Has design at Toyota and Lexus turned a corner?

Judging from Toyota’s cars, design has been an afterthought at the world’s largest auto maker, something tacked onto whatever the engineers came up with. Even when the company decided to place more emphasis on design, this meant adding more extraneous details to a shape that was largely beyond the designers’ control. As a result, the cars appeared neither coherent nor… More →

Am I being overly picky?

Chevrolet has upgraded the interior of its midsize Malibu sedan as part of a complete redesign for 2016. Some aspects of the interior I like a lot. An increasing number of cars, including the Kia Optima I examined last week, have stitching embedded in molded panels. If you think about it at all, this makes no sense, especially not if… More →

AutoWeek Design Forum 2013

Each year following NAIAS (the Detroit auto show), AutoWeek puts on a design forum where the general public can hear car designers discuss their work. This year the program included the exterior design manager for the new Corvette, the executive in charge of Alfa, Lancia, and Maserati design, the well-dressed head of a design consultancy, and a pair of executives… More →

NAIAS 2010 impressions: Audi A8 best in show?

I attended the 1.5 press days of the North American International (i.e. Detroit) Auto Show earlier this week. You’ll find detailed coverage on many other sites. Here I’ll just post a few of my personal impressions, covering the makes in alphabetical order. First, a general comment. Like last year, but perhaps to an even greater degree, the auto show had… More →