I never thought of the early Oughts version of the Hyundai Santa Fe as a large vehicle, but was recently floored at how giant it looked next to this 1986 Lincoln Continental. The Lincoln has more glass area too. The Lincoln is elegant, while the Hyundai looks like a fat man sitting on a bar stool. Where have all the good designers gone?
I’d take the 5.0 V8 goodness of the Connie over the collagen-injected ugliness of that Hyundai Santa Fe Fat any day! Comments? Suggestions?
I tend to agree. I’m not against SUVs and crossovers, but this is ridiculous.
The styling of the Santa Fe is quirky and fish-like which is more distinctive than the current Santa Fe. One of these days I want to buy a 1st generation Santa Fe and turn it into a sculpture. When I sat in a new Santa Fe at the Portland Auto Show it smelled so much like a rattle can that I got nauseous which is exactly what my folk’s 05 Sedona did to me. I would have thought Hyundai/Kia would have fixed that problem by now.
There are other cars that when paired make one look small and one look bloated. 1990s Tracer Station Wagons look like a 6 or 7/8th car compared to the 2015 Corolla. Same thing with a 2001 Lumina parked next to a 2015 Impala.
Then again, wasn’t the 1970 Dart considered a compact car back in the day? Personally I consider those Darts midsized.
I almost sat in a Genesis 2.0T coupe at the dealer. I got as far as opening the door. I don’t know what would have happened if I tried to breath in that car, but I wasn’t about to find out.
Those Darts outside dimensions were damn near identical to a mid-sized GM A-body.
A friend had a 74 Swinger that was about 3″ shorter than my 76 Chevelle sedan, and the Dart had far less room than the Chevy did inside.
People think my 95 Explorer is huge, then I park it next to something comparable and they realize that while it’s tall, its not long and its not wide.
Is the Santa Fe bigger than a Town Car? 😉
There was a point somewhere in the early-’00s that nearly ALL the different SUVs and trucks began this “Puffing Out” design phase…like somebody’d stuck an air-hose in the tailpipe and blown them up to where they were straining at the seams.
Most obvious case in point the “blimping” of Toyota trucks…the blimped Tacoma is as big as the original Tundra…the Tundra got stupidly big…for a Toyota, at any rate. Nissan, too. It seemed universally “the new trend” for everything to get all “puffed out”…and all the “puffiness” was usually just big, empty sheet metal or plastic flares or lumps that had no real purpose, other than to be, well….puffy.
Subaru was guilty of it with what they did to the Forester throughout the whole decade. The last “sensibly” sized one was the ’06-’08 generation. The newest ones seem huge in comparison.
It is interesting to see a Santa Fe that doesn’t have all of it’s paint peeling off like a leper.
These have peeling paint issues?
Would make sense, most Asian vehicles down in Dixie have clear coat and paint issues.
Problem should be fixed, considering they’re built in “Dixie” now. 😉
I just got home from a week in Dixie, and saw an awful lot of faded and peeling clear coat… Not much rust, tho!
Viciously good simile, sir!
Someone had a first gen Caravan in our shop last week. Boy, those are tiny compared to the new minivans.
Someone at work drives a Gen 1 Odyssey, and I keep waiting for the eventual moment when someone parks a current model next to it so I can grab a photo.
I hope whoever buys the Lincoln takes care of it and knows what they have.
does the connie have glass headlamps? no need to worry about fading too
The Connie has sealed beam headlights which you replace the whole thing instead of the bulb. I am not sure why Ford waited till the next gen Connie to add the “Euro” lights to it when its sister car the Mark Seven had them.
Its funny how people are attracted to both very large and very small cars. I would love to have a Ford Excursion and a Scion IQ in the same garage!
I also find it interesting that cars are slowly following the size trend again. With each new model, they always gain an inch or two, and they need larger and larger engines to help pull that newfound weight every few years. Can’t wait to see what a Corolla is going to look like in 50 years, if they don’t have a downsizing phase like in the late 70s.
Interesting to see a Sante Fe at all, I don’t think I’ve seen this generation roam the streets since I graduated high school.
I always find it funny when someone sees an old Fox bodied car like the Continental and calls it a land yacht. Are they blind to the recent automotive landscape?
Hyundais and Kias of this vintage almost seem like they’re from another planet compared to where they are now in terms of looks and design. Amazing how far they’ve come in such a short time.
They still look like they are on a different planet.
Not a fan of the styling, then or now.
How come I can’t use the letters “POS”, but the author can use “Lard-Ass” in the title?
Let’s try this again: “What’s the uproar? The Santa Fe is an SUV and the Continental is a little POS nobody wanted ha ha.”
Hey, if you want to drive a crossover that looks like a fat guy on a bar stool, more power to you.
Recently I was parked on the street in my TL and there was a 2014 Mazda 3 right ahead of me. I consider the TL a fairly large car, especially since I grew up loving small cars, and still do in fact. It was hard to see much difference in size of the cars. The Mazda is classified as a, get this, “sub-compact,” with a wheelbase of 106″ while in its day, the TL was considered “mid-size” on its 108″ wheelbase. The Mazda is only about 150 kg lighter, despite having a four banger and only a foot or so shorter.
When I was a new driver, a sub-compact had a 90″ wheelbase and weighed 1700 lbs but I guess it’s all relative. Next to a jacked up F-350 4X4 Crew, the Mazda 3 looks small.
Most guides class the Mazda 3 as a compact, along with the Ford Focus, Chevy Cruze, Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic etc. They’ve gotten so big they had to bring in an entire segment of cars smaller than them to take over the “subcompact” title.
I think the author buried the lede here. $6500 for a mid-80’s Continental? Sure, it looks to be in good shape, and I’ve always had an odd love of bustlebacks, but I didn’t realize people considered these collectible. It wasn’t too long ago they were worth whatever scrap metal was going for.
That fantasy figure of $6500 was what jumped out at me too. The Reagan-era Lincoln may be comparatively free of bloat, but there’s still plenty of flab to be trimmed from that William Conrad-sized asking-price.
“Where have all the good designers gone?”
The death of good design bothers me as much as anyone, but I’m not convinced the Fox-body Lincoln Continental is an example of what was once possible. The MKVII LSC made it look pretty awkward, and at the time it was perceived by many to be an ill-conceived gen-2 Seville knock-off, a car that really wasn’t crying out for imitation.
This generation Santa Fe had very awkward rear door stampings that look like they’ve been dented even when they haven’t.
I had one of those Continentals in college (a 1987, the last year of V8 RWD connies.) It was comfy, handled really well for what it was, and the transmission was very responsive.
However, the air suspension was prone to leaks, the electronics went increasingly flaky (and gooood luck finding a cluster for them .. all digital), and it wasn’t that roomy a car for its external dimensions. $6500 is ridiculous for one of those, it would be much better spent on a Mark V … or an E12, or a W116.
This model Santa Fe seemed to be exclusively used for speed cameras when they were new (they didnt sell that well), it made them easy to spot at least.
I also heard a story about Ford keeping one at their proving ground because it would scare the kangaroos away from the track!
Another astounding observation I had when crossing the intersection in Munich recently, I saw a Volkswagen Passat Variant (B7) idling behind a new third-generation MINI. I had to do the double-take to note that MINI is visually as tall and wide as Passat. I was like ‘Gee, that MINI is damn huge’.
Two years ago, I had a chance to ride in a Mercedes-Benz 190D 2.5 (W201) and couldn’t believe how small the car look as compared to current Ford Focus. Yet, 190D had more interior space than Focus…
I think a lot of that is a result of the huge rear end thing that’s been going on for awhile. I remember my dad parking his ’99 Mustang next to his ’88 or my ’65, and the trunk lid was well over a foot higher. I can barely back up my ’12 Focus; it’s like being in a bunker.
Any one of my old cars is like a greenhouse compared to a new one.
This post brings up both of my pet peeves with current automotive styling; bloat and greenhouse size. I’m not sure why we are where we are with the way current cars look, but overall it’s not a good place. This photo clearly illustrates the problem that even a “mid-sized” crossover looks positively huge compared to a large luxury car of 20 years ago. Other posts here have specifically mentioned the what has happened to the Corolla over the past few gens. Why is the current one larger than a Camry of 25 years ago?
Almost every car today looks like a nondescript bloated blob to me. And sitting inside one, with the high beltlines and gun slit greenhouses makes me at least, claustrophobic. And all this bloat means weight. In the early ’70s there was an outcry that cars had gotten too big (they had), and there was a sensible “reset” that occurred and cars got smaller and lighter. Why do we not hear that now?
It seems the very same people who scoffed at the conception that SUVs were safer than small cars a decade ago did a complete 180* and convinced themselves otherwise, without admitting such of course.
The other thing is “car based SUVs” don’t exist anymore, it’s now SUV based cars! I doubt there’s a mass produced platform designed today that isn’t intended to play dual roles, and ultimately that adds a whole lot of compromised bulk for the lesser of the two.
Boy do I hear ya! It is shocking in the extreme sitting and driving my 1996 Caprice vs a new body LaCrosse or Taurus as two modern full sized examples. They all weight close to 4000 LBS. The Caprice has large easy to see out of glass and is a breeze to drive. The LaCrosse is a joke. It’s back door windows are all but useless and backing up is a chore. The Ford isn’t much better. The Caprice is huge inside with loads of space for everybody and a massive trunk. It also rides like a dream and is very quiet with it’s new Tiger Paw tires and just installed HD gas shocks from Gabriel. The Lacrosse/Taurus also ride quiet and handle well but the front seat is cramped, especially the Taurus. Where did all the room go? Think safety and that ridiculous massive center console.
Opening the door reveals another shock. Just look at the floor pan in relation to the edge of the rockers. There has to be 8-10″ of wasted space probably for those all too important side crash ratings. This of course conspires to reduce foot and legroom on the floor boards noticeably. The Caprice in contrast makes use of most of it’s width and there is plenty of room for everything front and rear. Now the Taurus and LaCrosse do have more rear seat legroom than the old Chevy but some of it is a waste when there is literally no room up front.
Moving out back to the trunk reveals more form over function in today’s sedans. The old Caprice has a huge trunk with a large opening making it a breeze sticking most any size objects in there. Over 20 cu. ft. of space is offered and the Taurus’s trunk is about the same size inside. Problem is that the opening is smaller and most of the space is far forward making loading much harder. The LaCrosse’s trunk is a sad joke. 13.3 cu. ft. for the V6 and 10.7 for the eAssist which means folks with strollers are forced to leave them behind.
Fuel economy is another surprise. 6 speed automatic transmissions. Direct fuel injection. VVT. All alloy blocks. DOHC etc. The new cars have every trick in the book to get there fuel mileage higher and emissions lower etc. My 1996 Caprice with a V8 engine averages about 20-21 MPG in normal everyday driving.
Surprise! The 2012 LaCrosse and Taurus rental cars I had with FWD and 3.6/3.5 DOHC V6 engines and 6 speed transmissions could only muster 21-22 MPG averages in the exact same driving conditions. The open road also reveals similarities. The old Chevy in tip top tune can see as high as 27 on the highway going 72 MPH. The Ford and Buick are barely any better at 27.5-28 MPG as there top obtained figures.
The one area that lets the old car down however is performance. That is one area where the new cars trounce the old ones. Both 3.5 and 3.6 DOHC V6’s feel like race car’s compared to the 1996 spec 4.3 V8 which cranks out all but 200 horses to the Buick’s 302 and Ford’s 288. And lets not forget all the features these new cars offer. The tech is light years better right down to how the radio sounds to the trip computers and tire pressure monitors to the way the ABS/traction control work and the touch screens and features offered etc.
As has been covered already–current required safety architechure makes it impossilble. Low beltlines are illegal due to pedestrian impact standards. Low sills and lightweight doors don’t pass side impact muster. Slim pillars don’t accommodate modern passenger cage protection, nor do they meet rollover standards. To have a modern car with a large, airy greenhouse would require, essentially, a crossover with a trunk. It couldn’t be any shorter or lower.
Maybe as materials advance we’ll see innovative alloys or other substances that offer high strength with less buik, but I don’t see it anytime soon. It’s a hard sell getting folks to pay for safety in many cases so we’re not only waiting on the materials to be developed and adapted, but to come down in cost.
What? You obviously don’t know what’s going on right now or you’d be highly aware that every manufacturer is moving towards lighter vehicles. Ford releasing their new F-series with an all aluminum body is probably the highest profile example of this, but when it comes to cars 40 MPG is the new target that marketing departments salivate over, and they’ve finally woken up to the fact that a Corolla/Civic/Focus weighing 3500 lbs–which is the path they’ve been on–is not a good idea. There is very much a reset going on where aluminum and carbon fiber are getting fresh looks that they’d never gotten before.
It took a bit longer for them to get to this point–hybrid and turbocharged powertrains got the lion’s share of R&D dollars recently–but make no mistake of it, we’re finally waking up to the fact that today’s cars are fatties.
I really like the “fat man sitting on a bars stool description”
Back then it was a look , to have the swollen fender tops wider than the fenders bottom. It was ugly. I think Hyundai & GM were the worst offenders.
Darn you to heck! Your avatar got me again!
When it comes to car and truck features, I’m more for “form follows function”. I think that was Mercedes-Benz’s philosophy for their vehicles. However attractive a vehicle may be, everything that’s on the car should have a purpose.
Where have all the good designers gone? They retired about 40 years ago.
I hate bloat, but I hate shrinking interior dimensions even more. I’m 6’4″, and never had any trouble fitting into VW Beetles, Morris Minors and Austin Americas. Modern small cars like Civics and Corollas make me feel awfully cramped.
Man I’d love to find another Continental in that body style…mine was a medium slate blue with navy leather…good riding car, comfy seats, great a/c. Mine had the weird wire wheels with the lugnuts hidden behind an oversized center cap. Just a really nice, decently-sized little sedan.
I would take the Lincoln too. The Santa Fe’s usually suffer from the usual 2000 up faded or yellowed head lights, peeling paint, ticking or knocking 2.7 V6 engines, rusted door seams and tailgate and peeling ugly alloy wheels. The interiors seem to hold up okay but are boring dull gray for the most part and well used.
“Where have all the good designers gone”?
They retired years ago to be replaced by one designer who seems to style most everything alike these days for all the companies.
I agree that individual design is fading, but at least the lookalike cars of today are uniformly more pleasant than they used to be. I never liked that generation of Santa Fe when new, and it certainly hasn’t aged well. Before 2005 or so, Hyundai styling was weird to ugly, and Kia styling was bland. Big difference today–the current Sonata has been a trend-setter and, at least as far as cars go, both companies are attractive across the board.
Though I’d still take that Fox Continental over most. Offer me a Genesis R-spec, well, mabye not…