Styling of cars: is there a relationship between the style of cars and the culture identity of a specific country?

Abstract

Today, with globalization, an important characteristic of a car’s brand should be its clear and precise identity. In order to obtain a successful brand, company managers should continuously be innovative without forgetting the product history of the brand and should use the culture of the country as a value system and as an inspirational background. The goal of this paper is to analyse the relationship between the car’s style and some implicit references such as the culture identity of a specific country. The analysis is carried out on the basis of the extracted data on and study of characteristic styling lines of the cars. French cars (Peugeot, Citroën and Renault) as well as German cars (Volkswagen) are selected and analysed. It is found that specific styling lines are particular to French cars. From this analysis, it is concluded that a French style identity is implicitly embedded in the car’s design.