When lists of history's most beautiful cars are compiled, pre-1970 designs tend to dominate. That's no coincidence: the first U.S. motor vehicle safety standards took effect in 1968, and safety laws have been ramping up ever since.
The Jaguar E-Type is widely considered one of those most beautiful cars. So, a couple of years ago, when Jaguar was launching the F-Type, design chief Ian Callum was asked, "Why not just recreate the same shape?"
"Where do I start?" he responded. "In legal terms, it would be impossible. Not by millimetres but by inches. Almost every aspect of the cars we design now, I can give you a reason why it ends up the way it does."
'Let's start at the front," Callum said. "The E-Type's got no bumpers. It's got wheel coverage. The hood line is too high for the 4-degree down-vision line. The windshield header is too low for the U.S. unbelted occupant requirement. The vision lines around the car probably infringe on a number of legal requirements. And the side impact … there's no way there's space to get airbags in there."
Designers have come a long way since the early days of safety rules, when some true abominations were created.
Perhaps the most egregious collision of style and safety was the indignity inflicted on MG's aging sports cars by new bumper standards in the mid-1970s. MG replaced the cars' slender chrome bumpers with monstrous black rubber ones, and then to get the height right, jacked up the suspension. The poor roadsters were not only visually disfigured by the rubber bumpers – the raised ride height also sabotaged their handling.
Countless other regulations influence and constrain car styling. The U.S. federal law that governs exterior lighting alone (Canada usually adopts the same rules) is 207 pages of legal and technical gobbledygook.
Europe has its own rules that are largely shared worldwide except by the United States and Canada. Most significant, since 2005 Europe has been phasing in a standard to minimize injury to pedestrians struck by a car. One outcome is softer, more rounded front-end designs. However, the most serious injuries occur when a pedestrian's head hits the hood. The hood itself isn't usually the problem – there's a lot of flex in that sheet-metal panel. What hurts is the hard point below, typically the engine, that limits the give in the hood.
Providing the necessary clearance is a particular challenge for BMW, with its trademark longitudinal in-line six-cylinder engines that extend farther forward than an in-line four, V-6 or V-8 would. Have you noticed the somewhat bulbous sculpting of the hood on the current 3 Series? That's not happenstance.
An alternative solution adopted by auto makers anxious to preserve a low hood line is the pop-up hood. Jaguar won an international award when it equipped its 2007 XK with sensors and actuators that instantaneously raise the trailing edge of the hood when a pedestrian impact is detected.
In North America, auto makers must meet a different set of regulations, many of which date back to 1968. However, a few, including headlights and bumpers, have been dropped or eased.
In 1983, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration stopped mandating circular or rectangular glass headlamps. That allowed American cars to adopt European-style sculpted "architectural" headlamp designs, and also improved aerodynamics.
"Now we have projector headlights, which are really small," says Paul Deutschman of Deutschman Design, an independent design studio in Montreal. "Porsche and Aston Martin, for example, have some really slick low-profile lenses and get all the illumination necessary. And compare the new Corvette with the old ones with pop-up lights. Now they use the headlight to distinguish the styling and add excitement."
Junichi Orai, safety engineer manager with Subaru, speaks of another fundamental conflict between style and safety. "A big front overhang is poor for design, but for safety you want more overhang to maximize the crush zone," he says.
But even at Subaru, the trade-offs are easing. Ted Lalka, Subaru Canada vice-president of product planning and marketing, says that through the use of high-strength steels, "we have even better safety, and at the same time give designers more flexibility to achieve nicer-looking cars."
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