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We're In the Dark Ages of Car Design
🕑 Added 2025-12-09 19:48:10 +0000 UTCModern car design has fallen apart, and nobody in the auto industry wants to admit it. If anything, it’s almost like they want to make it worse. From long, tall, pedestrian-safety noses, to a bunch of fake vents, fake exhausts, and fake diffusers that don’t actually do anything. We’re in a period I’m calling The Dark Ages of Automotive Design, because we aren’t just bloating and curving the exterior bumpers, automakers are making cabins worse with cluttered layouts and invasive tech. But why do cars look the way they do now? Is it regulation, corporate meddling, consumer taste, or something much worse?
In this episode of Fuel For Thought, we’ll dive into the real reasons new cars look so strange, so aggressive, and so uniformly bland. This might just be the worst era of car design ever, and the reasons behind it will make you rethink every “new” car you see.
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If you liked this video, check out these other in-depth opinion pieces:
Stellantis Is Putting Pop-Up Ads In Your Car: https://youtu.be/sceLsLkQf7A?si=-JrYNyQReTjKkWkx
GM Is Ditching Android Auto and Apple CarPlay: https://youtu.be/o_Mq5mj5kaQ?si=CKBNUop6h5CcvJa2
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Timestamps:
00:00 The Dark Ages of Car Design
01:35 Intro Song
01:44 Regulations Are to Blame
09:51 No! Executive Meddling Is to Blame
14:48 No, It's the Consumers' Fault!
18:56 A Risky Theory to Explain Bad Car Design
20:54 It's My Fault (And Yours Too)
23:24 An Incredibly Important Message
24:30 Bad Car Design Is the Fault Of...
26:21 Sources and Photo Credits
Comments
William Hawley
Very good and thoughtful points as always, it’s strange to see the blanket generification of sooo many things, and it all seems to be about image alone. And the awareness that the image is achieved through deception and cut corners. Everyone’s searching for the easiest ways to make life easier on themselves. People don’t have time, don’t have money, and if they do it’s spent just as quickly to get this dopamine hit of superiority or just being noticed because people are so antisocial nowadays. The human experience is robbed in so many daily interactions we have, and all the way up the chain of command it’s just more like-minded, money and image focused individuals. Just people doing their jobs and making their way through the same machine we are as well. When the state of things is constantly manipulated and changed on fundamental levels for so long, people don’t even notice the extent that life, feeling and freedom are just set to the side in the name of this stuff. Everyone is creating an illusion of luxury and the easy life and selling it off to everyone else. It’s especially obvious in the auto industry, but the more you look, the more you see it’s pervaded our lives. Sad times.
Mark Hasty
You know, I never considered the need to design cars so that they look good on mobile devices. It explains a lot. Doesn't make the cars any better looking though.
Alex Isaac
A second malaise era. The rules are not refined. 70s American vehicles are uglier that's for sure. 2.5mph impact absorbing is less than 10mph bumpers.
Will nolastname
Awesome, I thought I was blind.
Volvo Mechanic
Thanks for fixing it lol
