That's just YOU - :D


humfrz

DAMN ! - we're getten back there - :eyebulge:


humfrz

And the reason for that is "more agressive". Idiots.

This. GM even realized what a mistake it was by rushing the body colored option into production.

They really need to focus group some of this stuff more. They probably prototyped it on a black car and said "yea that looks good".

(OK, I know they did more than that, but it sure feels like it sometimes)

No you got it right, they didn't do any reseach. Haven't you heard, GM is killing off six models and closing five plants. They can't afford to pay for fo-fo Focus groups and all that touchy feely stuff.

Who is more to blame, the people who design cars to be aggressive or people like you who buy the aggressive looking cars? ;)

I'm sure they can afford the focus groups, they just all happen to be in China. :bellyroll:

I didn't buy the car for the front end. I want the front from the version everyone called a "chick car".

https://images.hgmsites.net/med/toyo...00510705_m.jpg

I can vouch for this. He complained about the bumper from day one!
He want's this one. Have to admit it is loads better than what they did.


https://cdn1.evo.co.uk/sites/evo/fil...?itok=klyEGat3

To be fair it was marketed to females so that's probably why people call it that.

I wholeheartedly disagree. I think focus groups produce some of the worst or most boring designs imaginable. They signal to your most visionary designers that you don't trust them to do what you hired them to do.

Put a dozen people in a room and show them pictures of your designs, then ask for their thoughts. Maybe they really don't have any strong opinions, but now that you've asked for them, they feel obligated to say something. So they say vague, wishy-washy stuff about the design. Sometimes one girl will express an opinion, and several other people will glom onto her viewpoint so that they don't have to come up with their own. Someone else may disagree with her just to play the contrarian. Or maybe there's genuine disagreement. People will entrench in their opinions and express them more forcefully, not because they believe them, but because they're being encouraged to express themselves.

You take all this contradictory bullshit you gather back to your visionaries and say, "I know your design was really nice, but the focus group didn't like it. Change it to make it fit more with what The People want."

So your designer dumbs down the design. It's a snoozefest. But it's deemed safe, so it goes into production. It doesn't sell in the numbers you hoped, not even to the focus group members who said they wanted it.

You have to do something to sell more cars and justify your large management salary. So you blame the designer and call for more focus groups to steer your visionaries away from taking any design risks in the next version of the car.

GM makes some of the blandest, most boring designs of any manufacturers except maybe Toyota, mostly because they focus-group the hell out of everything until it's just generic. The one place where they don't do that is with the Corvette, with that team getting a much longer leash. Predictably, that's the one group producing something interesting.

Zora Arkus-Duntov wasn't beaten senseless by focus groups. Neither were Giovanni Michelotti or Brooks Stevens. Those guys were hired to deliver, and they did.

The way you get interesting cars is you hire very bright people on the basis of their vision, set them loose and take what they design to market. If it sells, you keep them around. If it doesn't sell, either they learn from it or you let them go. Auto manufacturers generally are too risk averse to do that today, and the visionaries get all their creativity beaten out of them.

I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I think Toyota/Lexus makes some of the best looking new cars compared to its competition and I think the new Corvette is the worst looking Corvette ever produced.

I was going to go find some pictures to prove you wrong, but I got so bored looking at Camrys that I fell asleep.

Toyota's recent designs are much more daring than before. They're still overdesigned but they are far better looking than before imo. A lot of their old cars were just plain conservative. They were there and you saw it and that was it.

Lexus on the other hand turned their design dial way up and it brought us designs centered around the spindle grille, which is still polarizing today.

I quite liked how aggressive and different they looked. The LC inspired design direction they're going through now is much better than when it started (far more cohesive and not 'predator grille face slapped onto body' look that a lot of the early spindle grille had.)

its still in your face and polarizing but they're definitely distinctive and clearly lexus.

With everyone jumping on the gigantic grille trend, a lot of cars are starting to look the same. Grille shapes and headlight shapes are really starting to look like derivatives of each other.