Dan's Papers - July 13, 2007

Hard bodies and pretty faces - I'm not talking about Hollywood starlets, but automobiles. Yesterday I was in my Mini waiting for the traffic light to turn green. A spanking new Acura MDX sport utility vehicle pulled up behind me, with its gaudy grill filling my rear view mirror. The full-blown mirror view prompted me to turn around and look at the thing up close and personal, and man was it ugly. What the heck were the Honda/Acura car designers thinking when they put that god-awful King Arthur's shield of a grill on the face of an otherwise attractive and well-designed vehicle?

There have been many ugly front ends put on many cars over the years. Most recently the Subaru Tribeca and the Pontiac Aztek come to mind. Unfortunately, everything about the Aztek was beauty impaired, but the Subaru was quite a handsome car, with a nice personality but an unfortunate face. For the record, Subaru, obviously aware of the need for plastic surgery, has redesigned the front end of the 2008 model.

The front end "face" is a very important design detail of any automobile. The Europeans seem to understand that concept more than most of the world's automotive manufacturers. To the Europeans, the visage of their cars is what establishes their product's identity. For instance, consider Mercedes Benz, the company who literally invented the automobile, as we know it. Since the beginning of automobile time, the face of the Mercedes has literally been the same - that of an upright radiator grill. The same can be said of Rolls Royce, another legendary old time manufacturer. It's surprising that the equally legendary Ford Motor Company didn't establish a corporate grill. However, at least they have kept their vintage corporate logotype in their nameplate on every Ford product.

There are some upstarts that have established faces. BMW, which first started to produce notable cars in the early thirties, had a twin kidney shaped grill which is the corporate look they proudly display on every car they produce today. The same can be said for Alfa-Romeo, which has a streamlined radiator look and two lower side intakes. The great Italian-made Ferrari has always been known for its long snout ending with a racy oval grill. This plain and simple front-end look has always been a PininFarina trademark design and has been copied by everyone from Ford to Chrysler for their lesser production cars.

One vehicle that has a very unique trademark look is the Porsche. Because the Porsche's engine is in the rear, and is air-cooled, the poor thing has no grill. As everyone knows, the Porsche's trunk is in the front, designed to be quite low, swooped and small. The front fenders jut much higher than the trunk and give the car a look all its own. Porsche's face hasn't really changed that much since 1949 and it will still be a beauty 50 years from now.

Many cars have front-ends designed for a product cycle of about four years. Usually, it's the early and original design that is the best. This is because it is a purer design that was not changed just for the sake of being updated. The 1953 Studebaker was a brilliant overall design. Over the ensuing years, it just became goofed up in every way. This can be said of virtually every car built during the fifties. The chrome "virus" was everywhere. It was used as makeup to virtually update the faces of every production car over its production cycle, most of the time to the detriment of the looks of the car. However, in all fairness to Detroit, the rock n' roll era produced those nostalgic fifties cars that are certainly unique and representative of the times.

There is an expression used in Germany, and that is "Autobahn presence." In Germany, If you're in the left lane, say cruising along at 90 m.p.h., and you see a speck in your rear view mirror rapidly growing larger and suddenly that face has an upright grill, or perhaps twin kidneys, you signal and pull over into the right lane. Soon a big Benz will swoosh by. If you are in the left lane and you can hardly make out what the hell the speck is in the mirror, but the speck is flashing its headlights at you, pull to the right. Guaranteed, that speck in your mirror will turn out to be a Porsche that will go by so fast you will not even be able to read the model number on its flanks. That, my friends, is Autobahn presence. On the Autobahn, the S Class Mercedes is King, the BMW is heir apparent and those little Porsches are the Jokers.

Bob Gelber, an automotive journalist living in the Hamptons, appears regularly on television as an automotive expert. You can email him at bobgelber@aol.com.