This might come off sounding snobbish and pretentious (and I wouldn’t have it any other way), but I have to get this out of my system. The current state of American cars says everything to me about why our beloved auto industry is flailing like a rodent in a bathtub.

My beloved MINI is in the shop for a bit of work, so I was given this ridiculous Pontiac Grand Prix to drive around in the interim. I can tell you, after having spent a day with this thing, that there is not one bit about this car that I even remotely like.

To begin with, it’s ugly. I’m not talking about mild cosmetic blemish ugly, this thing is more on par with radioactive creature from the Siberian swamps ugly. Of course, personal taste is just that – personal. But there are a few things even the most disparate of individuals can agree on, and I hope this is one of them. It’s a mixture of pointless blobs with no defined purpose and a proportion and balance problem that defies logic. There’s no central striking feature or theme and instead the beast resembles a mangled ball of plasticine.

But what really rubs me the wrong way is the interior. For a rental, I could really give a hippo’s patoot about how it looks from the outside. It’s a short-term fling, and I can get past it making me turn green when I walk up to it in the parking lot. But real beauty should be on the inside, no?

It all comes down to ergonomics and attention to detail. There are some very fine automobiles on the road today. BMW, Audi, Saab, Volvo, VW, and even Cadillac fall into this category (for the most part). It’s not just because they look nice or drive well. It’s also because you can tell the engineers cared when they were brainstorming and designing. When you put a button here vs. yonder, there has to be a reason. I’d have to say that the arrangement of the Pontiac’s interior is careless at best.

There’s no parallel design between components. They all feel like individually designed units that all ended up getting duct-taped together. What you come away with is a Felix-and-Oscar-like companionship between elements that does no one the least bit of good. This might sound nit-picky, but here are a few examples.

The odometer is placed in a computer readout array located above the radio. Why would you put such a small monochromatic display there, balanced uncomfortably on console’s left side? It leaves an empty void on the right side of the column and begs the question, “what is the sense in separating the odometer from the speedo and tach?” But, that’s where it is because it is nestled in with various other readout pages (displayed in very nonsensical short-hand gibberish) that don’t necessarily need to be in with the primary gauges.

This computer bugs me for one other reason. The background red is different than that of the radio’s more purple background. And, the text sizes and fonts are all different between the two.

All the buttons are made out of that soft mushy rubber that doesn’t feel intuitive when you’ve pushed it. It’s like the rubber on a TV’s remote control where you’re never quite sure if you hit the buttons just right because they’re so elastic. What I want is a button that goes “click”.

The driver’s seat has an electric motor to make it go forward and backward, but has a manual handle to adjust the recline of the seat back. Why? Why not all electric or all manual? Either is fine; seriously, I’d cope. It’s like having a power window on the left and a hand crank on the right. It just seems cheap and tacky.

The steering wheel has horrifically chunky faux-aluminum plastic accents that scream “frugal” and “lowbrow”. They make me feel like I’m bringing Two Buck Chuck to a nice dinner party.
In all honesty, the interior of my car has plastic components and oddly placed displays and features. But, the difference is they are engineered to fit with the car and conform to a very defined style. There’s uniformity, purpose, and attention to detail. My car costs a fraction of what this behemoth would fetch at the dealer. I have a feeling most of that cost goes into the huge power train. While it is a front-wheel drive 4-speed automatic (hardly a recipe for excitement), it’s got a 3.8 V-6 in it.

The bottom line is that a car doesn’t have to be expensive to be nice. All the makes I listed above build cars that cost, on average, a small fortune. But, somehow Honda, Toyota, Renault, Mazda and even Skoda (gasp) sell cars that are easy on the wallet and eyes, and have good usability mojo.

Why can’t Detroit understand why the rodent is flailing? Maybe it’s because the engineers are busy designing ugly rodent-sized swim caps instead of building useful rodent-sized waterwings.