Quote:
Originally Posted by eddf
I also don't like cars that look like they were designed by committee and patched together. I've owned cars in the past where it was obvious the interior and exterior designers were on two separate paths.
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Yes and no.
The exterior was DESIGNED to look like the showcar, which was designed to look like the concept art.
When it came to production, the tooling for the panels had full license to ensure the lines of the car were sustained.
In order to keep costs down, the interior had to be based on the existing GM parts bins as much as possible. To illustrate the point, note the exterior design art does not suggest any existing components because there were none from a "shape" standpoint. Granted, as the production design took shape, certain external components began to be "borrowed" from other lines (e.g., fog lamps from Grand Prix, backup lamps from Envoy, door handles from Cobalt). From the get go, the interior design art was put together with suggestions from the parts bin. That's how you design a concept that has a chance of going into production. If the interior designer was not constrained by the production mantra, she could have gone hog wild with whatever looked the best. We might have a nice showcar, but no production car. Given the parts restrictions, the objective was for the interior theme to match the exterior theme when it came to the curves of the car. The Solstice exterior is curvy. So is the interior. In that respect, the design was nicely accomplished.
Contrast with the SKY, which has sharp exterior lines, which is complimented by the lines of the interior.