Wow, dude, your front end sure is tall

It's gorgeous, isn't it? Form following function, with character lines in all of the right places and an appealing, aggressive stance. Let's go for a ride! Honda swears it's the 2008 Accord.

I think the current Accord coupe is an attractive car, but this one is swoonworthy. To me it has a British gentleman look about it; certainly not something you'd expect to discover a Honda badge on. I could see this automobile labeled the newest Jaguar or Aston Martin coupe and never have a second thought about it.

Unfortunately, I fear it's a harbinger of monotonous styling to come. How can that be? Well, see how high the front end is? You don't really notice it until it's pointed out, and then it's all you can look at. (That's true for me, anyway.) In any case, that's to meet new pedestrian safety standards in Europe that require a lot of empty space between a car's "skin" and anything underneath it. This car is novel; ten followers that look just like it won't be.

So we have this regulation, which works directly against a lot of other recent advances (most notably to me, lighting technology that permits extremely low-profile, yet still effective, headlights). What's it mean to styling? Well, we'll have a lot of broad-side-of-the-barn front ends. Hopefully it will be temporary; just until the designers draw a car from the beginning of its cycle with this regulation in mind and we have unusually-located radiators and what-not to permit a swoopier face.

Perhaps it will be like the new bumper regulations in the mid-'70s, that gave us weirdness like the '73 Corvette and the oh-so-homely "bumperettes" slapped on the 911. Automakers had trouble with the changes in the short-term, but gave us pleasing designs on the following cycles. Perhaps this new regulation is an impetus for styling that we can't predict, but will enjoy.