Britain's 'Perfect' Car is Good Science, Bad Car Design

Prof. Hancock isn't suggesting that some automaker should adopt and produce the design, but instead it seems to be sort of a thought experiment built off the back of a survey conducted with around 2,000 participants.

The survey asked a few basic questions: What is your favorite car? Which aspect is the most attractive? And so on. After tallying around 3,800 data points, Prof. Hancock identified the most attractive individual elements of the cars that were mentioned. That's probably an interesting list to peruse. But instead of stopping there, Hancock cobbled the top-rated bits together. And not by, for example, taking the elements to a professional car designer and saying, "produce a cohesive design using these as reference points."

Nope. Instead, they're all just pasted on top of each other. And it is, quite frankly, hideous. Want to know what comprises what here? Up front, there are Mini Cooper headlights grafted onto the front fascia of an Aston Martin DB9. Aft of that, Rolls Royce Phantom doors blend poorly into the mirrors of a Citroen C4 Picasso and the roof and windows of a Lamborghini Gallardo. The Triumph Spitfire rear end is topped off with taillights from an Audi A1.

Let's hope that Hancock and his surveys don't attract the attention of any vehicle design students.