This recent user's ride post got me thinking...what other cars besides the 1989-1996 Nissan 300ZX have aged particularly well? I mean stylistically, inside and/or out, though modern driving dynamics don't hurt. Not much in terms of rules, but for the sake of reasonablenessocity let's not discuss designs any newer than 10 years old. Makes sense?


To get this started, I'm gonna start with the (barely within the rules) Isuzu Vehicross. When this came out in 1997, some people lauded its futuristic styling but most people just balked. Yet, here in 2008, I think it looks totally fresh...it really was way way ahead of its time.

Acura NSX. I think it's timeless.

That's older than 10 years.

That's the point. It should be at least 10 years old.

FD RX-7

i'm gonna go with the first thing that comes to my mind...

Ferrari F40

If that's the minimum age, what's the maximum? Because there are ten gazillion good-looking cars from the 1960s. Are we really just talking 1990s cars, or 1990s and 1980s cars?

The point is that the car looks good and modern now. Sorry if I failed to get that point across. There's lots of beautiful cars from the '60s but none of them look like they're near-new.

Supra I can see, B5 Passat...gotta disagree with that one. For a car available from 1998 to 2001 they look like they were from 1995 to 1999.

I thought that generation Passat started in 1996?

http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/carreviews/dr...passat_old.html

Anyway, I really like its design, and while it looks conservative to me, it doesn't look dated. Heck, the modern A6 looks very similar to my eyes.

I guess it was 1996 in europe. It was a 1998 intro in North America, though.

If we're talking how old an aesthetic design is (to determine how well the design aged), I think the date it was released for production anywhere is what matters. Not the date it ended production, and not the date it was released into one particular market.

Debut in 1997:

Can we use racing cars?

No I agree, just pointing out where we both got our numbers from.



No, let's leave it to road cars.

It was designed and produced in '97. Only 2 exist in the world. Built for homologation purposes.

Though first released in '99 production started in mid '98



The Corrado is another good one.

I don't think the R390 looks remotely new. It looks like it's from 1997 through and through.

Possibly because most of the exterior parts were from Nissan's line-up during that time. In fact, those headlights are lifted directly from a 300ZX.

But, still, I think the OVERALL design of the car is lasting.

XJ220

It's interesting how little supercar aesthetics have changed in fifteen years. It's really hard coming up with mass-market cars from the mid-90s that still look modern, but most of the supercars in this thread look like they could still be sold today.

Thought came to me earlier today: The E36 3-series. Maybe only because they're still quite common and because the E46 shared so much of their styling, but the E36 looks way fresher than its 1991 introduction would indicate.

The reason I can't see that being new is because the Bangled 3-series is forever etched into my mind and that is what I automatically interpret as the current 3. If the Bangle 3 didn't exist or looked more like the E36, I'd agree.

That Jag XJ220 looks pretty damn dated.

And, clark, you make fun of the R390 but then you post the boxiest 3-series from the early '90s? Hell, that car looks like it's from the late '80s and the design was lazily carried over into the '90s and kept alive for far too long.

R32 Skyline and the Lancer Evolution III. Aged very well IMO, mostly because they look so goddamn beautiful when clean, and their predecessors are not that far off from these in some aspects of the car; exterior design, engineering and performance.

I'd have to disagree with a lot of these. The R32, F40, E36, XJ220, in particular. They all are good looking cars, no doubt. But they don't look modern. There's a big difference between the two. The GT-R, BMW and Ferrari are all too boxy to be modern looking, they are very 80s-90s looking. If you saw one for the first time in your life and you had to guess the era from which it came, you could easily pick them out to be 15-20 years old. The same goes for the Jag, it goes with the jelly-bean look that was big at that time as well. The Cougar is a good example for this thread. It's edgy and fresh looking, yet about 10 years old.

The point of the thread isn't that they look NEW, just newer than they actually are. I personally think it's hard to look at an E36 next to most cars from ~1991 and say it doesn't look fresher and more modern compared to most.



Boxy vs. smooth is not the only thing that differentiates old from new. In fact, newer cars have an increased angularity to them that makes boxier cars fit in better (you want stuff that's really curvy and ovoid, look at the mid to late '90s...Ford Taurus, Chrysler's Cab Forward, GM's products, Jags, Mercedes C/E class, etc. etc.) The E36 looks newer than it is, IMO, because of its use of modern window, light, and bumper treatments combined with an inoffensive overall shape that doesn't peg it in any one place (exaggerated by the fact that the E46, which continued until just a couple years ago, evolved so lightly from this car's design).

I do agree that the Jag looks dated, though.



And then there's always the fact that people see different indicators of freshness and modernity in cars (not picking on anything you've said here specifically, Asher, just using your post as an example of disagreement with others).



You posted the totally redesigned 2003 and newer model. I think you meant to go for the 1995 revision of the 2nd gen XJ, pictured here:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm..._aquamarine.jpg

Lol you silly DS'ers don't understand the point of this thread.

It's half my inability to adequately explain what I was looking for and the other half is just everyone's differing opinions on the highly subjective subject of style.

Boxy does not always mean 1980s-looking. But the E36 completely looks 1980s-esque to me, for reasons I can't put into words. In fact, I always assumed that it was from the 1980s. I was surprised when I eventually figured out that it debuted in the early 90s.

We all know that attractiveness in aesthetic design is subjective, but I think this thread is proving that modernness in aesthetic design is also sometimes subjective. One would think you can boil modern design down to objective criteria, but that doesn't seem to work.

Ferrari 348 debut in 1989, hard to believe this car is almost 20 years old.

I would have guessed 25.

It looks like a late '80s car.

BMW M1. 30 years old this year and still amazing.

McKhaos, that things looks like something from the '70s. If it came out now... no.

The point is that it looks newer than it is, not new. Clearly if the cars in this thread had to look new, that would be impossible.

But yeah, the M1's from 1978 and it looks like it.

The 300ZX's headlights were also used on the Lamborghini Diablo.

Lotus Esprit V8 (1996)
Jaguar XK8 (1996)
Porsche 996 (introduced in 1998, so designed prior to that)

Aston DB7



TVR Cerbera

There's a bunch more I can think of, but these are my two favorites.

Panoz AIV Roadster. Introduced 1992.

Never really thought the AIV Roadster pulled off the classic Allard/track roadster look that well. It just looks like a giant sweet potato on wheels.

1989 Nissan S-Cargo (from Nissan's niche car period - Be-1, Pao, Figaro)


Not sexy like the sports cars pervading this thread, but the design doesn't look nearly 20 years old. Substitute some flush headlights for the bug-eyes, make it a hybrid or electric, and it wouldn't look that out of place as an urban delivery vehicle for Europe or Japan today.

Cutest. Van. Ever.

Ok, this one's kinda weird because it's actually designed to look OLD, but it came out in 1991 and I think it looks like a newer retro model than that (if it makes any sense). Also, the van reminded me of it:

Nissan Figaro

TVR Griffith 500



Mazda Miata (NA)



Dodge Viper RT/10

...and then I realized all my choices were sportscars (and almost all well-designed sports cars get better with age)...so I went looking for more conventional offerings.



BMW 7-series (E38)



VW Corrado

The NA Miata and the Corrado look VERY dated IMO. I'll agree with the 7-Series though.

I've always thought the NA Miata was a pretty timeless design. The Corrado was a car who's looks I didn't really appreciate until recently.

I'm still rather vague on the rules.

I think the C5 Corvette has aged well. I remember seeing my first one back in late '97. As a 17 year old walking home from school it was awesome++. It's hard to believe that was 11 years ago sometimes.