The 'Not Too Crazy' Pulls Ahead In Car Race
Once upon a time when a car company introduced a new car, it was a new new car.
But at this year's L.A. Auto Show, you won't see any revolutionary new rides — at least not on the outside. You'll find the same sameness in your grocery store parking lot. A lot of cars look alike — why is that?
"What they're relying on to distinguish these cars from one another is not so much the mechanical pieces of them or the design," says Brian Moody of Autotrader.com. "They're selling sort of a lifestyle or an experience or a philosophy."
Derrick Jenkins, head of design for Mazda, will reluctantly admit that there's been kind of a convergence in the way cars look.
"If you really line the silhouettes up and really check the dimensions and the width — yeah, there's a lot of similarities," he says, "because the basic architecture has been on a constant evolutionary path and that's where the sweet spot exits."
Jenkins says his job at Mazda is to hit that sweet spot and design cars that sell, so that's why you won't see cars with bubbles or giant fins.