Like any human being, or at least near-human primate, I am replete with flaws and preconceptions and assumptions and unfair biases. I’m full of half-baked ideas and opinions, especially about cars and car-adjacent things. One opinion or bias or prejudice or whatever that I’ve realized I hold is something that, in hindsight, I’ve had for decades, ever since I was a kid.
It’s this: you know how some people put strips of chrome trim on the edges of their car doors? Well, those never look good. They look awful.
I know there may be some readers who have cars with such chrome trim, and I don’t mean to offend, but I can’t stay silent on this any longer. When I was a kid, my family had a 1980 Honda Accord sedan, and my mom, my very own mother, had the dealer install chrome trim on the door edges, and even as a child I knew something was wrong, something had been debased. Of course, back then, as a child, I didn’t have the words to express what I felt. But now, as a vastly older child, I do.
This sort of trim isn’t something that’s some relic of the past, it’s still very much alive today, and as you can see above, people are spending hundreds of dollars to make their cars look vastly worse.
So, why do I harbor such animosity for chrome door trim? Because it looks good on precisely zero cars, give or take no cars. It breaks up the overall form of the car, and no car seems to work better when the door shut lines are emphasized and delineated with shiny trim. Sure, there are some cars that pay special attention to the shape of the door shutlines, and I certainly respect it when designers pay attention to such details, but this crap simply does not work:
Car design since the 1930s has been about overall form; the era of cars being made of discrete, independent visual elements ended in the ’20s, and the only reason it ever was A Thing was because manufacturing ability needed to catch up. The bright piping on the door edges reminds me of one thing, and I don’t think it’s particularly flattering:
Yes, Captain Kangaroo‘s coat. The white piping, outlining the lapels and pockets. That’s what it looks like. And if you’re not a decrepit, old bastard like myself you may not be familiar with Captain Kangaroo, but that doesn’t really matter. Look at that dude. Is that the look you want for your car? Really?
I am, as always, interested in your opinion, since this is the world’s most influential automotive community. So, let’s do a poll about this, to see how The People really feel about terrible car door trim that manages to ruin the look of pretty much any car, ever:
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