Fashion goes round in circles for clothing… and car bumpers
Industry’s relentless search for effectiveness and attractiveness has made this component go through a very particular timeline of conceptual and technical changes
Being used in the real world makes cars susceptible to damage of many kinds, so they need all the protection they can have. While that quickly makes us think of airbags and electronic-aid systems, we must consider low-speed accidents just as much. After all, while they’re much less harmful to everyone, they tend to be much easier to happen. And this is when bumpers come to attention: they’ve been our allies in this kind of protection for a long time.
As you can imagine, the continuous effort to improve car components in every possible manner bore fruits in the bumper deparment as well. Many types of material have been applied, even more shapes have been created… one could say the only constant aspect of a bumper is the positions where it goes in a car for obvious reasons. The thing is, such evolutionary process has made the bumper abandon some of its initial features… only to get them back later!
Once upon a time…
The very first bumpers were created merely to provide the body with physical protection. That made them nothing but metal bars horizontally fixed on the lowermost front and rear sections of the car. Most of them were curved on the edges in order to become less aggressive to people’s ankles, to look somewhat nice and, to a lesser extent, to help reduce aerodynamic drag — the latter only become actually relevant once cars became truly popular around the world.
Creativity starts to kick in
As cars became more common on the streets, more companies were founded and more designs appeared. North-American companies became some of the most influential in the 1950s for their high-end models, and that reflected on bumpers through the use of opulent style and chrome trim. A very particular case is the addition of cone-shaped guards between the headlights: they were nicknamed “Dagmars” for their resemblance with the TV personality’s bra cups.
Less is more
It’s commonly said that the 1950s fashion quickly seemed excessive in the 1960s and was crushed by the oil crisis in the 1970s. Car design responded with much simpler components, such as bumpers covered in black plastic. That made them more discreet and resistant to low-speed collisions. Makers used to add plastic guards on the sides as well to offer wraparound protection at the expense of polluting designs which weren’t exactly rich in the first place.
The US were responsible for a rather curious example at that time. Their safety laws required car bumpers to be more resistant than what was needed in Europe and Volkswagen chose to solve that by only changing them. The result is presented on the photo: bumpers bizarrely long enough to disrupt the whole appearance.
Integration with separation
More years passed and the industry kept moving forward. By the 1990s, front and rear bumpers became integrated to the body so as to favor aerodynamics and visual harmony. While they no longer protuded from the body, they were still clearly separated from it: the line where body and bumper meet was used in the external design to visually smoothen the transition from one to another. Sadly, good-looking results were more common only among high-end models.
While that bumper design could come in the body color to improve the car’s appearance, it was still possible to leave unpainted to cut costs. As a result, plastic bumpers became an unmistakable symbol of low-end trim versions as well as plastic hubcaps. As the years went on, they were quickly restricted to the smallest and cheapest models.
One of us! One of us!
At some point, the industry noticed new possibilities for the car’s design could be created by making the bumpers extensions of the body— it became almost impossible to see the limits between them. The added cost of making painted bumpers mandatory was overshadowed by the prospects of tweaking size and position of every front and rear part even more freely. Some of the strongest design identities seen today could only exist with this type of bumper design.
Crossover cars were preceded by the light off-road trend. Minivans, hatchbacks, and station wagons would get technical improvements such as all-wheel drive and visual accessories like unpainted plastic cladding. Since the bumpers were already large, the excess of black regions could only be reduced by adding even more details in silver.
The age of metabumpers
While the industry had developed the bumpers up to a fully integrated design, marketing and urban necessities made the unpainted trim come back. The rise of crossovers helped give this story quite a plot twist: fully integrated bumpers with unpainted lower section created to protect them from low-speed impact. In other words, since bumpers became part of the car’s body, they’ve received bumpers of their own! In off-road cars, they’re often paired to side cladding.
The history of car bumpers reminds us that no design or material is absolutely good or bad in this industry. Each option is more or less appropriate in a given market segment, region, or time. Those are all variables which have influence over the demand, so coming across concoctions like a bumper for a part which used to be the bumper is simply an attempt to give what people want around the world. Do you know any other interesting examples of that? Feel free to leave a comment!
