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No Bailout Required for This Car Company

Meet the best-selling car in America, for the past three decades.

It was designed, ironically, by a former Chrysler designer.

Note the Cars style revisions to the latest model, which strangely re-anthromorphizes the car (the headlights already being a pair of “eyes”) with a friendly pair of eyes — a bit strange for the device which will go on to represent the greatest risk of accidental death in their life.

And note the gender-specifying project at work.

Which does make me wonder why we don’t see more pink cars, like this one I snapped in London (with matching dice):

(via Autoblog, horn honk to Braulio)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 11th, 2009 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Cars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “No Bailout Required for This Car Company”

  1. Stephens Says:
    June 11th, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    We don’t see more pink cars in the U.S. because they’re exclusively associated with Mary Kay Cosmetics sales reps.

  2. chrismealy Says:
    June 11th, 2009 at 4:42 pm

    That’s a Nissan Figaro.

  3. John Campion Says:
    June 12th, 2009 at 5:38 am

    See some in the UK.

    They usually have a row of soft toys or similar on the parcel shelf, occasionally a “powered by pixie dust” (as if!) sticker.

  4. Moocow Says:
    June 14th, 2009 at 2:47 pm

    Check it: Plastic crap cars going to the graveyard, at the height of the financial downturn in the US. It seemed like people were rethinking things…

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/29453408@N07/2916957213/

  5. DoctorJay Says:
    June 15th, 2009 at 8:43 pm

    Ugh with the eyes! Don’t headlights already look like eyes? I never understood why the Pixar movie “Cars” had the eyes in the windshield.

  6. Richard Says:
    June 16th, 2009 at 4:29 am

    The eyes in the windshield give the “face” of the car a more human appearance that is easier to identify with. There was a lot of thought that went into how the face of the car should look. You can probably watch the extras on the DVD to find out more.

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Traffic Tom Vanderbilt

How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

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