Quote:
Originally Posted by SCOTT26
Lexus does not really have much of a history especially when it is around 30 years old. BMW had that oversize grille in the thirties and as an example on the 1939 328. Sure the grille was a lot thinner but it was large enough to dominate the front of the car. Which is what's happens with the new 4 which you see with the concept.
It was pre-warned with the 328 Hommage and CSL Hommage concepts that radical change was being thought of. The rear lights that everyone thinks have been influenced by Lexus actually began to gestate with the BMW ConnectedDrive Concept.
But the ideas certainly were conceived in the eighties/nineties where an idea to use the headlights or indeed L shaped tail lights as just a shape in the metal, just a light bar, not a full unit are coming back.
A good example of this idea being used was on the E46 3er Compact where the front lights are not actually units but the actual double-halo headlights situated in the actual front of the car.
Everything you have seen is considered original because they pushed these ideas forward for forthcoming change. Remember the auto industry is actually real life time travel. You can look back to go forward.
The 4er when it launches next Summer may be all new to the market But it will be over two years old.
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Sorry Scott, that’s just one way to look at it. Another way is that if you really want to be bold, you don’t look back for inspiration and instead carve a whole new future apart from everything else.
But let’s say that is not necessarily the BMW way, who have in general worn a more conservative suit than others.
Even though I like the prewar 328 as an elegant design for a sports car, the grille was done that way due to the form factor of the engine compartment in those years. It was vertical because it had nowhere to go horizontally, and all cars were like that.
And I wasn’t alive back then to know whether it was a controversial design for the time or not; I suspect it wasn’t considered “bold” at the time, just simply “beautiful”.
But I was alive in the 70’s, and to me the only shape evocative enough, the only one worth going back to, is the one with 4 headlights embedded into a large horizontal grille, with the two small nostrils in the middle - as seen on the CSL, 5 series, and later 6 series.
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OO==()()==OO forever
This could be the first time in my life when design has turned me away from buying a car, no matter how compelling from a mechanical or performance perspective. Then again, there is so much choice in the market in this price range these days...