Not unreasonably recently my mind turned to blistered arches - and more specifically to a question centred around blistered arches. Namely: was there ever a car built that didn't benefit from this most excellent styling addition? I am no expert on the genesis of these flares, but have to assume they came to be because of so called 'silhouette' racing in the 70s. Competitors took advantage of rule book loopholes to retain a basic glasshouse and then made space for wider rubber. But genuine blisters are a mostly 80s phenomenon and defined a quasi-motorsport look for people of my generation. Why do the
Integrale
E30 M3
Ur Quattro
look so damn good? It's all in the blisters.
From frumpy hatch to hardcore rally rep
On the magazine page the extra width and aggression never quite made the same impact, but I remember seeing my first 8V Integrale on the road in 1989 and thinking Miki Biasion must have driven it straight from a rally stage. And this was just a distinctly ordinary five door hatchback body with its wings lightly pulled. But the transformation was remarkable.
Same with the E30 M3. The first time you saw one, your jaw slackened slightly and you tried to work out how something so obviously similar to a 316i could look so damned desirable. And even though you knew the rear screen angle was altered, you couldn't actually register it without a reference point, so the arches it was. You just stared at the arches. Aged 10, it was abundantly clear why the Mercedes 190E 2.3-16 never won those group tests. It was not equipped with blisters.
The first generation three-door Vauxhall Nova wore perhaps the most excellent blisters ever seen on a small production hatchback. When they were dropped for the five-door version the car immediately looked pants. Plonk a Porsche 924 next to a 944 and tell me the latter doesn't look profoundly tougher than the former. In fact I cannot think of a situation where blisters haven't improved a shape, unless it was some 80s tuning catastrophe. Doubtless I will now live to regret that last statement.
Audi has worked the blistered look for years
Given how keen the motor industry is to resurrect its past and constantly refer back to previous generations I find it strange that the blisters haven't made a larger comeback. At the moment Audi seems to be the only company willing to play the game - it's no coincidence that
the new RS4
is one of the best looking cars on the road just now.