Electel Blogspot

Peter DeLorenzo, an automobile industry observer whose father was a General Motors executive and whose nearby neighbor was GM Design Vice President Bill Mitchell, hosts the must-read AutoExtremist web site.  About once a year DeLorenzo presents his evaluation of the branding strength of many makes of cars.  A consistent standout is Jeep . From my perspective, one strong factor in Jeep's brand identity is its grille design that dates back to its World War 2 origins as a light military vehicle.  Almost all Jeeps since then have featured variations on that design.  This is akin to the famous long-lasting grille design themes of Rolls-Royce and Packard. However, there was one exception to this strong Jeep theme.  That was found on Jeep's Wagoneer station wagon line produced from 1963 into 1991.   Early Wagoneers carried a stylized version of the traditional grille, but in 1970 that was abandoned for the rest of the model's production life.  (The Wagoneer...

A few years ago I wrote about the restyled 2016 Nissan Maxima .  I mostly complained about the fussy ornamentation.  Observing one in a parking lot the other day provoked new thoughts regarding its design. For some time now, the Maxima has been an upscaled variant of Nissan's mainline Altima brand.  Styling-wise, Maximas are Altimas with different sheet metal here and there to provide a distinctive appearance.  (Though Altimas have had a somewhat similar "feel" over the time since they were enlarged in the early 2000s, Maximas don't strike me as having any design continuity beyond their Altima base.) To set the scene, the 2016 Altima had a height of 57.9 inches (1,471 mm), according to Wikipedia.  The height of the '16 Maxima from the same general source was 56.5 inches (1,435 mm).  It's possible that the Maxima's roof sheet metal is a bit flatter than the Altima's.  It's also possible that Maxima bodies sit a little closer to the ground.   Perh...