The grille is one of the most important elements of a car’s design, but why have they become so big, and where will it all end? Peter Stevens shares his thoughts -
and even Tatra. None of these cars needed a front-mounted radiator but the designers struggled with finding a way to bring character to the front end.
In the early 1970s designer Giorgetto Giugiaro’s Mk1 Golf very successfully combined the headlamps with the black plastic front intake grille; the slots in it were only cut through where airflow was actually needed, and a modern, elegant look was achieved that was a huge leap forward from the rear‑enginedWhilst VW followed this path, Audi, using the same floor pan, eventually separated the grille from the headlights and by 2007 introduced the ‘single frame grille’, with no apparent continuous...
With modern car makes becoming more and more difficult to recognise from either the side view or the rear end, the emphasis of visual differentiation is at the front. This is where things appear to have got out of control, and it is the ‘upmarket brands’ that have the most to explain. There are news stories quoting BMW’s senior vice president of project management, Peter Henrich, as saying that feedback on the latest grilles ‘has been very positive’.