Why cars went from boxy in the 80s to curvy in the 90s | Hacker News Reader

Why cars went from boxy in the 80s to curvy in the 90s

vox.com

37 pointsHooke56 comments

I hate how all cars on the road look like identical bars of soap. I realize a lot of this is due to aerodynamics and safety regulations, but it's a shame. You don't see too many cars anymore that are significantly visually distinct from a Honda Accord.

> I realize a lot of this is due to aerodynamics and safety regulations,

I think it's actually almost exclusively fuel economy regulations. Same reason you can't buy a new washing machine that consistently gets your clothes clean.

You don't see a whole lot of distinct raindrop shapes for a very good reason: path of least resistance.

The question isn't "why is there only one shape that minimizes drag?", the question is "why are all the cars sacrificing so much style and functionality to reduce drag?". You would expect some buyers to accept slightly less fuel economy for increased style, especially in luxury case, since they clearly are willing to pay significantly extra for style in ways that don't conflict with fuel economy (e.g., leather seats).

The reason is that the market is not being determined by having the consumer trade off style/functionality for fuel economy. Rather, the fuel economy, and hence the shape, is being set by statute. That's why even luxury cars have about the same shape. The only exception are the super luxury cars that make up such a small fraction of the market that they are negligible in calculating a manufacturer's fleet-average fuel economy (which is what the regulation specifies).

> slightly less fuel economy

I think the issue is that it isn't slight. Air resistance increases in a cubic ratio to speed. Aerodynamics make a big difference at highway speeds.

They knew aerodynamics in the 1950's too, and the fuel prices were very similar in inflation adjusted terms.

http://inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Oil/Gasolin...

(And we are richer then we were before, so modern folks are more willing to pay extra for fashion). The difference between then and now is definitely regulatory.

> And we are richer then we were before

Well, that depends who "we" is. "Car owners" as a whole may well be poorer than in the 1950s in inflation adjusted terms: median income has gone up some, but car ownership has moved down the economic scale, too. And there are different looks at the top end of the market, the part that caters to people who are willing to pay extra for fashion.

> I hate how all cars on the road look like identical bars of soap

In Japan this is probably the worst. Japanese car designs from the 2000s till now is completely uninspiring. In Europe I feel it's somewhat better and more stylish.

I don't buy it. Curvy cars were not some high end European flirtation in the 60s. Pretty much all cars in the "old days" were rounded. Random examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Deluxe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studebaker_Lark

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_180

Why publish an article whose premise is so obviously wrong?

The article specifically mentions that earlier curvy cars had gone out of fashion and sold more poorly than bigger, boxier ones. Hence the trend towards boxy designs. Theres even a picture of a 1930s streamliner.

I agree. The real question is why did even European cars go boxy in the second half of the 1970s? A good example is the Ford Cortina Mk 3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Cortina#TC_Mark_III_.28197... vs Mk 4: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Cortina#Mark_IV_.281976.E2...

I think late 70s/early 80s boxy cars were the anomaly - all other eras were curvy.

You know, the extra curvy crazy body panels can be cool looking sometimes, but I still wish they'd ship the engineers that build and design these cars out to Alaska in the winter and make them disassemble and reassemble the cars a couple of times before they ship them -- the increasingly custom body panels and designs has made it much more difficult to fix what's there or even get the cars apart for service.

Curvy body panels look good as long as there are some sharp curves in the right places.

If there is nothing but low-curvature, then the vehicle just looks fat.

We look at cars like we look at human bodies. The classic sports car shape has a waits and hips. :)

Fat can be cute though: if a sub-compact hatch-back is round in the right way. Classic VW beetle, the new Minis, 5th gen Civic ...

(This still jives with the human body theory. We excuse the little cars for being chubby because they are babies.)

It seems to be an intentional design choice.

Body shop work, OEM bumpers and panels feast upon the ubiquitous automobile accident.

As an aside, Bézier curves were invented at Renault.

I always assumed the change in styles was because design tools with Bézier curves became commonly available, and computers became more common.

Alias had a big impact in auto design. You could almost tell back then which cars were designed in Alias (later Alias AutoStudio).

Reason 1 and 3 are totally baloney. European cars were as much boxy as the Americans and Japaneses in the same era and technology have nothing to do with enabling new curvy design either. If you look back to the 50s/60s, cars from Lincoln, Cadillac, Ford, Bentley, Mercedes, etc were not only curvy but there were all kinda of crazy complex shapes.

I think people's preference just got tired of the overly designed styles up until the late 60s. I would point to Cadillac as the one that started the boxy cars trend. They are still boxy/edgy today, although much more stylized. I love the newer Cadis design actually, they are so different than anything on the roads.

The difference is that the parts on the older curvy cars didn't fit together all that well. Modern computer designed parts and tooling allow tight construction without the labor to make things line up. That permits more adventurous shaping of parts. This really showed in the "ovalized" Ford Taurus where the rear quarter panels had a long narrow strip extending forward over the roof. Basically a pointless showoff by engineering.

The 3rd Gen RX-7 was the first to make curves look good.

At least it still had the popup headlights though. I sorely wish those would make a comeback, but most folks don't like to have to think about whether their lights are on or not anymore.

Also your front end can't be too pointy due to pedestrian impact standards, and they're heavy. I believe pedestrian impact safety was what actually killed the pop-ups.

That and their tendency to break. Another significant change was the allowance of custom headlight assembly's rather than the few standard sealed bulbs that had to be stuffed into a popup if you wanted a wedge that looked different from everybody else.

>That and their tendency to break.

I'm certainly not sorry to see them go. I was getting tired of being blinded by the car behind me because its owner was too lazy or cheap to fix a headlight that had broken loose.

Now you just get blinded by every asshole with a cheap HID kit.

i want to pay for a service that summarize articles in 5 lines tops and a few images (which is honestly the only reason why we click)

Demo for this one:

1) aerodynamics/fuel efficiency

2) cost/machinery able to make curves

Also, didnt have to read it to figure that out ;)

I would pay for that. Though I usually just find a summary in comments (like you kindly provided).

TLDR twits™

There is a bot on reddit[1] that attempts this. (sans pictures) It actually works pretty well.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/user/autotldr

this is pretty cool. i need this for HN.

While reading about how European car makers like Porsche were toying with curved shapes in the 60s, all I could think about was Corvettes in the 50s.

i'm surprised no one has mentioned this but it seems like the koreans are now driving automotive style. The 2000's cars pretty much hit jellybean status, toyota/lexus in particular.

A few years ago I started noticing some of the hyundai models starting to have a much more aggressive design with harder lines and more angular breaks. I notice the japanese starting to (IMHO) poorly follow this design.

Not sure I agree. It's nearly universally agreed among auto-journos that the current Mazda 6 may just be the best looking full-sized sedan...well...ever.

Not sure I agree. My automotive paymasters have given me my biggest paycheck...well...ever.

It is a mid-size, not a full-size. And the best looking cars are, imo: (1) Ford Taurus/Fusion, (2) Audi A8/A6, and (3) Chrysler 300/200.

No mention of Chrysler's "cab forward" design, which imo really broke the dam on this. Average cars didn't start looking curvy until the first Intrepid was released. At least that's how I remember it.

The first soap shaped american car was the 1983 Mercury cougar. The success of that led to the Ford Taurus.

I always thought it was because a curved panel was stronger than a flat panel, hence curved panels allow a car to be built with less metal.

I've always felt the Ford KA (here in Europe) was a big influencer in the movement towards curvy cars over here.

No mention of the vehicle that epitomizes curves for me, the Volkswagen Beetle...

Nothing about the Dodge Neon? That thing was sooo slick to my 6-year-old self.

80s cars were damn ugly, even during the 80s. I breathed a sigh of relief when they finally started adding curves again.

I disagree. The 70s/80s wedge is still my favorite car shape. Hatchback Louvers were grand and those 5-mph bumpers look great on some cars (VW, Volvo...)

Those garish econonoboxes are for-sure terrible though. The Dodge Omni has the honor of being one of the ugliest cars ever made. Which also makes the fact that Shelby turned it into one of the most awesome machines ever on the road (Omni '86 GLHS) that much more satisfying. That said, rally was much more fun when it was with ugly boxy cars and Group B.

I love 80s Hondas. Especially the late 80s Civic Hatchback.

Most things in the 80s were ugly. I mean people wore costumes for clothes for crying out loud. I have pictures my wife will never see because of the embarrassing things I wore.

General Motors, which dominated the market and always set the styling trends, stuck with the same box styling for too long. The "sheer look" was introduced with the 1976 Cadillac Seville and they were still using it until the late 1980s. So the Ford aero look was very fresh in comparison.

The 80s were perhaps the worst decade on record from both an aesthetic and musical standpoint. Seriously, pop culture sensibilities reigned. Over-synthesized corporate pop music, neon-light bright clothes, box shaped cars. The only thing cool about the 80s was that I was a kid and had no bills. And much better cartoons and imagination/cynicism ratio.

I dunno man... New Wave was pretty awesome.

Maybe. Maybe its the cheesy over-acting of the words in the low-budget videos of those days that drive me crazy...something about that decade strikes me as decidedly fake looking back on it. But hell, Im a grown man now. Things about the 90s and 2000s seem just as phony as well.

music videos were in their infancy in the '80s. They were still figuring out the ropes. Synthesisers were also a new instrument, and people were toying around with them.

If corporate-backed music is your problem, you need to look two decades later, when the formula was perfected and in heavy use. And if 'artificial' music is your bugbear, you must hate sampling :)

I dont hate sampling. Nowhere near it. In fact, sampling brought back the raw early 70s/late60s sounds I love. Compare the early grittiness of a Public Enemy song from 1987 against a Cyndi Lauper or other neon-habadashery hair-metal corporate concoction from that decade. You can't. One was rawness and grit, the other a manufactured POS.

Also, synths were around from the early 70s. Look up Bob Moog or ARP. The 80s marked the over-abuse and reliance on the instrument. Hollow sound for a hollow, soulless decade.

Yes, they were, but they hadn't really hit the public experimentation stage at that point. Guitars were around for centuries before guitar music really took off (and instruments similar to guitars go back millenia).

I have the opposite view of sampling - I find it feels heavily artificial and manufactured (not always corporate, but still manufactured), and it doesn't really feel like you can 'hear' the musician's mood. Just a matter of taste, though. I just think you're giving the 80s a bit of rough stick - that corporate management increased through the 90s and 00s, and was around before the 80s, too - see the infamous 'wall of sound' methodology :)

Cars became ugly in 1973 and never recovered.

The only good ones are the ones with a retro 60's look.

I think the W123 platform Mercedes Benz vehicles are the best looking cars they've ever made.

that video at the bottom ..

Mercedes Benz Cockroachmobile- has aero design gone too far?

Vox is non-technical, consumerist trash.

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