"Porsche needs to advance." I'm sorry. That simply has nothing to do with the exterior design of the 996 or the 997. The idea that some shapes are 'retro' and some shapes are 'new' is pure baloney, to me.
Porsche needs to make every generation of its cars better than the one before it. I'm completely on board for that.
Making it ugly? Someone's going to have to explain to me why that's become such an essential part of the process.
A design either looks good, or it doesn't. From a styling perspective, there really isn't much that's important beyond that.
I want the 'new is better' crowd to explain the Pontiac Aztek to me. It's a newer design than the classic GTO, and it's also a newer design than a lot of other pre-1999 Pontiacs.
So? It's an incredibly ugly vehicle. And pretty much everyone agrees that it's an incredibly ugly vehicle. I don't think anyone finding a mid-'90's Pontiac more attractive than the Aztek means they're fanatically attached to Pontiac's previous design beliefs.
The Aztek is just plain old
ugly.
In terms of external styling, I think the 993 design is much more attractive than the 964 that came before it. It's not better looking because it's newer. It's better looking because it's better looking.
In the 996 restyling of the 911, the designers (for a lot of different reasons, I'm sure) decided that they wanted to eliminate fender flares, change the hood shape, extend the nose, put on hockey-stick-shaped headlights, and change the underlying line of the car to incorporate what they called a 'power hump' in the back, and to allow the roofline to continue to rise up after the windshield.
Does anyone
seriously believe that they did all this because of some devotion to the forward march of progress? They did it to cut productions costs, conform to different countries' safety mandates, and (of course) to flatter the vanity of the designers themselves (and the corporate managers approving the designs) and, I'm sure, for hundreds of other reasons.
Compared to the 993, though, the 996 is ugly. I don't care if it came before the 993 or after it. It contained a lot of ideas that made the 996 iteration of the 911 design uglier than other iterations of the 911 design.
The 997 is a little better. There's still that stupid Boxster butt sticking up in the back. And the roofline still looks goofy. And the nose is still too long.
But it's better.
Does this mean progress is marching forward, and Porsche is sweeping out the new in order to bravely face the future? Of course not. They've simply redesigned the exterior of the car so that it's not as ugly as the 996. They tried some design features that backfired, and they're getting rid of them.
Design is subjective, and you'll never get 100% unanimity on it. Loads of people love the Aztek. Loads of people think the 996 is the most beautiful 911 variant ever designed. I'm glad for these people. They'll always be able to get a pretty sweet deals on the cars they love -- because the majority of people disagree with them, and prefer just about any Pontiac to the Aztek, and prefer just about any 911 iteration to the 996.
But even if you think the 996 is the sweetest-looking hockey-stick-headlighted car in the world, it doesn't make you modern, or forward-thinking. It just means you love
that design. Like I said, a lot of people do.
In my opinion, a fastback design looks better when you don't interrupt the fastback line with a big hump. You can call this idea 'retro' if you want, but then you have to admit that once a company's signed on to the idea of continuing production of one model of car for 40 years, the distinction between new and retro has already been made fairly moot. It's a design that's famous (and popular) because of a few key features. If you abandon those features, the design gets watered down, and it loses its appeal as a design.
Of course, there is a lot more to the 996 and the 997 than their exterior styling. They're both awesome cars, faster, more sophisticated and more comfortable than any of the 911's that came before them. BMW is currently proving that you can sell ugly cars about as easily as you can sell attractive ones. Exterior styling is not the key factor in whether a car sells -- it's only a key factor in whether the car is ugly or not. The 996 is popular, for a lot of good reasons -- but it's also ugly, to many.
The 997 is slightly less ugly. If Porsche were able to put all the goodies from the 997 into a better-looking chassis, I'd be at the head of the line to pick one up. But they haven't, and I'll keep waiting. Hopefully, they'll get it right one day.
Okay. Rant over. Return to your regularly-scheduled threads.
