Conspiracy Theory #17: Ugly Cars and Stupid Names

It has been clear for years that the bean counters in the US auto industry successfully banished all the better stylists and brought in surplus Soviet designers who had been locked away in prison because their designs were marginally less boring and ugly than what the party leaders wanted.

While the bean counters did plenty of damage elsewhere, boring cars didn't help flagging sales at all. Some of these cars made me want to claw my eyeballs out. The recent spate of muscle cars shows at least a partial reversal of this trend.

Since the early 1970s, the Mustang just got more and more boring. Someone screwed up in the early 1990s and made one that was almost cool looking, Ford sort of fumbled forward, gradually doing a better job, finally unveiling the current herd of really nice looking Mustangs. These in turn got a response from Chevy and Dodge, who brought out gorgeous Camaros, Chargers, and Challengers. The new Shelby Mustang (despite the fact that Carroll Shelby is dead) looks like it should be a thing of beauty, something car lovers might drool over.

Only time will tell whether this trend will spread throughout the industry.

In related news, who comes up with new car names? There are a lot of really bad or just silly car names out there, but the US Big Three aren't as bad as some of the other companies. The award for Worst Name of 2014 has to go to Hyundai for...

(drum roll, please!)

the IQ.

Seriously. I can only assume this is their take on the SMART Car (a dismal failure in these parts). All I can think of is Thor looking at someone trying to get him into this car.

"Your IQ. It's so... tiny."

And then Hulk accidentally stepped on it because it was so small he didn't see it.

"Look, brother!" Loki laughed. "Someone had a smaller IQ than the beast!"

Hulk stepped on Loki next but not by accident. "Puny god. Puny IQ."

I Need a Friendly Frost Giant

I need a friendly frost giant.

I need one in my car.

I need one in my pocket.

Why do I need a frost giant in my car? To cool it off, of course.

The previous Mazda 3 had marginal air conditioning for a Texas summer. If the car didn't sit in the sun too long, the A/C was fine. If it got very hot, the A/C would eventually be fine, but it could take a loooong time to initially cool the car down. On a 105 degree day, parking in the sun for an hour meant the A/C blew warm the first few minutes, cool another five, and after ten was blowing cold air. By then you could be soaked. The only saving grace twas that by the time the temperature was that high, the humidity was low. I usually drove home with the air off and windows down; evaporative cooling worked better than the A/C those days.

Our new 3, a five door, has a larger passenger compartment (18% bigger because storage is inside, not in the trunk), has the same A/C, which struggles even harder.

Mazda is hardly alone in this. Most cars apparently are neither designed for, nor tested in, climates like those of the southern US.

 

Why do I need a frost giant in my pocket? To cool my phone off, of course.

My smart phone already has plenty of problems, documented elsewhere. But another problem is that it just can't cope with the Texas heat. If it's in my pocket or a fanny pack (while running) on a 100+ degree day for even a half hour, it needs to be shut off and put somewhere cool for a bit or (a) the battery discharges crazily fast and (b) the phone just locks up.

 

This is poor design and poor testing. I don't know the actual numbers, but a decent percentage of North American car and phone customers (among others) live in climates that get pretty hot or pretty cold. The products need to be designed and tested for these extremes.

We should all be demanding this of the manufacturers and voting with our dollars.

 

Recommendations for well designed, climate robust products welcome.