The Loss of Low: How Cars Lost Their Grounded Grace and What It Takes to Bring It Back
At the Auto e Moto d’Epoca in Bologna, I kept finding myself bending at the waist. Rows of Alfas, Ferraris, and Lancias, machines that once defined speed and beauty, all sat impossibly low. You didn’t just look at them; you looked down at them. The show floor felt like a field of motion, as if the cars were still pressing into the tarmac of history.
Today, we stand taller. We drive taller. Our cars have swollen into rolling fortresses: comfortable, efficient, and disconnected from the earth that once defined them. Looking across those low silhouettes in Bologna, I realized how much the proportion itself has changed. A common guideline in car design is the total height should be no more than 2 ¼ times the height of the wheels. This ensures that design elements relate properly. Today’s automotive landscape is littered with giraffes when it used to be populated by cheetahs.
Some of that shift is physics—crash structures, pedestrian safety, and shared platforms have raised the beltlines of even sports cars. But some of it is psychological. The modern driver wants command, not connection. We’ve traded grace for visibility, and intimacy for dominance.
The Age of Proportion
Mid-century cars weren’t just smaller: they were proportioned differently. Low rooflines and long hoods created visual tension, a sense that the car was coiled and ready to move. You didn’t need 700 horsepower to feel fast; the stance alone suggested purpose. Sitting low placed the driver in the car rather than on it, a dynamic partnership with the road rather than a position of authority.
A 1965 Alfa Giulia Sprint GTA stood only 1,310 mm high. The latest Alfa Giulia Quadrifoglio, more powerful in every measurable way, rises to 1,430 mm. That extra 12 centimeters of compliance (to safety tests, platform economics, and comfort) costs something intangible: grace. The visual lightness of old Italian metal has been replaced by the heavy security of steel and glass.
To stand beside a 1963 Jaguar E-Type or a Lamborghini Miura is to see elegance defined by restraint. These cars were sculpted around human proportions, not crash dummies. Their waistlines met the driver’s hips, not their shoulders.
Why We Raised Ourselves
The height increase has real reasons. Pedestrian-impact regulations require higher hoods and softer crumple zones. Roof-crush standards and side-impact beams demand thicker pillars. Even seat ergonomics changed as buyers demanded easier entry and upright visibility.
Platform sharing also reshaped design. Where a 1960s coupe was drawn from a clean sheet, today’s sedans and crossovers often share the same modular skeleton. Designers stretch and sculpt, but the hard points (e.g. where the suspension connects, where the firewall ends, etc) stay high. In a world where profit depends on flexibility, height equals efficiency.
Then there’s psychology. After decades of fear marketing (e.g. crash test videos, “commanding driving positions,” safety as status, etc) consumers now equate altitude with security. We want to see over the road, not feel it. Cars once celebrated connection; now they celebrate control.
The Few That Still Dare
Creating a truly low car today is an act of rebellion. The Mazda MX-5 Miata remains near 1,235 mm tall because Mazda treats lightness and simplicity as a religion (and doesn’t share the chassis with anything else). The Alpine A110 (1,252 mm) and Ferrari 296 GTB (1,187 mm) keep low rooflines by moving engines mid-ship, redistributing structure, and relying on more clever (or expensive) materials. Lotus, stubborn as ever, keeps the Emira under 1,230 mm through obsessive weight-saving and driver-first design.
But these cars are outliers. Each requires either exotic engineering, niche positioning, or cultural defiance. Mass-market brands can’t (or won’t) afford the compromises. It’s easier to go high.
Electric vehicles complicate the picture. Batteries lift floors by 10 to 15 centimeters, forcing designers to fake sleekness through trickery: darker lower cladding, low-contrast rooflines, exaggerated wheel arches. The visible proportions say “sports car,” but the physics say “minivan.”
Every low car that survives today does so through sheer conviction. It exists because someone in a boardroom still believes that beauty begins near the ground.
What We Lost (and Might Regain)
The loss of “low” isn’t just about style; it’s about emotion. A low car makes you aware of motion and mass. You feel the road texture, the lean of a corner, the stretch of a straight. A tall car isolates you; comfortable, yes, but anesthetized.
The classics in Bologna remind us that design once invited participation. You ducked under a roofline, dropped into a seat, and joined the machine. There was humility in that motion, the sense that driving was a collaboration, not a command.
Perhaps, in a world chasing electrification and automation, we’ll rediscover that intimacy. Advances in technology (active suspension, steer-by-wire, advanced materials) and creative engineering could free designers to lower cars again, not for nostalgia, but for balance. Because even as our technology ascends, our aesthetics long to return to earth. We as consumers also need to choose cars that evoke beauty, not dominance.
Standing in that hall, surrounded by cars that grazed the floor, I wondered if the modern world’s obsession with height—our towers, our SUVs, our hierarchies—has made us forget the quiet dignity of being close to the earth.
The next generation agrees.