The Porsche 911 is timeless and therefore hasn’t changed that much in 60 years. Not every car is blessed with the 911’s good looks, nor its enduring style, leading some modern cars to have little-to-no resemblance to their predecessors. What new car do you think is unrecognizable from previous generations or models?
The 911 is not the only car whose looks have held up, or whose stubborn visual identity is impossible to separate from its badge: the Jeep Wrangler is another vehicle in another category that’s immediately recognizable only as a Wrangler. Come to think of it, a lot of off-roaders share this trait. The new Jimny hardly looks any different than Suzuki’s off-roader going back to the 1970s. And, lately, the Toyota Land Cruiser has gone back to its old looks with a model whose lines hew closely to the Land Cruiser Series 60. But not all SUVs cling to their roots, as the 2024 Hyundai Santa Fe shows.
Then there are cars like the Honda Accord, which looks nothing like the one we had just 20 years ago — let alone the original from the mid-1970s. I’ll let you decide if the changes are for the better, but the Accord is quite different than the sedan it once was. Maybe not so different with the overall direction of its design these last two generations, but still a (literally) big departure from before.
Model bloat and safety features have something to do with certain cars looking unrecognizable, but that’s not always true. The Ford Explorer went from being a Ranger with a closed cargo area to a blobby crossover that has nothing in common with the former pickup. What other cars do you think this applies to? What new car do you think is most unrecognizable from its previous models?