Audi A3

Stand in any new car dealership and do a slow scan of the lot. Then do the same thing at the dealership next door. The silhouettes blur together. The crossover proportions are interchangeable. The front ends all have versions of the same aggressive grille flanked by the same split headlight treatment. The colors are white, gray, silver, black, and maybe one brave soul in red. You couldn't tell a Nissan Rogue from a Hyundai Tucson from a Chevrolet Equinox at fifty yards and that's not an accident. It's the output of a specific set of industry forces that have been running in the same direction for twenty years...

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...

Put a Porsche 911 against a Dodge Charger in a faceoff and the results split in a way that is almost perfectly predictable based on one variable: whether the voter knows anything about cars. Regular people pick the Charger. Car people pick the 911. Neither group is wrong. They are just answering different questions...

Every car person has been in this argument. Two cars, two owners, zero agreement, and a conversation that has been going in circles for twenty minutes. Your car looks better. No, mine does. Yours is common. Mine is refined. Yours is trying too hard. Mine knows exactly what it is. Nobody wins because nobody has a referee. Until now.