The Inconvenient Truth of Future Classics

What’s Old is New Again.
Inevitably, whether we like it or not, certain trends once again become popular after a few decades’ hiatus. From fashion to music, architecture to fad diets, we are predictable creatures intent upon reinventing the wheel, claiming it’s all-new, and then proceeding to make it so ubiquitous that we once again become disgusted by it — at which point we’ll reach a few years farther back for inspiration and start the whole process over again. We often see similar reinventions in the automotive landscape, a complex ecosystem in which the evolution of personal transportation sometimes flouts all of Darwin’s conventional wisdom, choosing instead to blaze a more unique trail while chasing consumers’ hard-earned dollars at all costs. But despite what many automakers claim when uttering phrases such as “all-new” or “segment-busting,” trends eventually disappear only to return again, and while it might seem easy to laugh at some of the aircraft-inspired designs of Harley Earl from the comfortable safety of the twenty-first century, our descendents will no doubt criticize our liberal use of non-functional scoops and vents and blacked out C pillars. But what will they admire? What will become a classic worthy of copying or resurrecting in the future? As cars have slowly given way to compact SUVs, which models of these high-riding car cousins will be heralded for their forward-thinking designs or spectacular uniqueness? Though many of Harley Earl’s designs seem quaint and outdated today, the significance of the 1938 Buick Y-Job, the world’s first true concept car, cannot be denied. (It’s also gorgeous, so there’s that, too.) Most critics point to the Jeep Cherokee and Ford Explorer as harbingers of the coming SUV craze, but those were rugged SUVs lightly disguised as family transportation Very little of their respective designs is present in today’s current crop of SUVs, so I have five alternative suggestions that I feel better predicted the role of the SUV in our current society and will serve as better time capsules (and inspiration) for our ancestors in the future.
5. Nissan Murano (2002) When the Nissan Murano exploded onto the automotive landscape in all of its beaked glory, it completely changed the way people perceived midsize SUVs. Stylish and futuristic, the Murano helped shape Nissan’s design language in ways the Altima and Maxima never could and gave upwardly mobile families an aspirational SUV from a mainstream brand. One could even argue that, for better or worse, it created a world in which the following SUV was possible.
4. BMW X6 (2008) Love it or hate it, there’s no denying the influence of BMW’s controversial X6. Taking the original Mercedes CLS’s design brief — make a more gorgeous but less practical E class, call it a “coupe,” and sell it for more money — the BMW X6 defied critics and reshaped what people expected from SUVs, in terms of both design and performance. It’s more audacious and even more cynical than the original Porsche Cayenne, a true example of form tap dancing across the battered face of function, gloriously and unapologetically so.
3. Lexus RX 300 (1998) Perhaps one of the most important cars of the twenty-first century — no, that’s not hyperbole — the original Lexus RX 300 gave less angry and more successful Gen Xers their first taste of the automotive good life, and it became a sales smash in the process.  Quite literally every single small, luxury SUV owes its life to the Lexus RX, as well as every car or SUV that has flaunted clear taillights.
2. Isuzu VehiCROSS (1999) While many of you probably don’t remember the VehiCROSS (or Isuzu, for that matter), it was simply one of the strangest and most interesting SUVs ever to grace American roads. Why does it matter? Because it was the other, far less successful, side of the Lexus RX 300 coin. While the Lexus abandoned any pretensions of an off-roading, active lifestyle, the VehiCROSS cranked them all up to eleven — and then it smashed the TV and threw it out the window into the pool. It was fabulously strange, and I desperately wanted one.
1. Pontiac Aztek (2001) Wait, what? How could this list contain one of the most mocked and reviled conveyances of all time? Bear with me: in a time when you can have a picnic on the back tailgate of your Rolls Royce Cullinan while listening to classical music (probably Bach), the Pontiac Aztek’s similar features don’t seem so silly. In fact, they seem downright prescient. But most of all, the Aztek was the kitchen sink approach: give the market all of the features and all of the styling, and see what sticks. It was a testbed for what was to come and how the SUV was to evolve, and it logically bridges the gap between the mass appeal and unrestrained success of the Lexus RX 300 and the niche-fulfilling design and performance of the BMW X6.     
​Plus, it was in Breaking Bad, and that will always be cool.