Have you noticed how modern products feel so uninspired?
How everything has somehow become the same?
Color-by-numbers formulas instead of art, craft, and inspiration.
Product launches have been reduced from exciting and groundbreaking to incremental changes.
Things feel like committee decisions made to appease everyone and offend no one.
And the industry that hurts me the most to watch - the automotive industry.
Automakers, I’m here to tell you, as a true enthusiast, what is missing in today’s cars, what makes a car great in a car guy’s eyes, and what we are longing for again.
And I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.
Automotive industry, I’m Dominic Scalise of IYKYK. Why don’t you have a seat right over there.
Now, when I say I’m a car guy, I mean it.
And I’ve ALWAYS been a car guy.
As a kid in the back seat of my parents’ car, I could tell you every car on the road, at night, by the shape of its taillights. No joke.
I had a Bugatti EB110 poster in my bedroom.
A Ford GT90 model on my dresser.
I’d come up with mnemonics to remember car names.
I’d religiously watch PowerBlock TV on the weekends.
Everyone has some quirky, Rain Man-y, one-off encyclopedic-knowledge thing.
Cars are mine.
All this to say - I’m rooting for automotive. I genuinely just want cool, well-designed cars out on the road.
My problem with modern cars is that they are going the way of modern “luxury” apartments — They are taking the investment away from the core space and putting it into amenities.
In the real estate game, this is a great way to lease apartments. You pull back your investment in the hundreds of individual units of your 20-story building, drop in smaller living spaces, cheaper appliances, LVT floors, and pour some money into one floor of amenities that most will never use - A pool, a movie room, and a tiny gym.
12-month lease → Signed, baby.
For cars, that amenity floor has become tech. And it’s off the rails.
To be clear, this misdirection isn’t “predatory” by companies — I despise that logic, as if we’re not adults who can make our own decisions.
We’re complicit. We vote with our dollars, and companies follow where those votes go.
People simply like novelty. It’s fun!
But the fun wears off, and I think we’re sobering up and realizing that we don’t actually want an amenity floor, we want a beautiful home.
Well-designed cars are like a Frank Lloyd Wright home. If you’ve ever been in one, you know they feel so special because they feel so considered.
A sunken living room for added drama. Lowered ceilings in certain rooms for a feeling of intimacy. Built-in furniture making the room feel smart and intentional.
They’ve got soul.
It feels good to be in something so thoughtfully designed and carefully made.
Car guys want this feeling every time we’re in our car.
We don’t want more tech, we want engagement.
We don’t want more investment in what takes our head out of the car (amenities); we want more investment in the foundation of our machine.
To distill this, I looked to the iconic cars of the past to understand the commonalities.
Turns out, there is a common box that iconic cars fit into, but the way they get into that box is like that developmental shape sorting toy for kids.
Obviously not an exhaustive list, but I dropped some car examples into these categories to help illustrate.
These cars are like the 4-minute mile.
It wasn’t until the mid-1950s that the 4 minute mile was broken. And up till then, many believed the human body simply couldn’t do it.
Funnily, less than 2 months after it was broken, another person did.
Years later, plenty did.
These cars change the way people perceive how things can be. They set a new baseline.
03 SVT Cobra - Leveled up what muscle car performance could be with a (massively underrated) supercharged V8 with a blood-curdling whine. Became the American Supra in the aftermarket.
Dodge Viper - Rewrote what an American sports car could be (one street light wrap-around at a time)
Nissan GTR - Supercar performance at a fraction of the price
Quirky combos are the curveballs of automotive.
Oftentimes they mix a typical car model with an atypical powertrain. Or they take the original intended use of a model and do the opposite.
For most people, these cars are head-scratchers. For cars guys, we’re like, “A lowered, overpowered, zero-traction death-machine F150??? Hell yeah.”
Ford SVT Lightning - A lowered, supercharged, street racing machine
Mercedes E55 AMG - An elegant sedan with an absolutely raucous motor
Buick Grand National - A menacing turbo Buick that could beat a Corvette
GMC Syclone - A truck that was faster than the Porsche 911 of its time
BMW Z3 Coupe - The “Clown Shoe”, aka what happens when you give the green light to an after-hours project for BMW engineers
This is the only one that even non-car guys will get. Because everyone loves beauty, and these cars are simply works of art. Perfect proportions, sweeping lines. These are the ones that give people butterflies.
Jaguar E-Type - Enzo Ferrari called this the most beautiful car ever made.
FD Mazda RX7 - The Japanese stunner.
Mercedes Pagoda - Absolutely elegant convertible
Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spyder - It was in Ferris Bueller for a reason
Aston Martin V8 Vantage - James Bond, baby.
Some cars are simply the best example of what they are. These cars were blessed by some magical confluence of artistry, engineering, and maybe most importantly - enthusiasm. You can tell that the team that made these were EXCITED about what they were creating.
E46 M3 - The ultimate M car.
E39 M5 - The ultimate driver’s sedan
Acura Integra Type R - The FWD King.
991 Porsche 911 - The ideal modern sports car. Porsche playing right in the pocket.
200 Series Land Cruiser - The greatest SUV ever made
Boiled down, they were all passion projects by car enthusiasts for car enthusiasts, not just another base hit for shareholders. It was a confluence of right place, right time, right people for a synergy within the company of:
Originality - These cars were unique and stood out from the pack.
Excitement - You can tell internal teams were having fun.
Pride - The internal team had pride in the project.
Taking chances - The company took a real swing for the fences.
“Don’t bunt. Aim out of the park. Aim for the company of immortals.” - David Ogilvy
Listen, I’m a businessman. I’m well aware carmakers can’t just go on making halo cars for a tiny subset of its buyers. Profit is the lifeblood of a business. Planned obsolescence can be profitable, and high tech cars speed up the cycle.
But I do believe in the importance of morale.
Today, customer morale is low, and I can only guess employee morale at many of these companies is the same.
People want to be proud of their work. They want to feel inspired. It can’t feel great to be producing things that you know will age poorly.
Automakers, I ain’t asking for much. I’m just asking you to pull back the spend on that amenity floor and invest back in the living space.
Give us
Fewer screens and SMALLER screens. Integrate them into the interior. This slapping an iPad on the dash trend is lazy and awful.
Driver-focused interiors (make us feel like the BMOC - the big man on campus)
Driving personality (even if a lil’ sketchy)
Inspiring motors
UNIQUE exteriors
Clicky buttons
Snappy knobs
Vault-like doors
Automakers taking chances again (except you, BMW - you’ve been taking too many chances with those front ends)
We’ve got so many car guys in this community. I want to hear your thoughts:
What is important to you in a car?
What do you find yourself longing for in modern automotive?
If you liked this, then check out some more of my automotive articles like:
Cheers!
Dominic
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