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Look Alikes?
fordtough60
Member Posts: 5
in Hyundai
It may be just me, but I recently noticed something.
The 1974 Hyundai Pony Coupe looks pretty similiar to the 1983 DeLorean. Just search Hyundai Pony on Googe Images, and the third or so picture will somewhat remind you of Back to The Future.
If you agree, tell me.
The 1974 Hyundai Pony Coupe looks pretty similiar to the 1983 DeLorean. Just search Hyundai Pony on Googe Images, and the third or so picture will somewhat remind you of Back to The Future.
If you agree, tell me.
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It's still kinda cool though. I think that particular one is just a show car though, and probably had some help from the Italians in the body work. In later years, I think the Pony was basically just what we called the Excel here in the US.
Was that Pony coupe just a concept? I don't think I have ever seen one of those in a street scene anywhere.
Shifty
Here's a pic of the thing from the front. I think it's actually pretty cool looking from this angle. I guess, if they had mass-produced it from the get-go, it could have been what ultimately became the Tiburon.
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you get a Porsche 928
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Regarding the Pacer/928, I have heard that before too...always thought that was funny. I've always thought the 928 was cool, but the Pacer, maybe not so much other than as a curiosity.
-Jake
The only difference is the rear end.
-Jake
They both had remarkably ugly bumpers.
At the same time, Ford also liked to point out that the Granada base price was about the same as a VW Rabbit. It was a successful car line in spite of the marketing comparisons to VW and Mercedes.
I think the challenge for automotive designers is to create a balanced blend of tasteful, elegant. and well integrated functional lines. I'm sure someone can express it better than this, but these are the adjectives that come to mind at this moment. In other words, maybe designers should invest less creative talent trying to discover something new, and more time adapting ideas that proved popular in the past to today's realities. I'm not referring to retro styling here, which has limited application and shelf life, but rather blending old forms in new ways. After all, cars have been around for over a century now, and carriages before that, so the chances of creating something without precedent is pretty remote, in my opinion.
Example of A
EXAMPLE of B
EXAMPLE OF B (2)
IMO automotive styling stopped advancing in leaps and bounds in the mid 1980's, with cars like the 1983 T-bird, the Audi 5000 (forget what year that one came out) and the 1986 Taurus. Ever since then, it seems like there have just been little tweaks here and there, and lots of retro thrown in.
Part of the problem might be that since the dawn of time up until 1976, cars had been progressing towards a common goal...longer, lower, wider. But you can only make a car so long, low, and wide, before it becomes too big to maneuver and too low to get into comfortably. So the cars started getting narrower, shorter, and more upright. Then, with increasing focus on aerodynamics, they started slicking them back. First with chiseled wedge shapes, then with the rounded jellybean look. But after that, there really wasn't a whole lot of uncharted territory left in automotive style. Where else do you go? We've already seen long, low, wide. Tall, boxy, chiseled, raked-back, rounded off, tall rumps, sloped off rumps, big windows, small windows, big rims, little rims, etc.
As for "retro", I probably use the word in a different way than it was intended. But IMO, most vehicles out there today are a little retro. IMO, the trend started with the 1994 Dodge Ram, with its bulging hood and low fenders. Ford actually did away with that look in pickup trucks way back in 1957, with a new style that was flat-hooded. I don't think it was widely regarded for its beauty, but it certainly looked much more modern than a '57 Chevy or Dodge truck.
I guess retro in its purest form would be stuff like the Beetle, Mustang, Challenger, PT Cruiser, and HHR. But IMO, even the 300C is retro. It's squared off and blocky, sort of like an old 80's Diplomat. Heck, the front-end even looks faintly like a '79 Newport I used to have. I swear, Chrysler could have come out with the 300C way back in 1988, instead of the C-body Dynasty/New Yorker, and it wouldn't have looked the least bit out of place way back then. Now the old M-body 5th Ave was sort of a neoclassic throwback itself by 1988, when Chrysler started phasing in those C-bodies. But the Dynasty/New Yorker really weren't any more modern looking. Modern under the skin yes, with overdrive automatics, FWD, and fuel injection. Now when the '93 Intrepid/Concorde came out, that was a quantum leap, style-wise over the Dynasty and New Yorker. And then the '98 seemed enough to at least keep it fresh. But then when the 300/C launched, it just seemed so, well, retrograde. I mean, I don't have a problem with that, and I do like the car. But I just never saw it as anything really new when it came out. More like a return to the old days of V-8 and RWD.
As for tailfins, I think the first inkling of a tailfin was on some old Cadillac showcar in 1942 that was inspired by the P51 Mustang, or something like that? Chrysler generally gets credit (or blame) for making the craze catch on though, because after they put fins on all their 1956 models, it sent everybody scrambling to copy them for 1957. However, if you look at a '55 Ford and Thunderbird, you can see a modest little fin forming. Or perhaps that didn't count, as it was actually fairly level, and rather the decklid sloped down a bit? And Pontiac started sprouting little fins, or at least the suggestion of one, around 1953.
I think part of the problem could be identified as computer-assisted design. Given that you can only do what the software allows, eccentricity has been blunted somewhat and a kind of sameness brought in.
At least in the mainstream type of cars. Perhaps exotics are still drawn out by hand in first renderings.
Granada doesn't seem like it was a bad car though, especially for the times. I remember tons of those were still on the road when I was a kid. Back in the mid 90s I remember my dad looked at one for a hobby car...it was a 1976 'sports sedan' model, and it must have been some kind of special order, it was fully loaded - glass moonroof, black , period color matching wheels, and I remember it might have had some plood. It had a 302 (I think) and it was in decent condition, just needed a heavy-duty detail. Could have bought it for $500 or so, but he preferred pre-emissions cars, so it was a no-go.
Of course no lookalike comparison would be complete without a Lexus LS/S-class comparison. Actually Lexus changed enough little details to make it not an obvious copy, but the inspiration is obvious for the first and second gen cars.
And we could get into the Chinese cars, but that's pretty well known already.
I hate MayBachs.
Two days ago I saw like a '65 Silver Cloud III. (That's a Rolls, if you didn't know).
I'm not talking about great styling so much, but rather the ability of a new model, when it comes out, to make its replacement look "old". I think cars pretty much stopped doing that in the 1980's. For instance, IMO at least, when the 1983 LTD came out (the small one), it made the 1981-82 Granada look old. It was still an angular car, but gained a sleeker front and rear-end, and a more open greenhouse that lost the formal C-pillars.
Then when the 1986 Taurus came out, it made the LTD and just about every other car in that class look ancient, almost immediately. But then styling just seemed to stop advancing. The '92 refresh of the Taurus cleaned it up a bit IMO, but at the same time toned it down and made it look less radical. And the '96 restyle just seemed way out there, but without really advancing anything, style-wise. And since then, it just sort of languished. And while the current Fusion and 500-er-I mean Taurus, are attractive cars IMO, they're just not pushing automotive style into the future, so to speak. The grilles sort of look like those big chromey aftermarket jobs you used to see on 70's and 80's Chevy pickups, and the cars just seem blocked-up, in general.
The computer assisted design probably has something to do with it. That, the need for decent aerodynamics, and government safety regulations and, well, there are only so many shapes that still lend themselves to being useful. People and cargo still have to fit in there, after all.
Very true - I wonder if Acura's new 'buck teeth' look has something to do with the EU's passenger safety requirements, and I wonder if the ever-shrinking windows have something to do with crash or rollover requirements. One other thing that seems to be affecting lots of new designs is the 'me too' lemming response. Seems like everybody's using some modified version of the 'Bangle butt' on many of their cars... :sick:
And even 40+ years before that. That look with the decklid higher than the rear fender tops makes me think of what the typical car looked like back in the late 40's and early 50's, that timeframe where the fenders were pretty much integrated rather than bolt-on, but still weren't level with the top of the trunk.
These are not times for free thinking, indeed.