What’s the Greatest Car Design Detail You’ve Ever Seen?
“That entire Ferrari 250 GTO” doesn’t count.
Despite it likely being the childhood dream job of more than a few of you reading this right now, car design is not an easy job. It's not just a matter of dreaming up cool-looking rides, putting them to paper, and handing 'em to the engineers with a note that says, "Figure it out." Designs must adhere to pre-set budgets, production-line limitations, and safety regulations. It all kind of leads to an entire market of mainstream vehicles that look mostly pretty similar, but sometimes, designers are able to get creative and slip some honest-to-goodness artistry and visual interest in the four-wheeled machines that they've been tasked to form.
With that in mind, we have a question to ask you all: What's the greatest car design detail you've ever seen?
This likely won't come off as a rare or unpopular opinion but I absolutely adore the Ford GT's massive flying buttresses. However, cool design touches don't exclusively come on six-figure, mid-engined exotics. Take, for example, the Hyundai Sonata's headlights. It features a DRL that gradually becomes the chrome strip that runs down the sides of the hood and loops around the greenhouse, like some sort of reflective lasso. It's the sort of thing you'd expect from a concept car but nowhere to be found on the eventual production version but, somehow, Hyundai's engineers really did figure it out.
Sometimes, cool design flourishes are found on the inside such as the gorgeous open-linkage gear shift of a Pagani Huayra or the physical on-screen volume "knob" found in the Ford Mustang Mach-E.
What's the coolest design thing you've seen either on or inside a car? Sound off in the comments.
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