What makes a car stylish?

I thought I should write a car-style philosophy, as all good style blogs seem to have a philosophy.

But after several drafts, it turns out it’s trickier than it looks.

It appears there are four main conditions that a style philosophy should meet:
· It should be concise – perhaps three conditions that need to be met.
· It should contain wisdom belied by its short length.
· It should be useful as a tool for quickly checking one’s style choices – people can’t just go around saying, “I like that, therefore it must be stylish.” Imagine the chaos!
· It should be able to be tested against a few select but clear examples and be shown to be useful.

This in mind, I set about my first draft.

“In order to be stylish, a car must have prettiness, fastness, and lightness.”

I quite like that.

It’s certainly concise.

Wisdom? Well, prettiness and fastness are obvious inclusions, but lightness is a slightly unexpected requirement for a style philosophy, hinting that that there may be deeper thought behind it. (Only ever hint whether you are capable of deeper thought. Never confirm, nor deny.)

As a quick test? Well, as a checklist, I can ask – is my car pretty? Check. Is it fast? Check. Is it light? No? Well, not stylish then. (Sure, you could argue that prettiness is subjective, and fastness relative, but, meh, what isn’t?)

Can it be tested against select but clear examples? Well, it clearly includes the original Lotus Elite – fast, pretty, light – which is vitally important for a car style guide.

But, it equally clearly excludes the series one through three Land Rovers, which have none of fastness, lightness or prettiness, but which very clearly have style. The Land Rover wouldn’t even pass a two out of three test.




So, as a philosophy, that one fails.

Back to the notebooks.

(Though the Land Rover question does raise an interesting point though, that I may comment on in a post or two.)