MOTORING: Why all modern cars look alike

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Do modern cars look irritatingly alike? Of course they do. Just take a look at your Range Rover Evogue and your neighbour’s Ford Edge or the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight. It is a real tussle telling who did the design first. And the fight sometimes gets ugly. The Germany government, for example once banned the sale of the Shuanghuan s-CEO – because it was so alike the BMW X5.

So why do the car manufacturers not save us the hustle of telling the Toyota Rav4 from the Ford Kuga or the Mercedes Benz CLS and the Volkswagen CC or the Hyundai i20 and Vauxhall Corsa?  Why, according to one blogger, do these cars all have slit-like windows and massive front ends?

Apparently, it is for two reasons; aerodynamics and safety. One saves fuel and the other saves lives. Also, while car buyers accuse car designers of laziness, the designers counter that the buyers are resistant to change. Give them anything too unusual and they reject it.

So the modern car is streamlined for the most efficient aerodynamics possible to save fuel. These days the line from the hood of the car to the windshield to the roof must transition in gentle and smooth fashion. The less the glass and the bigger the door pillars, the safer the car. The main considerations are comfort, safety, efficiency.

But the philosophers have the final word, possibly. Every generation goes through these phases. First the cars become similar. Then some radical designer comes up with someone a little different. If the market lights up, the other designers soon copy it and before long, all cars end up looking the same again. That is the reason all cars look the same these days, possibly.