Bye Bye Big Three?
Faggy plastic front bumpers?
I think ALL of us would love to see chrome bumpers make a comeback. How about dual carburetors, bias ply tires, Hurst shifters blah blah blah...
IMO, car design of 2008 just sucks, no matter what brand. There's no inspiration, just fuel economy and safety concerns. You can't have inspired design when you're hamstrung by these constraints, they're mutually exclusive. You can try and coax cool things out of these limited parameters, but it's all compromise in the end.
No design in the last 35 years speaks to me on a gut level, like WOW I need to buy that car. For me, the Challenger comes close, but I'm a little too jaded at this point. The prototype was better than the production model, just a much crisper treatment on the whole. I guess very few if any design studies make it to production unchanged. It's a shame.
How do non-gearhead types feel when they walk into a show room? Do they see the same things we do? When someone buys an Accord or Camry are they happy with the whole car or just the idea that they 'don't break down and get good mileage'? Do they care about 'spirited driving'? Likely not if you're buying a Camry.
What would make American cars more appealing to these consumers and get people to snap out of the Japanese econobox haze?