Many car designs elicit comparisons to animal forms, but the BMW i7's unique fascia has garnered significant attention for its monstrous appearance. The battery-electric variant of the 7-series boasts a distinctive front end, reminiscent of a saiga antelope's face, with flared nostrils and buccal marionette lines that evoke a bloodhound's features. However, this design choice is merely a distraction from the overall proportions of the vehicle.
The i7 shares its length almost precisely with the Ford Crown Victoria, but its massing is where the problem lies. Modern cars have grown in size, but their dimensions are not necessarily larger than those of past eras. Instead, it's the design language that contributes to their perceived enormity.
Lithium-ion cells reside in the basement of the electric version and dictate the shape of the body, adding roughly 100 millimeters to its thickness. This clean design sensibility is disrupted by the battery pack, resulting in a drastic change. Design choices enunciate instead of mask the i7's mass, with features like the tall, sharp-edged intake and rounded, featureless body sides that yield a heavy massing.
The ever-taller hoods and grilles on pickups and SUVs are fundamentally just cargo-cult mimicry of semi trucks. Vehicles have always managed to look massive due to their size, scale, and features, which must align with what they're towing. As people get larger, what looks comfortable to them as a car would be bigger.
The recent GMC Sierra HD Denali epitomizes this, with a lustrous, stacked blunt instrument of a grille that rises like a cross section of the Dubai skyline. As cars on the road grow in scale and those shapes grow in popularity, more drivers begin to feel less secure in vehicles that don’t share a high seating position.
The perception of size and mass in modern cars is largely driven by design language and the features they incorporate, rather than their actual dimensions. As our bodies change due to various factors, including obesity rates, it's essential for car designers to consider these changes when creating vehicles that must accommodate a growing population.
