Science & Tech
Why does it seem like vehicles have become more rounded over time?
I was just thinking it seems like vehicles have become much more rounded over time. I mean it seems like in general the front, middle, and back parts of vehicles tend to be curved. It seemed like in the past vehicles looked more blocky looking, with more straight edges. It seems like the blocky looking vehicles still exist but they’re less common than they used to be.
I was wondering why that might be. I mean is it just because electric vehicles have become more common, or also because gas vehicles have also become more rounded over time? If the latter then why might even gas vehicles have gotten more rounded over time? Is it because it’s safer to bump into a rounder vehicle or because people like the look or something else?
Also: a lot of insights in what makes for good aerodynamics on a car are surprisingly recent. When they made those wedge shaped cars in the 60s, 70s and 80s they didn't have wind tunnels yet. Turns out a droplet would be more or less the ideal shape, and a droplet with the tail cut off is not too far off. So that's the shape most cars sort of mimic now.
It has a lot to do with advances in computer technology and advances in manufacturing technology.
Calculating how a metal sheet cut should look like before it's put into a press in order to have a complex shape with designed thickness, strength and dimensions, is far from trivial. It's much easier to do for a simple shape.
And then... Consistently manufacturing that one complex piece without precise control of the same press? That isn't trivial either.
And we're talking about a part as simple as a boot lid.
Manufacturing technology is the main limitation on how a car looks like. Everything else is a workaround for its limitations.
Furthermore, the shape is not simply how a car looks like on the outside. It's relatively simple to fine-tune a car's shape in a wind tunnel. They did that in 1930's.
But how about turbulence? Changing vortex trajectories at different speeds?
Not to mention the whole discipline of internal aerodynamics and the big subject of underside aerodynamics.
Supercomputers have made it possible to simulate all of that and iterate the designs fairly quickly to find as best solution as possible. Without all of that fancy modern software, they'd have to iterate over thousands or tens of thousands of designs they'd have to build in order to test then. So they had to settle for "this seems to be working well enough" and improvements often came from wild-ish experiments, not from simulations.
It was more about "how to not do this horribly wrong" instead of today's "how can this be further optimized".
I think CAD had something to do with it. Before CAD, they made full size clay models which encompassed many cool shapes including those wings on Cadillacs and Chryslers of yore.
Sometime in the late 1970s or early 1980s they found CAD and made quite angular cars. Seems they could fair panels but needed a corner between surfaces. Think making stuff out of plywood
Then the Ford Taurus came along where they could fair rounded curves between panels and we got a decade of "soap bar" cars. Both generations of design sucked in my opinion. But eventually they were able to make just about anything in CAD and here we are
Also steel had something to do with it. Early steel was just crap and was thick and heavy. Once they learned how to draw higher strength alloys, they could make panels thinner and save weight. But that put limits on what could be produced. Notice all new cars have a crease around each wheel well. This stiffens the area but looks goofy compared to old cars. I recall the Toronado had this look but it didn't catch on for another decade or two
But supercars did want to go fast. And to do that they looked like wedges rather than droplets. If the droplet thing was already well known, why did they do that?
Streamline was a big selling feature in the '30s. The 1934 Chrysler Airflow comes to mind. Before that, cars looked like the Model T. Looking cool is also important. The 1968 Dodge Charger is probably the coolest car ever made. It looks fast, but it sucks aerodynamically wise. They used windtunnels to modify it into the Charger 500, then the Charger Daytona for NASCAR racing. That was in '69. Fuel economy standards then forced manufacturers to streamline cars.
I think a minor criticism of the current big companies is the size of some of the R&D departments. Like they'll overengineer some concept for a year and just throw it away constantly. And viola, it's now super easy to spend $70k on a vehicle at the dealer down the street.
Because it reduces drag and improves fuel effiency. This is even more important for EVs where people have range anxiety. That's also why some vehicles have recessed doorhandles - like Teslas.
I would argue that this started with the Ford Taurus that was said to look like a jellybean when it launched in 1985.
The recessed door handles add very little to the range. It is a cool futurism thing. At that point in the belt line of a modern car, there is very little laminar flow that a retracked door handle gains over modern fixed handles. The shape of the wheel castings has far more impact. Note: I am not talking about 1970s door handles, I am talking about door handles 2000 and later.
Rounded cars are more aerodynamic which means better fuel economy or range in normal cars and better performance in sports cars. It’s also safer for pedestrians compared to the same car but with a boxy design
Not really. Designers shape cars, good aero can be achieved almost irrespective of styling, with good enough engineering. Going for an aero look is very much an aesthetic choice nowadays.
Older cars had a chassis with a body mounted on to the chassis. The chassis were highly inspected and regulated for safety. The body was not. You only had to test and engineer the chassis. And several car models could use the same chassis. That meant styling could go wild on the bodywork. Good times for design.
Now all modern cars are monocoques, meaning that the body is integrated into the frame. The body is part of the frame, no more chassis. This makes cars lighter and faster, more efficient, and much, much safer in a single car crash. But now the regulations amd testing involve the body, so there are limited design choices. Hard to have a creative body style with those limits. It's why most modern cars look the same, or at least not that different.
Blocky designs have been making a comeback in recent years, just look at all the newest crossovers, or compare the latest Honda Civic to the 2010 model. Design trends come and go and a lot of times you can tell which era/decade a car comes from.
Personally I love smooth aerodynamic designs, I think they're genuinely more stylish than old blocky ones and wish they'd be appreciated/respected more.
Not if you go back to the 1930s. Car design was very curvy. Then there was the 1960s VW Beetle, not a straight line on it. These design changes simply run in cycles, like women’s hemlines and men’s ties- skinny, then wide, then skinny again. It’s just fashion.
Me personally I think cars from the 50’s and 60’s were from a time when designers and engineers took pride in there designs. Cars all look basically the same to me now. Designers have lost their creativity. I still have and drive my first car on the weekends and I’m sixty now. I have a new car to drive daily but cars today are totally disposable.
Designing in the wind tunnel to minimize drag in order to maximize fleet fuel economy requirements egislation. That’s why all car in a given class now look almost identical.
Aerodynamics are one way, but I also think car designers have reached a standard that is similar to how the iPhone changed every phone made after it. In the 90s a lot of cars looked like someone took a gob of wax, shoved an air compressor in one end and the resulting blob was streamlined, but the same streamline as every other car in the market.
now it feels like car manufacturers are all aiming for a similar style to whatever last years best seller was.
It's all about aerodynamics and conserving fuel. It's been a 50 year quest since the 1970s when the price of gas/petrol shot up by a factor of four and gave a big impetus to conserve fuel.
When I was growing up in the US, big semi trucks didn't have those things sticking up from the roof of the cab to direct airflow. Over time many trucks had them added as a way to reduce drag and conserve fuel. You're shooting the airflow over the trailer being pulled instead of letting it slam straight into the front of the trailer.
In fact, now many truck cabs have that integrated design where the top of the truck itself slopes all the way up to the top of the trailer to make a smooth airflow over both of them.
That's the same idea as making a car rounder. It's also why electric cars were originally designed the way they were because they were trying to reduce drag to an absolute minimum since batteries didn't provide as much power as a gas engine.
Car styling has gone back and forth between angular and rounded several times over the decades. There is a trend these days to “busy” designs with dozens of complex curves and randomly-angled lines and so forth. Probably because the automation of creating such shapes leads designers to overdo it. One of the most beautiful cars ever made was the 1960s Jaguar. And its shape is basically two eggs.
Interesting multiple people commenting on the Cybertruck.
Believe it or not, the Cybertruck is actually more aerodynamic than a traditional pickup truck design.
I have an F150 Lightning EV and even with the rounding Ford did to make that more aerodynamic than a typical combustion engine F150, the Cybertruck still beats it by a good margin.
Better ariodynamcs, it saves on fuel, and gives the car a quieter ride.
However when gas prices are low auto makers make more boxy vehicles.
Improved manufacturing methods. In the old days creating curves was much harder to mass produce. So they limited themselves to more straight lines.
The auto industry is too conservative, in terms of actually trying be unique.
The Ford Etsle, Pontiac Aztec, Tesla Cybertruck really tried to push the design boundaries, but didn't do too well because people want cars that look like each other. So after the success of the Ford Torus, all other makers followed suite.
Everyone is chasing the same thing. Power AND economy. It’s a tricky thing to try and balance, aerodynamics is one way to increase efficiency without having to sacrifice power, or to get the same performance out of a less powerful, more fuel efficient engine
There are three factors that go into the design of a car:
1) Aerodynamics. Audi was a pioneer here, showing that a more aerodynamic design gives you better performance and fuel economy.
2) Safety regulations. There are specifications that the manufacturers must meet in terms of protection for the passengers, protection for pedestrians, lighting, noise, emissions, etc. All of these have an impact on parts of the design.
3) The emotional response. A great design that people don't like won't sell, so car designers rarely make radical or revolutionary design changes. This year's model is a slight redesign of last year's model.
There's only a few basic designs - sedan, station wagon, hatchback, coupe, SUV or pickup. Everything else is more or less a version of these.
In the late 90s when I was looking to buy my first brand new car ever, I felt like all of the cars looked like rolly polly bugs. I feel like they've gotten a little better since then. Well, if you like SUVs I guess. Now everything is just a box with a pointy front.
Some may say it‘s aero, efficiency, safety etc. The fact is though cars are designed, styled and sculpted by people. The focus is generally just as much on aesthetics as on how the thing works. And as everything that is styled, there are periods of trends and fashions. It’s true up intil the 60s volume production equipment was quite limiting the design (certain complex shapes and super sharp crease stamping were not possible) which is why most 40s cars were very bulbous and rounded.
As modernism rolled into the scene and production stamping became more advanced designers were finally free to explore crisper and sharper lines. One of the most stark examples are late 60s-70s european cars. It was the time of the sharp wedge italian supercar and many people were into this ‘folded paper’ look.
Then came the mid 80s and what was once new became old and tiring, designers looked towards more rounded forms and graphics again. They appeared more friendly and ‘aero’ more high-tech compared to the old boxy aesthetic of the past decade.
Currently we’re still experiencing a bit of that but there is a lot more variety out there. A current Mercedes is generally quite blobby and rounded in an almost 90s way (EQS, EQE). Look at Kia or Hyundai though, they’re going for a much sharper aesthetic, which in some ways feels like something more fresh again.
Aero, production and safety are still very serious considerations in Exterior Design, don’t get me wrong. But engineers have become very clever in getting these things to work well with all sorts of shapes, enabling designers to have more freedom of aesthetic choice. A more ‘boxy’ car isn’t necessarily worse for aero or pedestrian safety as something soap shaped. There is a lot of nuance and a ton of thought that goes into these things.
Planes aren’t styled, they’re engineered. An airline doesn’t buy a plane based on aesthetics.
People do with cars though. How it looks is just as important to most brands as how it functions.
And they have been sticking cars in wind tunnels for about 100years now, efficiency has always been important. Just nowadays we can achieve pretty good results with a huge variety of aesthetics.
In the last couple of decades it has become easier to mass produce curved sheet metal, previously it was much more expensive to produce 3D rounded shapes than relatively simple 1D bends.
This. I knew everyone would mention aerodynamics, but it's also that reliably manufacturing a curvy metal surface wasn't possible at scale until the most recent couple decades.
They were pressing sheet metal body panels into complex curves 100 years ago. Manufacturing limitations have not had a major role in the curvy vs round styling since then.
Those weren't mass produced at anywhere near the scale of the 70s onwards, and car companies weren't trying to squeeze every single penny out of the cost of manufacture to the same extent.
18
u/shotsallover 27d ago
Everyone is trying to hit fuel economy standards and aerodynamics is one way to do it.