When I look at some modern cars, I get reminded of sharks. But if you, like me, are an amatuer shark scientist and loved Discovery Channel's 'Shark Week' shows, you would know that there are over a thousand species of sharks. And while when you think of sharks, you tend to think of the Great White, leaping into the air a seal tightly grasped inside its jaw, the fact is that the 'agape' look on so many car grilles that I see today, reminds me of the Whale Shark, the largest fish in the world. An impressive fish, but thoroughly harmless with a massive mouth at the tip of its head, not below like predatory sharks, but at the tip.
And when you see a picture of a whale shark feeding and then look at what Hyundai has been giving us of late the new Elantra coming in 2021 will be interesting to say the least. Even Maruti - the facelift on the Dzire makes things bigger. The MG Hector and Kia's 'Tiger Nose' on the Seltos and Sonet as well. Heck, Honda might stick a chrome slab through its mouth like braces on teeth, but they also have big mouths. And of course, there are the Germans. BMW's signature 'Kidney Grilles' have gotten a bit out of hand, have you seen the BMW 4series concept? I actually don't mind the kidney's on the 7-series and X7 because their huge size, the X7 is actually as large as a whale shark, ok, almost as large, so there is a bit of proportionality. And then there is Audi, the carmaker I think that started the trend of wide-mouthed sedans and SUV's with their 2004 line-up redesign starting with the A4 and A6.
Of course, larger grilles allow for more area where designers can play around. Or stick a humongous logo, like MG and Mercedes-Benz do. Or like in the case of BMW, where the kidney grilles are a signature of the Bavarian carmaker, and with three-dimensional light design killing off the other signature 'Corona' headlights, the grille is it. And while I know that in India today, China-bashing is in vogue and I have personally also been guilty of that, here I really have to blame the Chinese. When they buy a product, they are not subtle about it. The Ralph Lauren logo on T-Shirts grew bigger once that brand took off in China, similar to the brash Louis Vuitton logo, also thanks to that market. The tragedy of Mont blanc putting their logo on everything from belts to wallets, yup, you guessed it, China. BMW once admitted this to me, during the 7-series refresh international drive in Algarve. The bigger kidneys and the "12 percent larger" nose logo was for the Chinese market. And you know what? When that one market accounts for a third of your global sales, yeah, making those changes is perfectly logical for the carmaker.
And there are friends of mine in automotive journalism who like the big kidney grilles on BMW's. At the end of the day, we all have different aesthetic sensibilities, and one lesson that I have learnt is that in India, we seek 'value' from a car rather than looks. The first-generation Santro, particularly early builds of that car were, for lack of any other word to describe it, ugly. The first generation WagonR seemed as if the design team was only given a ruler and a brief to avoid any sort of curve. These cars were not at all aesthetically pleasing, the Daewoo Matiz on the other hand, was quite cute. But you know the story, the Santro launched Hyundai allowing them to dazzle our eyes with the next-generation Elantra that you will see next year. Don't get me wrong, I love the product, but the next Elantra just like the facelift on the Verna looks like a Whale Shark out of water.
Here is the funny thing, large grilles made sense when you had large naturally aspirated engines, big steel blocks with eight cylinders inside them. Those engines needed air and also a lot of cooling. But thanks to emissions norms, those engines are dying out in all but some supercars. And BMW themselves have the F90 5-series which is by far and away from the best looking car they make because it doesn't look like it went through rhinoplasty to get a boxer's nose, it is an aesthetically pleasing car. At a level this is a bit like planes, the Airbus A380 is a tremendous piece of engineering, but it isn't pretty. The Boeing 747 just has something about it, which is why it is called the 'Queen' of the skies and the A380, well, that is a whale (nothing against cetaceans by the way). When electric cars come along, what will happen to all these large grilles? Just look at Tesla's - a clean, proportionate design, no-frills, or huge kidney grilles. I mean, even BMW's electric warrior the i3 is not overdone on the nose front. So why on God's green earth did BMW give us the Concept 4 series?
Being passionate about cars, and writing about cars will necessarily make you passionate about car design, and I do not like the way many cars look these days. I'm not saying that there are not some pretty cars out there, the Swift, the BMW 5-series, the current Hyundai Elantra, the Audi A5. But the attack of the large grilles is upon us and while I'm sure I will be pummelled into acceptance, as we all accepted the first-generation Santro, I'm not going down without a fight. Or in my case, without writing such columns.