Car design has taken many wrong turns over the decades, but this latest one might be the worst.
I’m not talking about designers’ misguided love affair with touchscreens, the proliferation of fake air vents and fake exhaust pipes, or the frustration caused by door handles that don’t make sense. The problem is windows: they’re shrinking.
“Windows,” I can hear you laugh, “who cares!” But this isn’t a minor issue; it’s everything. Let me explain.
Viewing the world from the cabin of a modern SUV is a lot like peering out from inside a Second World War bunker. With every new model generation, windows tend to get smaller while vehicles get bigger. The effect is that they make drivers feel more isolated and removed from their surrounding environments, removed from the bustling streetscapes they inhabit. Not only is that dangerous, it means vehicles — especially SUVs and pickups — are becoming increasingly anti-social. They’re your own private little tank.
What car designers refer to as the greenhouse or DLO — daylight opening — is shrinking. The waistline or beltline, which runs below the side windows, is rising and the pillars between windows are bulking up, especially at their base. The leading edge of the hood is rising, too. In other words, modern cars have more metal and less glass.
A 2001 Land Rover Discovery II with a low waistline and big windows.
Contrast the old Discovery with this 2016 Land Rover Range Rover Evoque, which began to change car design with a much higher waistline that rises as it moves to the back and windows that are a much narrower slit at the front and get smaller in the rear.
Two leading car designers I spoke with both lamented the fact windows are shrinking.
“There are different reasons why you have so much more metal and less glass,” said Hussein Al Attar, director of automotive design at BMW’s Designworks studio in Los Angeles. With electric vehicles, he said, windows get squished vertically because underfloor batteries push the cabin up but rooflines need to be kept relatively low to minimize aerodynamic drag. Thick pillars housing air bags, which are critical structural components, add to the bulk.
So, no, it’s not just you. It really is more difficult to see out of new cars.
A 2025 U.S. Department of Transportation study mapped forward visibility in a 180-degree arc from the driver and found that through successive model generations of three popular SUVs from 1997 to 2023, forward visibility within a 10-metre radius fell as much as 58 per cent. Behind the wheel of a classic 1997 Honda CR-V, for example, drivers were able to see 68 per cent of the area within that 10-metre radius, but it drops to just 28 per cent in the 2022 CR-V.
1997 Honda CR-VHonda/Courtesy of manufacturer
The 2023 Honda CR-V Hybrid.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
It’s worth noting that visibility in two popular sedans — the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry — declined only a few percentage points over that time, according to researchers. The 2022 Accord and Camry both let drivers see roughly 60 per cent of the area in that 10-metre zone. So, blame cannot fall solely on more stringent safety regulations; those alone aren’t forcing this huge reduction in outward visibility.
There’s a psychological aspect to our desire to drive private little tanks everywhere. It feels more secure to be surround by all that metal.
“You feel much safer in an SUV because you sit a little bit higher, everything is kind of like hugging you, and this [beltline] is higher,” said Al Attar, pointing toward the bottom of the driver’s side window.
Matthew Beaven, Range Rover’s chief exterior designer, echoed that sentiment. “The general feeling is that the lower the waistline [aka beltline], the more vulnerable the occupant can feel, so it’s probably kind of trended up and up and up and up,” said Beaven.
Cars with a higher beltline and smaller windows, he said, “tend to look a little bit sleeker and a little bit faster.” For many drivers, that is more desirable, and so is having a closed-in cabin that feels like it’s hugging you. The cocoon-like cabin is a major selling point for Hyundai’s Ioniq 6. Range Rover advertises its flagship SUV as being a “sanctuary.”
The problem is that outward visibility is being sacrificed for style. Blind spots are becoming blind quadrants. Looking out a rearview mirror — through ever-smaller back windows — is like peering through a periscope. Unless there’s an aircraft carrier on your tail, you could easily miss whatever’s back there.
Designers at EV upstart Polestar took the window-shrinking trend to its logical conclusion with their latest SUV and deleted the rear window altogether. It’s an eerie precursor to a dystopian future of fully autonomous cars that just have televisions or billboards where the windows used to be; we could zip through the world without ever having to look at it. How very sad.
Today though, at least while humans are still behind the wheel, no expensive surround-view cameras, screens or radar sensors can make up for a well-placed piece of glass. One is not a substitute for the other. Similarly, while upselling consumers on a panoramic roof does brighten the cabin, it doesn’t improve outward visibility in any way that helps.
Al Attar said the shrinking greenhouse is a trend BMW’s designers are trying to reverse. You can see their intent in the 2023 Vision Neue Klasse sedan concept, which has especially tall side windows and is more beautiful for it. (Sadly, by the time it makes it into production as the new 2027 i3, its greenhouse shrunk.)
The BMW Neue Klasse concept car has more of that greenhouse look.BMW
The 2027 i3 is a clear evolution of the current 3 Series with its signature forward leaning stance, short overhangs and tight muscular proportions.Fabian Kirchbauer/Courtesy of manufacturer
But it’s not easy to make a car with big windows that looks good. It goes against prevailing trends and consumer taste. “If you have a car with tiny little wheels and a low waistline, tall glass, you probably wouldn’t want to buy it,” said Beaven. “You’ll probably go, ‘Wow, that looks like a taxi’.”
However, Citroen’s recent ELO concept is a prime example of how big windows could work. It’s a compact box and yet it somehow has room for six and looks like a nice place to be when you’re stuck in traffic. The car’s 50/50 ratio of metal to glass on the bodyside offers panoramic views, which is what drivers need to safely share the road with cyclists and pedestrians. Leave it to the French to make cars more egalitarian.
Citroen ELO concept carCourtesy of manufacturer