I wish I could give a better, or, really, any explanation about why I feel this way, but I can’t. I’ve tried, and I still feel it, but I cannot qualify why I feel this way. Here’s what it is: see that car up there? It’s a 1977 Toyota Carina, which started as the Celica’s sedan brother. My problem is every time I look at this car, it looks fake to me.
I can’t put my finger exactly on what it is, perhaps just my relative unfamiliarity with this model that never came to America, but it looks to me like a late ’70s version of one of those generalized composite cars you see in insurance ads.
It doesn’t look bad, it just looks like someone took some Accords and Bluebirds and B210s and Crowns and Coronas and GLCs and a lot of other Japanese cars of the era, gave it to a magic giant dog to masticate, and spit out this.
Am I the only one who feels like this? It’s something about the headlights, I think. And the side looks just like a 1979-1981 Accord sedan, too.
The “problem” is that the clean, crisp styling this car exemplifies ran counter to Toyota’s design language at the time. Look at a 1977 Corona or Corolla and note the slightly busy design cues and rounded edges. (And by ’77 those cues had been watered down compared to earlier years.) This looks too European to be a Japanese car.
Having lived in Nagasaki in ‘77, this looks normal to me. Just needs kanji on the plate and those almost-to-the-headlights fender mirrors. And the curtains & tissue box; then you’re good.
My first gut reaction was Audi Fox.
I feel like this was built at the “Gung Ho” factory.
“I like you. You make me laugh.”
Nuclear family – check
Car – check
Road – check
OK, everything is normal.
Oh wait, I ate ‘ethnic’ food last night. I don’t feel so good.
When I see a pic of a “not looking for any trouble” style car like this I auto- visualize some 3″ convex flares, watnabes with the required negative offset, a color not found in nature, and some brian ferry cassettes in the console. Or, a lowered ’64 malibu on daisy wheels. Some verisimilitude can make bland cars exquisite.
Mercedes would be a good fit here, where I need only one image from the Torch Archive and a single word, say “spongiform”, to get the ball rolling in the comments
The front end on this looks like it was designed by AI. It’s got that uncanny valley thing going on. Also maybe triggering a bit of trypophobia.
Even if you ditch the center headlights it would still look odd, because the others would be too far apart. You’d need to pull those in a bit, then add some marker lights or turn signals outboard of those.
before reading I thought: LHD = Europe= Accord body with Lada front. It’s the wheels for me that looks Accord
Nebulous and Vague..and the Moire makes it look even more sketchy
It is the car as appliance. These were quite popular in Sweden when I was little, but mostly rusted away by the time I reached high school. Delightfully conventional in every aspect imaginable.
My first thought was big FIAT or one of the many eastern block versions of a FIAT.
When I first saw the photo, I guessed it was some sort of English Ford from the late ’70s. But then, I’m looking at it on my phone and don’t have my reading glasses. Looks extra-generic that way.
Every time I look at it I think its a different vehicle.
That makes it the perfect getaway car. Twenty witnesses will all say it’s something different.
My aunt had one of these when I was REALLY young. I can barely remember it other than it having rust issues and her sending it off to be scrapped.
It was bad enough that she replaced it with a shite-brown Austin Allegro.
My first thought on seeing the image?
Huh, that Fiat 131 looks a bit odd.
I want to see that magic giant dog.
Pretty sure Torch writes these pieces just so he can use the word “masticate” and giggle a little because it’s so close to “masturbate”.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
I want to pet it and tell it that it is a good pup.
This is a child’s crayon drawing of a car. To be specific, it is the drawing of a child who does not care about cars. This car is meant to fill out the background of a much more interesting drawing of a field of wildflowers, or sit in the driveway of a beautiful fairy house, or be crushed beneath the metal foot of a giant, fire-breathing robot lizard. It is the classic formula of “default car”: short box at either end with a tall box in the middle, two circles at the bottom for wheels, a little dot at one end for headlights, and (if you’re lucky) a dash of red at the other end for the (U.S.-spec) taillights – because a child who doesn’t care about cars isn’t going to bother reaching for a second color to represent an amber indicator. This photo looks fake because it is in the center of the picture – when, obviously, it should really be to the side of some larger, more interesting image. When I first clicked on the article, the photo didn’t load. When I refreshed it so the photo would load properly, I still didn’t see anything.
Off-topic, maybe you can sign Mercedes Streeter to be a writer here? She left that other site yesterday
Wait, what? Really? Best wishes of greener pastures and all that, but I certainly hope she has interest in grazing this pasture.
I find it amusing that it’s a farewell disguised as an introspective instead of the typical “eat shit” post.
Someone said Herb won’t yet the roast outgoing writers anymore
Typical slash-and-burn VC tactics. I guess the only OGs left are…Tom McParland and Rob Emslie?
Out of the satellite sites, I probably miss The Takeout the most. Most of the good writers were lost in the last couple year’s diaspora.
I sometimes accidentally type in the url for the A/V Club and get sad.
I don’t know why you’d buy websites just to get rid of the reasons people read those websites. I also get the sense that the comments are pretty much dead, way fewer replies than usual (not that I was extremely popular, but sometimes I’d get notifications on a post) and a lot less interesting content.
The worst part is all the writers I liked have dispersed into the ether and harder to find.
I never did manage to escape the grays despite years of comments and not a single insult that i can remember. Maybe i should have insulted more people more often.
Who are the other freelancers there? Blackstock?
Oh wow. She was kind of the only reason I’d occasionally check over there. I guess I can take it off my RSS feed for good now.
Damn, so mannnnnnny hours wasted on that site when I should have been working. I haven’t been keeping up with it since this launched, who’s left over there?
I still check it for NPOND. That’s about it.
Same
She and Rob are the only reasons I went back there. When she wrote about her troubles financing a new motorcycle my comment included caution about the fleeting nature of employment in her field. Might have been uncharacteristically good advice coming from me.
I go there for the NPOCP.
I stay until the “subscribe to our newsletter” pop up pops up.
I type in Dave Tracy’s email, then I’m done there for the day.
“Who needs writers when we can have autoplay videos?”
Unless I missed a comment from one of them, David and Jason’s silence suggests to me that they may be more than aware of Mercedes’ departure from that other site, if you know what I mean. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.
Reminds me of the lines of a that-era Ford Granada (Europe). Not the most famous Ford then, but has a following.
That was my first thought too
Meh, I’d still take it over most any Camry. Sure, it’s derivative and a bit bland as a result, but it’s not bad or offensive (af least not to me).
It looks fake because, as far as styling cues go, it has none. No character lines, no interesting curves, and it’s silver, probably the blandest color.
It’s not a car. It’s just a placeholder for one.
They played with the grille design to make it somehow look “distinctive.”
The grille almost looks Russian/Soviet to me, like if you told me this was some version of a Lada, I might believe you.
THIS, 100%.