The purpose of this thread is to find design details that didn´t work. I call it Friday Afternoon Design. One gets the impression these details were concluded so as to be able to end a long tedious meeting just before the weekend. "Gosh, is that the time? I have a flight to Munich in 3 hours, so we will go with Bob´s blob concept? Agreed? Good!" The sad part is that in all likelihood some very talented and able people probably fought tooth and nail for these ideas and now have to sit about and have their work trashed by armchair designers like me.
I´ve gone out and photographed examples of these Friday Afternoon details that have snagged my eye as I´ve peered at cars over the last few years. These are design details I could never warm to and never ignore, like a really bad wart on someone´s nose. The Peugeot 106 mirror bulge is the one I have the hardest time accepting as it seems to be styling for styling`s sake and if deleted wouldn´t change the overall theme in any material sense. In the case of the Citroen C1, one can guess that with three different design teams working together there were bound to be compromises. And in this instance, Citroen lost, leaving their car with a lamp graphic that looks as if it was drawn in two minutes, in the dark. Ogees are always wrong. The Alfa 156 is a really tiny detail but bothers me because it looks like a weak little splinter of plastic just waiting to get caught on someone´s cardigan or to snap off once the plastic gets brittle with age.
If I´ve picked alot of Citroens it's because I´m a disappointed Citroeniste and also because I think Citroen design has been the most careless of any major maker. Being French is not a justification for dashing off ill-considered bits of goofiness. The best goofy designs had some deep thought behind them and these don´t.
If you have any more design flubs you can think of, send them in and let us collectively jeer at the hard work of others. That´ll teach them.
