In Malcolm Gladwell's best selling new book Blink he explains the human phenomenon of making a nearly instantaneous judgment about a person, a place or a situation. Even if we cannot articulate what causes us to form an opinion so quickly, we intuitively react to stimuli based upon small clues that we subconsciously perceive. If your eye does not get all the visual clues it expects from a car's design, your subconscious is inclined to dislike the car.
Gladwell sighted a marketing research investigation of a particular brand of inexpensive brandy that was losing market share to a rapidly rising competitor. Blind taste tests by consumers could not identify a significant difference in the two products. When the products were identified to the test subjects by their bottle, the competitor's brandy emerged as a clear favorite. But when the brandy within the bottles was switched so that the competitor's brandy was in put into the bottle of the slipping brand, the rising competitor's more impressive looking bottle tilted the test tastes to the brandy in the fancy bottle. The researchers found that consumers were making an instantaneous selection of the competitor's brandy strictly because of the more impressive and attractive packaging.
This should not be news to automobile designers. Supposedly they know that if the new car buying customer does not get an immediate positive response to the shape/style/look of a car, he just will not like it no matter how accomplished the mechanicals are under the body. But sometimes a design slips through that fails because of a simple omission.
One of the best examples of a very good car that did not sell well due to a cosmetic design fault was the original Infiniti Q45. The most expensive and luxurious model of Nissan's upscale Infiniti name plate, the Q45 got nothing but great reviews from the car magazines and it was poised to be a sales success in its upscale sedan market. There was nothing radically different about the Q45; it looked pretty much like all the other full sized luxury sedans in its class. It came with a powerful V8, leather seats and a wood paneled interior.
What it did not have was the deciding factor for the older, conservative consumers of expensive luxury sedans consumers to reject it. Rather than sporting a conventional radiator grill, it had a blunt front panel with no discernable opening. The car had no radiator grill. This lack of a single design element was enough to put off the Q45's target. Responding to dealer's demands, Infiniti added a "radiator grill" opening with the requisite chrome gilding the following model year and the car became a reasonably successful seller.
You can instantly identify a Rolls Royce by its Greek Revival radiator housing, you can tell it is a BMW by the twin kidney shaped openings and the Bentley is known by its wire mesh grill. Even if the make and model are not known for a particular radiator shape, a sedan as pedestrian as a Camry or an Accord has a ceremonial grill because consumers of sedans will reject a car that is missing an important design element such as a radiator grill.
How was it that Infiniti could sell a car without a radiator grill? Today's radiators draw the majority of the cooling air from below the front bumper; modern car designers have found that they can generate better airflow through the cooling system with this technique. That shiny "radiator grill" that you proudly polish on your modern cars is as functional as a set of tail fins on a 1958 Desoto.
The Infiniti Q45 was a conventional car targeted for a conventional market, its unconventional looks made it a flop with its intended market. But unconventional looks can be an advantage when manufacturers are looking to appeal to an unconventional market segment.
The original VW beetle was not a major success in America until VW recognized that they had a unique product that needed a unique consumer. They directed their advertising toward quirky individualists; generally better educated and younger than the broad car consumer market. The VW target market adopted the Beetle as a fashion statement as much as a mode of transportation. And this pioneering market segmentation paved the way for loveably odd-looking cars to find their niche in America.