There is this little restaurant in town that has glass doors seperating the smoking and non smoking sections. its really nice and its the best of both worlds...

 

i don't think opinions should split people up. after all that's all that they are. people aren't getting paid for it, so it means their sources are coming from your "corrupt media." Opinions should only make material for a good hearty debate to discover alternative in-depth perspectives and introduce new ideas. if that can't be done and someone takes it personally, then he or she is going outside their own box. if i like blue better than red because blue reminds me of the fresh ocean and the sky while red is evil like burning fire and pain, then that is my own conclusion. if you think red is a better color, i respect that, but i won't ever call names for it.

i recently recall you saying your old Excel was an awesome car and how you used to take it off road. but you told me the Excel was a cheap POS and a bad car. That's your own experience. I grew up in an Excel and agree that it wasn't the best car, but my argument was that it was an awesome car because that was the standard back then, that it comes from Giugiaro Design (world's greatest designer). It was No. 1 in Australia, and Chung Ju Yung said it himself the Excel saved the company from bankruptcy. I also think it's better to have Giugiaro design your car, than to have the guy who designed the abomnable failure that ultimately didn't save Crysler from bankruptcy, the Crossfire. By making that link, I think the Genesis Coupe is flawed. This is the reason of my thinking, while all of the contradictory statements I've heard, including yours, have been from personal assumptions and not respective to historical links. My rationale is that something is causing those links to break. Perhaps it is the economic downturn. There are articles pointing out the lack of quality in products today due to the economic downturn (writer's strike for example). So is it a sin to notice that something is traditionally lacking and ask why, or better just accepting this lack of passion that has come upon us? If someone cannot handle that, then I am sorry for being the one to bring it up.

Neoclassicism and Renaissance Classicism. These are the "classics." Ideally—and neoclassicism is essentially an art of an ideal. Classicism is a specific genre of philosophy, expressing itself in literature, architecture, art and music, which has Ancient Greek and Roman sources and an emphasis on society. It was particularly expressed in the Enlightenment, and the Age of Reason. As Fabrizio Giugiaro said it, “Good taste is simply good taste.”

 

T.G.I. Fridays has that. A glass wall separating their dining area from smoking.

In Tennessee, the law states that smoking is not permitted in any establishment unless it's strictly 21+ (thus it's allowed in bars and some clubs)

 

That is one of the MOST flawed arguments I've ever heard.

The Excel was ugly as hell. Even if it was designed by the most talented person/firm in the world it is still ugly. See this:

The Excel had none of that.

The Crossfire was not intended to save Chrysler. It was a vehicle of opportunity. After the Mercedes merger they just built another car on the SLK320 platform. Was it a great success? No. Did it kill Chrysler? No. Niche cars like the Crossfire are never what sinks or floats an automaker. Making crappy family sedans did that. I give the Crossfire points for being unique and not looking like everything else on the road.

Your argument is the same nonsense that the artistic communities seem to have all the time. You decided someone designs beautiful cars. Because of that, you now determine whether the car is beautiful based on who designed it. It is a lot like those artists that gain notoriety and then become eccentric, defecating on a canvas and smearing it around, but because of who they are the artsy jackasses consider it to be art.

Se also: This

 

what makes you think the Crossfire designer isn't one of them?



i don't find modern, contemporary, dada, expressionist, or cubist art to be appealing. that is why i brought up neoclassicism. it is a return to true form take Berlini's Pluto from 1620 for example:
it's nothing other than a rock, except look at the emotions that it invokes. artists wanted to return to the greatness of beauty, and ancient art began to be re-introduced after the Carracci Academy had introduced this idea of natural form versus the unnatural Gothic, Netherlandish, and Christian ideals. it's just this is what i believe is true beauty. and today we have strayed away from this and began to produce "experiments" like the crossfire, the Fiat Multipla and the Pontiac Aztek. if the crossfire didn't help the company, then it didn't do its job. if it's unnatural, and looks odd, then it will always be lesser than something that manages to fix those mistakes.



while i agree that sedans account for the most sales, i disagree that cars like the Crossfire are never what sinks or floats an automaker. the very marketing strategy for every successful car company comes from designing their lineup based on their sports car. look at all of the successful automakers today. their structure is primarily based on this (i'm not making this up). therefore, a sports car has to be a successful example-setter of a company's finest work. this was nissan-infiniti strategy (350) (g35) (370 based off GT-R), hyundais strategy (Tiburon). toyota's srategy (Celica), Ford's strategy (Mustang), Audi-Volkswagen strategy (TT), Honda-Acura strategy (S2000) (RSX). Chevy strategy (Vette & now Camaro) the complete line-up were all made on those sports car design cues and of those companies are staying afloat quite well. i guarantee this will remain their main strategy.

chrysler didn't follow this path. if they weren't known for car problems, so what else could have led them to failure? its CEO's were misusing their funds instead of developing successful products and flexing their muscles with sports cars, they kept offering high health insurance benefits and retirement and ignoring their brand image & design. the only reason they needed mercedes was for them pay health and pension benefits to which they no longer wanted to be a part of. i really don't think it had to do with making crappy family sedans. the 300C really kept them afloat and was a total success for them.

you guys say that original Hyundais and Excel cars were ugly. well let me ask you this: what car was pretty 30 years ago? 20 years ago? almost nothing! the technology wasn't available to make things beautiful.

You think they would release this ad today? Does it really look like a million? Not today, but back then YES!:



This was considered beauty back then. So instead of comparing it to today, my mind goes back into those days and thinks, "hey, what a beautiful icon. look how they sculpted this, and that all without any computers, amazing. i can't believe this was the standard once. this has a place in time"

with this in mind, the Excel was a wonderful car that introduced the idea "cheaper and better". if it weren't for Hyundai knocking on ItalDesign's door with the Excel, then they would never have been able to stay here as a business. If toyota didn't rely on the Tercel or Corolla they wouldn't exist. look at what happened to Peugeot and Datsun in the U.S. market! they couldn't afford to stay here. it were the cheaper more "crappier" cars that enabled these manufacturers to stay here. back then they weren't in any position like Mercedes and Audi to build anything beautiful, but the Excel and Pony are the origin of the Hyundai image and that alone is a beautiful thing. They are legendary designs that paved the way for the cars we see today.



actually, yes. is this image beautiful and does it look like a hot babe?


no?

but actually it is beautiful once you discover that it is the very first female nude statue ever made out of mammoth ivory 35,000 years ago by cavemen.

40 years ago muscle cars and big heavy hunks of metal honked the streets. (the original mustang was designed by Giugiaro) oil was abundant. when we had an oil crisis in the mid 70's, manufacturers began looking towards lighter metals and plastics and better safety standards. enter cars like toyota tercel, honda civic and crx, pony and excel. the beauty was within their purpose and their success. back then, these cars were considered beautiful. you might think the Quattro of the 80's was an ugly car, but a true car enthusiast would go crazy if he saw a Quattro at a junkyard. i believe you guys would say the original Celica GT-4, or Lancia Delta were ugly yet i respect them, and think they're more beautiful over any cars on earth, and not just because of rally, but because they are timeless originals that created and evolved their company brands.


Example: Toyota's quality is owed to this Celica, derived from the TTE (Toyota Team Europe) project in 1972 in Cologne, Germany. TTE built, developed, and tested racing parts that were included on this car enabling it to win rallies. They currently build, test, and employ homogolated Formula 1 parts for Toyota vehicles.

(sorry for the long read. 187 thanks for your time. i do think you are by all means correct and very much relative. but i am just deriving a somewhat different viewpoint. this is just for debating purpose ;b )

 

You have some valid points, however your judgment is clouded. The Excel is ugly, even for it's time. You're also wrong about me thinking a lot of the other cars you mentioned are ugly. I know you don't know it about me because it doesn't come up often but I love a lot of types of cars, very much including the Audi Quattro above and Celica GT-4. The Excel isn't ugly because it has slab sided features, it's because it's a very crappy design with no character whatsoever. It is the epitome of simplistic car design and would look perfectly at home sitting next to the finest cars ever created by communist countries. The Excel was easy to build cheaply, and that's definitely what it's design says about it. That is it's only redeeming value. Looking back over time, the Excel is a very significant car, especially for Hyundai. Hyundai owes it's current success to the Excel, but the Excel is also responsible for Hyundai's tarnished reputation. The fact is that there would be no Hyundai right now if there had been no Excel. That fact doesn't make the Excel beautiful, but it does make it significant.

What cars were beautiful 20 or 30 years ago? LOTS. The industry as a whole took a giant downturn in their design from about 1975-1990 in my opinion, but get back to between 1920 and 1975 and there are many beautiful cars. Those designs and construction methods did not disappear, so it is not correct to say that it wasn't possible to build beautiful cars in the 80's. It just wasn't common. Some cars that I think looked great in the mid 80's: Porsche 911, Mitsubishi Starion, Toyota Supra MKII, Chevy Corvette, BMW E30, Toyota MR-2, Pontiac Fiero, Toyota AE86 Corolla, Buick Grand National, as well as others.

The Chrysler management are responsible for the failure of Chrysler. In the US, each subsidiary does not need a halo car. Dodge has the halo car, Chrysler and Plymouth didn't need one. Same for Mercury, Lincoln, Buick, Saturn, and Pontiac. I know that some of those marques have had what could be considered a halo car (Buick Grand National, Saturn Sky, Pontiac G8) at some point in their history, but for the most part a halo car in the corporate ranks is all you need. The Crossfire is a result of badge engineering that didn't help an already failing automaker selling sub-par products for too much money to a pickier and pickier public. Chrysler along with Dodge, Plymouth, and Jeep are actually all known for having problems and have a bad reliability track record and a bad reputation. Out of the almost 30 vehicles I've owned only one has been from the Chrysler Group, my 85 Jeep CJ-7. Jeeps are cool and fun, but have always had issues with crappy wiring. A ton of people I know would never buy a Chrysler Group product.

The Crossfire is not an ugly car, it's a hate it or love it car. I don't think it's great, but I would drive a Crossfire SRT-6 if it was inexpensive enough. For $45k, oh hell no.

With this sculpture:

You are confusing two concepts. Beauty and significance. Significance does not equal beauty. That is not a beautiful sculpture. It is a significant relic, and very worthy of being prominently displayed at a museum. That doesn't make it beautiful by default.

This piece of work however:

Is beautiful. It is not the only form of beautiful sculpture, but it is a beautiful sculpture.

You have determined that certain pieces of work are beautiful by default because of their designer and certain pieces of work cannot be beautiful because of the designer. That's a very elitist outlook and frankly it's total BS. Beauty, while in the eye of the beholder, is beauty regardless of it's creator.

HKC, I'm just debating also. You have offered viewpoints that I hadn't thought of on some points. I'm not angry or hateful if it comes across that way.

 

I'm pretty sure I've never said it was a POS. I loved that car. It was ugly, but it ran well and gave me no problems. OTHERS in the industry have always looked at it as a POS though, and I may have referred to that, but I loved that car to death. I drove it from San Francisco to Charleston SC.

The death of that car was my trip to Korea last time, and letting my inlaws watch it for me. I sold it to Faithofadragon's brother, and he drove it for some time when it finally popped the timing belt at over 186K miles.

On the original belt.

The reliability of that car made me leave the domestics behind forever.

 

I have a belly-button. It's an innie. I think we should ban all outties.

 

holy crap people... even if i printed out all 10 pages you guys just wrote i still wouldn't get 1/2 way through it... cliffnotes please?

 

No