With the Popularity of SUVs and Crossovers, Is Styling Going out of Style?

With the current popularity of SUVs and crossovers, it would seem buyers today are more concerned than ever with the practical aspects of vehicle ownership when making their purchase decision.

Certainly, compared to a sedan, these vehicles offer packaging and usability advantages that are undisputed.

Combine that with the ubiquitous availability of all-wheel drive for rough weather or off-roading and refinement that buyers of earlier versions of these vehicles could only dream of and you get transportation that meets a lot of needs for a lot of people.

And I can understand why someone would love their SUV because it does such a good job of satisfying the practical reasons they bought it in the first place—much like a toaster oven or vacuum cleaner.

It’s just that, in a Concours d’Elegance of the future, I can’t imagine some pristine golf course littered with these things. And while I don’t doubt that the appearance of a vehicle still plays a role in the purchase decision, for many buyers, its importance is secondary.

So, for those of us who make our career in automotive design, this could be very disturbing. It’s conceivable in the not-too-distant future that some marketing hack armed with consumer data and an AI program could spit out perfectly commercial designs. Not beautiful, mind you, but that’s not the point, seemingly not anymore.

But then we have the crossovers, which, unlike the two-box SUVs, seem to prioritize style at least as much as function.

The difference between a true SUV and a crossover used to be that SUVs were truck based, body-on-frame construction, while crossovers generally were body integral, sometimes sharing their platform with a sedan sibling, being neither a car nor a truck (cross-over, get it?).

Over time, that definition has become muddled as some full-size SUVs have gone to integral construction, and today people just refer to anything that isn’t a car or truck as an “SUV.”

With a crossover, the design pendulum between car-like and truck-like can swing widely. With car-like, there’s more of an emphasis on style, and less on utility. Some, like the Subaru Crosstrek compact crossover, which is a lifted Impreza 5-door, really are cars. And while I would never accuse Subaru of focusing too intently on styling, clearly others do.

Buick’s recent Envista, for example—a fastbacked, 5-door hatchback—stands out as a small, stylish crossover that prioritizes its exterior design over cargo capacity and ultimate utility.

The same is true for GM’s Cadillac Lyriq and Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 EVs: Both make strong, expressive design statements, even though Cadillac and Hyundai refer to them as SUVs.

This, of course isn’t new. Manufacturers have known for decades that consumers would happily trade off some functionality for style, and even pay a premium for it.

Think of all those two-door “personal luxury” coupes, muscle and pony cars in the ‘60s and ‘70s (how many two-door body styles exist now?) that sold instead of their sedan-based counterparts.

The original 1964 Mustang was a great example of taking plebian components and topping them with a great looking body.

Perhaps more applicable, in 2008 BMW introduced the X6 (pictured at top of story), a body variant of the boxier X5 SUV but with less room, less seating capacity (4 only initially), and much less storage capacity. But here again is the fastback roof profile and a lot more swagger.

At the time, many thought BMW was cutting their product pie into too many pieces, and that the X6 would find a very limited audience.

But here we are, 16 years later and there’s still an X6, as well as an X4 and X2, smaller counterparts to the more utilitarian X3 and X1.

In addition, Mercedes Benz, Audi, and Porsche have all taken BMW’s lead and produced their own versions of more highly styled, less capacious “coupe” versions of their utility vehicles, which sell at a premium.

And while the notion of a utility vehicle compromised for style would seem a contradiction in terms, it’s reassuring, (at least to me) that the public is still willing to pay purely for design.

There’s a saying in product design that when all else is equal, the consumer will invariably choose what they perceive as the better looking option.

Of course, with a vehicle purchase there’s a lot of variables to that “all else,” some of which are very practical considerations. But as the latest offerings of SUV/crossovers illustrate, consumers appear to want both the practicality and the style—and are willing to compromise on the former.

So, rest easy automotive designers. For the time being at least, your services are still needed.

Dave Rand (pictured right) is the former executive director of Global Advanced Design for General Motors.