[copperx]

Since I was a teenager I never understood why cheap cars had to be ugly in the exterior. I understand that if you're a car company you don't want to cannibalize sales of your higher-end models, but that doesn't stop a new company coming up with a really nice looking budget car.

Why did that never happen? I still wonder.

This car looks really nice, and proves that a nice looking car doesn't have to be expensive.

[kazinator]

Cheap cars are ugly on the exterior because 1) they are small, but 2) customers want the maximum possible interior space in those small cars. So they become awkwardly tall, boxy, with wheels out in their corners and so on. Also 3) they have to be reasonable to get into and out of.

[namdnay]

Exactly. Someone buying a cheap car is making a decision based on reason, not emotion

But they don't all look too bad: The Dacia Duster isn't ugly (if you like SUVs in general), and it's cheap as chips

[aitchnyu]

Duster is hardly optimised for boxiness compared to WagonR, which costs half as much in India, and has to make more usable space from much smaller dimensions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Wagon_R

[jonny_eh]

It's hard to make a new car company, especially one that targets the low end of the market. The low end of the market has tighter margins, and therefore needs high volume to be profitable. Hard to imagine a startup achieving that.

[jakobegger]

My guess is that the design itself is expensive.

[libc2020]

I think Mazda is trying to fill in that niche, the recent 2019 Mazda3 is more refined and luxurious compared to competitors in it's class, but without the price tag of a German luxury.

[namdnay]

The Mazda 3 is definitely not a "cheap car" in Europe. Mazda are positioning themselves slightly more upmarket in the premium sector, trying to nibble away at VW's dominance in this sector

[copperx]

The last time I tested a Mazda3 it fell squarely into the econobox category. What do you find luxurious about it? Or perhaps there's a secret trim level?

[megablast]

Exactly, it is just different shaped molds.

[onion2k]

For steel maybe, but even then it can be tricky to make some shapes. Doing it at scale with high precision is hard regardless of what you're making.

Bending more exotic metals, glass, and carbon fibre in more than one direction at once while maintaining it's strength is a really hard problem.

[sjwright]

Also less expensive car shapes are optimized for other priorities like space efficiency and ease of manufacture.

And don’t forget that much of what makes a sports car attractive is psychological and powered by a true perception of scarcity. If everyone’s car looked like an Aston Martin DB11 they wouldn’t be nearly so attractive as they look to us.