My theory about current car design is that, because potential buyers entire lives are spent staring at smartphones/tablets/computers etc, new cars have to look ridiculous with exaggerated features (extra large grill, highly 'stylised' led lights and enormous wheels are a couple of examples) just to attract the attention of these potential buyers who are very easily distracted and have a very short attention span.

I feel the same way about most current TV programmes with their exessive amounts of violence and/or sex. The programme makers feel they have to shock, just to get folk to watch. I watched (and enjoyed) an episode of "Boon" the other day and I found myself wondering what my two sons (19 and 24) would make of it. I reckoned they'd be bored senseless after a few minutes!.

But getting back on track, while the new Sportage is not really my cup of tea, it certainly doesn't look as bad (offensive?) as some new cars.

Edited by badbusdriver on 12/06/2021 at 10:48

Perhaps it's a trick of the light, but it looks as though someone's just reversed into the driver's door and stoved the side of the car in.

I'm fine with it apart from the front lights, grill etc. below the bonnet line. Why does it appear to have 2 "nostrils"?

Tiger.

The last but one version of the Sportage was a styling masterpiece. I suppose I mean the pre-facelift version of the outgoing model, before it got the so-called "tiger grille".

With recent downward trend in car styling, with the "split seam" look, at least there's not much point in worrying about tight and even shut-lines any more!

I can just imagine going to collect one of these current bad-styling-day cars from the garage after minor bodywork repair and saying: "That bit you filled ... It wasn't a dent! It was designed like that. Mind you, it does look better like that!"

Edited by Sofa Spud on 12/06/2021 at 16:04

Its due to a global 2-way marketing deal with the Transformers franchise.

Every 10.000 car has an egg hidden in the ECM software that turns it into an autonomous intergalactic battle robot from Alpha Centauri, which you wont be able to get parts for, either.

I thought everyone knew that.

Given how that franchise has (pardon the pun) crashed and burned (the last two Transformers films probably not even making a profit after marketing costs were added in, given that a large percentage of the box office was from the Chinese market, that keeps 80% of receipts, not around 40% for the rest of the world [average]), it's not a good idea to pair up with a failure like that, whether you're joking or not.

Kia's parent company Hyundai didn't have much success either when making a Kona 'special' (which was hardly the type of car Tony Stark would drive) that was an 'Iron Man' themed car, especially when he only drove Audis as part of their sponsorship deal.

Not a good time to be partnering with the film industry, and especially 'superhero' type films, as they appear to be well past their peak in terms of popularity, as well as now being infected by wokeness.

It doesn't look over-designed to me, more just of the kind of out of proportion mess that we're more used to see from Ssyangong rather than Kia. Over designed cars like the Honda Civic are still generally in proportion and even the BMW huge grills line up with the lines on the rest of the car.

I wonder whether its part of the plan to push people into the dedicated EVs, by making the petrol cars less desirable. The Kia EV6 is a genuinely good looking modern design in my view. That's an example where they've pulled out all the stops to do something different to the current trend that works, so perhaps it's more a case that the best designers were working on that, so weren't available for the Sportage.

It still holds that if you put your foot down in an EV you reduce range and use more energy so why are manufactures still making cars that will do just this with performance times of 0-60 in 3 seconds it seems a bit hypocritical to me.

They want to sell cars, fast cars help sales - therefore they make them fast. They make EV's as that is what the future demands, not because they want to.