Volvo S90

Most cars look worse dirty. A dusty black sedan looks neglected. A water-spotted white crossover looks like it spent a week in a grocery store parking lot. But there is a specific category of vehicle where a layer of dirt, dust, or mud does not hurt the design at all. In some cases it actively improves it. These are those cars and the reason is more interesting than it sounds...

Walk through any parking lot in America and run a quick count. Crossovers, trucks, more crossovers, a few SUVs, one sedan that belongs to someone's dad. The cars that consistently rate highest on design, the ones that win awards and get photographed at auto shows, are largely absent. Meanwhile, the vehicles moving off dealer lots..

Some cars stop traffic. They get photographed in parking lots by strangers, get threads started about them on forums, and land on every best-looking list written in the last five years. Then you check the sales numbers and wonder why nobody is actually buying them...