![\"BYD](\"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/why-modern-cars-all-look-the-same-and-why-its-getting-worse.jpg\" "\\"BYD")
<\/a><\/p>\nBMW\u2019s XM isn\u2019t pretty, but at least you\u2019d spot it in a line-up of Chinese SUVs<\/p>\n
Please tell me it\u2019s not just me, dear reader, who sometimes looks at a\u00a0new car \u2013 something I do on a more than occasional basis \u2013 and with the best will in the world couldn\u2019t say what it is.<\/p>\n
There are so many more new cars than there used to be, so many more of them are crossovers<\/a> than they used to be and, by gum, so many of them look the same that I am, on occasion, utterly lost. I can\u2019t tell one from another.<\/p>\n This is a new experience for me. I always proudly thought that if I witnessed a robbery I\u2019d be able to tell the police what make, model and trim level a getaway car was, and I\u2019d probably be able to name its colour and wheel design. Actually that may be a bad example, because\u00a0I already know it will be an Audi RS3.<\/a><\/p>\n But let\u2019s say an anonymous grey crossover is involved in a hit and run and a nearby copper asks me for a statement about what car was involved. I increasingly fear I\u2019d have to shrug and offer up a simple: \u201cHaven\u2019t a clue, mate. One of those new electric SUVs<\/a>. I think.\u201d<\/p>\n Strictly speaking, thinking that all cars look the same isn\u2019t a new phenomenon. In an issue of Performance Car I bought back in the early 1990s, the magazine printed a series of silhouettes of D-segment hatchbacks from the time: a Ford Mondeo<\/a>, a Nissan Primera, a Toyota Carina and so on.<\/p>\n Their gag was that if you could identify none of them from their outline alone, you were a true Performance Car reader. But if you could tell most of them apart, you were an Autocar & Motor reader.<\/p>\n But while not a new thing, I think events have recently progressed at speed. I don\u2019t know about today\u2019s Autocar reader, but I can tell you this Autocar writer of two decades would struggle to tell plenty of new models apart even if they weren\u2019t reduced to their silhouettes.<\/p>\n Even on a clear day I\u2019m not at all confident I could tell a Geely EX5 from a BYD Atto 3<\/a> until I got close enough to read the badges. Why is this? Have all the good shapes already been taken? Are we now drawing the same ones again because, basically, we have to?<\/p>\n In national treasure (and Ferrari F12tdf<\/a> owner) Hugh Grant\u2019s rather grizzly new film Heretic, our villain tells a story, and it\u2019s mostly true, of how Radiohead were sued by The Hollies because parts of Creep were taken from The Air That\u00a0I Breathe. But then Radiohead got legal with\u00a0Lana Del Rey because her Get Free sounded\u00a0too much like Creep.<\/p>\n Are we just, y\u2019know, running out of notes? And if so, is it really so surprising we\u2019re running out of lines? There only so many ways you can draw around four wheels and a car\u2019s oily (or electrical) bits if one also has to include the certain number and location of seats, doors, windows and lights, plus bumpers so soft that hitting a deer writes off the car. So the new Ford Capri<\/a> looks a bit like a Polestar 2<\/a>? Well, it has to look like something.<\/p>\n Maybe I should start being kinder to wilfully ugly cars. Say what you like about the absolute munter that is BMW\u2019s XM<\/a> \u2013 plenty of people have \u2013 but you will not mistake it for an Omoda 5.<\/a><\/p>\n I think electrification<\/a> isn\u2019t helpful. If you don\u2019t need a grille to cool an engine then you don\u2019t have a signature identifier in the most prominent position on the car. In fact, given that it would upset the aerodynamics so much \u2013 and that\u2019s so important for an electric car\u2019s range<\/a> \u2013 you\u2019d better not have one. A person can design plenty of different pretty shapes, but a wind tunnel will say only one of them is the most efficient.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.globalvillagespace.com\/tech\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/why-modern-cars-all-look-the-same-and-why-its-getting-worse-1.jpg\")
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