Oh Lord, Won't You Iron Me A Mercedes Benz?

Mercedes Benz' head of design Gorden Wagener has announced that the time of creases is over. No, this wasn't some executive acid trip, it actually meant something. You see ceases in all kinds of cars these days: they're the sudden, superfluous angles in otherwise smooth metal. Creases can have all sorts of aesthetic purposes: making flat surfaces more interesting, making things seem shorter or narrower (which is great on humongous SUV's.)

But it's really gotten excessive. Combined with other unnecessary styling additions like fake vents chrome accents, we're in an era of ornamentation. It may not be as noticeable because they aren't as ostentatious as tailfins, but it's similar levels excess.

I mentioned before about how much of the radiator grille on a modern cars is often fake. But it's really reached a new level in which cars have fake vents that don't even really look like vents any more. They may have a square of patterned black plastic, but there's obviously no opening, and it's in a place where you woudn't expect a vent to be, like in front of the wheel. Essentially, they just wanted to break up some plain area of the body, so they just stuck some random shape there.

I'm not some modernist hardliner demanding that everything on a car have a reason. I'm just saying that we've pushed the pendulum too far. With all the chrome and angles on today's cars, we might as well drop the pretence of maturity and go back to putting firebird decals on the hood. So I'll applaud anyone who will push the trends the other way.

But as some have pointed out, the concept car being revealed by Mercedes does still have creases. But it doesn't rely on them nearly as much as other cars. It has a nice rounded, relatively-minimal look. And that brings up something I've worried about in recent years. I used to find Mercedes car designs pretty boring, like they were aiming for the Platonic ideal for sedans. But lately I find like their designs a lot more. What worries me is: I have no idea whether they've improved their designs, or this is just part of the natural aging process for me.