Challenge to auto designers on the forum

This is sort of Ferrari related as I believe they are just as guilty of the current 'plastic toy' school of auto design as everyone else...

So please explain to me the *real* reasons why modern auto designs look like preschoolers plastic toys. Why there is so little good design out there.

Is it the schools ? Regulations ? Cost of material ? What is it ?

Do you feel you arent guilty of it ? Do you feel modern cars do look better than older designs ?

Ive got to image we have some auto designers here.

 

Aerodynamics is making all mid-sized cars look pretty much the same. If you want 300 HP and 30 MPG, you pretty much have to have the same <almost everything>. At this point is it any wonder why all mid-sized cars look alike?

The biggest gain left to be had is aerodymanics (and energy loss while driving) iand will be found UNDER the car. Yet this is goind to cost several percent of the whole cost of the car, and complicate working on the wear components of the car adding to down-the-road costs.

Only the highest end is doing anything, here; and this pretty much falls off by the time one gets to a Corvette cost structure. Sure its easy to hang body pannels on the side rails and a diffuser on the back, but real underbody aerodynamics is expensive (mainly in wind tunnel time. Ever notice those comercial wind tunnel tests showing the smooth airflow over the car? What we need is smooth airflow UNDER the car along with smooth airflow over the car. Those comercials are designed to give one the illusion of good aerodymanics without actually giving you good aerodymanics.

Overall, marketing and comercial design get a bigger hunk of the budget than car design!

 

I think that, at least in part, the "problem" is just change. I mean, every generation at some point pines for the way things used to be in the "good ol' days" and points out all the flaws of the new. You can see this in many areas beyond car design, such as music. I recently read a quote lamenting the way society in the U.S. has changed and how the country is really going down the tubes now. At the end of the quote I saw the date of the quote and that it was written back in the beginning of the 20th century. Just goes to show that change is constant, and we (I'm guilty of it too) often are not completely okay with it. My two cents.

 

http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=253969&highlight=wind+tunnel

Perhaps cars like the iconic 308, 288 GTO, F40 --shapes that indelibly define what pure Ferrari means to the culture-- are never to be revisited in new spirit and form ever again.

The curse of the 'benchmark," however impressive the technology can engender Earth-shattering performance, is often facilitated by very low drag coefficients, super-slippery outer contours, vacuum-like sucking downforce --all due to wind tunnel engineered car designs.

Has this gone too far?

 

There have been a few cases/stories of ultra high performance cars killing their drivers because the under-car aerodynamics were disturbed and the car lost a lot of downforce. I believe the prime example is the Porsche Carrera GT, and perhaps the Enzo, too?

My opinion is that there is still a lot of progress to be made in undercar aerodynamics, and the direction it should take is toward making the car stable under all circumstances while creating downforce or reducing drag, rather than just under "normal" high speed conditions.

I view today's undercar aerodynamics as being primitive, like independent suspension with bump-steer, or an early mid-engined car (or 911) with tail-happy handling characteristics -- clearly an innovation and a distinct new performance development/improvement, but still "scary" and with a long way to go in refinement.

 

Jerry,

Wasn't this discussed earlier ? : http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showthr...ht=wind+tunnel
Unless you are asking a different kind of question re: design.

 

I don't think it is even possible where the driver is attempting to win a Darwin award!

Also note: when a car is absolutely stable, it is difficult to make it turn in. Indeed the best race cars are actually unstable under certain driver inputs, and would not be competitive otherwise.

 

Understood.

But I still think there is much to be developed . . .

 

As a designer of those plastic toys you dislike ( ), I think I can shed some light on this.

First -- it's schooling. In my opinion, the schooling today is way to heavily based on computer programs and not enough in design. Computer programs make any idiot look good. They are set up with a kind of "self fullfilling" philosophy. If the computer says it looks best this way, then it must be. Also schools are under pressure to crank out new fodder that they can toss in the pool rather than foster new talent. It's all about getting a job. The more success you have in placing designers, the more students want to be in your program and the more grant money you get from the manufacturers.

Second -- the "old boys club". There are too many who are in charge of design in the design departments and marketing departments who took years and years to rise through the ranks. It takes too long for fresh blood to reach the top. When they do, they are the new old school who have been beaten up so many times, they've forgotten what it takes to be fresh. They're stuck in the mud.

Third-- bean counters. Designers try to do something unique and the bean counters and engineers shoot it down. Without a strong push from the design and marketing departments, there's no reason to be bold.

Fourth -- the "take no risks" mentality. Marketing guys (who really have no design talent at all) are really in charge of what gets made. To protect their own behinds, they want to take no risks. No one wants to be involved in another Edsel. Instead, they'd rather be on the Ford 500 (remember that mess? Not many do...) because, althought it's bland, it isn't their fault the data says it should sell.

Fifth -- the public. We keep buying boring stuff. As long as we keep buying it, more boring stuff will be made. When the public finally gets bored, then maybe we will see something bold. Those of us who are enthusiasts see the problem well in advance of the public in general. So, it looks worse to us.

Sixth -- regulations. Now you have new standards of hitting pedestrians and even horses with your car. There are crash standards, insurance standards, fuel economy standards, emission standards, cost vs benefit standards, bumper height standards, and product liability standards to consider. Each of these tends to put designers and engineers in "boxes" they cannot break free from.

I may be oversimplifying but you get the basics.

 

Yes and no.

I thought of this because of the chrome bumper thread. You can still be aerodynamic without the car being huge expanses of plastic. What happened to details ? What happened to different materials? Textures ?

And I was also looking for some insider opinions. People who work in auto design and/or have gone to school for it.

I dont buy the 'wind tunnel' excuse as the Camaro is not a giant melted gumdrop. But it still looks like a giant piece of plastic. It really needs some other materials/textures to break up those huge expanses of plastic. I feel the same way about the fronts of new BMWs.

In all seriousness I cant believe that the difference in cd of .25-.30 results in that much of fuel savings. I also cant buy that it makes the car significantly more stable as its not like cars from the past were dangerously unstable. I used to drive a '95 M3 and it didnt feel any more unstable than a brand new jelly bean car to me.

And its not a 'only love the era you grew up in' as I think new Aston Martins and the Maser Gran Turismo are both gorgeous cars that look modern and use different materials/textures to break up their surfaces.

 

Good post !

 

Bean counters are probably running the show at Toyota, Honda, et al., but this is no excuse for the Ferrari. For $200K-$300K, you shouldn't get dull, derivative styling with a bunch of painted plastic and an instrument cluster from a Subaru.

On the public, I agree. I think we could be better consumers -- of cars, music, pretty much everything. An interesting thread on FChat is the modern architecture thread. It's interesting because while many of us find that design school appealing you really need to hire an architect and build custom to get anything that's not generic faux colonial in the midwest or faux Spanish or Mediterranean here in California, etc.

 

I half way agree. Even in a car of 200 grand, there is always some compromise with price. Perhaps there shouldn't be but there is.

I noticed something on the 458 that bothers me. It's clearly a cost savings over the F430. The entire front part of the car extends up the side of the wings, making a rather ugly joint above the front wheels. This was done to combine a lot of formerly metal pieces into one giant plastic piece. It saves money to manufacture, to service, and to repair in an accident. Also, to make the air scoop next to the headlights would be very expensive in metal. So, they used plastic. But, it does mean that the gap above the wheels is a rather obvious design flaw the designers tried to hide with the angle of the extended headlights.

Once again... compromise.

I think though that the original question was about car design in general. Bad design is much more common in the everyday vehicles now on the street. I feel we are in a period of ugly cars caused by either poor design or a lack of imagination.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

One of the most important points: Pedestrian safety. Especially the required distance between the engine and the hood, which allows the hood to flex so the guy you try to drive over does not immediately hit the hard engine. If you have to lift the hood, you have to change the shape of the whole car to keep the proportions. This is also the cause of newer cars (-> last 10 years) having larger rims than before. With the pre-2000 rim sizes, the wheels would look very small in comparison to the rest of the car.

 

Can't argue there. It feels like a sort of race to see who can be the most generic. It seems like designers would want to resist this.

Maybe, although that seems to have been made worse by the wedge craze (Lotus Esprit, Ferrari 308, DeLorean and dozens of Japanese clones). If you go back to the 1960s, cars seemed to have higher bonnets -- e.g., Ferrari 275 GTB, Merc 230 SL, etc.

I think we're stuck in a permanent wedge phase, and maybe that's part of the reason raising the engine-to-hood distance doesn't work well.

 

If ever there were a wedge car is is/was the Countach--which started this craze.

 

I see some irony here - the Dodge Viper is a good example of this, IMHO.

 

A lot of interesting thoughts on here. As a former car design student I'll throw my hat into the conversation.

I believe that currently the involvement between designers and engineers is like two parallel running train tracks, headed in the same direction and perhaps communicating but never merging. With the onset of aerodynamics, pedestrian safety, and ever increasing regulation, the artistic nature is being constantly suffocated. The tracks are only spreading further and further apart. There is a solution.

I came to the conclusion that if beautiful cars are ever to grace the roads again it must be approached not unlike Ettore Bugatti's epitaph of "the artist forced to be an engineer". The artist's creative side naturally rejects that which it does not understands and tries to compensate using their imagination. Adversely the engineering understands limits and controls, but as a result the engineer often has little in the way of an imagination. In light of this I am now studying mechanical engineering in hopes of following after Ettore's epitaph and applying it in the current automotive landscape.

 

Im pretty rational so you wont get an argument out of me re:viper looking like a plastic preschoolers toy. They do. Lots of big expanses of plastic with no varied textures or materials.

However, I feel the Viper (Gen 1 and 2) are one of the few cars where it works. Possibly because it was one of the first to look like a melted jelly bean. I can accept if others disagree though.

The one thing the Viper (especially the Gen 2 GTS) has going for it is it was very unique looking. Nothing else like it on the road.

I cant say that for current jelly bean plastic cars.

 

As a former design student I have to throw in my two cents!

I think everyone has hit on most of the reasons above. First and foremost, is the simple fact that there are soooo many hard points to work around now due to excessive safety regs and engineering it's hard to make anything that looks like the sexy forms we love from the past. That and the fact that we have to now try to stuff in 10 pounds of unnecessary crap into a five pound sack. The poor California was doomed to have that massive, Oprah ass end the minute the mandated that it hold a folding hardtop. The wind tunnel in actuality plays little to no effect on the majority of modern cars. They like to say it does as a marketing tool but things are still driven by design more so than drag coefficients.

People have gotten soft and their perception of sports car, super car has changed. They now want a "super car" that will go 300 mph at 50 mpg, be environment friendly, seat four with room for golf clubs, 50 cupholders, sat nav, internet, butt massage, electric power everything, folding-rotating-self aligning magical see thru top, shifting thru brain waves, organic puppy seal free interior, and emissions that can sustain the orphan population. All of my favorite classics are works of art with a singular purpose, they don't try to be something they are not. I think a Lusso it's the perfect daily driver. Imagine trying to sell something so spartan and simple in today's fickle market? Hell, people don't even want to be bothered with a gated shifter because they feel they need to do it .001 of a second faster so they can get to Publix!

Based on my past experience and based on my friends current feelings (current GM, Ford studio directors) I'd say the major problem is simple politics.

Many of the timeless, classic designs were one man's singular, focused vision of beauty. Love it or hate it one person had the final say as to what was executed. Nowadays everything is done by committee and everyone tries to put their stamp on it. There simply is too much input involved in the process. Whether it's the BS focus groups, marketing, design heads trying to suck up to upper management, or some nonsense "research" about future trends, everyone is adding spice to the sauce. In the end it just doesn't work as well.

Ever try to design something at the corporate level and make all the suits happy? Wow! I can tell you it's not easy. Everyone in management tends to think they have all the answers and pushes their owen agenda even though most are lucky to be able to match their tie and shirt let alone make artistic decisions regarding complex form surfacing. They end up basing their decisions on current trends which are dated by the time tooling and production are finished. Maybe this is even why they don't make classic movies like they used to? No singular vision, just a bunch of hipster jambonis looking to make a fast buck and capitalize on a nation with a five minute attention span. Yeah!!! Let's do the Karate Kid with Will Smith's son!!! Brilliant! How about we remake Caddyshack in 3d and put it in a more modern setting with Queen Latifah, Jordan Beiber, and Taylor Swift? Dane Cook can do the Dangerfield bit and Simon Cowell can be the Judge. Uuuugghhhh!!! The Humanity!!!!!

Sorry, ramble over!

 

To be fair, Publix sometimes runs low on items and I hated it when the F1 guys beat me there.

 

Good post

I agree with your 'too many chefs' point. It is the same in Hollywood though being an insider I would have to begrudgingly admit that the Hollywood system of watering everything down through committee actually results in more profits for them.

Do you think the same applies to auto design ? Does the general public like thes homogeneous designs more than they would original visions ? To be honest I had never thought about it that way... I guess I just assumed most people were as disgusted by modern auto design as I am.

 

I have been away from auto design for a long, long time but did graduate from Art Center in "draw cars" (actual degree says Transportation Design).

Surprised that more of the practicing professionals that do visit F-Chat have not chimed in yet.

My take on some of this:

Back in older times there were some strong heads of design. Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell certainly qualify. What they had was the ability to impose the will of design. There are legendary stories of Mr. Earl having a direct phone line to Alfred Sloan. Since everyone of the division heads knew he had this they were not likely to try a real fight. There are abundant stories of Bill Mitchell invoking the "ghost of Harley Earl" to win his fights over the sanctity of design. GM's board passed over Chuck Jordan to select Irv Ribycki to avoid having another imperial leader of Design. By the time that Chuck did ascend damage had already been done.

I know it was true back when and I would certainly believe it is still true today, don't blame the designer in the studio. Blame their design management that lacks the forcefullness to fight for design. Even more so, blame the more powerful management that is scared of design doing anything that is not "safe".

Bob Luzt was quoted regularly about how GM was functioning when he arrived there. He talked of new cars being conceptualized with a matrix of 90 percentiles against all their identified competition. So before the aesthetic process even started all the meaninful hard points had been established and a solution that might look better but compromised the matrix was unacceptable.

10 something years ago I had a conversation with Chuck Jordan comparing GM, Ford and Chrysler design. He said that in the past GM did what they did without looking over their shoulder. Ford copied GM and Chrysler was "futzing around". The point is that if you are trying to make your new designs by looking in the rear view mirror it is not possible to lead.

To pick up on some other points already mentioned:
The greatest Ferrari designs were done by a single designer. That designer was able to keep pure to their vision and Ferrari left the designs alone. The first wonderful (in a bad way) example of this not happening is the 550. The story goes that LdM dictated much of the design and the design itself exhibits a lack of cohesiveness. The other element of the great Ferrari designs is that shapes compromised functionality. We readily accept these compromises because of the superior looks.

Currently some of the newest Alfas are showing a break from the sea of bland. I find them to be an example of design and management coming together with the idea that they will not look like everyone else and have made choices for the sake of design.

So, that my .02 (which may be worth even less than that).

Jeff

 

I chimed in , but had to bite my tongue with some of the statements that were being made. What you said is pretty much on the money. Design ain't easy..............if it were ,anyone could do it.

 

You really shouldnt bite your tongue. If you are actively involved in that world id like to her your opinion uncensored even if it disagrees with mine.

Fire at will !