Honda's no slouch. From the 2018 Civic brochure: There IS a wee fog light in one corner of that vast (and apparently blank) corner grill. Round the back, a corresponding, and equally blank grill, with diminutive light in the corner: My take: they're afraid to stop, caught up in some design "loop", and to just shut it down, would be to admit defeat, "loss of face".
Something else I notice in all design quirks, and it's nothing new, same thing was going on in the 40's, 50's, 60's, whenever: The designers seem insecure, craving acceptance, and having the misguided notion that whatever pointless design tweaks they come up with, if they repeat it enough, it'll gain acceptance, become desirable. Looking at the front/rear Civic corner grills above, they're virtually identical, the lines and shapes. I think this reflects the designers' insecurites: they know it's dreck, but can't shake it, so figure to make it very repetive, familar and hence likeable dreck.
Repeating something can make it popular. But you wouldn’t say that if you liked that design. There have been cars with similar styling in front and back for a long time. I don’t really like that Civic as the rear “grill” is a bit too fake looking.
It has to do a lot with imitation of function on the low end cars giving the illusion of importance, power, and things like that. Then the "new weird designs" are just doing something different to be different. People (especially today) don't want the same style vehicle, but that's what's happening. The majority of people can't tell what brand a de-badged car is. That is perceived as a failing by the brand and designers. But if you saw the shark-jaw Lexus without the Lexus brand, you'd know what it is. Didn't matter if you thought it was ugly. You'd know it is a Lexus. And that mental mapping is MUCH more important to the brand. For example that civic. Those blank and useless non-grills that are waste of space plastic in the rear, and actually imitations of rear vents for rear and mid-engined cars. Just like the equally stupid huge grill areas in the front are air scoops. The civic, in any carnation, doesn't need those as evidenced by the fact they aren't used. But they look that way because they are imitating the cars that do actually need them, which makes people who buy or look at the civic think or perceive it to have much more performance and power than it does. There's an engine back here that needs to breath and cool down, look at those grates... It is a huge game of psychology and the car companies are very aware of this.
Your post reinforces the RoSPA thing I posted upthread - they referred to it as "low aggressivity design" (), and talking about making things grate again (…see what I did there?) anyone else fancy a cheese sandwich?
It is really a Volkswagen beetle in disguise? 1970 Legrand Electric Car: Own a Piece of Seventies Kitsch
I heard somebody referring to one of Toyota's black grill designs (Camry?) as looking like a chain link fence.
Well, I admit to having an afro and wearing flares back in the 1970s, and here's one of my chariots, (IMNSHO) the cutest thing on three wheels ever!
Much of the grill isn't really a grill. The salt grime here is making the actual hole in the 2016 Camry's lower grill really obvious. The Prime. The curvy rear glass helps aero, but the different from Prius front worsens it. So both models have the same Cd value.
I always said that Hyundai started it all when the redesigned the 2011 Sonata. The previous Hyundai was a nice car but when they redesigned it with the aggressive front end and gave it some shape down the sides their sales took off and then the other car companies eventually followed. Show me one popular car that was built in 2011 that had the aggressive look and sold the number of cars Hyundai did and in the tough mid size market.
