Good design may always be on our shopping list when we look for a new car, but what’s to say that a vehicle is well designed? To some, design means the overall shape of the car, while to others it’s the way the car fits its function, how it addresses the details or even how well the car performs.

To help take a look at just what good design is and choose the best-designed vehicles sold today, we enlisted the help of several top-name design experts in the U.S. currently working outside the industry. They are Imre Molnar, dean of Detroit’s College for Creative Studies (CCS); Tom Matano, co-director of the school of Industrial Design at Academy of Art University in San Francisco; and Brigid O’Kane, coordinator of the Transportation Design Track at the University of Cincinnati. These schools, along with Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., are the educational centers for automotive design in the U.S.

Tom Matano

Our design panel feels that a well-designed car is determined by the following: proportion and stance, design consistency, functionality and staying power.

“Number one for me is proportion,” said O’Kane. “I don’t care what type of vehicle it is. The overall proportions of a vehicle define what it is. You can’t just take an SUV and shrink it down to make a commuter car.”

O’Kane also believes that an excellent wheel-to-body relationship is critical, with minimal fender overhang and wheels pushed as far out to the corners as possible.

“Right now we’re in an era when athleticism and confidence in stance seem to be highly regarded in the marketplace,” Molnar said. “That translates to vehicle design in minimal overhangs and large diameter wheels.”

Brigid O'Kane

The second quality of good design is a consistent and coherent intent. Matano clarified that when you look at a well-designed vehicle, “it should clearly communicate its purpose and what’s inside.”

“Sometimes designers try to throw all this stuff on a vehicle, and often it just looks like it’s overdesigned or many different designers worked on it,” said O’Kane, who feels that the design intent of a vehicle can get lost if too many designers get involved or too many changes are made in bringing it to production.

Imre Molnar

The functionality of a design is another important criterion. For instance, a sports-car shopper might be OK with a compromised cargo area or the lack of good cup holders, while a sport-utility buyer would take those things for granted.

Finally, another important element of good design is staying power — how the public perceives the design over the long term. Staying power involves purity of purpose but not making the design too extreme, clarified Matano. If the design is too radical, it may fade out of fashion quickly — but if it’s too staid, it might not find enough interest.

Molnar believes that automakers are showing too much restraint in their design. “If the automakers make a common mistake, it’s that they underestimate the aesthetic sophistication of the American public… It’s been proven time and time again that the typical American consumer has an appetite for a pretty radical design language,” he said.

While our experts were split on whether good design always sells or whether best-selling vehicles are always well designed, they did agree that if the vehicle communicates the core message of the design, then it will be successful.

Molnar is of the belief, almost unconditionally, that good design sells. “We live in a pretty enlightened time as far as design, and the products that are doing well in the market are by and large well designed. Quality issues notwithstanding, if you look at the successful models on the market, they’re well designed… It’s an exciting time. I don’t think we’ve seen such an exciting array of designs coming into the marketplace in a very long time.”

The following are the Top 10 Best-Designed Vehicles, ranked in order of popularity of choice from our polled experts and how they fit the criteria above. To learn more about which cars made our list, click on the vehicle names in the upper left-hand page navigation or click here to see the slideshow. 

Images courtesy of Tom Matano, Brigid O'Kane and Imre Molnar