ICM - Leeds Design Agency

How's your car - happy or angry?

As an avid petrol-head as well as a designer, I have a great interest in automotive design. Of the many websites I keep in touch with, one of them is SeriousWheels, a great source of up-and-coming trends in automotive design, as well as looking back at tendencies from the past.

One vehicle that I’m always waiting to see is ‘the good-looking, green vehicle’. The one that runs on something other than conventional fuels, it might be a hybrid, electric, hydrogen, whatever. There seems to be a trend that small eco-cars must have a cute, smiley face to portray it’s non-harming, kitten-loving nature?!

Throughout the ages the general rule has been; the more powerful (and expensive) the vehicle is – the angrier and more imposing its face becomes.

For example:

Here’s the Nissan Nuvu; a zero-emission electric city car. With a face that seems to be puckering up to give you a nice big kiss on the cheek.

And here’s a Brabus Mercedes C-Class:

It laughs in the face of fuel consumption figures and has a face angrier than Mr. Angry himself.

There’s loads of studies into what different consumers read from this, its called geometric morphometrics. Many car manufactures use this system with both male and female subjects to rate certain traits on a sliding scale (such as “infancy” to “adulthood”). The traits represented maturity, sex, attitudes, emotions, and personality — all things that people infer from human faces at a single glance.

This data is then used as part of the design process that goes into many of the vehicles on the road today.

So when, if at all, will the crossover occur? Will we ever have an aggressive-looking electric city-car, or a cute and smiley high performance machine?

I for one would certainly like to see a less cutesy-looking eco-machine.

Does your car make you smile? Even though it may look at you with a frown. Or does it make you angry with it’s constantly fixed grin?