8 Design Trends That Need To Come Back

I was just getting my automotive feet wet in the late 1990s when the retro design craze hit the American auto industry. I blame the baby boomers who were yearning for the cars of their youth, but didn’t want to deal with the hassle of actually owning something as old as they were.

My feelings on that whole era are mixed, as there were a few hits but a lot of styling misses. Also, the snob in me wants to chide auto designers for being lazy and completely unoriginal, but I recognise that making something new out of something old still requires a certain measure of skill. Plus, if it’s what the public wanted, I can’t fault manufacturers for trying to appeal to their tastes.

The retro phase seems to be behind us now, and while I’m not necessarily interested in bringing it back, there are some specific styling cues I’d love to see make a grand automotive comeback. I don’t know if I’d call all of these retro per se, but I think modern design trends could be made better with some help from these abandoned automotive touches.

Raised white letter tyres

I know raised white letter tyres are still somewhat common on pickup trucks, and they’ll always be around for classic muscle cars. But I’m dying to see a new Camaro with 16-inch mag wheels and a set of higher profile 60-series tyres with white letters. I don’t care if it leans towards the redneck side of things - I want to see a new performance car with slightly smaller wheels, slightly taller tyres, and white letters spinning down the road.

Hood ornaments

Once upon a time in America you could get a hood ornament on just about everything. And I’m not just talking about a tiny badge on the hood - I mean chunks of solid chrome sticking up like gun sights on a World War II fighter plane. They don’t have to be larger than life, but tell me it wouldn’t be neat to have a tiny chrome boxer (the dog) on the hood of a new WRX.

Big convertibles

My grandmother bought a 1960 Cadillac Series 62 convertible brand new, and my dad restored it in the 1980s. It was a two-door convertible that weighed 2.5 tonnes, was 19-feet long, and could easily fit six people plus a Fiat 500 in the boot. Not even the new big Bentley convertibles come close to this, and we’re long overdue to have a large, decadent, cruising-for-days convertible like this old Caddy.

Aero front ends

I’m already a bit tired of all the radically-styled front clips with huge, gaping grilles and angular openings that were apparently designed by people with no concept of curves. I’m a child of the 1980s, so I suppose it’s natural for me to gravitate towards the classic 1980s aero look. And if you ask me, no car pulled it off better than the 1987-1988 Ford Thunderbird. These weren’t called Aero Birds for nothing.

Rear window louvres

With rake angles on front and rear glass growing longer with every new model year, now is the perfect time to bring back rear window louvres. These were all the rage in the 1970s, and I’ve actually seen a few on new Mustangs and Camaros so there are others that feel the same way I do. There are aftermarket options, but I’m waiting for a manufacturer with the guts to install one from the factory. Let’s combine it with white letter tyres and a vivid striping package for the ultimate 70s retro machine.

Biplane spoilers

When the Ford Sierra hit US shores as the Merkur XR4Ti with the biplane rear spoiler in the mid-1980s I loved it. And when I saw my first Cosworth Escort with the similar wing, I loved it even more. I’m terrible at Photoshop, so could someone with better graphic art skills than me be so kind as to ‘shop a biplane spoiler on a new Focus RS and post it in the comments? I bet we’d all be shocked at just how good it looks.

Rear fins

I suppose you could say this is related to my fondness for big classic convertibles. American auto designers in the 1950s and 1960s were dead set on turning cars into jet fighters, and while I don’t think big massive fins have a place in today’s automotive landscape, I bet the new Lincoln Continental would look even better with a small pair of fins out back to contrast with the sloping rear beltline.

Pop-up headlights

When the fifth-generation Chevrolet Corvette ended production in 2004, the hidden pop-up headlamps went with it. Pedestrian safety regulations pretty much guarantee that hidden headlights won’t return, but that still doesn’t stop me from missing the clean, aero look that pop-up headlamps delivered. They’re the perfect foil to current front-end design trends that either resemble open-mouthed monkeys discovering their backsides for the first time, or instruments of evil with machine gun eyes straight from a Terminator movie.