In the automotive fashion cycle, some cars go from hero-to-zero faster than junior-high socialites.
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At first charm, the Chrysler PT Cruiser appealed to the latent street-rodder. But with familiarity, the PT was exposed as cute, and cute has limited shelf life.
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Volkswagen beat the retro drum harder than anyone with the New Beetle, and for pure nostalgia it sold well until everyone who loved "Herbie" had one.
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Scion's hippest urban box, the xB made all the papers in a major way, but its "my shoes came in this" vibe has lost its newsy punch.
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In the Pontiac Solstice, General Motors delivered a sports car that's more sporty than sport, thanks to oatmeal power and an aversion to storage space.
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A retro hit at introduction, the two-seater Ford Thunderbird flashed its poodle skirt to eager sales applause, but almost as quickly buyers realized they wanted something more forward-thinking.
During the 1950's in America, whitewall tires and fins were easy marks when it came to gauging automotive fashion. Overt capitulations to style, both were expected to rise and fall with fashion. But the same is also true of entire cars. Whether it's for some iconic new design trend, or just the fickle winds of fashion, entire vehicles have gone from glory to ignored about as fast as they could reach 60 mph.
Today, the lead time required to build a car is out of synch with society's attention span. Thanks to the information revolution, both rules and perceptions change even before the metal can be shaped. The public, you might say, never had it so fast. Let's look at some modern machines that burned bright and faded fast, plus some icons that continue to shine.
Hummer H2 It had its fling with polite society, a soiree combined from the macho family resemblance to the military-derived
Hummer H1 and the housebroken underpinnings of a
Chevy Suburban. Hot when it first landed, thanks to the shift in the environmental winds, the H2 is now the redneck's parade float.