Car companies realize that streets full of their products look terrible
As an art and design nerd who really appreciates cars as pieces of industrial design, that is an extremely succinct and perceptive criticism.
(Also it a lot of them just aren’t that beautiful or interesting of pieces of design anymore which makes me a bit sad. Maybe it’s actually always been that way. Regardless, that’s really a different issue)
Fun bit of introspection: I believe most SUVs and trucks are actually owned by women. The primary driver for big cars isn’t just male toxicity - it’s feelings of safety, extended to children. Many women have very genuine reasons to feel vulnerable anywhere they walk. That changes when they’re behind an 8000-ton tank.
This is not true. While SUV popularity among women is increasing for the reason you describe, they make only 52% of owners (proportional to percentage of women in society). Trucks are still overwhelmingly owned by men.
Thought I’d clear that up so nobody thinks they learned some “facts” that turn out to be fake.
@Katana314@moriquende SUVs have undergone an interesting transformation in their marketing and in how conformist people perceive them. When they first exploded in popularity, they were seen as manly cars. Now in order to keep expanding the oversized car market, they’ve become the old minivans and a man, even if he lives in a city, is told SUVs are for women and he has to have a giant pickup truck to keep his “man card”.
@Katana314@moriquende Another factor is that when women enter into patriarchal marriages, a lot of them allow their husbands to choose their vehicles for them. Certainly there are single women and married ones who buy SUVs for a variety of reasons, but there are also a lot of women who let men choose their cars for them, leading to a car choice that is not necessarily optimal for the safety, comfort, or preferences of the person driving it.
Artistic designs has taken a backseat to profitability.
So we have a whole bunch of stylistically identical designs from all major companies. Without a logo on most vehicles today it is very difficult to distinguish between companies. They are all about the same with very little variability.
Case in point: the bog-standard station-wagon in that picture. Even the marketing dickheads realise they need a pretty girl in the picture to make it look remotely interesting.
… the fact that you just called an SUV a station wagon and, like, you’re not wrong, just made me super depressed. I drive a Mini and have since I started driving. In the beginning, I had the smallest car around. Now, I usually have the only car around.
It was tongue in cheek, but that’s pretty much what they are. At least here in Australia there’s still quite a few smaller cars around, but even new ‘small cars’ are getting pretty big.
This isn’t necessarily true. Even back then the streets were filled with shitbox cars that all looked the same. But only the cars that were beautiful and unique are still remembered and the rest are forgotten
If you ignore all the nice neon and look at just the cars all you see are a bunch of similar looking cars. They all look like a Chevy Bel-Air to me. Now I am sure a 50s car enthusiasts would be able to name them all, but to your average person there aren’t any significant differences.
This is the same for cars today as well. Maybe 60 years in the future people will reminisce about the good old days of the Mazda Miata, Shelby Mustang, or Toyota Supra without realizing that these cars were few and far between and the streets were actually just filled with cheap Toyotas and Kias and Nissan Altimas.
I always love the “cars all look the same these days” comment as if vehicles of every decade weren’t closely following the same design trends. Cars today don’t look the exact same unless you’re blind, especially if these people are supposed to be enthusiasts, so the other option is these people are just fuckin’ stupid.
One thing I will give older cars, though, is that at least they were colourful. I have a WRB BRZ(that’s mostly parked because I have great public transit options) and I feel so out of place not because it’s a sportscar but because it’s not a greyscale mass of shit rolling down the grey road.
But the shit boxes people were driving in the 60s were VW Beetles, an objectively good looking car. Easily the most popular car of the 60s was the Mustang, an objectively beautiful car.
The real shit boxes didn’t start popping up until after the oil crisis in 73.
Some of the conformity is safety. Cars today are generally designed with crumple zones, airbags, and other safety measures in mind. That leads to them looking similar to other cars designed with the same requirements.
There are still some beautiful cars today, but they are outliers. For example, I saw a Honda Prologue recently and loved it. It has a somewhat unique look that was much more obvious in person. And the Alfa Romeo Stelvio and Giulia, while bigger than their older brethren, always make me smile.
There are other examples. But largely, cars have become pretty samey and boring.
stuff like the VW buzz shows that you don’t even need to deviate much for it to stand out quite a lot, just a slightly different shape and 2 colours and bam i instantly like it so much more than the standard car
Uh, my first car ever was a '79 Chevy Malibu. There has never been a more boring basic car in existence, and for good measure it was mechanically a piece of shit. The only good thing about it was that it had once been owned by semi-famous comic book artist P. Craig Russell.
As an art and design nerd who really appreciates cars as pieces of industrial design, that is an extremely succinct and perceptive criticism.
(Also it a lot of them just aren’t that beautiful or interesting of pieces of design anymore which makes me a bit sad. Maybe it’s actually always been that way. Regardless, that’s really a different issue)
A lot of the cars now are bigger. They don’t look sleek or interesting. They look overweight. Cumbersome.
I really dislike those big-ass trucks with the bed that never gets used taking up a lot of space in the city.
I feel like one could draw a connection between this and the obesity problems in the US.
Fun bit of introspection: I believe most SUVs and trucks are actually owned by women. The primary driver for big cars isn’t just male toxicity - it’s feelings of safety, extended to children. Many women have very genuine reasons to feel vulnerable anywhere they walk. That changes when they’re behind an 8000-ton tank.
This is not true. While SUV popularity among women is increasing for the reason you describe, they make only 52% of owners (proportional to percentage of women in society). Trucks are still overwhelmingly owned by men.
Thought I’d clear that up so nobody thinks they learned some “facts” that turn out to be fake.
I apologize if I stated that in a way disposed to overinterpretation; 52% is still “most”, but you’re right, it is a slim majority.
It was only meant to be interesting to those who would’ve thought women owners would be a minority - that masculinity was the main selling point.
@Katana314 @moriquende SUVs have undergone an interesting transformation in their marketing and in how conformist people perceive them. When they first exploded in popularity, they were seen as manly cars. Now in order to keep expanding the oversized car market, they’ve become the old minivans and a man, even if he lives in a city, is told SUVs are for women and he has to have a giant pickup truck to keep his “man card”.
@Katana314 @moriquende Another factor is that when women enter into patriarchal marriages, a lot of them allow their husbands to choose their vehicles for them. Certainly there are single women and married ones who buy SUVs for a variety of reasons, but there are also a lot of women who let men choose their cars for them, leading to a car choice that is not necessarily optimal for the safety, comfort, or preferences of the person driving it.
Yea, now they’re just running over other peoples children instead
Artistic designs has taken a backseat to profitability.
So we have a whole bunch of stylistically identical designs from all major companies. Without a logo on most vehicles today it is very difficult to distinguish between companies. They are all about the same with very little variability.
Case in point: the bog-standard station-wagon in that picture. Even the marketing dickheads realise they need a pretty girl in the picture to make it look remotely interesting.
… the fact that you just called an SUV a station wagon and, like, you’re not wrong, just made me super depressed. I drive a Mini and have since I started driving. In the beginning, I had the smallest car around. Now, I usually have the only car around.
It was tongue in cheek, but that’s pretty much what they are. At least here in Australia there’s still quite a few smaller cars around, but even new ‘small cars’ are getting pretty big.
Cars used to be awesome, now they suck. Go look at pictures of cars from the 40s to 60s or 79s even… there is no comparison.
This isn’t necessarily true. Even back then the streets were filled with shitbox cars that all looked the same. But only the cars that were beautiful and unique are still remembered and the rest are forgotten
I don’t know, I think the streets were probalby really rad in like the late 40’s early 50’s. I mean:
If you ignore all the nice neon and look at just the cars all you see are a bunch of similar looking cars. They all look like a Chevy Bel-Air to me. Now I am sure a 50s car enthusiasts would be able to name them all, but to your average person there aren’t any significant differences.
This is the same for cars today as well. Maybe 60 years in the future people will reminisce about the good old days of the Mazda Miata, Shelby Mustang, or Toyota Supra without realizing that these cars were few and far between and the streets were actually just filled with cheap Toyotas and Kias and Nissan Altimas.
Nothing wrong with that!
I always love the “cars all look the same these days” comment as if vehicles of every decade weren’t closely following the same design trends. Cars today don’t look the exact same unless you’re blind, especially if these people are supposed to be enthusiasts, so the other option is these people are just fuckin’ stupid.
One thing I will give older cars, though, is that at least they were colourful. I have a WRB BRZ(that’s mostly parked because I have great public transit options) and I feel so out of place not because it’s a sportscar but because it’s not a greyscale mass of shit rolling down the grey road.
But the shit boxes people were driving in the 60s were VW Beetles, an objectively good looking car. Easily the most popular car of the 60s was the Mustang, an objectively beautiful car.
The real shit boxes didn’t start popping up until after the oil crisis in 73.
How dare you rip on the Pacer and the Gremlin!
Some of the conformity is safety. Cars today are generally designed with crumple zones, airbags, and other safety measures in mind. That leads to them looking similar to other cars designed with the same requirements.
There are still some beautiful cars today, but they are outliers. For example, I saw a Honda Prologue recently and loved it. It has a somewhat unique look that was much more obvious in person. And the Alfa Romeo Stelvio and Giulia, while bigger than their older brethren, always make me smile.
There are other examples. But largely, cars have become pretty samey and boring.
stuff like the VW buzz shows that you don’t even need to deviate much for it to stand out quite a lot, just a slightly different shape and 2 colours and bam i instantly like it so much more than the standard car
Uh, my first car ever was a '79 Chevy Malibu. There has never been a more boring basic car in existence, and for good measure it was mechanically a piece of shit. The only good thing about it was that it had once been owned by semi-famous comic book artist P. Craig Russell.