The Mercedes-Benz company has fallen into what might be described, if the nature of its decline were to relate to a person, as a state of spiritual malaise. Mercedes vehicles have lost much of the build quality, technological edge and design élan that once defined a world-famous marque. Mercedes now charges its famously steep premium for ugly, failure-prone and unremarkable cars. This ‘shooting brake concept’ vehicle is worth analysing because it takes all the current design mistakes now in vogue at Mercedes-Benz to extremes. In attempting to reach the top of the class of the Bangle school it exudes an air of snazzy, fatuous cheapness that would draw laughter from the casual observer if it wore a lesser car maker’s badge.
The genius contribution to car design of Chris Bangle that he called ‘flame surfacing’ creates the same sense here as it does on the bodies of the ugliest BMWs ever made, of simultaneous starvation and obesity. The bloating effect is especially noticeable on the Benz's beltline, which has been given an upwards-bellying curve to no effect other than to unbalance the car's proportions.
The entire greenhouse is a disaster, with errors accumulating, as they do in a poor design, toward the rear. The C-pillar is restrictive of both passenger headroom and rearward visibility for the driver while playing a large part in the car’s general sense of extreme, purposeless gesticulation.
A design tic of the moment is to pin elements such as tail-lights, headlights and windows by the corners and stretch them into elongated parodies of themselves. Here foolish-looking tail-lights contend with side glass beyond the C-pillar that has been distorted into a sharks-tooth shape, as if this were the perfect place on the body to display raciness and aggression. The plunging crease defining the haunch and the midline crease collide in a complete mess on the rear door, further complicating the inherent fussiness of 'flame surfacing.' What the crease near the door sills is about is anyone's guess. It subsides uselessly into the profile of the rear bumper. Just above it the only good line in the design struggles to impose unity as it develops into the upper edge of the bumper.
The critic who writes at the site linked below asks, bafflingly, ‘Who would have ever thought the humble Karmann Ghia might influence Mercedes-Benz styling?’ Would that it actually had done so. I would suggest it is more appropriate that the designers of this ‘shooting brake concept’ vehicle kneel before the house of Ghia and polish the boots of its designers with the oil of their collective nose.
A review of the Mercedes-Benz 'shooting brake concept' vehicle
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