We like to keep things pro-car at The Autopian, so I’m not looking to slag any cars as ugly or badly designed here, or unworthy of anyone’s respect or admiration or, dare I say, love. I should also point out that a car plainly appearing of its time does not mean its styling “doesn’t hold up.” Indeed, if you were to name what you think is the best-looking car of any decade, I’m confident it would employ the popular motifs of its era to some degree and be instantly recognizable as a product of the 50s or 60s or 70s, etc.
For me, the cars that hold up least well are the machines of the 50s and 60s that went hardest for chrome adornments and pointless jet-age detailing. I’m sure they were exciting and futuristic at the time, but today the unrestrained application of gewgaws and nonsensical stylistic appropriations (the taillights are jet engines?), often at the expense of what may well be otherwise clean lines, reduces these machines to mere kitsch.
Would I enjoy cruising in something like the ’59 Dodge Coronet in the topshot and soaking in the vibe? Absolutely. But do such things hold up as good design? Not for me.
Your turn: what cars of the past, near or distant, still hold up for you? Which most emphatically don’t?
Every Dodge from the 50’s
Strange phenomenon in my lifetime:
ALL 4-door cars (and trucks) of the late 1960’s thru early 80’s looked dorky then and still do. Nobody would get caught driving such things then.
But once we hit the 1990’s 4-door cars (and trucks) became cool looking and even heavily favored over the unpractical 2-doors.
I cannot think of one particular car or brand that flipped the script but would guess it was the BMWs for cars and Ford for trucks. Now days the 4-door is the default look.
“Nobody would get caught driving such things then.”
There were millions of nobodies driving 4 door sedans in the late 60’s-early 80s I guess.
I can’t imagine anyone considering the C2 Audi 5000/100/200, late 60’s Lincoln Continentals (including the ’66 & ’67 convertibles), ’69-’72 “Fuselage” Chrysler and Imperial hardtops, W116 Mercedes-Benz, Maserati Quattroporte III, or the Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow/Bentley T2 “dorky”
Even McGarrett’s 1968 Mercury Park Lane hardtop sedan (“Hawaii Five-O”) was considered cool.
The blobby 90s cars. Terrible design-wise. Like the Mark IV Supra. Great car, but not attractive in any way, shape, or form. But I do love the wacky designs from that transitional period of the late 50s and early 60s that that Coronet is from. Yeah, the fins were too big and there was too much chrome, but they were stylish and cool.
I think early 1990s econoboxes like 1992-1995 Honda Civic and the 1993-1997 Toyota Corolla aged very well and still provide sort of a template today for what subcompact cars ought to be.
Now that the S Class has been facelifted – any current Mercedes-Benz.
Every one of them: pure, tacky, bedazzled, overpriced garbage.
That Opel Rekord from earlier today won’t be something easily forgotten.
The stab-you-in-the-eye-for-following-too-closely Eldorado of 1959 was a creature of the midcentury American zeitgeist. You won’t see that again. Investing that much sheet metal in such outre features just will not happen in these much less passionate times.
As much as I dislike the angry-at-the-world styling fashion of late, I think the Tesla fleet goes too far the other direction. They’re like a pod person opened before they’re fully ripe, lacking distinctive features. I hope that becomes less of a thing.
Haven’t read the comments but pretty much any 1958 car gets my vote.
This is probably an unpopular opinion but I’ve always felt Audis from around the 2000-2015 trend to age into looking bland and boring. Their “clean lines” end up just making them look uninteresting to my eye. Also their early implementation of DRLs now look pretty bad, like Christmas lights stuck to the bottom of the headlight.
Those were the best years of Audi – before the overstyled, angry, gaping maw era.
Not saying the new ones are any better, it’s just that I’ve noticed the Audi more than the other German makes for whatever reason look much more dated and uninspiring much more quickly. I remember really liking the look of the early 2010s design language at the time, but now I look back and it just looks uninteresting.
I very much agree. I saw someone post a picture of their A3 or something from that era saying “finally!” and my immediate thought was I can’t believe people actually want these. They’re just… car.
What I think doesn’t hold up well is when an entire lineup of vehicles tries to use the same basic front-end look, but on different vehicle classes. Case in point. The rebooted 2007 (2012 for the US market) Fiat 500 looks fantastic, but extending that same look to the 500L and (the especially hideous) 500X is just dumb. Maybe that’s why I also really can’t stand modern Porsche models either.
Mini is another example of this, though admittedly, they’re more successful than Fiat’s efforts.
I think the GMT400 trucks will always look great.
Conversely, I think the blobby 1990s and early-2000s cars have aged particularly poorly. Vehicles like the second-gen Taurus, the late 90s Chevy Malibu and Olds Alero, the first-gen Dodge Avenger, and the like. I’ll give the Neon a pass, as well as the facelifted second-gen Eclipse, but there were a lot of melted-butter-looking cars in that time frame that haven’t taken on a classic shape in my eyes the way even some of the malaise-era cars have. That said, I have a feeling in a few decades I will feel the same way about a lot of the vehicles being sold today, especially the ones holding onto the stupid floating C-pillar nonsense.
The GMT400s were just so clean looking. I miss that in today’s offerings.
Clean, balanced, and well proportioned. I absolutely miss that in today’s trucks.
Every BMW in the last 30 years
I can’t think of a single American car from the Malaise era that has held up well. Trucks have done ok. I don’t understand the facination with the most 80s cars either. Unless it’s something truly iconic of which there are very few. Trucks also did ok. I’ve never liked 3rd gen Camaros or c4 Corvette. Not a fan or fox body’s.There are people still attracted to them but I don’t think they have aged well. Nor have many of the German cars past 02 or 03 ? All the ford mid to late 90s bubble stuff didn’t age well but people thought that not long after it came around.
I can see how certain unappreciated unloved cars leave the road become a rarity and people become interested. That’s sort of one of the key ideas around radwood. I found myself looking at late 2 door tempo thinking it’s not that bad. I never thought they aged well. But now they look sort of ok. I’ve seen people say the same about Malaise era. I don’t think anyone is saying the aged well. It’s just sort of maybe they aren’t as bad looking as we used to think.
There is probably a curve or cycle. People never cared much for various 00s Kia Hyundai products. Not exactly stylish but a lot of them look fine now. Because they weren’t really over styled in anyway. Just a car. The first gen Kia Sorento is a good example of that. Nothing really special about it some Kia dealers had to give away free rios to sell them at one point. But now it’s not horrible looking.
I would say the 2nd generation GM F bodies held up pretty well, especially during the Seventies when Detroit couldn’t figure out the bumper standards.
I could see maybe the firebird’s just because they were iconic in movies. And earlier ones look ok.
I look at the era of heavy chrome and fins and such, as the ’50s and 60’s version of the current fad with screens and dumb tech toys. Let’s hope it’s a temporary fad, and that our offspring will look back at now and just shake their heads…
The fin-tail Mercedes sedans I guess looked better than their immediate predecessors but not nearly as nice as their successors.
The 4th gen Firebird. They’re kickass fun muscle cars (ignoring the V6 auto ones), but the styling is a big miss in 2026. The early ones are so smooth and bubbly they look like a generic combination of the 90s bubbly design trends and the late ones with the nostrils look cartoonish and like GM worked with Hot Wheels to design it. I think its cleaner 4th gen Camaro brother looks decent, but the poor Firebird. Yikes
I think, as a whole, the simple boxy, sort of aero designs from the late 70s to early 90s work well. As a whole, I think cars (and trucks) from that era aged pretty well-they’re clean and simple compared to design languages that came before or after
I once read a fantastic assessment of that Firebird’s styling in comparison to its pony car competitors – Mustang says hey I’m hot and cool; Camaro says yeah I’m a bad boy; Firebird – you lookin’ at me -I’d kick your ass if I didn’t already have warrants out!
Great way to put the design language of the three pony cars, that description fits them really well
Whenever I see a Mk 1 Rabbit or Jetta at some car meet, I’m struck by how tiny and simple and clean-looking they are. Thus used to be everywhere, but are pretty rare now, even in SoCal. Same thing for first and second gen Celicas: for a while it seemed like every fifth car you encountered was a gen 2 Celica, but now I only see them at the Japanese Classic Car Show once a year in Long Beach. I think they’ve aged even better than the Mk 1 VWs: they’re small, with clean, simple designs and when I do see a super-rare one out on the street, I’m filled with an urge to own one. Brian from Regular Car Reviews drove a mostly-stock gen 1 liftback (the one that sorta looks like a mini Mustang) and he regarded it as very dailyable even decades later, and quite good to drive. I’d plotz for one of those as stock as possible… a great design that really stands tall a half century after it came out.
I’d love to get a Mk1 or Mk2 GTI, but they seem underpowered to the point of being a liability when sharing roads with 7,000lb bro dozers.
We had a Mk1 with the 70 HP 1.8 when I was a kid. Doesn’t sound like much, but at 1,700 lbs or so it was a genuinely zippy little car.
The Mk1 1.8 GTI (not plain Rabbit) was 90HP and about 100-110lb/ft of torque IIRC. It was zippy and fun, but sort of rattly (thanks to Westmoreland, PA assy). 9.4 seconds 0-60 I think, which is fast enough today, albeit loud on the highway. Of course, like any small car (even new ones, though they’re much safer of course) it will feel tiny and fragile when you’re looking up at the 22″ dubs of some three-ton-plus SUV or truck doing 85 in the lane next to you.
You are right, of course. It was the 1.6.
With Mk1 or Mk2 GTI vs. 7,000lb bro dozers power isn’t the problem, crash protection is.
You can make the engine more powerful with a 16v head, modem fuel management, turbos, etc but you’d kill everything great about those cars if you added enough weight as crash protection to make any difference against a bro dozer.
FWIW I was in a Fiat X1/9 an even more fragile car when the lifted bro dozer in front of me decided to suddenly back up when they overshot their exit. My pathetic little horn was useless. The truck rode up on my hood and got high centered stuck on the axle. Nobody got hurt. I imagine a GTI would have fared better.
A lot of Bangle-era BMW’s have aged like milk, like E65 7-series.
These were delivered already spoiled.
Man. Those Dame Edna headlights!
My Dad had a mint green 1961 Plymouth Belvedere. It was hideous then. Still hideous.
He traded it on a 1962 Ford Galaxie after 6 months. By comparison, it was beautiful.
early 60’s anything was mostly awkward and hard to like, but I think they were even when new, so don’t really qualify here.
Early 60s Ford and GM wasn’t so bad by and large, but MOPAR, specifically Dodge, was doing some real out there stuff the first few years. I own a ’64 Polara, and I find the front a slight bit ungainly from some angles, but going back to like a ’62 is downright grotesque. Ill give Virgil Exner and the like credit for thinking outside the box, but a lot of that stuff didn’t land all that well. Dodge car styling got a bit “safer” as the decade went on, and I hate to admit, but that was probably the right move.
Yeah, early 60s Mopar could be really goofy-looking, but by 1966, they looked like this.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRgrjFGZ9cWrb92aJKnHpVgzGYSVXMyn6mZxKtpMI5-nCSjsbZkIDt8Deg&s=10
66 Chargers were right on the cusp of being attractive, yet still ugly. Then there were the Barracudas. So Ugly. Early 60’s Buicks were also pretty Heinous, but got better quickly.
https://www.classicautomall.com/vehicles/7285/1966-plymouth-barracuda-fastback
The fastback 1st-gen Barracuda was indeed a bit awkward, but ever see the 2nd-gen coupe/notchback version? When I lived in oregon, there was one parked in the yard of a house on a route I often took, and it took me a few pencils by the police to figure out what I was looking at. Pretty handsome car – it looks like a Mopar Chevelle or something.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RofqcNfOv8E/maxresdefault.jpg
those were fully into the muscle car swing of things and were decidedly better for sure.
Oh man. I love the ’61 Plymouths. Weird and completely outrageous. And somehow minimalist except for the front fascia.
Pete: “We like to keep things pro-car at The Autopian, so I’m not looking to slag any cars as ugly or badly designed here”
Torch (two articles down): “Damn, This Is An Ugly Grille”
For certain distinct definitions of “we.”
I actually enjoy the chrome-dipped exuberance of 1950s American cars, as well as the more squared-off restraint of the 1960s. But I think the Malaise-era styling has aged teh worst. First you have the backward-looking design elements in the early ’70s–opera windows, big upright grilles, etc. Then you have the simplified “jewel cut” aesthetic of just a few years later, with lots of flat (or near-flat) surfaces and hard angles.
I don’t care for either look, and to my mind, cars got a lot better looking after the Ford Taurus debuted and automakers started to streamline their designs again.
the massively stretched front fenders with 2 feet or more of a now sticking out to try to emulate, albeit poorly, the personal luxury cars of Europe were certainly and eyesore even then.
What’s worse, an Edsel, or a Cybertruck?
Incel Camino, 100%, because it’s less likely to rust away.
and it was a hideous dumpster fire fromt he start. Edsel was pretty on par with cars of it’s era, but like the fuel injected chryslers of the 60’s and then again the 80’s they were just too far ahead of there time and the failures made them reviled enough to include the questionable styling cues that identified them.
CT. Look at the sales figures for the first year Edsel and the first year CT. The Edsel sold more units at a time when the US had half the current population.
The styling on a lot of modern Toyotas is way too busy and I don’t think it will hold up well. I call it Gundam style because every panel or surface has a fake vent or an unnecessary style line that seems like it was thrown in at the last minute.
The late 80’s and 90s Rolls Royce Silver Spur & Flying Spur (the square ones) are now so generic looking that if you parked one in a Shop & Save parking lot probably not a single person would even notice.
That was the idea and they executed it surprisingly well. Rolls-Royce’s two most important markets then were the UK itself and America.
They came with opposite expectations – a Rolls in Britain had always been about bold, flashy, in-your-face wealth while Americans expected a Hollywood -butler- like understatement from high end British products.
So they leaned on context or more bluntly they made it look like a Caprice. Until you saw That Grille and paint that made contemporary GM look like it was put on with a dirty mop. In a streetscape without big Chevys and Fords, the home market one where otherwise a Ford Scorpio is a big car, its massive size shouted its owner’s wealth.
it is hard for me to take you seriously in this arena since you seem to be more into toy cars and making movies. That being said the current design cues of about anything Nissan will not likely stand the test of time. Like the Ioniq 6 those 80’s themed angular designs have a shelf life. Just like Jelly Bean cars from the 90’s. they might do well in a tunnel, and thus aid in Fuel economy, but they just look like a suppository to me.
My hot take is the E46 M3. I know people glom on about it’s superior driving dynamics and I believe them. But, the styling to me feels very much of the bling era and I don’t see it coming around again unless it’s in a 2000’s radwood kind of way.
The lines are clean and logical, the proportions are perfect. I don’t look at an E46 and think “damn, that looks ancient”. It’s not current, sure, the age of the separate bumper is gone. I think sooner or later that early 00s Euro look- horizontal lines, good proportions and bold wheels- will be trendy again. It’s timeless, like an old tailored suit.
I saw a first gen Cayenne the other day and I don’t think it’s held up at all. I think a lot of more modern luxury brands haven’t aged super great; but you compare to their current lineup and your tune changes. Woof, I can’t imagine what a modern Merc will look like to us in 20 years.
It held up just fine, it was just born ugly even for its time…
Yeah, I recall a lot of handwringing when it was new that Porsche took what was already a poorly regarded 911 in terms of styling and hit it with a bicycle pump/
Well, damn if that ain’t the truth. Ya got me there.
I think I get exactly what you mean with “doesn’t hold up” != “bad”. I was watching a resurrection video on Atomic Era Garage (YouTube) of a 1961 Chrysler New Yorker, IIRC. The thing has a face only a mother can love. However, I was rooting for the car the whole episode, even if I found it terrible looking.
Here’s a similar one (the one on the video was a coupe and obviously a lot worse for wear): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/1961_Chrysler_New_Yorker_Convertible_%2835998385160%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=index&utm_content=original
I think what sours a design is too much “extra” stuff, like if the trend is near the end and designers keep tackling stuff to the car to try to keep things fresh. Usually those last gasps of a style are the worst looking ones of any line-up.
Besides that, I think any overly styled car will probably age badly, and with more and more platform consolidation AND aerodynamicpressure on the overall shape, things will only get worse – they will differentiate this CUV soap bar from that other by adding more and more grilles, exotic lighting, creases and cladding, and I bet those cars will age terrible. Add to this all the transition to on-board tech AND batteries, I guess future classics will have a hole from 2016 to whenever we ban “cars as a service” and get rid of screens, capacitive buttons and proprietary batteries.