(first posted 6/8/2017) We humans see faces in all sorts of things, we’re wired that way. We especially see faces in the fronts of our cars. Two headlights for eyes, a badge nose and a grille for a mouth. It gives the car personality, and sometimes brand family identity too. From the Fifties through the Seventies lots of small cars had rear engines. No radiator up front, which meant no grille either. A face with a blank space where the mouth should be, like this 1972 VW Squareback, looks wrong to many people. Stylists used a wide variety of tricks to deal with this problem.
Now we’re seeing more and more electric cars. No combustion engine means no big radiator which means no big grille. Car designers again have the challenge of “saving face”. Many of the same styling tricks are reappearing, with some new ones too. Let’s take a look at the wide variety of cars without grilles.
First a collection of grilles with real personality. Two cars couldn’t be much different than the carefree 1959 Austin-Healey Sprite and the grinning, some say angry, 1959 Buick. A couple of today’s popular cars, the 2017 Ford Fusion and Honda Accord have personality too. In fact I was surprised to see similar expressions in the Honda and the Buick. No question the grille has always been a powerful tool for the stylist to give a car character and distinction.
Grilles can be powerful tools for branding too. You can’t see the rest of the car but you instantly know what kind of car it is, which tells you something about its owner. A grille is a lot more than just a big air vent. It’s a shame to give it up.
Here are some cars that simply left a blank space where the grille would be. Purely functional, a perfectly defensible choice. But, like the “silence” emoji in the center, a face with no mouth has nothing to say. There’s something quite odd and unsatisfying about it to most of us. Starting at the upper left, did you know Mercedes once sold a rear-engine production car? Here is a 1935 Mercedes 130. Going clockwise that’s a 1972 VW 412, a 1985 Tatra 613, and a 1973 Fiat 126. There were darned few blank-faced rear-engine cars, and I haven’t found any blank-faced modern electrics.
Ever seen a man with a mustache just long enough that you can’t see his mouth? Still can be a fine-looking face. I like to think of these as “mustache” cars, no grille but a nice wide trim feature to take its place. This was a popular feature of grilleless cars, here are just a few. The 1958 NSU Prinz (thanks Tatra87) at upper left really has a mustache-shaped mustache. We Americans knew the Chevrolet Corvair very well (’62 shown here), and you Brits knew its stylistic sibling the 1963 Hillman Imp well too. The current 2017 Tesla Model S electric car has a modern mustache, don’t you think?
One of the most popular and well-loved “mustache” rear-engined cars was the 1957 Fiat 500. It was revived in 2007 as a retro-styled answer to the modern Mini. But to echo the original 500’s look, today’s 500 has no grille even though it has a front engine. Just a little slot under the mustache and a good-sized chin scoop. In a unique return to roots, the 2013 500e electric needs no grille like its grandpa, so the chin scoop was replaced with a styled plastic panel. The slot remains for the motor controller and the air conditioner. (A metallic grey 2017 500e is now my daily driver. I’m delighted with it and it inspired this post.)
Another answer is to make the bumper take the visual shape of a mouth, like the popular 1956 Renault Dauphine. Since modern bumpers are so large and covered with colored plastic, the “bumper mouth” has been a common feature of modern electric cars, seen on the 2010 Nissan Leaf, the 2017 Chevy Bolt and the original 2012 Tesla Model S.
Of course a popular solution to the lack of a grille was just to put on a fake one. An easy way to complete the face and give it a bit of attitude as well. Upper left is a Tatra 600 Tatraplan from 1946, next to the Dauphine’s predecessor, a 1947 Renault 4CV. The 1948 Tucker’s big chrome front grill was only used for air conditioning, it had a radiator and a grille with the engine out back. Today’s Ford Focus Electric just replaced the combustion version grille with an identical looking fake grille panel. Which leads us to another common form today…
…what I call “fill in the blank”. Many of today’s electrics are versions of existing combustion-engine cars. It’s common to use the same bodywork and just fill in the grille opening with something different to signify the electric version. The Chevy Spark EV, which went out of production when the Bolt came out, has patterned silver panels to fill in its grille openings. VW’s eGolf above it has a black plastic band that replaces the Golf’s grille. That’s the new Kia Soul EV at the lower right, with a white and blue panel filling in the blank. BMW’s i3 electric car is still a fill in the blank design in my book, even though it has no combustion counterpart. They kept the iconic BMW grille shape, filled in with black rather than a fake grille.
Porsche set the standard for rear-engine sports car design in 1963 with its iconic 911. Just slope the hood down to the bumper to cheat the wind and maximize forward visibility. For some reason it looks right in a way that other grilleless cars don’t. Heaven knows a 911 can scream. Fiat’s 1965 850 Spider is a trim and beautiful Porsche-type front end design by Bertone. In 1969 Porsche’s 914, an air-cooled mid-engine roadster (without the front radiator most mid-engine cars have), didn’t even try to present a face by hiding its headlights. Looking to the future, Porsche has announced its pure-electric Mission E, to come out in 2019 as their Tesla fighter. Its front end is unmistakably Porsche style.
From the sublime to the ridiculous. A few designers just filled the grilleless space up with more headlights. Tatra’s 603 from 1956 looks like it came out of a mid-fifties space monster movie. Older three-headlight designs like the Tucker (shown 3 pictures up) and some earlier Tatras used separate fenders and the hood to make triple headlights look somewhat functional. Not the 603. Maybe they meant to poke fun at the Communist officials who drove the big Tatras. Renault’s 1967 R8 Gordini was a more successful example of the face full of headlights, maybe because it has a bumper mouth as well.
Has anyone noticed how much the forthcoming Tesla Model 3 front end looks like a 1958 Renault Caravelle? Can you believe sixty years separate these two designs? In both cases the blank front succeeds because it strongly suggests the shape of a sports car with grille. I’m thinking of the 1966 Fiat 124 Sport Spider for example. Something like a sculpted face wearing a sheer ski mask. Model 3 is such a big hit people lined up around the block to put down $1,000 on one. Maybe this look portends a new design generation of cars without grilles.
Finally, let’s consider the most popular car without a grille in history, the VW Beetle. It’s in a class by itself. A design so well loved VW came out with a modern retro version, that keeps its grilleless look in spite of its front engine. I’ve owned two original Beetles myself. What makes this such a successful face? It’s not quite a bumper mouth, besides VWs without their bumpers look fine, even better to my eye. I think the trunk lid resembles a big, broad nose, like a trusty, lovable dog. It harmonizes with similar shapes in the whole car. Compare with its blank-faced big brother, the Squareback at the top of the page. Somehow the Beetle pulls it off, a car without a grille but the friendliest face on the road.
Loved the article, thank you!
I think it’s that in what you called the blank face cars the license plate can serve as a mouth. Specially if the car is small like the Fiat 126. In the US it doesn’t work, with the small squarish plates and even lack of front plate in some states.
No American cars? Lets not forget the1991 Ford Crown Vic!
There are seven grilleless American cars pictured above, a Ford, three Chevys and three Teslas.
You mean the ’92 CV? It’s got a bit of a mouth with the slots, but it gets most of its air from a low chin scoop. You can see it better in this pic.
Here I’m just looking at rear engine or electric cars, which need no grille or chin scoop at all. It’s apparent that an article about grilleless front engine cars would be interesting too!
Quite similar to the chin-breather design of my 1990 Taurus wagon. Aside from the opening around the Blue Oval and a 1″ gap above the bumper between the headlamp buckets, most of the air intake is forced updraft from the bumper louvers. There’s even a seal across the hood’s underside leading edge where it meets the upper crossmember, to minimize airflow from that source. It’s unusual but it works.
The Tucker is also American
In Australia Holden tried first, with the JD Camira. Ford later gave us the EF model Falcon. I loved the look of both, but both were quickly updated to include a grille above the bumper.
Sometimes the true grille is hidden under the bumper, as in the case of the Ford Mk.IV Zephyr/Zodiac range. This is a Zephyr V6 I photographed in 1987 where there isn’t really even a fake grille, just body coloured panels with applied decoration and badging. The real air intake is visible in the shadows.
The more upmarket Zodiac and Executive versions had fake grilles and four headlights.
The spare wheel was behind the front panel on the MK4 the wheel tray was the top of the air inlet duct with the radiator mounted behind the spare the long bonnet belies the fact these cars had a V6 engine four wheel independant suspension and four wheel disc brakes in 1966 a bit of a step up over the American and Australian Falcon in tech. Reliability was below par though engine failures were common.
An independent rear suspension, yes. A good one? No. I remember talking to a former British highway policeman in Windsor awhile back and he said they were rather poor handling but he praised the Essex V6. He much preferred the later mk3/4 Cortinas
There was a police special with 4WD in the UK that apparently cured the understeer and improved the handling but yeah they werent a great car to drive too fast.
Though I didn’t mention it, for those unfamiliar with these cars, they were conventional front engine, rear-wheel drive cars, though they did have, for 1966, quite advanced spec. including all-independant suspension and disc brakes all round. Not that they actually lived up to the promise…
They also fell out of favour quickly after the replacement Granada came out and even though they’d only been out of production for 15 years when I took the photo, it had been several years since I’d seen one ‘in the wild’. I’ve not seen many in the 30 years since, except at shows.
Ah, I was a bit slow there. Bryce beat me to it.
Theres a Zodiac at the garage that does my safety inspections a very tidy example too, the 2.5 V6 was dropped from NZ assembly in 67 we never had the V4 model all Kiwi cars from 67 on got the Zodiac 3.0 litre engines but the still failed on a regular basis, many a wrecking yard ran same day V8 swap overs 289 and 302 Ford V8s being a popular choice the MK4 gearbox and diff could easily cope with up to 351 or 350 cubic inch engines the gearbox casing was strengthened over the MK3 box that was also in US Falcons,
There are too many ugly cars, and I must scream!
I think contemporary car stylists are too obsessed with trying anything, just to not make cars boring”.
Today, I see too many evil grin, reptilian, and fish mouth faces, cluttered by multiple folds, creases, ridges and too much sculpting.
One thing that makes some of today’s cars look really bizzare to me, like some Picasso paintings, are when there are two faces, one stacked above the other, like the red Chevy Volt, with it’s grinning face stacked above it’s fish-mouth face.
I wish modern cars could return to a cleaner, simpler style of 20 – 60 years ago.
Or at least, replace some of those evil lizard-eyes with friendlier round ones.
Happy Motoring, Mark
What you say about much current car styling is so true. I marvel at the weirdness of some current Toyota and Lexus models, among others. They are so ugly that I couldn’t stand to have one, no matter its other virtues. Perhaps the best comparisons I have seen are with oddities like the 1959 Chevrolet or 1961 Plymouth, which are similarly overstyled.
The Honda Clarity gives the late 70s Datsun 200SX strong competition, in the overwrought styling department.
Both are lightweights compared to the Toyota Mirai. We saw one on the road a few days ago. Quite an eyeful.
Today’s car designers grew up playing with Transformers, and I think we can see the results…
All too true, unfortunately.
Right on! So exact to the point.
The curse of nostalgia.
I find the chrome-laden, overturned bathtubs of the Fifties some of the ugliest designs in automotive history.
Very good article, great pics, well thought out. Good job indeed!
I, for one, really like the current era cars and their brash “overstyled” swagger. But then my favorite year for car design is 1959! And it seems the Japanese makers are having their 1959 moment now, that new Accord grille, the baby bat wings on the stern of the new Prius with its “I’m straining to poop” face up front, the bizarre Lexus alien predator face, and the list goes on.
I truly enjoy how each new model year the makers keep getting more wild and outlandish. Fords that look like catfish! Fabulous! Pickups with acres of chrome on the bow. (You can never have too much chrome IMHO) Little econo cars that resemble escaped mutants from that weirdo neighbor kids house of toy horrors in the first Toy Story movie.
It’s an exciting time for this car lover.
I’m glad I’m not the only one enjoying the 1959 reprisal! And thanks for the description of the Prius’ face; I can’t unsee that now.
1959 cars embody a filmic America the rest of world envied, effortlessly rich, technicolour, large, undefeated, plentiful, with speed, chromey rockets, turbines, the Future, space travel, and possibly Martians as adornments. Optimism as a philosophy, in motion. Ok, it was a future that couldn’t sustain that level of consumption, but we all secretly coveted it. Now, every car face looks like a variation on a disposable razor with either neon-like hockey sticks or or melty expanses the size of the geosphere either side, and all of ’em angry. I don’t see a zeitgeist expressed, or anything at all really, though perhaps in this age of disruption the lack of coherence does say something. Certainly, I see nothing pretty. The best it ever rises to is “striking”. And in a number of cases, just “struck”.
The zeitgeist being expressed is that things are weird these days.
The evil grin drives me nuts, even the cars with catfish grilles now have the 59 Buick look to the headlights, and it’s been that way for a decade now! Every car looks exactly the same with it, just with different fussy details within the grille and headlights. It’s amazing to me how much more styling variety there was back when Every. Single. Car. used universal round headlights.
Blatant opinion but to me the current car whose “face” works the least is the Ford C-Max. The lower grille is too big and chromey and the upper one too far back, so they fight with each other for dominance. Chevy pulled this look off a little better by putting the logo on the bar between the two grilles to merge them into a larger hole, and at least in pics the Euro C-Max looks a little better with a blacked-out lower grille.
I’m pretty sure that the designers had already put the finishing touches on the C-Max’s design when they got a last minute edict from the top to “put the Fusion grill on it”. So the result is the Fusion’s grill cynically slapped on the front without even trying to work it into the design, with the original grill sitting above it completely unchanged.
For a while it looked like Ford was going to afflict all their models with that grill. Luckily it seems they might be moving away from that, and some models like the Flex seemed to manage to escape unmolested.
Agreed !! Cars were good looking through the 90s. When 2000 came , auto designers got crazy.
What about the karmann ghia ,another V W with a fake grill
Also the first ford Taurus had no grill as it was a bottom breather
IIRC, the Karmann-Ghia came with no fake grill – just a badge on the nose, with two small functional fresh-air vent intakes on either side.
In the early ’60s, there used to be an aftermarket fake Karmann-Ghia center-grill designed to cover up any nose-damage, or just give it an Alfa Romeo look.
In ’63, my Dad brought a ’61 Karmann-Ghia convertible back from Europe with one of these grills, and I wondered for years why I never saw other Ghias with one, until I found an ad for it in an old J C Whitney catalog.
I have no idea how or why my Dad’s wound up with the fake grill.
Happy Motoring, Mark
The K-G mini grilles were for the horn; one was functional and the other just for symmetry (and to give the owner a space to install a second horn).
The Beetle actually has twin horn grills as well.
And remember the Passat where the VW emblem was also the upper grill?
https://s1.cdn.autoevolution.com/images/gallery/VOLKSWAGENPassat-2449_2.jpg
Liked the early Type 3 front end better (without crooked license plate)
http://www.oldbug.com/qwep3.jpg
Yes, that chrome trim on the older Type 3 gave it more of a face.
There was a minor trend in the early seventies to go totally blank. Even the Fiat 500 shaved off its mustache.
And the Sable as well with it’s grille-less light bar-ed face.
It’s usually hard to see, but I used to have one (loved it) so I know it has a grille of slots in the bumper. Sort of a bottom breather too.
Well done. I am really starting to prefer the plain “faces” (e. g., current vs previous Telsa S). Also nice to see the Renault Caravelle/Model 3 similarity noted. Did I miss the Isetta?
Perhaps someone could post a picture of an early ‘grill-less’ car – like an early 1900s Renault. Though perhaps back then one might call it ‘radiator-less’.
Happy Motoring
The grille on my hatchback feeds the intercooler the radiator breathes under the bumper, what the grille does on the non turbo gas model I have no idea, front car is gas rear car turbo diesel
Excellent article. What bugs me on modern cars lately is less the grille or lack thereof, but the headlights. Newer Porsches, for instance, have those four tiny high-intensity bulbs in each headlight spot; to me it looks exactly like a spider face coming at you. A several-thousand-pound, 15-foot-long spider. Creepy.
This Zundapp Type 12 (probably the first VW Beetle prototype) looks a bit odd without a grille.
There was also the B3 VW Passat, which had a huge molded front panel. In VW’s words, it “looks like it’s carved from a single block”.
It appeared to have sold well (I used to see a lot of them), but probably not well enough, as the thorough restyling that made it the B4 came up with a conventional grille
Always loved that Passat, although the conventional grille model sold a lot better.
Nice article – the first non-grille car that really caught my attention was the 63 Avanti. Jim.
With the exception of the Beetle, I’ve always disliked grille-less cars. The dark days were the early 1990s, where the Taurus, Crown Victoria, Passat, Q45, Civic and Mirage (I’m sure I’m missing some) all looked unfinished without them.
I always preferred the 1992 grille-less Crown Victoria to the 1993 model with the strange pinched grille that showed up on the 93 models. The final models had an attractive grille but those 90s grilles were just – – – no.
My high school history teacher had an Areo Panther – other than it being robin’s egg blue I quite liked that design. And he may have been a senior citizen but he made that car hustle.
I agree but I liked the full width taillights that came on the pinched grille restyle better. I never cared for the 98, it seemed to be a full relapse into the box Panther look
Personally I think the ’92-95 Civic’s bottom breather grille was too prominent to really qualify as “grille-less”. The bumper was faired in sufficiently and had a prominent enough spoiler even in base form, that it didn’t strike me as having the “chin” in the wrong place.
Such a great read – excellent work, Mike.
As you stated in your opening paragraph about many of us anthropomorphising (“autopomorphising”?) cars, I couldn’t agree more. I have always done this, and it’s great to read similar thoughts from you (and Tom Halter, from an earlier post, IIRC).
Would love to read more from you. Great stuff.
“autopomorphising” – That’s a great term for it, Joseph.
The technical term for this psychological phenomenon of seeing faces in various things is called “Pareidolia”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
“Pareidolia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep.” – Paraphrased with apologies to Buffalo Springfield.
It is interesting that we humans see a car without a proper ‘face’ as not looking quite right, and that the designers of cars continue to somehow integrate a face even when one is no longer needed as is the case with electric cars. One wonders how long this will continue as electric cars become more common place. When I first saw the pictures of the Tesla Model 3, I too thought it looked weird, but it’s growing on me the more I look at it. Even the Model S, when they went for a more grill-less look, was unusual to me at first, but now I find the older design (with its fake grill) less appealing.
I’ll be curious to see where all this goes in the future with styling, but some ‘purely functional’ designs are just strange. A guy here at work has a Nissan Leaf like the one pictured above (even in the same color). All it needs are curb feelers and it would look like a catfish (talk about “Pareidolia” ;o). I’m not a fan, no matter how cool it must be not to have to put gas in a car.
Interesting, I think the Model 3 is homely looking regardless of it’s lack of grille, but grilleless restyle of the Model S I instantly found more attractive. I dislike it when car designers consciously put a face on cars, not just design a car a certain way and let pareidolia set in to determine whether it looks like a face or not. I feel like this wasn’t a conscious effort among designers until the 1990s when bottom feeder radiators and plastic headlights gave designers carte blanch.
Thanks, Retro-Stang Rick! This is not the first time CC has broadened my not-insubstantial vocabulary. :).
Click on Mike’s name and a considerable list of all his former posts will come up. Mike was one of our early contributors.
Excellent. Thanks, Paul.
Of the cars without grilles, one that bugs me a bit is the Nissan Leaf. Instead of the huge (or at least huge-looking) flap in the middle of the front of the car they could have come up with a faux grille of some sort. Then at the back of the car the tailights, while unique looking, give the impression the stylists wanted to give the same minimalist look to the rear that they gave the front. As a result the car REALLY looks like a shoe.
I’d buy one because it’s cheap, but hate it because it’s so blah looking.
Your mention of a mustache car immediately brought to mind the Kaiser Darrin. Even though it’s got a grill it just doesn’t seem big enough, kind of like Oliver Hardy’s mustache.
Of course I believe Paul covered some mustachioed – though not grill-less – cars in his writeup on the cars of Tintin.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/the-cars-of-tintin-can-you-identify-them-all/
Two more that look odd include the Studebaker Avanti (particularly the round-eyed ’63s) and the original Infiniti Q45, which later got a grille added after complaints it didn’t look right.
Avanti:
It’s true the front-engine cars with chin scoops only can be a problem. To my eye they usually have a face, the chin scoop being an open mouth. When they hide it, like that Infiniti, it looks wrong. When they don’t, like the Avanti, I see sort of a face. When it’s emphasized, like this Miata, it’s a good face.
The face everyone loves. 🙂
Nice happy face!
Reminds me of the Chevron Techron cars with the happy faces…
Indeed, I replied as much below before seeing your comment. Thanks.
Great to see your byline back Mike, good stuff. An interesting topic that I have not thought all that much about.
While not strictly grille-less, the 1950 bulletnose Studebaker painted in a dark color disguised the grille sufficiently to make it almost grille-less. The design got updated quickly to add a larger, much more noticeable grille.
I will respond with a corollary, which is that not all cars with grilles are that successful putting a good face forward.
A visual aid on the Studebaker point.
Brought home in a green 50 by my folks, JP. Wrap around rear window and the same color as the bottom picture.
The strange started early.
But the ’50 Bullet is a ‘nose’, a ‘mammary’, and a ‘grille’, all in one! (along with the chrome mustache over a pair of grilled openings you still can’t miss).
Odd that one never thinks of that bullet as a mouth at all.
They should have just called it the Dodge Warthog.
Thanks Jim! That ’50 Stude was radical, the ’51 less so. The picture you posted makes it clear. I wonder if it affected sales? As for the Dodge, ouch!
1950 was Studebaker’s peak at over 320K units. 1951 saw a drop to under 250K – and that was with a new V8 engine available!
Probably talking to myself here, but I see a face with big boogers in it’s nose.
Always willing to take the intellectual road here, dontcha know.
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned the original Taurus, given it’s sales volume and cultural impact. Little know fact, the grill-less nose was initially planned only for the top-line LX, with the lesser models getting a faux grill. They even had brochures printed in this config, so it must have really been a last-minute decision.
Interesting! I’ve never seen that. Always thought Taurus success was remarkable given its radical front end.
I was sticking to rear-engine and electric cars in the article, which have no need for a grille or a chin scoop, just a small vent. You could do a whole other article on the history of the front-engine chin scoop.
The Police package version of the 1st gen Taurus did get a different panel in the front with grille openings for better cooling.
The 1988-1991 first-gen regular passenger Taurus had a well-concealed slot under the “grill” panel for added airflow. The second-gen police package Taurus didn’t have the grill slots but had a larger slot than the regular Tauri.
I had one of those grilles that I found at a self service junkyard, it came off a WAGON! Paint on it was factory too, not exactly a typical fleet color.
The ’86 Taurus brochure I had showed only the bottom-of-the-line Taurus L having the black grille with the horizontal slots. All other models – the GL and MT-5 as well as the LX – showed the correct production grille. Another error in both the ’86 Taurus and Sable brochures was optional roll-down front vent windows that didn’t make production.
That actually looks better, IMO with the grille for original Taurus
Goggomobil, don’t forget the Goggomobil!
BMW 700
Simca 1000. Most of them had a fake grille though.
The 1000 coupe was also grille-less, at least initially. And quite good looking!
Indeed! So were the FIAT 850 Coupe and the Skoda 110R.
Hey, how about the Geo Metro? Got no grille, and it goes well with the Harlan Ellison reference in the title.
Mr Butts, let me begin by saying thank you 😉
But there are also grille-less cars that are not rear-engined. Such as the Panhard PL17…
….and the lovely Panhard 24, which looks most striking from the rear 3/4 view but the front isn’t bad either.
… Or the inimitable Reliant…
… And them wacky Citroens. Though one could argue that the DS’s tiny mail-slot type aperture could be called a grille, the SM’s grille is hidden from view from most angles.
Grilleless always seem to come in vogue when designs go off the rails, the Corvair coming off the late 50s, the Taurus coming off the broughamy late 70s/early 80s and I think again today with the latest Teslas coming off hideous spindle grilles. The trouble with it it never seems to catch on for long, since people tend to autopomorphise everything, to steal Joseph’s very accurate term, designers just can’t resist throwing on hipster beards, neck tattoos, piercings and ugly sunglasses to “add personality”, and inevitably wind right back up with something akin to Lexus’s current design language.
Using headlights to fill the space is my favorite execution, the 86-95 Mercury Sable wins my heart over the Taurus.
How I pine for the original LS400, in it’s nondescript glory. Then again, I liked the original 2003 Pontiac GTO for the same reason. Gliding around unnoticed has it’s benefits.
My friend recently took home a low mile 98 black LS400, that car could still pass for brand new had it’s badge not deviated so far off course. With a car that clean among modern designs it actually seems to stand out now more than it ever did new.
Don’t forget first half 1990s four door Grand Prix, which pulled the same trick with the light bar all the way across the front.
Someone has read Harlan Ellison?
Someone has lived, eaten, slept and personally knew Harlan Ellison back in the 80’s and 90’s. The science fiction convention stories about him are legion.
If you are the “someone” you refer to then you probably know the title of this article is from a short story of Ellison’s. I became aware of him because of his work in the original Star Trek episodes. I read a few other things by him, mostly forgotten now, back in the 70’s. I guess I was more of an H. G. Wells man, myself. I will have to put Google to work on the convention stories.
neither last nor least – but it does have a pencil-thin moustache
Don’t forget the Fiat 500’s bigger, older brother the 600 which sported distinctive chrome “whiskers” in lieu of a grille.
the 1971 Brazilian VW 1600 TL “high nose” was particularly unappealing and got a better looking “low nose” after one year
The horror, the horror!
What were they thinking????
“What, were they thinking?”
Fixed it for you! 🙂
The Trabant P 500, in its original form, with front engine and and FWD glory – konsequent ohne Kühlergrill!
Büssing wins.
And, of course, the air cooled DAF 44 (front engine, RWD).
A very suave rendition; the Volkswagen Karmann-Ghia Type 34:
I could never decide whether I liked those or not. Decades later, the jury is still out.
A worth-reading-again article, nicely turned out. I wouldn’t have thought of 1/4 of these makes…
And then the CC Collective Wisdom’s postings add so much on top of this; as someone said six days ago in Dearborn, “the Comments are often half of what’s great about CC.”
I see Mike Butts did mention the Tucker re the 3-headlight setup. Given the look of the front bumper/grille (without peeking at the other end), I’d swear it was an FWD car:
Thanks, George. In fact the Tucker falls into both the extra headlights and the fake grille categories. From what I’ve read, that big chrome front grille was only actually used by an A/C condenser when present.
Grilles still make a statement. Too bad current designers forget about the rear end, which is just as important in developing brand identity as the front.
The taillights are all 58 Edsel or 96 Cavalier now.
Not to forget the wall to wall strip tails Buick was using in 1967. Played out by 72 and still being used when designers run out of imagination.
I do like the idea that fins are back. At least on the current Prius.
Well put…today’s cars’ tailights look like eyebrows, parentheses (like the Civic) or jellybeans (Camry, Fusion). Call it the Punctuation Taillight Generation.
Or boomerangs… https://autouniversum.wordpress.com/2016/08/22/return-of-the-boomerang/
By wall to wall tail strip tails, I believe you may be referring to Unilamps: https://autouniversum.wordpress.com/2016/10/12/1966-year-of-the-unilamp/
Love the unilamp. That instantly attracted me to my 94 Cougar over the Tbird, despite the center not actually lighting up
Don’t forget the Aurora and Saturn S Series to 2002 as well.
ActuallyMike mentioned the Geo Metro. One of my favorites. Somehow it just looked right on that car. Pure minimalist motoring in looks and deed.
Great article
Although this guy has a little air vent, it’s almost invisible. The Sierra is nice, however an air vent around the blue oval as present in the Taurus I and II would let that nose less odd.
Several aftermarket replacement grille panels were sold for the XR4Ti, this being just one of them
I was just thinking of the Sierra mk1 when I read the article.
I didn’t like that look, the facelift with a little grille, made a huge difference, made it look like a real car.
How about “eyeless with grille” such as Lincoln Continental Mark III, IV, V, and VI, late 70’s Town Cars, plus their Chrysler descendants after Mr. Iacocca decamped there (Imperials, various K-car New Yorker models) ? I always thought the faces of the hidden headlights Continental Marks look vaguely Hitler-mustache-ish.
Please see my CC History on that topic, part 1 and part 2.
one category is still missing: the “headligts only” section. As evidenced in the otherworldy handsome Citroën SM (already mentioned above) or the similarly amesome first gen Alpine A310
I would have loved to include the Alpine A310 in the “fill the space with headlights”, but it has a front radiator behind a front grille behind the license plate.
Maybe because my first car was a US-spec ’59 Fiat 500 with the big headlight-pod “eyes”, I’ve never had a problem seeing a face on a grille-less car, though I know a lot of people do. I was frankly pissed when Nissan slapped what looked like a poor imitation of an MGA grille onto the front of the Infiniti, replacing what I thought was a particularly elegant presentation, though I understood why. That’s why I was amused to see that Tesla’s fake “grille” has been replaced with a simple panel; they led off with a sop to convention, let the car become familiar, then “upgraded” the front … and almost certainly saved some money at the same time. Good work!
But while we are on the subject, y’all … how about those characters in the “Cars” movies? Come on: eyes in the WINDSHIELD?? I can recollect in my barely post-toddler years recognizing car faces, and the windshield was either not in there at all or a kind of hat; the lights were ALWAYS the eyes, whatever the age or style of the car. That nobody seems to have pointed this out as a fundamental design flaw, and yet somehow those movies are hauling in buckets of money, just makes me want to throw up my hands and go watch OLD cartoons, where at least they got the faces right!
Thank goodness for classic literature, right? 🙂
Love it – I think we’ve all owned a car like that!
At least Chevron (actually Bristol’s brilliant Aardman Animation) got it right. Believe it or not Wikipedia has a very long list of all the Chevron cars.
Agree with this completely, I never understood why the movie ignored the obvious, but I guess the target audience (certainly not me) doesn’t mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu7fh9G0f-0
The Cars movies were following the Disney tradition of eyes in the windshield set by “Susie the Little Blue Coupe,” an animated short from 1952 (see link above). I think I remember someone at Pixar, who made “Cars,” say that they could show a greater range of facial expression/emotion with the eyes in the windshield. But, yes, it does conflict with the headlights-as-eyes model of imputed faces on cars.
Darn, found an error!!! The DeLorean’s grille is real. While checking into the Alpine A310 that C107 brought up, someplace mentioned it had the same powertrain as the DeLorean. A bit of digging yielded photographic proof, the DeLorean has a rear-mounted water-cooled engine with a radiator in the front. Thanks to C107 for steering me in this direction.
I’ll remove the DeLorean from the post tonight. What “fake grille” car do you think I should I replace it with?
I was going to say “If I Built A Car” but the illustrator included a grille even with the engines mounted a rear.
Can you tell I have an almost 3 year old in my house?
Fixed, with a Tucker replacing the DeLorean. Both cars starred in great 1980’s Hollywood movies.
Skoda 110R. It’s replacement the Estelle had a fake grille.
‘Fraid not, it’s got a front radiator says Wikipedia.
Thx. Didn’t know that, despite owning one (130 Rapid Coupe) in the dim and distant past.
One downside to making a liquid cooled front engine car look like it’s grillless forebear (VW Beetle/Fiat 500): the radiator and a/c condenser end up in or below the bumper. Most of the Bugs and 500s I see with 40-50K miles on them have extensive damage to the a/c condenser from road debris hitting and flattening the cooling fins. A car with a grill can carry those vulnerable parts higher, where they escape most of the road debris.
Actually most modern cars draw the majority of their air through large lower openings. Ideally, you want most of the air striking the front of the car to be diverted over the top so as to avoid aerodynamic lift. As a result most “grills” today are partly decorative. Take a look at a recent Ford Fiesta as an example. The upper third of their “Aston Martin” style grill is completely blocked off.
Other cars, like a number of recent BMW models, have active shutters that close off the upper grills (in this case the BMW “kidneys”) at speed, pulling all air in from their below-bumper grill openings.
Yep, look closely at the HUGE grille in modern Mustangs too and you’ll see 2/3rds of the honeycomb pattern is blocked off, and the actual opening is no bigger than the mail slot grilles on late foxbodies.
I think no Volkswagen had a grille until the Golf came out in 1974 .
Good point. Does the acquired-from-NSU 1970 K70 count?
Ah, you’re right.
VW K70 this was indeed the first one (1970),
Passat/Dasher came 2nd (1973),
and Golf was only 3rd (1974).
There were a few more. The Type I Karmann-Ghia (1955) had twin front chrome-trimmed grills that served as the source for cabin ventilation (in lieu of vents at the base of the windshield.) Type 3 models (Fastback and Squareback in the U.S.) equipped with official VWoA air-conditioning had vertical oval-shaped chrome-trimmed grills just inboard of the front turn indicators for condenser-cooling air (1966-69). When the Type 2 (Bus) was redesigned for 1968, the cabin air intakes, previously hidden under the roof overhang, were replaced by a wide slotted grille just above the giant VW logo. Finally, all U.S. model 1302 and 1303 (Super Beetles) had a slotted grille under the bumper, again to accommodate the condenser for dealer-installed A/C (1971.)
Mike, many thanks for a very entertaining and well-researched article. And a fun read.
Thank you! It was fun to write.
Where is the giant 70s Olds tornado
Loved your post. Reflects my childhood and my early enthusiasm for cars. I saw car faces all time. I even invented a term for that: “autolity”, arguing that an automobile can’t have personality… Today I look more for other aspects, like engine, reliability, comfort, and so on. Probably just getting old
Great article – and comments! However in all the Tesla discussion I’m surprised there was no mention of the Model X. A similar mustache to the current S, but with its taller proportions, the smooth chin becomes really prominent. I see quite a few of these on the roads now and they are distinctive, but look awkward to me.
A fun fact I never noticed – my father owned (and still owns) three of the cars above, a 1961 NUS Prinz a, Hillman Imp for amateur racing and the Gordini version of an 1968 Renault R8 ! I’m starting to see a patern here…..
DAF 44
All this talk of mustaches on cars got me thinking. You know how some dogs look like their owners? What about cars that look like their designers? I see too good looking faces with championship mustaches.
Ha! That’s uncanny.
I’d like to see Beetle designer Ferdinand Porsche’s dog.
That Raymond Loewy ‘tache look…
Whoa…. that’s Ugly!
It has a BMW roundel on the hood! Designed after a week at Oktoberfest?
Proof that even Loewy wasn’t perfect.
Interesting review, but don’t forget the Rover 3500 SD1, even if it did riff the Ferrari Daytona
And the initial Rover 800/Sterling 825/827, though the facelifted cars in 1992 got a chrome-y grille.
I like grill-less cars, because it gives the front a real clean and sometimes aerodynamic look . I always though of my dad’s VW Squareback with a closed friendly mouth look. The crease at the bottom front of the trunk lid is the closed mouth look, same with the bug. Even the bay window VW bus had a nice closed mouth smile under the headlights. The old split window VW buses had an bird beak look between the headlights . I like the smiley open grill looks on some cars. But a lot of the new Toyotas have a huge ugly monster face frown I don’t like.
Kudos to Mike B. for a thorough survey of arcane subject matter; who else would’ve remembered the Mercedes 130 (even Daimler Benz wanted to forget).
The “fake-grille / blackout graphics destroy form” BMW i3 made our reader survey of Worst Car Designs Ever…
The Tesla Model 3, unlike the revised Model S with its dainty grille which somehow reminds me of a Kaiser Darrin, just looks like somebody erased the grille at the last minute…
Mike, glad to hear that you are delighted with your FIAT 500E. I’ve Been thinking about buying a used one. looks like fun! and low maintenance!!
Yes the 500e is fun. The Bosch electric drive is instant and punchy, and it handles flat thanks to the batteries mounted down low. Nicely trimmed interior, great stereo. I don’t have any maintenance for two years. About 80 miles range on my mostly-freeway commute. It never gets less than half-full.
If you live in California or Oregon, watch your dealer at the end of the month for incredible lease deals (like $88/mo.). That’s how I got my new one. Used electrics of all makes are an excellent buy now, thanks to gas being so cheap.
Funny thing. Today I went to California on business. After all this chat about grilleless cars, what does Avis give me? A New Beetle.
Bit late here, but an interesting article, thank you Mike! Although there had been grille-less cars in New Zealand over the years (such as Beetles, Renaults, Porsches etc), the Ford Sierra created widespread controversy when it was launched here in 1984. Most of the controversy was due to the overall shape, but the smooth grille-less received attention too.
The base ‘L’ had a slatted plastic front panel (visible on my old red ’84 below), but the Ghia had a smooth panel. Presumably the public got used to the smooth look quickly, as from 1985 all NZ Sierras received the Ghia’s grille-less front – visible on my old ’87 ‘L’ and ’86 Ghia below.
When the Mk2 Sierra arrived wearing an updated front end, the sedans gained a grille, but the hatches and wagons gained a new bonnet that went right down to the bumper. It had the appearance of having an air intake above the number plate, but this is fake on mine – there’s plastic trim there that prevents any air flowing through – visible on my current ’89 Ghia on the hoist below.
Cooling airflow through the 1956 Citroen DS was marginal so they measured air pressures all around the car to see where the highest pressure was and where the lowest pressure was. For 1965 they ducted in an air inlet just forward of the drivelines at the high pressure point, opened the area around the engine and let the air out just by the front floor at the low point. The rest of the bottom of the car was totally enclosed.
I built a steam powered Citroen DJF in 1974 and my client had been told that there wasn’t enough frontal area on a sedan to condense all the steam. He must have been thinking of a 1903 model. I instrumented my DS21 and made the measurements. Attached. Enormous airflow. Thankyouverymuch.
Image showing late Citroen DS21 surface pressures with zero reference being the interior.
One point about the classic Fiat 500 is that it had its’ moustache “shaved off” for the final 500R model which just had a /F/I/A/T/ badge in place of the earlier chrome assembly.
The Chevy Spark EV was replaced by the Bolt which, even being purpose-styled, carried on the “fill in the blank” look. Early Premier-trim models had the fill panels chromed and base models blacked out, the latter must’ve been more popular to the point of sales resistance to upgrading since very quickly they ended up all being black. Nevertheless at the facelift they went to a body-colored “plug” well below main-headlight-and-badge height.
And I still like the ’92-95 Civic.
Bristol 404/405 (see pic)
Also
Fiat X 1/9 and Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce
trying to load the pic again.
…is why that Pixar-Disney “Cars” animated movie of 2006 bugged the carp outta me: the vehicles’ _windshields_ were the eyes. Wrong! I didn’t see the sequels.
The big thing now is the replacement of radiator grilles by grilleboards (a portmanteau of ‘grille’ and ‘billboard’): a display taking up the space formerly occupied by the grille, and able to show whatever is desired. Battery state of charge; car-share ride customer (“Sharon, here’s your ride”), taxicab status (“FOR HIRE”), maybe some vehicle-to-pedestrian messages; whatever dancing-light schtick the automaker wants to program for welcome/farewell, etc.
The Porsche 928 and 924 were highly influential in the shift of fresh air intakes from above to below the bumper, which was soon copied by Mazda for the RX-7. The 1979 Datsun 280ZX also combined no visible grill with a classic front mounted, water-cooled engine and rear wheel drive.
Two of the cars that bother me being (almost) grillless are the New Beetle and the Fiat 500, that are trying to emulate a rear engine car despite having front engines….for some reason I think they’re trying to hide something, guess I don’t like styling exercises that disguise function. Kind of the opposite when people put the fake Ford or Rolls Royce knockoff grills on aircooled Beetle…though maybe it increased the front trunk space some, otherwise it seemed only to exist as a gimmick, which I don’t care for. I guess a rear engine car can have a front radiator, but I think it should be true to that function and not try to “hide” whether it has a radiator or not.
Guess the other cars that try to emulate the styling of older cars kept the same engine layout on both the new and old versions, so the discrepancy doesn’t bother me as they don’t try to hide the layout.
This is for Mike Butler, trying to reach you. My email is cjkuster@gmail.com