I’m not a fussy person, but I can be picky.
The crucial difference is a fussy person demands that everything be tailored to their exact requirements at all times. I saw something on Twitter this morning about how Millennials and Zoomers leave their phones on Do Not Disturb because how dare someone demand any of their precious attention. Elvis on a Honda Monkey bike, is this how far we’ve cratered as a civilization? Be a real adult like me and leave it on silent, because misanthropy is a sacred code to live by, not this week’s lifestyle choice. Conversely, being picky means I’m choosy about how I dress, what I wear, what books I read and what media I consume; whether this is the result of a lifetime spent cultivating specific interests and aesthetics or because I’m an autistic square peg in the round hole of human existence is a matter for the courts to decide.
Car designers spend an inordinate amount of time being picky about the largest and smallest details. Almost everything the customer can see, touch or interact with is the purview of a designer inside the studio. Whether it’s the look of a plastic engine cover, the fit of a door seal or the placement of a warning label in a grey zone, at some point a designer will have sweated these innocuous details. If an OEM doesn’t put any care or attention into small visible things you can see, one can only imagine how they treat the things you can’t see … which makes the cope over panel gaps by Tesla’s most-online fans hilarious. Real paying customers care very much about small things indeed. As Charles Eames said, “details are not details; they make the design.” If I see a student’s render and they’ve ballsed up the perspective or proportions, my mind immediately rejects it no matter how otherwise good their design is because it tells me they haven’t developed an eye for the basics yet.
I’m not deliberately boarding the awkward train to Nitpick City. Freud called this phenomenon “the narcissism of small differences.” The idea is that if something is slightly off with what we desire, that’s a bigger issue than it being totally wrong. When the amount of wrongness condenses into a core of galaxy-sized shittitude, it’s easy to give an existential shrug of the shoulders and move on. But one tiny little error in something otherwise acceptable will manifest overwrought anguish, cardiovascular palpitations, and sleepless nights. Thankfully, I was created in a top-secret NHS research laboratory in the seventies and don’t sleep or have a heart, so instead I’ve come up with a new series where I fix these small car design errors. We’re calling it …
Altered By Adrian
The idea is I’m going to choose a car and remedy something about it that bugs the absolute caps off my markers. To tweak something that I think could have been done better. Yep, Mr. Big Shot Smart Mouth Car Designer is going to do some actual design work for change. These aren’t going to be ground-up designs like I used to do early on in my Autopian career, because those were time consuming and I have a lot of day drinking to do. Instead, I’m going to be making minor changes that will have a big effect. This will be a great way to demonstrate that car design is an act of nuance, as well as imparting some small but easily digestible car design lessons along the way.
Our Subject: The Mazda MX-5 Miata
One of my big caveats when doing design breakdowns and commentary is that to really understand a car, you need to see it in the metal. Photographs flatten the sculpture and obscure the subtlety, and in the case of press pack images they’re usually manipulated to make sure the new model looks as good as possible. So imagine my shock and horror when I first clapped eyes on an ND Miata and noticed the unnecessary crease in the body side. What the actual hell is that doing there?
Let’s look at the evidence. I’ve downloaded some Miata press images and uploaded them into the Autopian mainframe (actually a Babbage difference engine made by Torch from Chinese knock-off Erector sets as part of his rehab) for processing. As you can see, there’s a crease that runs from the rear edge of the cockpit, forwards down the rear fender and onto the door. It starts at the corner of the passenger compartment opening, continues forwards under the door handle and fades out having done its evil work somewhere about halfway down the door skin. It does nothing except torture the metal in directions it doesn’t really want to go in, which you can see by the way the highlight across the rear fender in front of the wheel suddenly changes direction. Why is this here?
Surfacing 101
To start understanding how surfacing works, check out the image below. Think of a car like a simple metal box. Each side of the car, i.e. bodyside, hood, trunk, front and rear fascias are like the faces of a cube. The edges of the cube are the intersections between these different panels. How these intersect, and how one surface turns into another, are known as transitions. On the Miata, the main transition between the hood, the trunk, and the body sides are sharply defined. This gives it a strong profile that defines the side view of the car.
Designers use feature lines in a variety of ways, and as a designer it’s important to ask oneself “what is this feature line giving me?” They can and are used as a purely sculptural element, to provide a visual flourish and a bit of interest. They can also be used to define an edge in the bodywork and allow a change in direction of the sheet metal if needed – think sharp box arches, light catchers just above rocker panels, and so on. They can also be used to provide visual continuity with shut lines – consider how a clamshell hood creates a line that then runs down the length of the car. But no matter why a designer chooses to deploy a feature line, that line needs a start point and an end point. If you look at the small feature line that wraps around the side repeater of the Miata, you see there’s plenty of real estate in the middle of the fender for ends of that small line to blend out without it impacting the shut line of the door or the flat surface of the front wheel arch.
With more prominent feature lines this isn’t always possible, and because the offending line on the Miata ends near the transition between the trunk lid and rear fender, there are in effect three edges coming together which creates an unnecessary corner. I genuinely do not understand why this line is here.
The only reason I can think of is that one of the designers is still mourning the death of the old Nagare design language, as seen above. This was Mazda’s attempt to visualize the word flow (Nagare is flow in Japanese) by introducing wave-like lines into the surfacing. The vast slab sides of a minivan are the type of vehicle you want to break up a bit, but on the Mazda 5 (below) they just looked idiotic and completely out of place.
Much the same as that feature line looks idiotic and out of place on the Miata, which is why I removed it:
There. I feel so much better.
All images courtesy of Mazda.
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- How A 14,000 RPM Mazda Concept Car From 1970 Could Inspire A Badass New Dakar-Style Rally Mazda
- The Eunos Cosmo Was So Advanced It Was The Only Mazda Ever To Get A Triple-Rotor Engine: Holy Grails
> But one tiny little error in something otherwise acceptable will manifest overwrought anguish, cardiovascular palpitations, and sleepless nights. Thankfully, I was created in a top-secret NHS research laboratory in the seventies
… And have no such errors. Don’t believe all those people who tell you otherwise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuRjmzz6qL0
Yes! Yes, yes, yes! “This stupid line here,” or, as I put it, the “factory-installed parking lot crumple” is THE glaring flaw of the ND’s design. But, to be fair, it’s not like it’s but a solitary blemish on the glutes of an otherwise genetically-ideal supermodel’s body. This fourth-gen MX-5 is nearly overflowing with dereliction of design duty, evident from its initial reveal, that still, many years later, jars the eye no less harshly. The sooner the NE arrives the better, and if it’s close to the Iconic SP, I’ll forgive Mazda their foray into fugly.
I don’t see the difference.
All these creases, accent lines and general busyness we see with modern cars are an attempt to distract us from the fact that most vehicle’s overall proportions these days lean towards tall and lab sided, and they just aren’t very attractive shapes. (Same deal with oversized wheels)
I thought the ND Miata was gorgeous in pictures, but when I saw my first in real life it just looked too stubby and tall. The crease line breaks it up a little bit, I would have to see it in real life as the pics on my phone screen don’t do your efforts justice. I appreciate a clean smooth shape like and FD RX7, but the smooth and clean works better if the overall lines and shape of the car hold up as attractive by themselves.
As a satisfied ND owner, I like the crease. It is well modelled and adds interest to the surfaces in line with the overall themes of the exterior, without resorting to “dazzle surfacing”.
If I was going to fix anything, it would be the lacrimal caruncles* in the inner corners of the headlights. (*I had to Google that.)
There’s an opportunity there for Miata punctal plugs.
I had to Google that, too, and now I have the heebie-jeebies.
And also, still waiting on your take about how the multipla is great design, hope it’s getting close to the top of list, but i see how writing a good piece about it would take time.
I love the Multipla and I’m at the ready with banners and branded T-Shirts to support it.
I’m currently looking for a Multipla (prefacelift obvs) as it would be perfect 2nd car for me, my 2 daughters and Newfoundland. I hadn’t realised how rare they’d become, and how in demand. One reappeared on eBay last week after the buyer backed out and sold within 2 minutes.
It will happen, but several things have to fall into place first, the main one being the weather needs to warm up a bit…..
Would love to see this kind of takes on some recent peugeot designs..
It’s infuriating to me how they always find a cool style for a generation, and fuck it up by going all in on the second gen.
(See 2nd gen 308 versus actual one, 2nd gen 3/5008 vs new one, actual 2008, and the recent 408).
Also would love to read your take on the painted shiny black fender arches cladding, like on the 208, or some kia stuff, or whatever, everyone is doing it at the moment and it’s killing my eyes.
Adrian- As a past student of design and fellow spectrum dweller, you are my favourite contributor to this website. Looking forward to more of this series and your other design analysis.
This detail on the Miata though? I dunno man. I think this article actually convinced me that line NEEDS to be there. It really draws the eye along the body and up towards the rear edge of the passenger area. Without, it just looks vague and bathtub shaped, like the Pontiac Solstice.
Maybe this imagine captures the crease in just the right light, but damn, I don’t think I properly appreciated this car and its lines until now…
https://i.imgur.com/PXUS8Nt.jpeg
I completely agree. The sexiest cars have few to no creases anywhere. I’d even go a step further – smooth out the creases on the hood.
Counterpoint: sometimes creases are there for engineering reasons, to make it more manufacturable or to make the shape have more long-term resiliency. Personally, I quite like the original.
Not on a small panel like the rear fender though.
In my opinion, the thing you needed to change, is that heinous display on the dash.
Love this column idea. I would never notice the things you “fixed”, but yeah, it does look better. Now I can’t unsee it. So thanks for ruining it for me.
Ditto. It’s better now that’s he Made It A Teensy Adrian.
“because I’m an autistic square peg in the round hole of human existence”
Hah, this is exactly what I told my co-worker this morning when they asked why I’m so weird.
I hoped this article was about those elbow stabbing cup holders. Leaving a little disappointed.
I can’t tell you why, but you’re wrong.
You’re wrong. But I can’t tell you why,
Surprisingly, I’d never noticed that particular body line on the ND before, and you were entirely right to prove that it shouldn’t be there, however I will not stand for slandering on the Premacy.
The Nagare design language was both bold and beautiful and I think that even when it was a little awkward, it was still refreshing compared to how bland and safe a lot of car designs are.
They looked at the damn MPV option in the line up and just went, fuck yeah, we’re going all in on this one too. That deserved praise.
Hard agree
At best you could call it whimsy, which is a very Japanese trait.
I actually tried this today to focus and ended up missing a bunch of slack messages because I guess it do-not-disturbed my work laptop, too.
RIP Stef’s job, I guess.
That headline had me at you were adding a proper glovebox, leaving a bit disappointed with the reveal lol.
THIS! I have a 2016 Miata and that line has always driven me a bit crazy. Could there have been any reasoning towards increasing torsional rigidity? Otherwise, it’s just ugly.
No because it’s only on the surface. The body in white provides torsional stiffness, not the external panels.
I mean, the skin on the panel needs rigidity too, right ?
We all know that moment when you slightly rest yourself on a panel and it leaves a dent because no renforcement under the skin at this exact place.. Do that on a rear fender that can’t be bent back easily and you’re in for a potentially expensive job.
I do wonder looking at the two profile shots if someone was worried that it was getting a little too much of a flat uninterrupted surface on that rear haunch? But we also seem to be in an era of fussy overwrought designs…though Mazda generally has been doing a good job fighting this trend (CX90 aside)
In design-language theory, the reason for the flexural crease, is to mimic how a cat coils on its haunches before it springs at prey. It’s supposed to evoke muscularity, subconsciously.
I have never subscribed to that particular line of designer bullshit.
Oh I quite agree. People can’t seem to stop themselves from doing it though.
Ah. Since we’re using crouching tiger analogies,
My cat doesn’t ever coil haunches but rather just curls up in sun on the window sill…
So is that the design language that the Audi A4 is going for??? More of the Hidden Dragon look than Crouching Tiger.
ROTF!
Love the tweaks—I was a little disappointed design-wise when Mazda teased and unveiled the ND…I would’ve loved a shark nose scowl and surface sculpting more in line with the rest of the lineup of that time.
I understand why they went in the direction they did but damn, that side crease has always bothered me—especially on the RF (where it makes more sense stylistically but somehow is more distracting).
Counterpoint: it creates a nice bit of tension and draws the eye right above the top of the rear wheel, which is especially visually dramatic because the vehicle is RWD.
It also draws a horizontal line with the fender-mounted turn signal. By erasing the line you’ve orphaned that turn signal element.
Also, the line helps make the ND look less “bathtubby” than the NC.
It may not be as evident in person as in photos.
That said, when I first saw the image I thought you were going to reshape the door’s trailing edge, and I was curious what you were going to come up with.
It’s way more evident in the metal than it is in photos, although some non-metallics hide it a bit.
I’ll take your word for it. I haven’t noticed it until now, and I work next to a Mazda dealership.
I hadn’t noticed that detail until before.
Now I can’t unsee it.
IMO, smooth, curvy object should not be busy with a ton of elements. You want a busy design, more angular is usually better.
I had noticed it before and couldn’t unsee it, though I will admit it didn’t bother me a great deal. The problem now is that Adrian’s fix is so much better that I’ll now be bothered more by that detail because I know what could have been!
Also, I absolutely agree with your statement about curvy objects not being too busy.
Excellent. Now how about cleaning up the Supra?
I believe that’s called a “clean sheet” redesign.
I’m not the only one that thinks the mk5 supra is a rather good looking design as it sits. It is interesting how sharply divided opinion is on that subject though
I think the concept was stunning, but its transition to production is amongst the most catastrophic we’ve seen. In production it’s too stumpy, too short in wheel base and too long in overhangs, too tall over the wheels and in cabin (see also the Alfa Romeo Brera which had a very similar journey from stunning concept to gawky production).
Maybe the proportions of the concept would’ve worked as an EV.
It’s partly because the proportions of the concept didn’t work when forced onto the Z4 platform. The Z4 has overhang problems when you see them in the metal,
Definitely, neither came out well from that collaboration. Why do they have such big front overhangs for rear wheel drive cars?
I’d have to examine one in the metal to understand why they are like that. It’s some sort of packaging issue.
Of course, I just thought it was odd given BMW have historically always been very good at pushing the front wheels as far forward as possible.
If I had to take a wild guess, it’s a consequence of using a short version of a platform designed for larger cars. With a longer wheel base you can get away with longer overhangs because it’s all about keeping things in proportion. If you reduce the wheelbase without being able to correspondingly shorten the overhangs, guess what. There may be things in those front corners that they are unable to move.
You’re right, it’s built on the CLAR LK platform, upon which basically all RWD BMWs were built:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_CLAR_platform
The only other small(ish) built on that platform is the latest 2 series, which is similarly big nosed, as well as looking awful in several other ways.
Thanks for taking time to reply. We’ve wandered far from discussing creases on MX-5s, and I look forward to more in this series.
We’re customer service fourth around here, after safety third.
That’s an impressive claim, given attacking lead acid batteries with chain saws passes the safety standards.
That’s interesting, because I think the concept looked like ass.
You’re not the only, but you’re very rare.
The fact that you’ve written a helpful guide to the difference between fussiness and pickiness is a sign that you are definitely one or the other.
I’m definitely something.