"In car styling terms, he's a rock star, " according to Just-Auto's Mark Bursa, who describes Mr Hildebrand's Mini design as "one of the biggest hits of recent times".
Ford has announced plans to locate its advanced car-styling centre in Britain to take advantage of London's status as a leading centre of design.
Also, because so much of the car is mechanically preordained from generation to generation, the car's styling must carry the weight of the new.
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We guess buyers with either model will just have to settle for traditional luxury-car virtues like styling, performance and ownership cachet to justify their vehicular investments.
The car's styling forgave a multitude of other sins, including a penny-pinched interior, mediocre fuel economy and a rather heavy, trembling, fundamentally unathletic chassis that no amount of spring rates nor summer tires could mediate.
The difference from the previous car is that before, people bought the car mostly for the styling.
The extremely square styling of the car was the most distinguishing feature of the Scion brand when it debuted, but over the last few years a number of competitors finally have copied the idea including Nissan, with Cube, and Kia, with Soul.
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Mr Gale pushed through a radical revision of the car maker's long-stodgy styling in the late 1980s, so helping to save Chrysler from bankruptcy.
While earlier generations of car buyers tended to focus mainly on exterior styling, today's buyers are paying more attention to safety features and the overall driving experience.
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While the 2012 Audi A7 may not be as uncompromising sporty as a BMW 550i or carry the deeply chiseled exterior of a Mercedes-Benz CLS, it should appeal to a broad spectrum of luxury car buyers on the basis of its overall pleasing performance, tastefully attractive styling and broad array of cutting-edge amenities.
It's just hard to score in the luxury market when you refuse to do an eight-cylinder engine, wear undistinguished styling and don't offer a rear-wheel-drive car.
The car itself is based primarily on the MINI Cooper S, with similar front and rear styling and the l.6-liter four-cylinder turbo engine that debuted in the 2011 MINI S. (The engine gets 181 hp and up to 192 lb-ft of torque, with a 0-to-60 mph sprint of 6.6 seconds.) Fuel economy ratings are 35 mpg on the highway and 27 mpg in the city under the manual transmission variant.
This year, the car has received a face-lift, along with a new engine and transmission, to address criticisms that its styling was too conservative and that it was underpowered.
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