Car manufacturers know people form emotional attachments to automobile ‘faces’ and use the fact to guide their design and marketing efforts. “In today’s hyper-competitive car market, designers are focusing on faces as part of a broader effort to design cars that appeal to buyers ― tapping psychologists, anthropologists and other experts in human behavior, and even monitoring the brain waves of focus-group participants,” the Wall Street Journal reported in a 2006 article entitled ‘Why Cars Got Angry.’ Automotive research shows “70% of drivers identify and judge vehicles by the headlights and grille,” the article reported. In the first years of the twenty-first century, the trend was toward angrier, scarier vehicles’ faces. The article hypothesized that these faces help drivers feel safer in heavier traffic amidst more oversize SUVs. Reflecting our tumultuous times, the ‘scary look’ shows no sign of slowing in the new millennium. “Buoyant sales of cars with styling which suggests power or bad temper seem to confirm that customers are happy with this look,” an international automotive site reported in 2017.
* tumultuous: 떠들썩한 ** buoyant: 부력이 있는