Invisible Cars

April 7, 2006 - By John LeBlanc

Have you flipped through your high school yearbook lately? If you're like me, it's always easy to remember the kids that stood out.

Your friend with the '72 Chevelle who use to drop stink bombs in the smoking area and once streaked during gym class. What a cut-up! Or your friend's sister who sat next to you in physics, always got As and ended up being an architect/brain surgeon/lingerie model when she grew up. Such a slacker!

But some of the pimply faces in the 20 year-old grainy black and white pictures don't ring any bells at all. Nothing. Nada. These are the kids who slipped through four years of high school without making any kind of impression whatsoever. In fact they might as well have been invisible.

At a time when the benchmarks in reliability, safety and performance of cars, in general, are all relatively even, styling has become the key differentiator when new car shoppers are on the prowl.

It's why car designers are paid and treated like rock stars. It's why some of those designer's cars, like the Chrysler 300C, MINI Cooper and Ford Mustang, stand out not only for their looks but also for their success on the showroom floor.

It's also why Toyota, in their quest for world domination (which in the past, admittedly, has meant some of the most bland looking, yet best selling cars on the planet) is heavily investing in redesigning their lineup with cars that imbue more character and style. Take the new FJ Cruiser for instance.

But be warned. Despite this resurgence in characterful car design, there are still a bunch of new cars whose visual impression is as fleeting as the Canadian spring. Feel free to call all them Invisible Cars.

The Invisible Car list has to start with that trio of uninspiring, former-Daewoos that Chevrolet started importing into Canada a few years ago. If you can identify the tapioca of tin Chevrolet Aveo, Optra or Epica from 50 paces, you're a better car-spotter than moi. You can add to the Aveo's stealthy nature in that General Motors has generously rebadged the subcompact as a Pontiac Wave and a Suzuki Swift to further water down its already invisible identity.

Ford is all full of piss 'n vinegar these days with their boldly designed Fusion. But if you're a member of the witness protection program, try their lackluster Ford Five Hundred or Freestyle. Both virtual cloaking devices on wheels.

Of course, some vehicles are invisible by their sheer ubiquity on our roads.

Can you get a picture of what a tedious Toyota Camry, monotonous Honda Accord, wearisome Chevrolet Impala or repetitive Chrysler minivan look like? Oops, times up.

Auto invisibility is not only limited to individual models. Some car makers-who shall be named Acura-have seen fit to make their entire humdrum lineup almost transparent to the naked eye.

And then there are cars that are almost Big Foot-like in their legendary ability to avoid being spotted simply because no one's buying them.

If anyone has photograph evidence of the existence of a Volkswagen Phaeton on public roads (no VW PR shots, please), you have my email.

Someone once said it takes just as much money to make a car look exciting as it is to make it dull. That wasn't me, but I do know that flipping through my old copies of Car and Driver 20 years from now, I'll come upon a certain car and say, "Suzuki made a Verona?"

- John LeBlanc, Publisher, www.straight-six.com