What Defines Car Beauty? Insights from Top Car Designers

Cars are more than just machines – they're human creations with personalities all their own. From the love-it-or-hate-it Pontiac Aztek to the universally adored Lamborghini Miura, every car hits the road with purpose and intent behind its styling. But that doesn't mean the public always jumps on board when automakers push design boundaries.

Let's face it – beauty is totally subjective. One person's stylish ride might be another's eyesore. To dig deeper into what makes a car truly beautiful, some of the industry's most celebrated designers from the world's top brands shared their perspectives.

These designers face a pretty tough challenge: predicting what customers will find attractive years or even decades down the road. With constantly shifting tastes and cultural influences, it's no small task. But there are certain principles they rely on when trying to create something beautiful, and for most of them, getting the proportions right is absolutely essential.

"It's got to have a beautiful and balanced proportion," explains Brian Nielander, a chief designer at Stellantis who's responsible for concepts like the Chrysler Firepower and ME Four-Twelve. He notes how easy it is to "over-style things" just for the sake of design. "It's not always about the details, but more about the simplicity in proportion."

"I think a little bit of simplicity goes a long way," Nielander adds.

Ed Welburn, who served as GM's vice president of global design and oversaw vehicles like the second-gen Cadillac CTS-V and the Chevrolet SSR, also emphasized keeping things simple.

"Complex designs may look great for the moment, but generally do not age gracefully," Welburn says. In his view, "Beautiful designs are clear and simple, but not boring." They achieve this by being "well-proportioned in every way" while maintaining "a consistent character of line and form."

But Welburn admits the old saying is true – beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.

Tony Hatter, who recently retired from Style Porsche where he was head of design quality, says there's "no simple answer" to what makes a car beautiful. Hatter worked as an exterior designer at Porsche from 1986 to 2002, creating the 993 and the Carrera GT, before becoming a design manager. Now he works with Ruf.

For Hatter, a car's proportion is just one of four key components. He examines how the greenhouse relates to the body, the position of the wheels, and the overhangs – all of which are influenced by his second component: Function.

Hatter considers the car's aerodynamics, engine placement, and overall performance, but both proportion and function must follow his third component: Form.

"Form, however, within this aesthetic, has to have an underlying structure dictated by those first two components," Hatter explains. "This is where innate understanding of form and competence are required, specifically how the greenhouse fits, or is integrated into the body, the way the wheel arches are treated, perhaps emphasizing the position and size of the wheels and the attention to details."

His final component? Materials – evaluating the brightwork, color choices, and wheels, and how they interact with the body. He also noted, "The interior cannot be ignored, especially if we are talking about an open car."

Tom Matano, who helped bring us the original Mazda MX-5 Miata and FD RX-7, believes a beautiful car is one that's "void of gimmicky surfaces." He stresses that a vehicle must be "totally cohesive from overall proportion to the minute detail, both inside and out. By a quick glance, one should communicate what it was designed for."

When judging automotive beauty, Matano looks for "proportion, stance, attitude, movement, tension, center of gravity, details, and choice of materials and finishes." After leaving Mazda in 2002, Matano moved into education and currently serves as Director Emeritus of the Academy of Art University's School of Industrial Design.

Mercedes-Benz's Head of Exterior Vehicle Design, Robert Lesnik, also highlights the importance of nailing a car's proportions. "Where are the wheels? What is the stance?" he asks.

Lesnik evaluates the surfaces next and, finally, the graphics. He points out that you probably won't remember what a car's lights looked like, but you'd "remember how elegant it was when it passed by at very low speed."

According to Frank Heyl, Bugatti's design director who contributed to the Chiron, Divo, Bolide, and W16 Mistral, a car's design should do more than just look pretty.

"It's got to tell a story, number one," Heyl insists. "That's what makes it appealing to me. It's got to be authentic. What I'm looking at, what I'm being presented with, has got to be sure of itself. It has this purpose, and it fulfills it, and it's sympathetic when it's doing it because it's authentic."

"Number two, obviously, it's proportion, proportion, proportion," he continues. "Before I look at any color or theme or line or intake exit, whatever it is, the thing just has to sit right." Only on his second look does he notice specific features or design lines.

The proportion must be "just right." Heyl says it's obvious when a car doesn't "come together, that there had been some commission there without understanding, just counting the beans, and then it has small wheels and is big and bulky, and then it doesn't look good."

Creating a beautiful car, Heyl believes, requires "a person with a vision and the best team to get something together that you know is an authentic contender."

For BMW's Head of Design, Adrian Van Hooydonk, industrial design sits "almost at the crossroads of art and engineering."

"We want to create products that add something to our customers' lives," he explains. "To me, design is beautiful when it works really well, but over and beyond the functionality, it offers something that people can relate to in an emotional way."

But Van Hooydonk is straightforward about design challenges. "We need to find solutions for a multitude of legal requirements, problems, and so on," he says. "That is part of our job. That's why we call it industrial design."

"We try to offer products that are much more than the sum total of their functions or their solved problems, let's say," he adds. "And we want people to be able to really relate not only on a rational level, but also on an emotional level to the product."

Car designers juggle countless factors when creating a vehicle – from crash safety standards and cost constraints to fuel economy targets and more. That's why concept sketches often look dramatically different from production models. These machines must balance beauty and function, and blending the two successfully is truly an art form.

Beauty is also shaped by time and place. Designs that received harsh criticism when first released sometimes find appreciation decades later – and that's the beauty of beauty itself. It's all about opinion, and opinions change over time. And honestly, cars would be pretty boring if they didn't