When do you believe car design was at its absolute peak, and who was responsible for that triumph? That was the question we posed to Jalopnik commenters earlier this week, and you certainly didn’t disappoint with your answers. Whether it’s understated German luxury, the pageantry of American design in the ’50s and ’60s or the most cutting-edge of modern EVs, you’re guaranteed to find something you like in this roundup of the best of the best. So let’s look at some pretty cars, shall we?
The Bruno Sacco era for Mercedes Benz.
Sacco’s designs were simple, clean and uniformly of the future, even now.
Suggested by: Brad Pearson
Kinja keeps eating my post, but I was gonna say Chrysler in the 90's, with the cab forward design of the LH cars, cloud cars, and Neon, and the big-rig inspired Ram. Lots of hits, not to mention the Viper
Chrysler damn near ran cab-forward into the ground around this time, but neither Ford nor General Motors was working to push American car design into the 21st century the way Auburn Hills was throughout the ’90s, spanning Dodge’s entire range. Even the Ram was unique among pickups. Ford’s New Edge was similarly promising, but the American side of the operation never leaned as hard into it as they should’ve.
Suggested by: GreenN_Gold
Strictly on design? I’m not sure how you beat some of the cars coming out of the early 60s. No they weren’t great performers or particularly safe by todays standards. But they looked - great. For my money it would be Jaguar.\
If it’s ’60s British that speaks to you, does it get better than Jaguar? Can it?
Suggested by: TheWalrus
Sticking with BMW: I think the F80/82 era was the perfect blend of beauty and the beast, god they were gorgeous:
I suspect the Master Chief’s opinion here will be slightly controversial, as Bimmer fans tend to hate everything past the ’90s. But about 10 years ago, you could argue the brand struck a good balance between the Bangle era — if you hated that — and the unchecked lunacy it’s fully thrown itself into now.
Suggested by: darthspartan117
Bill Mitchell’s 60's era at GM
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The Mitchell Era at GM had them at their absolute peak of design. GM was just throwing money at design and it showed.
I am definitely not a Corvette guy, but penning the C2 is a fool-proof way to get yourself on any list of the all-time greats.
Suggested by: thisismyid2 and bfisch1629
Mid-2000s Infiniti is worth a mention. They really hit their stride about that time with innovative and well received designs. The G35 coupe stood out from everything else on the road at that time. It had great looks and performance to finally “beat” the BMW 3-series; aka the luxury benchmark of car reviewers. Then using the same platform they released the FX35/45 - a cross-over that had performance under pinning’s, years before performance cross-overs actually existed. You could even get one with a V8 under the hood. They handled great at a time when SUVs were lumbering along. Infiniti basically invented the formula of sweeping back SUVs.
Remember about 2003, when we all loved Infiniti? When the G35 was mentioned in the very same breath as the 3 Series? What the hell happened? How do you does anyone drop the ball like that, and make no attempt to pick it back up again?
Suggested by: Louie
This might seem like a weird answer, but let me make a case for late 90s Daewoo. Now Daewoo is rightly maligned as a company what with its once fugitive boss, financial crises, and shoddy build quality; but right before the parent group collapsed in 1998 in the Asian financial crisis, Daewoo commissioned Italian design houses to style its cars. A lot of them were recycled versions of unused designs for historic European brands, which doesn’t sound like much, but it was almost revolutionary for a Korean manufacturer when they were all churning out boxy and lumpy utilitarian cars.
The Leganza was based on the ItalDesign Jaguar Kensington concept and basically looked like the sedan version of Maserati 3200 GT that came out around the same time.
The Matiz was based on the ItalDesign Fiat 500 concept.
The Lanos was also designed at ItalDesign.
The Nubira was designed by the I.DE.A Institute.
Just compare them to all the small and midsize cars on the road in 1997 even outside Korea, and you can see what a coup it was at the time.
You have to give it to Pessimippopotamus here — the one person who read the prompt for this question and thought “Daewoo,” without a hint of irony. Italdesign is and will always be the finest of all the Italian car design houses, so the reasoning is sound.
Suggested by: Pessimippopotamus
Dick Teague at AMC. Nobody ever did more with less than this guy. He repackaged old crap in new wrappers and made it work. Without him, AMC would have been long gone well before it went away.
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Scrolled way too far to find this. That man was amazing. He could make a platform last decades, for example the hornet and wagoneer. However, given a budget he turned out some impressive designs and huge money makers.
Doing the most with the least is an underrated designer skill.
Suggested by: Bitter Old Dude and Drg84
As an 80's poster child, my room was adorned with posters of Lamborghini automobiles. Maybe beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I thought the Countach and Jalpa were the raddest designs they have ever put out. Even the pre-GMC Hummer / Hummer HT3 known as the LM 002 was cool-ish.
I expected more Lamborghini — hell, more Italy in general — in these responses. What’s a kid’s bedroom car poster today? A Cybertruck?
Suggested by: paradescar
The 1950s Exner years at Chrysler gave us “The Forward Look”. The Chrysler “Letter Cars” are masterworks. The interiors of these cars are simply magnificent. Chrysler threw around its weight as an aerospace company and put electroluminescent gauges in their cars. I mean, come on - that’s amazing and also bankrupting.
The Engel Era at Ford. The pendulum swing from 50's opulence to 60s elegance with clean modern lines defined that era and saved Chrysler’s design bacon when he gave them the Fuselage Era.
All in - Elwood Engel at Ford and Chrysler was arguably the best that spanned two full decades and two of the Big Three.
That wasn’t only praise given to Engel in our comments...
Elwood Engel was the genius of design behind these, and then took his game to Chrysler where he designed all of the Mopars that make Mopar-people crazy.
Suggested by: bfisch1629 and Potbelly Joe and 42 others
For me it was mid 90s Mazda
Always give it to Mazda. In fact, if we’re talking about the best design comprehensively, over successive eras, they’re pretty tough to beat. I’ll just choose to forget the fish-mouth phase of the late-aughts.
Suggested by: boneheadotto
I think Hyundai might be starting one of the best car design eras of all time, mostly with their EV specific designs.
A lot of car companies great design eras amount to taking the same basic design ideas and applying them across an entire lineup of cars. Hyundai is going a different route. The Ioniq 5 looks great and dramatically different from the Ioniq 6, which also looks great, but in a completely different way. Then their concept Ioniq 7 looks pretty different from both of those others but is still looks really cool for a large SUV and somewhat unique in the segment (especially if the large glass rear window makes it into production). All of them share small design features in common to show that they are linked, but use very different design languages that play to the strengths of their respective segment and what Hyundai wants them to be able to do. Then you have gorgeous concepts like their Vision 74, let’s all hope that leads to an actual production car.
I do like that Hyundai’s designers have broken one of the core tenets of car design going back at least as long as I have been alive, which is the need to create a cohesive lineup. That said, the Ioniq 6 is an extremely disappointing production conversion of the Prophecy concept, and I can’t be convinced otherwise.
Suggested by: Connor
There was a short time period in Honda’s history that I have always referred as the Golden Age. 1988-1991. Think for a moment how many significant cars existed during those 4 brief years. The EF Civic Si. The 2nd gen CRX with the cool rear glass. The beautiful 3rd gen Prelude 4WS. The 1st AND 2nd gen Integra and Legend. The 4WD Civic Wagon! The massively popular 4th gen Accord (in coupe and wagon variants), and, of course, the original NSX. The family resemblance they all shared? A low, low “belt line”, large greenhouse, and in the case of the Prelude, the lowest cowl line of ANY front wheel drive car, ever. You could SEE over the hoods of ALL of these cars. Most had simple, but attractive 3 spoke steering wheels and bolstered, Recaro-style seats with long-wearing plush cloth upholstery. There were usually little nooks and binnacles, lined with fancy velour, which gradually looked cheaper and more plasticky as the 90s came around.
My opinion, the best 4 years of Honda.
Low belt lines and large greenhouses always work, people.
Suggested by: Dc1991
Tesla in the 2030's was the Tesla we all knew they could be in the 2020's but weren’t, solidifying their position in the pantheon of great auto makers and even surpassing their own early greatness.
After getting the industry to wake up to electric in the 2010's Tesla promptly went to sleep like Chrysler in the 80's and let the world pass them by as the rest of the industry picked up the EV ball and ran with it. When Musk finally left Tesla in late 2031 to work full time on “cryptosand” (Seriously, can anybody explain this to me? I still don’t get it.) the ghost of Sergio Marchionne saw his opportunity and seized the reins, steering the company back to the land of the living. Tesla became an aspirational brand once again. Realizing the EV platform had become commoditized and was no longer what made cars exciting to customers Tesla began pumping out designs that seemed otherworldly yet familiar and approachable, influencing automotive design language for successive generations across the industry, and with quirks and features that were novel at the time but which we all consider non-negotiable now.
Cryptosand.
Suggested by: Harmon20