I think it was the Americans who started it. When I was a little kid, the Detroiters were heavily into indulging themselves with some of the most massive, chrome-laden, over-the-top front grilles in history, and I loved them all, even though I usually only saw them in pictures. 

At the time, an elaborate grille usually went with a chest-high set of tin tailfins overhanging the bootlid of practically every full-sized American car (and quite a few British and mainland European offerings too), but I never cared as much about them as I did the grilles: they didn’t have the same high purpose. 

Distinctive frontal façades did two things for me – and still do. First, they did a perfect job of defining a car’s make. A Chevy was very different from a Ford, despite equal ironmongery.

Second, they spelled out the prevailing mood of the society from which they sprang. Back in the ‘chrome grin’ era, the pervading mood was optimism and anticipated prosperity: the end of war, a gradual freedom from austerity, the beginning of a baby boom, an increase in personal ambition and very little concern about economy or efficiency. 

Now it’s very different. I love the way that grilles have changed through the ages, keeping their role as a guide to the times. Compare the joyous exuberance of an early Cadillac Eldorado with the efficiency-driven restraint of 2020’s Volkswagen ID 3, for example.

It’s amazing to me that while absorbing such seismic design shifts, grilles can still maintain a marque’s historical connections. 

Today, I get special pleasure from the seven-slat grille of a Jeep Wrangler, re-expressed over many years by hundreds of designers intent on maintaining a connection to the ubiquitous wartime 1940s Jeep – whose original radiator shroud simply had a few casually cut vent slots.

I’m also intrigued by how the grille designer’s challenge gets ever greater. Today’s electric cars don’t strictly need grilles at all, but car companies that want to be successful still see a vital need for them.