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by JAX
Door handles. When all was said and done, one of the most interesting features to be found on a car making its debut at this year’s Detroit Auto Show was smoothly integrated door handles, a never-before-seen feature that previously appeared on cars such as the original NSX, the last Mazda RX-7, and the first Dodge Viper GTS. And the third, sixth, and seventh generations of the Corvette. The unlovable Fiat Barchetta also sported slickly integrated handles, which was surprising considering the rest of the car looked as though it were designed by a prisoner from the Soviet Gulags who had once heard about convertibles from a delirious cellmate. To be fair to Lincoln, who debuted what we all assume to be the production version of the Continental, the handles are in a somewhat interesting location at the base of the windows, blending nicely with the dignified side profile. It’s just a shame that the front end looks like an inelegant pastiche of the Jaguar XJ and Kia K900 and does a very poor job of disguising the Continental’s front-drive origins. (The less said about the Dodge Durango lights grafted onto the rear of the Continental, the better.) As a resurrection of the Lincoln brand, it utterly and completely fails on every level, leaving us all scratching our heads as to how and why Lincoln still manufactures automobiles in the first place. Lincoln is the automotive equivalent of Andrea from The Walking Dead: you keep tuning in hoping that they’ll finally kill her off, only to be disappointed time and time again. Memo to Ford: it took a while, but they finally let Andrea go. Somewhere just outside the vortex of banality created by the Continental, Chrysler was showing off the ground-up redesign of its famous minivan, now dubbed the Pacifica. Though it is no doubt important to the brand (and FCA as a whole), generating excitement about a new line of minivans is like trying to make a cool advertisement for washing machines: at the end of the day, it’s just an appliance that cleans underwear and socks, and you don’t buy one in a blinding fit of passion that usurps your capacity for reason and logic. Perhaps that’s what I most felt was missing as I scanned the continuous coverage of the Detroit Auto Show — passion. Chevy dropped its production version of the Bolt, an amazing accomplishment in its own right, but it looks exactly how we all expected it to look. Ford added two more doors to the Raptor pickup truck, making it slightly less pointless, and they wedged a 325-hp twin-turbo V-6 into the Fusion, which is the dictionary definition of pointless. They also gave it all-wheel drive, something I can’t be bothered to care about. (Look, if you’re the kind of person that an all-wheel drive, fire-breathing Fusion appeals to, please do us all a favor and limit your contribution to the human gene pool.) Audi showed off its new Allroad, an attractive car aimed at wealthy people who are unaware of the existence of the Subaru Outback and desperately want to overpay for a tall wagon. Honda continued to bludgeon its brand identity to death by showing off a deformed Pilot it will be calling the new Ridgeline as well as an Acura concept called “Precision” that has a near-perfect stance and wonderful proportions but suffers from Honda’s penchant for harsh lines and creases that ruin an otherwise pleasing shape, kind of like Mickey Rourke’s face. So the greatest auto show in the world was reduced to fanfare over minivans, incrementally less boring versions of boring cars, and the steaming pile that was the Continental. If you’re wondering what I’m on about, consider some of the show stealers and hotly anticipated debuts from the previous years: in 2015, the new Ford GT, the Buick Avenir concept, and the production version of the Acura NSX all appeared alongside the Chevy Bolt concept that no one saw coming, and the Corvette Z06, the new Ford Mustang, the BMW M4, and the Toyota FT-1 concept car were the highlights of the 2014 show. However, in any good rant there can’t help but be exceptions, and this year’s show provided two of them. It’s safe to say that after last year’s gorgeous Avenir concept car, no one expected Buick, a brand formerly associated with assisted living facilities and the slow decomposition of organic matter, to bring another stunner to the show, but they did — in a big way. The Avista concept, likely built on the lightweight and capable Alpha platform that underpins the Cadillac ATS and brand new Chevy Camaro, was jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Low, wide, and sublimely styled, it showed that Buick is everything that Lincoln wishes it were, and it established a visual brand identity shared with the previous year’s Avenir. There are subtle nods to the Riviera in the creases and lines, but the overall look is fresh and modern, signalling a new path for Buick — and GM as well. I can only assume that somewhere nearby was a Lincoln executive weeping quietly into his third White Zinfandel of the night. Despite my misgivings on the overall direction of Lexus’s styling, the other big hit of the show was the undoubtedly striking Lexus LC500, a monstrous super coupe that embodies the word presence unlike anything we’ve seen for quite some time — especially from Japan. The bold front end actually works when combined with the car’s aggressive stance, and the almost cartoonishly wide rear haunches lend a perception of power and performance not seen on a Lexus product since, well, ever. (The LFA, while technically brilliant, was not the most inspiring car to look at.) Inside, the LC500 refines Lexus’s current style of elegance and simplicity, and it appears to feature the expected techno goodies that one would associate with this class of car. Perhaps most interestingly, the LC500 features a naturally aspirated V-8 at a time when most manufacturers are switching to forced induction. This fact alone makes the LC500 profoundly interesting and worthy of consideration. It also makes me question everything I know about the universe and life when Lexus of all companies is sticking with the naturally aspirated V-8, the most irrational of choices in a world increasingly dictated by rational results and bottom lines. As is the case with all concept cars, everything is smoke and mirrors until the eventual production models begin trickling out of the factory. Though they are based on production-ready parts, the Buick Avista and Lexus LC500 could look very different by the time they roll into dealerships in the not-too-distant future. But you know what? That’s fine by me. Because at the Detroit Auto Show of 2016, these two cars carried the torch for every car guy attending the show, following the show, or overhearing two other car guys talking about the show and then joining in awkwardly at the least opportune moment and making everyone involved uncomfortable. They wiped from our minds the missed opportunities like the Lincoln Continental, and they erased the necessity of practicality represented by the Chrysler Pacifica. That the cars in question are from Buick and Lexus makes the experience even more surreal. But most of all they let us dream, and at the end of the day that’s what all good concept cars are supposed to do, stoke the passion that we all have for automobiles.
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by JAX
A little over a decade before I was born, Toyota released the 2000GT, a stunning, two-door grand tourer that resembled a more sensual version of the Jensen Interceptor — one that worked properly, anyway — while Honda’s sleek and simple S800 roadster carried the torch for the brand built on lightness, simplicity, and reliability. A few years later, Nissan released a one-two punch in the form of the very first GT-R, an aggressive, lightweight version of the Skyline sedan that was as purposeful as it was attractive and the 240Z, which would spawn an icon in its own right. Mazda’s first RX-7 appeared just before the dawn of the eighties, looking like a tiny Ferrari Daytona and popularizing the brand’s adherence to the Book of Wankel here in the States. Though there were a number of attractive Japanese designs during the eighties — most notably Honda’s first generation Prelude, Nissan’s 300ZX, Mitsubishi’s Starion, and Toyota’s gorgeous A70 model Supra — it wasn’t until a certain concept car debuted in 1989 at the Chicago Auto Show that the world’s collective jaw dropped at the suddenly realized potential of Japanese design — and every other automaker was subsequently put on notice. When the Acura NSX was first unveiled, I remember thinking that it was impossibly good looking, almost uncomprehendingly pretty, and in its signature red body/black roof color combination, it somehow appeared to be simultaneously lethal and delicate. The car effortlessly combined the over-the-top sensibilities of the cocaine-fueled eighties with the organic simplicity that would come to characterize the nineties. And it had pop-up headlights, which are always cool. (When the facelifted NSX debuted in 2002 with fixed headlights, it was as though Acura had taken Heidi Klum, relentlessly pummeled her about the head with a tire iron, and declared the resultant lumpy mishmash an improvement.) The NSX was the ultimate expression of Japanese car design, and it paved the way for a series of hits that absolutely dominated nineties sports cars: the 1989 Nissan 300ZX, the 1991 Mazda RX-7, and the legendary 1992 Toyota Supra.* While the Mustang and Camaro were languishing during the American auto industry’s darkest days, which reached its nadir with the debut of the Pontiac Aztek, the Japanese sports cars infiltrated the public consciousness, spawning a car culture that was helped along by appearances in popular video game series and neverending movie franchises — one that continues to this day. It wasn’t until the sports car market began to dry up at the turn of the millennium that Japanese design showed any signs of slowing down. Though Honda soldiered on, selling the simplistically handsome S2000 and Acura RSX, eventually they caved, and attractive Japanese cars began to disappear from our shores. Apparently never to return. Oh sure, there were glimmers of hope here and there. The Infiniti G35 coupe came along in 2003 boasting a fresh new design that symbolized Infiniti’s bold new goal of being taken seriously by human people. (It also proved that the chunky and awkward 350Z platform could, in fact, be made beautiful.) Acura’s new-for-2004 TL was inoffensive but not much more attractive than the Accord on which it was based.** In contrast, Lexus spent most of the first decade of the new millennium selling the wretched SC430, a car that most closely resembled the piece of soap slowly melting on the drain of your shower — you know, the one you keep meaning to pick up but never do — and Mazda thought that bringing the RX-7 back as a four-seat coupe with terrible gas mileage and a penchant for swilling oil would win the hearts and minds of enthusiasts who had grown up lusting for the third generation car during the nineties. Nay, the story grows worse. As the first decade of the new millennium came to a close, no hope appeared on the horizon. Honda’s entire design department was apparently replaced by cartoon characters, Infiniti and parent company Nissan had a bit of an identity crisis, and Lexus decided that cars which appeared to be perpetually punched in the face would fare well against the established brands from Europe and a newly revitalized Cadillac. Each subsequent redesign from the Japanese brands reeked of a “more is more” philosophy, which brought us such monstrosities as the 2009 Acura TL, the 2011 Nissan Juke, and the 2013 Lexus IS. But perhaps no one has gone farther off the reservation of good taste than Lexus parent and perpetual fan of the color beige, Toyota. The upcoming 2016 Toyota Prius is a laughably bad caricature of a car, a bit of half-baked lunacy cooked up in the minds of some Toyota designers on a saké bender and then released to the public as the equivalent of an Andy Kaufman joke in car form. This from the company that brought us the 2000GT, a car good enough for James Bond that currently sells for well over a million dollars. As automotive enthusiasts, we collectively celebrate when a company is churning out hit after hit, gorgeous car after gorgeous car. Whether or not we personally like the particular company is irrelevant; we can admire the effort and appreciate the resultant beauty. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than at Hyundai and Kia, two brands that until relatively recently were not the first names that came to mind when enthusiasts discussed car design, but under the direction of Peter Schreyer, the man responsible for the original Audi TT, they have amassed a portfolio of handsome and refined models that appear far more expensive than their price tags would suggest. And maybe, at the end of the day, that’s all Japan needs to get back on track — the singular talents of an automotive design rockstar who knows good and well when it’s time to lift the pencil. Until that day comes, we’ll all be rooting for a return to form, a return to the time when Japanese design was the envy of the world and made every other car company better for it. However, in the meantime, I’ll continue drooling over the 1996 300ZX Twin Turbo Commemorative Edition, which was my personal favorite of the Japanese super coupes. * Despite its technical brilliance, the Mitsubishi 3000GT doesn’t make the list because this article is about design, and the 3000GT was an overstyle mess compared to the previously mentioned cars; the Honda Prelude doesn’t make the list because after its first generation it made a point of being fairly hideous. ** And it’s hard to give the 2004 TL too much credit. At the time, people still remembered the second generation Legend from the nineties, one of the best looking luxury sedans ever made. |
AuthorJAX is an automotive enthusiast from Atlanta, Georgia. He loves Corvettes. He hates Mustangs. Archives
January 2019
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