Why car design is so critical and why do you care so much; assuming you live in America, in LA, Southern California etc., you probably spend a lot of time in the car, looking at other cars, or in places where you see a huge parking lot full of cars. For myself, I love beautiful design, and I hate looking at ugly cars.
Therefore as a design imperative, striving to design cars as beautiful as possible, just to make the urban landscape more beautiful.
For example, just inherited my mom’s old 2009 Hyundai Sonata, and I am amazed; looking at the Hyundai Sonata, over the years, how much it has evolved design wise, to become so much more beautiful.
For example, as a kid, I remember looking at Hyundai and Kia cars and being so offended how ugly they were. Now, if you look at modern Hyundai cars, Kia cars, and Genesis cars, they are beautiful. In fact, out of all of the car brands out there, Hyundai-KIA-Genesis is by far the most ambitious car brands in terms of design, and future thinking. And yes, Hyundai owns KIA and Genesis, just like how Volkswagen (see their brands) owns Lamborghini, Audi, Porsche, Ducati, Bentley, etc. And how BMW owns Rolls Royce. Certainly these mega conglomerates don’t want you to know this.
For example, if you go to the Volkswagen AG website, and you look at their brands, they are very clever in hiding some of their brands, like Skoda and Bentley, by having to click right.
For example, I went to a Pasadena art center student show for cars, and was amazed by how innovative all the students were. Like my brother-in-law John Narciso says, it is a lot of the Korean, and Korean American kids were by far the most innovative in car design.