Please tell me it’s not just me, dear reader, who sometimes looks at a new car – something I do on a more than occasional basis – and with the best will in the world couldn’t say what it is.
There are so many more new cars than there used to be, so many more of them are crossovers than they used to be and, by gum, so many of them look the same that I am, on occasion, utterly lost. I can’t tell one from another.
This is a new experience for me. I always proudly thought that if I witnessed a robbery I’d be able to tell the police what make, model and trim level a getaway car was, and I’d probably be able to name its colour and wheel design. Actually that may be a bad example, because I already know it will be an Audi RS3.
But let’s say an anonymous grey crossover is involved in a hit and run and a nearby copper asks me for a statement about what car was involved. I increasingly fear I’d have to shrug and offer up a simple: “Haven’t a clue, mate. One of those new electric SUVs. I think.”
Strictly speaking, thinking that all cars look the same isn’t a new phenomenon. In an issue of Performance Car I bought back in the early 1990s, the magazine printed a series of silhouettes of D-segment hatchbacks from the time: a Ford Mondeo, a Nissan Primera, a Toyota Carina and so on.
Their gag was that if you could identify none of them from their outline alone, you were a true Performance Car reader. But if you could tell most of them apart, you were an Autocar & Motor reader.
But while not a new thing, I think events have recently progressed at speed. I don’t know about today’s Autocar reader, but I can tell you this Autocar writer of two decades would struggle to tell plenty of new models apart even if they weren’t reduced to their silhouettes.
Even on a clear day I’m not at all confident I could tell a Geely EX5 from a BYD Atto 3 until I got close enough to read the badges. Why is this? Have all the good shapes already been taken? Are we now drawing the same ones again because, basically, we have to?
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Consumers are partly to blame here. Cars that look markedly different - I'm thinking original Ford Sierra, Audi A2, 2006 Honda Civic, Vauxhall Adam, BMW i3 - often don't sell . Car buyers ar notoriously conservative and tend to avoid anything too different, despite bold designs often displaying technical advancements and pointing the way to the future.
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Until recently I always thought that I could identify a car by its light signature but despite the scope with LEDs both front and back few manufacturers have made much of an effort to create a distrintive means of identification. A continuous strip across the back has become ubiquitous on all EVs. I am though looking forward to the return of Wolseley style light up badge.
Yea, yes, yes! This dear reader wholeheartedly agrees with you. Even worse the current bloated boxy styling obsession is turning cars into domestic appliances.
How long before we get a Ford Zanussi? Or a Fiat Indesit?