At some point, cars need to start getting simpler again. If somebody had told you twenty-five years ago, when cars were getting lower and faster, that transport at the turn of the century would be higher and slower, you would have looked at them with the scorn they deserved. Cars did get higher and slower though - from the truck-based 4WD revolution to oddities like the Mercedes A-class. What the hell happened in the last twenty-five years?
Cars are now over complicated too. Mercedes doesn't ship an A-class without a full complement of electronic driver aids. You know, underneath all that so-called cleverness of high seated passengers over a double floored, compact chassis are some fundamental engineering problems that were well understood by the boat builders of Egypt thousands of years ago (ie build it tall and narrow and it will fall over). Nobody cares about careful axle location (for limiting wheelspin, for example) when the ABS sensors can do it cheaper, even if the end product is a compromised, nasty bag of tricks.
It seems you can't buy a car now without at least two airbags, anti-lock brakes with traction control, a complement of precision-machined balance shafts and a satellite navigation system hooked up to the internet. Not only do I have to contend with bozos on their mobile phones snarling up peak hour by forgetting to brake, we now have to worry about over-stimulated internet connected drivers fogging up their windows after they download fake nudie pictures of Jennifer Love-Hewitt. Try explaining that one to the police officer attending your accident.
On top of all that, we have the styling nightmare that is the cutting edge modern car, from Chris Bangle's defacement of the E46 3 series with those unsightly bags under its eyes, to the Hyundai Coupe (Tiburon in some markets) with a lumpy, toad-like visage that bears absolutely no resemblance to the mechanicals underneath. Before anybody really thought about aerodynamics, a car's mechanicals were barely covered, with styling limited to the shape of the radiator. I was horrified the first time I saw a styled, plastic engine cover; now Audi on the A2 give us a fake radiator that's actually a pop-open cover so you can check the oil. Not change the oil, just check it. No user serviceable parts inside buddy, not under the bonnet that probably requires 4 trained service people to open. Surely the Volkswagen group must have gotten a wake-up call about style over substance when the Audi TT started turning turtle - its styling a direct influence on the amount of lift the car generates over the back axle.
Styling is now so contrived that even the owners don't know what to do with their cars. A prime example is the Toyota RAV4. It's not a hatchback/wagon, it's not a four-wheel-drive truck - but it looks like a little bit of both. So you have two camps of RAV4 modifiers; they either cover it with 4WD paraphernalia for 'mini desert racer' looks, or slam it and put enormous wheels with fat, low profile tyres on it. So I'm not sure whether the inaugural Paris-Dakar shopping trip is being organised (six malls in six hours!), but there seem to be plenty of potential contenders in circulation.
I don't need to Yahoo! in my car, unless I'm doing a 6000 rpm clutch dump; I have enough trouble with the radio. I don't need confused message styling for styling's sake (Chrysler, your PT cruiser falls under this category, with the "new beetle" and the early Porsche wannabe Audi TT). Don't get me wrong, I don't want cars to look boring, but in the same way that 4cm of pancake makeup and 5 gallons of hair dye doesn't hide Joan Collin's age, putting a plastic-chrome 50's face on a Neon wagon doesn't hide that it's a boring, slow little wagon. Do these companies think we're that stupid?
What I need is for somebody to engineer the damn cars first, and then get the stylists involved afterwards. Any car that makes it to production with the handling flaws of the A class or the Audi TT can only emphasise that cars are now being built backwards. Draw out the suspension mounts, plop the drivetrain package in, put five digital humans with their luggage in their place and drop a digital sheet over the lot on the stylist's workstation. If the metal (or plastic or whatever) doesn't have to be there, don't put it there. Add in the mandated safety devices but don't insult me with styling that's supposed to invoke somebody else's genius.
The original Mini looked that way because there weren't too many other ways to package the mechanicals. The new Mini is an ugly, compromised copy with none of the genius or inspiration of the Issigonis original. If BMW had the guts, they'd design something as radical as the original and the styling would sort itself out, just like the original.
Without a doubt, my favourite cars were all built this way. The guy who scribbled the Ford GT40 didn't dictate to the engineers where the wheels should go, he had to work around the chassis hard-points he was given. I think most people would agree that there are precious few cars that look so purposeful. Nobody complains about the styling of the Lotus 7; it isn't styled so much as barely covered, vintage car, with the minimum bits of metal to keep the oily bits out of harm's way.
If somebody decided to build a proper, family car that way I'd be first in line waving a cheque.
Without all the extraneous chrome, bulbous styling and 400 kilograms of wireless internet transmitter, that car should be a nimble road rocket. It will be no fun to drive though; I'll probably need all the performance I can get to avoid the meandering traffic of dot.com stock-watching, internet-addicted motorists....
