I've been meaning to make this post for a long time. Lately I've been having trouble sharing my ideas, but who cares: here's one.
I've got a beef to pick. I want to be a car designer, I've longed for this career since being a tiny child. My beef, paid for Tuesday, gladly - is with most modern FWD cars. There's a common mis-proportion that is seriously unacceptable, turning probably very nice sketches into the ugly girls that make the pretty ones look prettier. I guess they serve a purpose in that sense, but a little plastic surgery wouldn't hurt in some of these cases. There are some other major flaws in many of these cars that I'd like to correct.
However, I've focused...Ford Focus, another I could've shopped up; I've focused on correcting one thing that bugs me most. The upper photo is the original, lower obvious the edited version. I'm sure you'll get the idea. Maybe I'll do something about the 'Delete windows' or the 'faux pillars' in future posts.
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It's funny how this changes the whole classiness of the car. To me the original position makes the cars look much cheaper. Paying attention to luxury cars of known, good handling characteristics, you'll start to see the position makes quite a bit of difference on the quality of design, beyond looks, but rather performance. The vehicle appears to be much more stable, sure footed and smooth with the more forward position. Just an observation I thought I'd share.
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proportional… lol, do you really know WHY front drive cars have a short dash-to-axle ratio? It has nothing to do with the design of the exterior, but with the engineering of the mechanicals of the car. BTW, the Ford Taurus (86-95) was one of the best handling FWD cars from that era, and even today. My 90 SHO was “stable, sure footed and smooth” even with the short dash-to-axle ratio. My SHO handled better than either my 325i E30 or 540i E39. If you really want to change the looks of modern front drive cars, you need to engineer a transaxle that has the final drive in front, and not behind the transaxle.
My God! You’ve CRACKED THE CASE. Irish Ron. For a moment there I thought you were Sherlock Holmes.I agree, your FWD Automatic Ford sedan surely handled better than a 3 series BMW. I don’t need the science to believe, I can feel the passion in your heart.
FWD car design (especially 4 door sedans) is subject to the discretion of Drivetrain Engineers. You may not know this, or you may. But modern car designs would agree with you generally, in the sense that front over hang is not not a desirable feature or positive styling cue. It throws out the proportions of cars, especially 4-Door Sedans. However Car designers work around Engineers, they could design and attempt to put many things through to production that would be aesthetically pleasing, BUT mechanically, it is not feasible. The Transaxle is a very large portion of the car physically and the basic design hasn’t changed in years. For what you have done to those cars above to be possible, you would basically need to build the car in an FR layout. This is why FR sedans and have well proportioned noses and fenders. There are a few styling techniques that can take the eye away from this feature, a inset rocket line, larger wheels and a more aggressive front light design can actually give an impression of less front overhang that the car actually poses.