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Comment by lucideer | Hacker News Reader

As others here have mentioned, this is obviously subjective.

I could be wrong but I think beyond that it's also highly regional/cultural.

Teslas look awful to me; they remind me of so many other examples of recent bland US car design: particularly Ford, and with a few hints of the sort of 90s-mazda-esque Corvettes of the past 10-15 years. All very popular aesthetically but to me seem a bit lacking in anything unusual or novel. I would say the same of a fair amount of Japanese car design.

European car design (particularly French, Italian) is often ugly, usually novel, sometimes beautiful. Germans are a bit more conservative (especially VW), but they definitely have their moments.

I am European so I may simply be missing the nuance of non-European design.

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This is a common misconception, but no, it’s not subjective. There is such a thing as mass appeal.

I don’t know whether the Model 3 or the ID3 has it, but this “design is subjective” meme is wrong and I think a little bit disrespectful to design as a profession, where people spend decades learning how to build things that are—objectively—appealing and functional.

Of course individual reactions and needs vary. But that doesn’t mean the design space is a totally relativistic fog.

I think you're mixing up "objective" with shared lived experience / perspective / values.

"Subjective" doesn't necessarily mean "highly varied" on a per-individual level. Mass appeal is about a group of people sharing perspective as a result of a common societal context.

Talk about being disrespectful to design as a profession: the psychology and context that informs such subjective views is a big part of design. Saying it's objective reduces something of deep complexity to a set of simplistic rules that can be blindly followed by anyone.

What car looks good to you?

While I love what Tesla is doing, I also think their external design is their least appealing part.

I think there are many fine examples of great car designs. Recently, I can think of Mini, Fiat 500, Alfa 147, Alfa MiTo, Golf Mk I & II, Lamborghini Gallardo, BMW 3 series E21-E46...

Doesn't the Tesla 3 try too much to look like a Porsche?

The two current sibling comments are pretty on the mark. Alfas, Land Rovers. I quite like some of the BMWs.

Fiat and Citroen are, on the more reasonably priced end of the spectrum, doing innovative/interesting things that are at the very least not bland.

"I quite like some of the BMWs."

GRILLs, Grills everywhere!

Yaawwwwhhhrrrrr! Grrrrrrrrr!

Grills == BBQ == Manly!

Sorry, I'm just poking fun. There are so many auto style people that go ga-ga over something that is fundamentally inefficient aerodynamically.

I'd like to note that Fiat and Citroen, based on my rather sparse knowledge, are basically not even bothering with EVs at the moment.

Fiat have an electric 500, and Citroen have been reselling Mitsubishi EVs for a looong time, but yeah, not a whole lot going on. I figured GP was discussing design aesthetic in general though.

I always thought BMWs grills looked more snout-like than BBQ-ish...

Tesla cars remind me particularly of Ford Europe's bland but also ugly phase of the early 90s, like the first model Mondeo that wasn't sure what it wanted to be, and the fugly frog-faced last model Granada Scorpio. Or Mazda of the same era.

They have the same ability to combine total inoffensive blandness, with some detail or corner that just looks plain wrong, ugly, the wrong size or damaged with vehicle lines that neither align nor complement each other. The Tesla Model 3 ends up looking like a poor attempt at a parts bin special, as though nothing at all was originally intended for the Model 3. Of course some actual parts bin specials were very successful - like the first model Land Rover Discovery.

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