Has Toyota's Styling Gone Too Far?

just looked inside an ls460 or whatever they are these days. 2 upholders in all that massive real estate between the driver and passenger seat? not impressed with lexus styling. even hyundai and kia are starting to look better. fortunately for toyota, they have a lot of other things going for them. specifically, function over form.

 

Once upon a time there were bumpers on the front. That's old-hat now I guess.

 

Toyota is ahead right now, but the others are coming!

 

Or how to grill block.

 

will that attract bees?

 

It'll take a big motor to close down that much grillwork real estate.
.

 

Or a rabbit. Having wiped out a my fair share of road kill (accidentally of course), I'm a fan of hard bumpers. I can see those new grills getting wiped out by some animal with no road sense as well as those who park with their bumpers.

 

Still looks good to this day, as well as the LS430 being a runner up. I don't like how they went with the S-class look on the LS460.

 

Lexus obviously spent a lot of time designing that right, and then seem to have rushed their later models to the point where they're anonymous. The same happened with Mazda and their Eunos/MX5 Roadster. The original was perfect, and then slowly got fat and dull thereafter. I think Toyota have done the same with the Prius. The gen2 was well designed and the gen3 whilst modern, just doesn't have that certain je ne sais quoi. (and I own one)

 

We still have bumpers on the front now, but too often disguised as the middle section of outsized, partially-fake grills.

Stupid-large black plastic grills are just as ridiculous now as stupid-large chromy metal ones were circa 1950. See current-generation Focus for a less expensive example of this silliness. Grills should be only large enough to admit adequate cooling air, and as inconspicous as possible. The 2nd- and 3rd-generation Prii have a nicer noses than most of the stuff shown in this thread! (So does a '76 Vega, for that matter.)

 

Yeah, now that's a bumper.



And I'd expect it mounted to hydraulically damped stong points.

I know, with today's cars everything for'ard of the fire wall is crumple zone, pretty much a write-off in a front ender.

 

I used to have a '75 Cosworth Vega, #1131.

 

Yes, cause the designers know that no engine really needs that much air flow. Heck, the top grill on the Sonic isn't even all open.

 

There is an aerodynamic trick that involves generating small vortexes that 'adhere' to the surface. However, this is done just before where flow-separation would occur, near the back, not at the front. No, this is just ugly.

Bob Wilson

 

Rhetorical Titles are Annoying

 

Not disagreeing with these cars, but vortex generators can help near the front, if underneath. AN old article once tested the use of AirTabs on the first gen Prius and Insight. No MPG results, just basic string testing on the back window, but they did try slabbing 4 or so Tabs under the Insight before the engine bay. Nothing quantitative, but reported it stablized the Insight's squirrelliness at speed. With an ICE, a completely flat belly sheet isn't possible, so there will be some dirty flow.