Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Well, it has taken a bit longer than I wished to make another post, and it will be a bit longer yet before a full one gets put up, but here is a teaser. Next post will be impressions, thoughts and comments on cars at the Canadian International Auto Show. I was there today (Feb 16) and am going again on Feb 20, and if all goes well, will have a new post up to read by Monday morning. So stay tuned! In the mean time, enjoy some wrapped Huracan ala Deadmau5 in his Nian-Cat theme. If you're in the Toronto area, check your Uber as he's been known to pick up passengers now and again.
Thursday, January 7, 2016
Why Aren’t You A Hatch Back?
In the never ending quest to improve fuel efficiency in
cars, automakers have always strived to strike a balance between artful design
and practical usefulness. Sometimes this
has resulted in great, forward thinking cars, other times it hasn’t.
What brings me to discuss this is the other evening while driving home I caught my first ‘in-the-metal’ look at the
new 2017 Honda Civic sedan. I’ve seen a
number of photos online from various websites that I’m sure all of you read
(likely before stumbling on over here to read my nonsense), but had not
actually viewed the car in person until I came across it on my drive home from
work. I’ll leave my design impressions
about overall car for a later post when I’ve had a chance to walk around and
look at, touch and sit in a car that isn’t traveling at 120kph. For now though, I want to address a trend
that I’ve noticed creeping into car design over the last few years that I find
both amusing and frustrating at the same time. That trend is using the fast-back
roof profile without the added benefit of having a large lift-gate to go with
it.
The brand new 2016 Civic has a very modern and slippery
shape, moving the Honda design philosophy in a much bolder direction. In comparison to the previous generation,
which was a slightly more squared off variation of the slippery design departure
the 2008 Civic had made from all its predecessors, the new car just now
arriving in dealerships is both a large step forward and a polarizing one as
well. But it is the profile of the car
that catches my eye, both intrigues and disappoints me all at the same time. Viewed directly from the side, one would
immediately assume that the car is a 5-door hatch back.
The coupe is even more compelling in suggesting that it is a
lift-back design and yet from what I can find, it too will have a ‘traditional’
trunk opening in it. Based on this
profile, it will be more like a mail slot than anything else.
In fact, I actually thought it was a fast-back hatchback
design, as leading up to the introduction of the car, the rumour mill was
buzzing about how Honda was going to bring a hatchback version to the North
American market again. So I was
dumbfounded (well, maybe not that, but surprised and dismayed) when I found out
that no, this was just a sedan, with a regular trunk opening on the back.
This is almost as bad as the trunk access that is on the
Mini Cooper convertable, VW Golf Cabriolet or the real mail-slot opening on the
Beetle:
The funny thing is, this kind of styling is very much in the same vein
as the very popular Audi A/S7 sedan and the BMW 4-Series Grand Coupe and 3 and 5-Series
GT.
The 5-series GT even has a “twin-door” hatch, where you can
just open the trailing edge of it, or open the full thing. I have no idea why you would do that, I
suppose to quickly stash something in the back when you are in a hurry but
there it is. VW had a similar design on
the Skoda Superb sedan.
The new Civic isn’t alone in this design quandary, other
cars that have become quite popular (in the sense that I see a lot of them on
the roads) also share the “look like a hatch-back-but –not” styling craze.
So what gives? I know
“we” are constantly told by automotive executives that “North Americans don’t
buy hatch-backs”..... except that they do buy tons of hatch-backs, they’re just
called CUVs, which are really just tall station wagons with allusions of
capability. Years ago, a marketing rep
at an auto show intimated to me that a hatch back vehicle suggested it was an economy car as
opposed to the supposedly more premium sedan shape, and people didn’t want to have a vehicle that suggested
they weren’t driving a more upscale car.
I’ve also been told that hatch backs are harder to design structurally
and the large opening the hatch requires leads to issues with cabin squeaks as
the body shifts separate from the hatch structure. As well, that hatches require large expanses
of glass, which is heavy and thus bad for keeping weight down. These last two reasons I can appreciate – it is
one of the reasons that the BRZ/FRS are notch-back instead of hatchback and why
the 370Z has a massive beam spanning just behind the seats. Still, even those reasons kind of fall flat
when over in Europe you have hatch-back variants of cars sold here. Ford offers a hatchback version of the Mondeo
in Europe, which is so similar to the notch-back version I had a hard time telling
them apart. The Opel Insigia, which is
marketed as the Buick Regal here also has a hatch back variant, again very
similar to the traditional sedan version.
Given the profile is so similar, why not offer the hatch here in North
America? Do Europeans have a higher tolerance
for squeaks and rattles than North Americans?
Are their roads that much better than here? (Well, they likely are,
especially in some parts of the U.S. from my experience).
One of the big reasons I read/am told as to why people buy
CUVs more and more is that they are more practical – you can fit lots of stuff
in them easily if you need to. And that
makes sense. I can fully appreciate that
and support it totally. It is one of the
reasons why I bought a hatch-back version of the Mazda6 – it has sedan-ish styling
but the versatility of a wagon because of that large gaping opening in the
back. It is the perfect compromise for
those that need the occasional flexibility of a wagon without the “stigma” or
bulkiness of actually driving one. So
given that more and more new cars are being introduced with the slippery styling
of the fastback shape, it is annoying to find that along with that shape doesn’t’
come the versatility that it could afford.
Maybe one day things will come around – rumour has it the next generation Regal will have a hatchback exclusively. One can only hope. Until then, we can all collectively look at and appreciate the slippery shape of new cars, then curse the designers when we can’t get our beer cooler into the trunk because the opening isn’t big enough.
(A note about pictures: everything was found on the internet. If you own the picture and object to it being on this site, shoot me a message and I'll take it down. I claim no rights to them and will try to link to the original sites when I can)
Maybe one day things will come around – rumour has it the next generation Regal will have a hatchback exclusively. One can only hope. Until then, we can all collectively look at and appreciate the slippery shape of new cars, then curse the designers when we can’t get our beer cooler into the trunk because the opening isn’t big enough.
(A note about pictures: everything was found on the internet. If you own the picture and object to it being on this site, shoot me a message and I'll take it down. I claim no rights to them and will try to link to the original sites when I can)
Let's Try This Again..... Again.
Okay, so it's now 2016 and as you can see, well nothing happened here for 2 years. There's really no excuse other than I didn't put in any time to this at all. But new year, new goals, new priories so hopefully my older (not necessarily wiser) self will keep up with maintaining this blog. Fingers crossed people. The First OpED will be posted every soon. As in 3.....2......1......
Okay, so it's now 2016 and as you can see, well nothing happened here for 2 years. There's really no excuse other than I didn't put in any time to this at all. But new year, new goals, new priories so hopefully my older (not necessarily wiser) self will keep up with maintaining this blog. Fingers crossed people. The First OpED will be posted every soon. As in 3.....2......1......
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Welcome to my blog. This is something of a re-boot of the first attempt at writing a car blog that exists/ed on Myspace (my-what?). As before I intend to (attempt) to satisfy my inner auto journalist/opinionated back-seat driver (get it???) in a manner that hopefully you will find interesting, infuriating and maybe informative. Though to be honest, a lot of what will be posted here will be flat out opinions with the occasional automotive review here and there. I will do you the favour of labeling the posts with the prefilx "REVIEW" or "OPINION" before blathering on so you can choose to read on, or go to your favourites and read some other blog, like this or just watch this. In any case, stop by infrequently to check out my weekly updates whenever you are bored or Jalopnik has nothing interesting to read.
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