How Can The Body Be So Beautiful And The Engine So Ugly
#1
#3
It's more expensive to finish parts, so parts that don't show don't get the treatment. They put a plastic cover over the whole thing.
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Slochap (10-20-2020)
#7
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#9
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#11
#15
Modern engines are pretty ugly (outside of supercars)
Modern engines are pretty ugly. The LS engine is a marvel of technology but you take off the cladding that those cars have you are left with something that is pretty ugly. I think it comes down to the fact that it is easier to make a cover than it is to make an engine pretty. What is sad is how few people seem to care anymore.
#16
You've hit the nail on the head. Ever look at coach-built cars from the 20s and 30s? The engines are a work of art just like the body. The reason for that was back then, an engine was still relatively new technology and cars themselves were still not completely ubiquitious. And if you owned a car back then, there weren't mechanic shops on every streetcorner, the reliability was such that you were lucky to get very far without needing some kind of repair and so you really needed to be at least a little bit familiar with how your car worked. When you bought an expensive car and showed it off to your peers at the country club, the first thing they'd do is open it up to look at the engine. So, manufacturers went out of their way to make then engine look impressive. Some years ago I got to visit the Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg Museum in Indiana. There was a whole room of period engines and transmissions mounted on stands, many of them "cutaway" engines that showed the internal working parts. I wish I could have stayed longer. I could have spent a couple of days just in that one room.
Today, everybody and their dog has a car, engines rarely need repair compared to back then and if they do, a mechanic is never far away. Almost nobody ever has any reason to open the hood of their car anymore. Its only a big deal to a few of us gearheads who still spin our own wrenches. But even if Jaguar wanted to make their modern engine look good, they've got to cram so much technology into a small space that you couldn't see anything but a bunch of wires and hoses anyway. So today, with very little user-serviceable parts, they just cover everything with plastic except the few places where the driver might have to add or check fluid levels. As perhaps the most extreme example in history, somebody on this forum photoshopped the XJS v12 as a Borg cube and I just about fell out of my chair laughing when I first saw it. Brilliant! That's been my screen-saver ever since.
Today, everybody and their dog has a car, engines rarely need repair compared to back then and if they do, a mechanic is never far away. Almost nobody ever has any reason to open the hood of their car anymore. Its only a big deal to a few of us gearheads who still spin our own wrenches. But even if Jaguar wanted to make their modern engine look good, they've got to cram so much technology into a small space that you couldn't see anything but a bunch of wires and hoses anyway. So today, with very little user-serviceable parts, they just cover everything with plastic except the few places where the driver might have to add or check fluid levels. As perhaps the most extreme example in history, somebody on this forum photoshopped the XJS v12 as a Borg cube and I just about fell out of my chair laughing when I first saw it. Brilliant! That's been my screen-saver ever since.
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Paul_59 (12-21-2019)
#18
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#19
I am not a fan of painting a picture of an engine on the cover. The judging should be cover off. Recent German cars without their covers is like a game called "find the engine."
Last edited by RacerX; 12-21-2019 at 10:36 AM.
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peppersam740 (12-21-2019)
#20