Car design, it has been pointed out, is very hard to get right. First, you have to design something from whole cloth, a vehicle that must live up to the aesthetic expectations of a capricious public. And then, as if that wasn’t hard enough, it must also be easily repeatable and cheap to put together.
It should hardly come as a surprise, then, that car designers sometimes get it wrong or, to put it more charitably, appeal to less than the majority of consumers. To some designers like BMW boss Domagoj Dukec, shaping a car is about much more than just what is “pretty or ugly”.
Speaking of BMW, it has a range of new vehicles that are as modern as they are divisive. Beyond the unusual shape of the new 7-Series and its vacant expression, it sports a feature that has most vexed automotive enthusiasts for the last several years: the enormous kidney grille.
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Looking more like a caricature of a BMW than a fine, artistic representation, the automaker’s designers (and its previous iterations) seem to be making some pretty odd choices when it comes to the design of their vehicles and especially their grilles. And onlookers have expressed their frustration.
However, onlookers seem to always be angry with BMW’s designers no matter what they do. Just ask Chris Bangle. Can that really be said to be the most hated design feature then?
Along with gigantic grilles in general from Lexus to obscure Chinese designs, commentators also like to complain about fake scoops and grilles as well as fake exhaust outlets in rear bumpers. Or it could be something else, like Tesla’s and more recently, the Lexus RZ’s yoke steering wheel, which doesn’t only hurt the eye but ergonomics too.
These features, it seems, inspire the ire of many. What do you think, though? What’s the most widely despised car design feature of all time? What’s your personal pick for the worst design detail?
