Re: Bring back the pretty cars

The Avanti was... You can even see

Not me, sorry.

More than a Rabbit, anyway. But its no Barracuda :-)

Not ALL of them. I like the current Mustang. The Dodge Magnum is a

Styling is cyclical- we're back in a hard edge/square lines phase now, not unlike the 60s and 80s. The 70s and 90s were about curves. I find pretty and ugly cars in both categories.

yeah, I'm with you there. "cute" is the nicest adjective I can think of to use for a Lark.

Scirocco, though... (the original)

Bite your tongue! Bulletnoses rock!

I have to say that if you picked a random car from the 60's and a random modern car, without knowing what you picked, I'd wager money that I'd find the 60's car more attractive. So the OP, while obviously trolling, has a point.

nate

What? Where have you been? You're too late. It's true that there are a few jellybean-shaped cars left, but there is a current general trend toward actual style that is already in full swing. Seems like the big selling cars always have the most boring styling (Camry), but in spite of that cars are much prettier now than they were, say, any year between 1980 and 2000.

(snip)

V-series Cadillacs

Tesla electric car

the new Alpha Romero (also called the rolling orgasm)

A new Bentley, you pick the grill style, exterior color scheme, interior wood type, interior color, you pick everything.

Chrysler made a HOT looking car, saw it on Discovery channel, very high tech, but cant remember the name. I do remember it was expected to sell for around a million $ if it ever went into production (not!)

Theres still some eye catching styles, but you better bring money.

I saw a picture of the 2008 Camero at a newstand today, it looked very nice.

Call me weird, but I liked the Pacer. Particularly the wagon. Awful mechanics tho.

As to today's cars, I like my Focus wagon (pre-2005), the new Jeep Compass and the Chevy HHR. I think Chevy has also done a good job with the recent Malibus (except the Maxx, which I can take or leave). Loved the PT cruiser when it came out, but to me looks dated now.

On the other end of practicality, the Miata (MX5) has got to be a styling classic.

I wince a little when I see an Element and some of the recent Caddies and BMWs. But it all comes down to taste. As long as the Aztec disappears from the roads as soon as possible, I'm happy.

Erratum: These were all 1930s designs...Chevy "Blue Flame": 1936 Ford flathead V8: 1932 Buick "Fireball" 8: 1933.

Pontiac's "stars and stripes" hailed directly from Harley Earl's 1954 Pontiac concept car, the original "Le Man," of which only one is known to exist. You'll also see a lot of the 1955 grille treatment in the Le Mans.

Points are well taken, but don't say one thing...you're old. The new cars are designed to titillate the "Gen Y" losers, including the baby buggy like "pimp" wheels. You might recall when Ford adopted Kaiser-Fraser's "fenderless" slab sided styling in 1949, many old timers decried the move, because it didn't look like "a car."

Not all new is really new, either. Look at the Nissan SUVs...that's a

I recognized these styling thefts the minute I saw them, because I remember the originals. But yes...all the new crap is cheap...and ugly...and designed to appeal to the current generation of a throw-away society.

Probably true. The total absence of chrome and the presence of so much plastic on modern cars would be an instant put-off, even without knowing the context. too much body color makes any car look like a jellybean, and plastic looks like plastic no matter what color its painted.

'Scuse me? There wasn't a THING wrong with the Buick straight-8. What a magnificent piece of engineering.

The Chevy straight-6 was a splash-oiled POS that shouldn't have made it out of the 1920s, let alone lived until the 50s, I'll agree with that. But even the Ford flatties had some redeeming characteristics.

Long crankshaft gave it torsional twist, limiting its output, but other than that, it was one of the best engines GM had in the '30s and '40s, until the Olds and Cadillac V8s hit in 1949. The other good one was the 347 Cadillac flathead, which also came from the late '30s.

The first Chevy 6 was the air-cooled dog from Franklin, which quickly went away. The "Blue Flame" came about in 1936, with "Boss" Kettering, as was practice for the loss leader Chevrolet Division, helped design the "cheapest thing we could and still have overhead valves." How it lasted until 1962 is beyond me.

Yeah...overheating, inefficiency, poor oiling being among them. Mine got 140K miles on it on the original engine, though, which was more than a Chevy 6 could get....or V8, for that matter. It was just a sign of the archiac engineering that the thing got 14 MPG around town,

Strong Ford point all the way through the FEs: Y-blocks. Nothing from GM could be as strong. That's why the old 390HPs, 406s and 427s could race and race some more while their competing Chevy 409s and

Harmonic vibration, far too long an engine. It's a credit to the engineers it was so good.

GM sticks to out of date form factors far too long, recent evidence being the sawn off V8 90? V6 engines, instead of the proper 60? V6. Obviously too many tools that are difficult to change.

True, a miserable engine that GM used far too long. My Father had a few, I knew them too well. >:)

The HHR will be looking dated, same as the PT Cruiser. Retro is nice for a little while, but it is not what I want to look at every day.

The Ford Five Hundred has all the excitement of a slice of Wonder bread. The Mercury Milan looks OK, but the Ford version looks cheesy, the Lincoln version looks like they added some extra trim just to raise the price. Chrysler has nothing I'd want to be seen in, especially the 300 with the huge grill. Pontiac has some OK looking cars but they are getting tired looking and need a freshening up. The Impala looks fresher than the previous models.

My favorites today are the Nissan Maxima, Infiniti G coupe, Lexus GS. The new Altima looks good in photos so far. BMW has lost it styling edge. Mercedes is staring to get it back, but they still made a lot of plain, boxy and even cheap looking cars for a few years.

I don't see as many ugly colors as there were a few years back. Our parking lot at work has a rose colored Neon that is ugly, as are some of the lavender and purple cars of just a few years ago. Buick has a Crimson Pearl that costs an extra $500 and makes the car look $5000 cheaper. Aside from Corvettes and Ferraris, I don't like red on any car.

Maybe, but to me it looks less extreme and more logical than the PT, and I suspect will outgrow any category and simply look like itself. They're at the top of my list to replace my 2000 Focus wagon next spring. Having a really great interior layout is really what's attracting me, more than the styling.

"Some O" wrote

Strange, that the Chevy V-6 is such a poor engine. I have one running past

Chrysler has to look back to the slant 6 to find an engine that can claim those kind of figures.

I agree. The 4.3 is pretty good, and while the 3800 was excellent, the "proper" 2.8 was a piece of s*it. There's a lot of other factors involved...

If you want to talk about engineering elegance, an I-6 kicks a V-6's ass any day.

nate

George, I did as well. Owned 4 of them - 75, 76 & 79 hatchbacks, 80 wagon. The mechanical problems of the Pacer where no better or worse than other cars of that same vintage - can you imagine how nice a Pacer would run with an AMC 4L FI I-6 and a modern 4-speed electronic control transmission?

Biggest pain in the butt I ever had with any of the Pacers was the PLASTIC (yes, I'm not joking) pistons in th front disk brake cailpers in the '80 wagon. Had the brakes lock up soild on me in downtown Indianapolis - in hot weather in heavy downtown traffic the pistons expanded in their bores and locked up the front brakes. That was no fun . . . Took it back to the dealer and demanded that he put in a set of pistons from a '79 (which where metal) and no further problems.

I'm still pissed off at my ex-wife for selling that car and not letting me take it off her hands first (she bought a damn Alliance - what a piece of frog crap that car was).

Regards, Bill Bowen Sacramento, CA

Edwin,

The HHR would look a lot nicer, in my humble opinion, if it had chrome bumpers to make it look more like the '49 GMC pickup the front end design is based on (first time I saw an HHR I said to myself :hey, Uncle George's old pickup lives on :)) My uncle George had a '49 GMC when I was a kid - loved that old truck. Remeber the old "step-on" starter where your foot was actually the starter solenoid?

AMEN on the 300 - and the chopped off greenhouse of nearly all the new Chrysler stuff leaves me cold - reminds me of a chopped and channeled '49 Mercury. My all-time favorite Chrysler is the 68-72 Dodge Dart hardtops and convertibles - I'd KILL for a '69 Dart GTS (but I want it with a 340, not a big block). If Chrysler want to go retor, why not make a 300 that looks like a '55 Chrysler 300? Of course too I have fond memories of the '67 Hemi Coronet hardtop we had for a driver's training car my senior year of high school (no joke - that was one scary car when you pushed that "loud" pedal a bit too much).

Pontiac has some OK looking cars but they are getting tired

Yep - why not let Pontiac import the entire Holden line and sell it? Hate to say it, but the Aussies are kicking our butts in style.

Boxy is not necessarily bad - example: GM "C" body '85 to '90. The Olds had a really classy look to it, and the squarish greenhouse made it easy for even 6 foot tall folks to easily get in and out of the back seat. I'd buy another one (had an '87 Olds 98 Touring Sedan) in a New York minute.

Remember, as the baby boomers like me get older we're looking for style WITH a sense of practicality. Take a look at the number of older folks that have bought Scions or Elements - why? Because those "breadbox on wheels" are so damn easy to get into and out of for someone with a bad back and/or arthritis - nearly as easy as a minivan without the extra size, weight and operating expense.

It is all fine and good to cater to the 20-something crowd, but the baby boomer generation is still a sizable number of car buyers AND, for the most part, they have more $$ than the 20-somethings do.

OH BARF

, as are some of the

Yep Ferraris should be either red or black; to me anyway, Corvettes look best in black, white (like the original '53s) or that dark blue they used in the mid 90s.

I'd like to see GM bring back the maroon they used on the larger Buicks and Oldsmobiles in the late 80s - that '87 Olds 98 I had was in that color and I really liked it.

For a bad paint color, remember the "champagne" color GM used in the mid 80s? My old boss had an 85 Monte Carlo in that color and I though it sucked. On the other hand, I saw a really great car driving home yesterday - a 63 Thunderbird hardtop in that kinda salmon color (original CA car with original issue plates, and the car I'd guess is a totally unrestored original based on the age of the driver {an older lady I'd suspect to be in her late 70s).

Style is such a subjective things, and our tastes change as time goes on. I remember when the '80 Seville was introduced - I thought Bill Mitchell had gone and done crack before he designed it! But as time goes on that design has kinda grown on me. On the other hand, all these plastic "Taraus clone" designs (like the Neon) of today I think suck and will just get "suckier" as time goes on.

Regards, Bill Bowen Sacramento, CA

P.S. A retro idea for GM - take the Holden Caprice chassis (modern version of the US "B" body of the mid-late 90s) and put a modern re-do of the '55-57 Nomad body on it. But it HAS to have chrome bumpers - none of this plastic crap. Idea for Chrysler - modern version of the '69 Dart GTS with a new Hemi under the hood - AND make it a convertible as well as a hardtop.

AMEN on all three points. Ed Cole and his team designed a great engine with the Chevy small-block that the 4.3 is derived from, and the folks at Buick did a real winner with the 90-degree V-6. I've owned 3 cars with them (an old Buick with an old odd-fire version, an '87 Olds with the first FI/DIS design and a '94 Regal with a Series I 3800) and they have all been great engines. Even owned an Olds with the 300 CID V-8, which is basically a Buick 90-degree V-6 with 2 added cylinders..

I agree - take a look at the AMC/Jeep I-6 as an example. Basic block used from 1964, with new heads etc. the 4L version produces 200 HP, runs very smoothly and is reliable as a large rock. Another example is the DOHC I-6 in the S/T GM trucks - that engine is a bit over-complicated for my tastes (as is the NorthStar V-8) but it is a very smooth engine and produces gobs of HP. The I-6 has a natural balance. Also too, let's not foget all the great BMW, Mercedes and Jag I-6s over the years..

Regards, Bill Bowen Sacramento, CA

Well, there's also the fact that GM's 90-degree v6 (the Buick 3800) is widely regarded as one of the best v6 engines made, while MANY of their

I agree that, philosophically, a 60-degree v6 is better than a