and light a fire in a person’s heart; other times, it takes many generations of vehicle before an automaker bakes a cake you’d actually want to eat.

What’s one car model you once hated, but now can’t wait to own?

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Distressing Photo Calls Attention to Future Bimmer's Face

A photo supposedly taken on a BMW factory floor and uploaded to BimmerPost appears to show a production-ready passenger car with a face only a mother could love.

It’s no secret that BMW’s signature kidney grille has expanded in recent years, first touching in the middle before heading downward for extra acreage. It’s part of the automaker’s attempt at simple yet bold vehicle design, and it seems to be working. For better or worse, they’re getting noticed. And it will certainly be difficult not to notice this Bimmer’s snout when it rolls into a dealer or driveway near you.

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Buick Regal Refresh on the Way, With an Asterisk

It’s just the news you needed to perk up a boring Monday. Buick’s Regal, which carries a variety of badges overseas, could see a facelift in the near future, leaked images reveal. Dutch website Autoweek.nl (via Motor Authority) has the pictures, with the decidedly brown model depicted therein bound for the Chinese market.

China, as you well know, loves Buicks like the NBA loves revenue.

While the China-bound Regal’s design alterations will no doubt carry over, in some form, to vehicles found in other markets, just how long buyers in America will have access to the model remains an open question.

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QOTD: What Comes Next?

For years now, we’ve watched as the average car/crossover grille has expanded faster than that aunt you got divorced in her 20s and never settled down (the same can be said for a man; don’t send us letters.)

Now, as vehicle grilles — once declared nearly extinct in the Taurus/Sable/Intrepid/Crown Vic era ⁠— reach their zenith, the mind turns to an obvious question: What comes next? You’ve watched on these pages as Toyota and Lexus attempted to swallow galaxies with their gaping front openings. Now, BMW is eager to swallow what’s left.

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  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?