Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) I am seeing a theme developing here.

I think they were initially designed by a 4 year old with a crayon. The subsequent drawing was then passed on to the car company designers with the brief "see what you can do to make this even uglier".
However looking on the bright side they do make our Morgans look even more classy by comparison.

Hey Perry, long time no hear, hope you’ve well and happy!


I think they have their market research spot on, ‘cause I don’t wan’t one, I want the Lamborghini version, in orange thank you very much!

I worked for Gallaher Tobacco ( now Japanese owned and HQ is next door to Brooklands).
Our Hamlet marketing was fun based...remember Gregor Fisher in the photo booth? There was an ongoing theme of lighting up when thingswent wrong.
Manikin cigars had gorgeous girls gambolling in the surf...
The Hamlet marketeers would also react to current news as when a stockmarket crash occured...next day an ad was out.
The out takes were brilliant...Manikin girls in t-shirts falling into the sea.....
The photo booth one had none...Gregor Fisher did it perfectly first time.
I’ll have to dig out the vhs tapes I managed to get.

Auto design is increasingly moving away from what many here would understand by good and aesthetic design. It also contains a message: The car in its current phase becomes a prop that posters life style themes. It has less and less to do with the fact that a car had previously embodied enthusiastic design that was directly related to the category of driving.
It may be a harbinger of the downfall of individual driving. If these ugly carts from Audi and other manufacturers meet the taste of the public, then it's the same people who will be sitting in an electric self-propelled car in the future without missing anything.

That sounds hard, but even if it hurts many people here at TM including me we may be in the middle of a paradigm shift.

All cars have ‘souls’ mainly because of the necessity to have two headlights which infer eyes

The radiator as a mostly angry or aggressive mouth is quite a recent design meme that could only really developed after the flat radiator and first appeared in the very late 40’s but boomed in 50’s sports cars

The earliest ‘mouth’ grills I can bring readily to mind of are from about the late 40’s - Aston Martin DB1 and a Ferrari or two (I am sure there are more)

Before then the headlights were still eyes but the grills were more noses as they were higher and more squashed

In America the early 50’s, the Corvette comes to mind as a good example of an aggressive mouth (it even has teeth) so it probably moved in tandem with a lower bonnet and lower wider radiator in sports cars

Now with SUV’s, designers have raised the front end but tried to keep the agressive mouth of a sport car and made a super angry screaming mouth of a grill

Gosh you lot really seem to have a downer on SUVs! I love mine. It serves its purpose, goes off road at times without any concerns and when I look at the dimensions, well apart from height it is no larger than many estate cars. And mine is fun to drive as a bonus. What’s the alternative? A boring hatchback? Each to their own I guess.

Steward, that is exactly the proof that it is no longer about "form follows function", but about a shabby transfer of sports car design elements to these miserable SUVs.

I have had an Audi Sportback 1.4 petrol S Line for 18 month and it's been fab.

Nothernmorgan, yes, of course, to each his own. Nor is it about condemning SUVs in general. It's just about how they've been trying to transfer design elements to SUVs lately, which is a lie.

Well it wasn’t supposed to be a dislike of ‘sports’ SUV design particularly
I’ve had a few (2 no M classes and a BMW X ) and quite liked them and I do secretly quite like the look of the new Lambo Anus (but don’t tell anyone)

The SUV designs I don’t like are the early Porsche SUV’s that had a face like a duck billed platypus because they tried to just pump up the grill-less wide mouth frog face of a 911 and create a curvy swoopy split grill
They’ve improved the design by making the grill more agressive, straighter, less fussy and less curvy
Another is the Bentley which just looks like a black cab on steroids because the nose is too high and flat and it doesn’t have a mouth, just a big flattened nose