Locked In The Trunk Of A Car

When it comes to cars, there's a whole lot of fakery just to keep people comfortable. I realized this as a child, at a time when vinyl roofs were still popular. They made no sense to me: why would you pay extra for a feature that had no purpose and couldn't even survive the monkey enclosure at African Lion Safari? 

In time, I found out that these began as fake convertible tops. Some of them even have a chrome decoration behind the window which is derived from the metal frame supporting the top. Faking that your possessions are more expensive than reality is pretty silly, especially since most convertibles look pretty bad when the top is up, so you're making your car look ugly, but more expensive. Same with the fake-wood paneling that often came on station wagons then. They looked silly to me, but appealed to people who could remember when wood was a legitimate automotive material. But for my generation, the idea of wood vehicles was no more than the premise for those humorous "Packin' a Woodie" T-shirts that I didn't understand until years later.

We're seeing something similar with trunks now. If you're not up on the issue, about twenty years ago, Americans decided that hatchbacks were a humiliating symbol of irredeemable poverty, to be avoided at all costs. However, the rest of the world still likes them, valuing the layout for its utility. So in our globalized world, car companies have to jump through hoops to deal with these different tastes. Some mangle language to convince customers the car isn't what it seems. It's not a hatchback, it's a "sport wagon."

But often, the car maker will design a small car to be a hatchback for most of the world, but then make a special American version with a trunk awkwardly tacked on to the back. This creates a car that is both weird looking and inefficient. I've got to ask, which makes you look poorer: a product associated with poverty, or a product whose whole purpose is convincing people that it isn't associated with poverty.

But now we've seen the beginning of the end for another common car part: the radiator grille. Engines get hot, and to cool them, the radiator needs exposure to incoming air. So we've all gotten used to cars having a big black & chrome opening on the front, forming either the "mouth" or the "nose" in the car's "face." 

But modern radiators don't need as much air as they once did, and for aerodynamic reasons, it makes sense for the opening to be as small as possible. Thus, if you look closely, you see that large parts of modern grilles are actually fake. Some of the grille may be closed, or blocked by the bumper. And chrome accents may take up much of the space, as on recent Acuras.

But the real change is with electric cars. They don't need radiators because their motors don't get nearly as hot. The front of the car just needs a few small openings for air to cool the battery and brakes. That leaves electric car designers with a dilemma about what to put at the front of the car. The Tesla Model S has a black grille, but on closer inspection, it's just exposed bumper, a flat hood ornament, and some black plastic. The follow-up Model X just has the hood ornament. And now the newly introduced Model 3 just has a blank space. Clearly they've been trying to wean us off the need to see something between the headlights.

Personally, I don't think it's worked. It still looks weird to me. I hate myself for feeling that way, because I know I'm just the modern equivalent of those guys who bought the ugly fake-wood-paneled K-cars.