Jeffrey Wiley
Editor · 12 articles published
Editor
Jeffrey Wiley has spent more time than he'd like to admit thinking about what makes a car look right. He writes about automotive design, car culture, and the opinions people have strong feelings about. He lives in north Georgia.
Articles by Jeffrey Wiley
GeneralMay 27, 2026
Why the Mazda RX-7 Aged So Well
The Mazda RX-7 FD was designed in 1989 and went on sale in 1992. It's now over thirty years old. It still looks better than most cars being built today. That's not nostalgia talking. Park one next to a current-generation crossover or a mid-size sedan and the RX-7 wins the visual argument without trying, which raises a question worth answering: what did Mazda's designers do in a California studio in the late 1980s that produced something thirty years of subsequent automotive design hasn't been able to improve on?
GeneralMay 20, 2026
The Porsche 911 Is Overrated on Looks and Everyone Is Afraid to Say It
Say this in any car community and watch the reaction. The Porsche 911 is overrated on looks. Not overrated as a car. Not overrated as a driving experience. On looks specifically. The design that everyone calls timeless is, examined honestly, a design that has been coasting on familiarity for decades while the world gave it a free pass because of what the badge represents and what the car does when you push it...
GeneralMay 15, 2026
What Color Makes a Car Look Bigger?
Color changes the perceived size of a car more than most buyers realize, and getting it wrong costs you. An SUV that should look imposing can look squat and heavy in the wrong color. A compact car that should look athletic can look like a toy. The mechanics behind why this happens are specific enough that you can use them deliberately rather than just hoping you guessed right at the configurator...
GeneralMay 12, 2026
The Best Car for Looking Good Without Trying
Some cars demand maintenance to look good. Black paint that needs weekly washing and monthly polishing. Complex body kits that need alignment after every car wash. A lowered suspension that scrapes on every parking garage entrance. These are cars that look spectacular when everything is right and progressively worse as the owner's time and patience run out...
GeneralMay 4, 2026
White Is the Hardest Color to Pull Off. Most Cars Fail.
White is the best-selling car color in the world. Has been for over a decade. Buyers choose it because it's safe, resells well, hides dust reasonably, and looks clean on a configurator screen. None of those are design reasons. And design is exactly what white tests, mercilessly, every time a car wears it...
GeneralMay 2, 2026
Electric Cars Have a Design Problem Nobody Is Talking About
Electric vehicles solved the engineering problem. The range improved. The charging infrastructure is building out. The performance numbers are extraordinary. What nobody solved is the design problem, and the design problem is not about styling. It is structural. It is baked into the format at a level that cannot be fixed with better headlights or a more aggressive front end. The best EV designers in the world are working against physics and losing in specific ways that are visible in every faceoff where an EV goes up against a comparable combustion car...
GeneralMay 1, 2026
Why Cars Looked Better When They Were Dangerous
The most beautiful production cars ever built would kill you at a rate modern safety regulators would find unconscionable. The 1966 Ferrari 275 GTB had no crumple zones, no airbags, a steering column that would impale the driver in a frontal impact, and drum brakes that required planning your stops several seconds in advance. It is also one of the most visually perfect objects ever produced by human hands. The connection between these two facts is not coincidental...
GeneralApr 29, 2026
Why Japanese Car Design Quietly Became the Best in the World
Japanese automakers have been quietly building the strongest design portfolio in the world, and the automotive press is only now catching up to what has been happening. This did not happen overnight. It is the result of a philosophy shift that started in Hiroshima with one mid-size brand and spread outward in ways that are still playing out...
AdviceApr 27, 2026
Why Black Cars Are a Trap
The gap between what black promises and what it delivers over time is the trap. Most people do not figure this out until they are three years into ownership...
GeneralApr 25, 2026
What Makes a Car Iconic vs Just Expensive
There are expensive cars everywhere. Most of them will be forgotten. The Porsche 911 will not be forgotten. Neither will the Ferrari Testarossa, the original Land Rover Defender, the Volkswagen Golf GTI, or the first-generation Mazda Miata. None of those last two cost anywhere near what most people think of as an iconic car's price. Expense has almost nothing to do with it...
GeneralApr 22, 2026
The Worst Thing That Ever Happened to Car Design Was the SUV Boom
In 1990 the ten best-selling vehicles in America included sedans, coupes, and a handful of trucks. By 2005 the list was unrecognizable. By 2015 it was almost entirely trucks and SUVs. By 2023 Ford had stopped selling passenger cars in the United States entirely except for the Mustang, which survives only because it is culturally untouchable...
GeneralApr 21, 2026
Should You Wash Your Car Before Photographing It? Why The Answer Is More Complicated Than You Think
The obvious answer is yes. Wash the car, get a clean photo, submit it. But spend any time looking at what actually wins faceoffs and you start noticing something that complicates the obvious answer. Some of the most compelling car photos are not of perfectly clean cars. And some of the most forgettable ones are of cars that look like they just rolled out of a detail shop...