Comments on: Carwow, best-looking beautiful cars and the golden ratio.

By: Gary B Meisner

Gary B Meisner — Sat, 04 Sep 2021 15:21:20 +0000

Is it the case that is closed or is it your mind? Why is it that skeptics make such bold claims with so little in the way of facts or analysis? Did you do any research on where the golden ratio is used, why it is used and its impacts or did you just state an uninformed opinion?

Toyota, the world’s leading car company, choose the golden ratio for the design of its logo.

https://www.goldennumber.net/logo-design/

Google, the world’s leading search engine, did as well:

https://www.goldennumber.net/google-logo-design-golden-ratio/

And the list goes on.

https://www.phimatrix.com/applications/

Is it essential? No, as good design has many elements and position/proportion is just one. Is it beneficial? There are clearly some great minds who have done their homework who must think so.

By: Çetin Tüker

Çetin Tüker — Sat, 21 Aug 2021 12:28:30 +0000

So other 1 million designers did not use golden ratio in their designs? It is possible a few designers try to use golden ratio or some other useless ratio in their designs, so what? What happens? Are these golden designs in most selling designs? No. Are these beautiful? No. Anyone remember these designs? No. So, what is the significant impact of golden rasio in design? Nothing. Case closed.

By: Gary B Meisner

Gary B Meisner — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 16:15:06 +0000

In reply to John Leaman.

I don’t know if “self-defeating” is the adjective I would have used, but I do agree that my article goes into great depth on how NOT to apply the golden ratio to design, which begs an answer to the question of how it SHOULD be applied in automotive design. I do have the one example at the bottom of the page, and the Aston Martin article at https://www.goldennumber.net/aston-martin-golden-ratio/. I agree that another article dedicated to great applications of the golden ratio in cars that truly are beautiful would be appropriate. This specific article was written in direct response to the carwow article on their application of the golden ratio to find the most beautiful cars, which unfortunately it clearly did not do. Thanks for your observation and suggestion.

By: Gary B Meisner

Gary B Meisner — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 15:20:15 +0000

In reply to Anna.

The Smart Cars were available in the US, but distribution was ceased in 2019. You may find some used ones in the US.

https://www.smartusa.com/
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a27310639/smart-fortwo-discontinued-usa/
https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/l-Used-smart-fortwo-d1040

By: John Leaman

John Leaman — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 11:18:19 +0000

A great informative article – but kind of self-defeating; the subjective and objective rankings seem to be totally at odds. In terms of the car’s ‘face’, IMHO there are two distinct elements. The objective Golden Ratio technical stuff, and the expression – which goes way beyond that. All the cars referenced above – I would suggest – have unpleasant expressions, regardless of their GR scores. They are bloated and/or aggressive in a way that cars almost never were up unto the 1980s. You’ve managed to write a whole article about what makes for a Beautiful car, and not mentioned such words as ‘Pininfarina’ or ‘Ferrari’. OK, I know that slightly misses your point – but not by much. Anyway, the GR concept seems to work a lot better with a car’s side-view (a la Aston).

By: Anna

Anna — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 09:38:34 +0000

Is this car available for buying in the US?

By: Gary B Meisner

Gary B Meisner — Sun, 26 Apr 2020 22:34:26 +0000

In reply to Granville. The golden ratio can be applied in ways other than in a straight line. It appears in nature in the golden angle (360 degrees divided by the golden ratio, roughly 137.5 degrees) in the positions of seeds, petals and stems of plants. It can appear in the ratio of expansion of a logarithmic spiral, closely approximately the Nautilus spiral. The point though is that you can't just take any three points in space that create two lines with golden ratio proportion and say that this will be perceived as innately beautiful by most people. That, unfortunately, is the way the golden ratio was applied by carwow in their review of cars, and why the cars that were found to be the most beautiful by their methodology were actually the least attractive based on people's perceptions.

By: Granville

Granville — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 05:01:23 +0000

Is the golden ratio merely just the line segmentation ratio, nothing in nature or the universe is straight, a straight line, therefore should designs not take in account the curvatures, the Fibonacci spiral.
The trinity effect?= straight line + bisected line*(golden line) + curvature (certain angle, which I have not calculated yet, probably two points on the curve, intersection point at a 90 degree angle).