Four-door Sedan: Which would you choose? - Page 2

Not really. My only disagreement with is the above Slate contributor is that upon his first gaze he thought "Crown Vic" whereas on my first gaze of that beached street-whale I thought "1990s Chevy Caprice." I like the way it takes a lot of the basic form from one of the very, very few successful size-XL sedans - the Freeman Thomas Audi A6, before VW's new (wrecking) crew got ahold of that car and went into a co-branding orgy with Dyson and Oreck in their new grill design - and masterfully remixes a whole bunch of cues from the venerable Citroën CX into that canvas. Then again, I've always appreciated French automotive design. Except for a regrettable period at the end of the last century they've always seemed three steps ahead of the rest in terms of both design and engineering.

The Quattroporte is a great looking car; it looks better than the Maser coupes. I've seen quite a few of them since they came out, and if that screams "˜GM' to you, I don't want to know what a GM-made car screams out.

Jon.

It's a bloody beached whale with portholes. Considering that, my gut reaction was wrong. Not Caprice, but its corporate twin, the Buick Roadmaster. If this same design said Buick on the grill - which it very well could - none of you would ascribe any worth to it. Because it doesn't have any beyond the pretty badge.

i agree with gladwell. if it had a lexus badge on it, people would complain about it being another bland japanese design.

i don't mind it. the headlights and the grille kind of irritates me.

I hate Bangle also, but i can understand what he was trying to do.

don't know what your problem with the quattroporte is other than that stupid Slate article. It's been pretty much hailed everywhere as a great design. and VW generally does a great job with it's cars in terms of looks. I have some issues here and there with the grilles but that's about it.

Citroen = quirky. It's never been 'ahead' in anything. looks like the bastard child of an A6 and a Mercedes CLS. strange placements of the a/b pillar, non existant wheel wells, and definitely french which is a curse nowadays in automotive design. it's 'unconventional,' take it as a compliment or an insult.

Except that it isn't. And outside of rags that are to good cars what GQ is to good clothes, nobody is hailing it as anything but an expensive Italian Buick with a beautiful badge on the nose.


Did. The people who have taken over after Mays then Thomas left have done nothing remotely as attractive as the cars those two gentleman steered into fruition.


Actually, you need to learn your automotive history better. The Citroën DS was probably the most revolutionary automobile of the postwar era. Furthermore, what you say is influence from the lowly CLS Merc is really harking back to the venerable Citroën CX:




Well, outside of the Mays/Thomas days at VW that might or might not be recreated at Ford now that both are over there (Mays never did something as ungainly as the T-Bird or Mustang while at VW, perhaps because he had better raw material for his "retrofuturism" concept in Europe) the only automotive designer working today who consistently does interesting cars is Patrick le Quoment of Renault. Judging from the number of new Peugeot 407's I've seen in places as diverse as Dublin and Dubai I'd say that's another roaring hit for the froggies. (Peugeot also seems to be the only marque in the world who can make a large car fun to drive.) Also, the French single-handedly invented the only new genre of cars since the minivan: the affordable coupe-convertible. (Of course, Renault invented that with the Espace, too; Chrysler just likes to take credit for it even though their inferior model came out later.) What started with the Peugeot 206CC and spread throughout Peugeot, Citroën (sort of, with the Pluriel), and Renault is just now starting to be done by VW and Ford. Oh, we won't get any of them, because the American automobile market isn't intelligent enough to appreciate cool small cars. The closest we'll get is a new Volvo CC.

M5, F1 based V-10 without a doubt

No one likes the Cadilac land yaughts (Deville)? Go with a cheaper one, I drive a camry and love it. Buy yourself a nice two door sports car with all the money you have left over. One day, I'll invest in a MB or Alfa Romeo. You just wait. I'll be big.

Bentley Arnage T or Audi A8.

The Citroen DS was a fluidly elegant design that even merited Roland Barthes to devote an admiring article to it. I share Gladwell's sentiment about most of the modern cars being insipid pieces of general fabrication. The old Jaguar Mark saloons were quite nice:

Une dodoche (http://www.citroen-klassiekers.nl/) ou une Juva Quatre (http://juvaquatre.free.fr/imageancie...linebpetit.jpg)

But the A4 has the same grill as the A8...? Actually, I think the shield grill is better executed in the A4 than it is in the A8. The lights look better on the A4 than they do on the A6.

What Bangle was trying to do is to make cars into representations of buildings. Instead what he should have been doing is turning cars into representations of cars.

Jon.