Opinion: Car styling is spinning its wheels

The Lamborghini Estoque crashed and burned. Unveiled in 2008, Sant'Agata's high performance sedan was culled at birth, Stephan Winkelmann playing the Herod role to the sleek front-engined four-door. Yet the Estoque is a car that, in terms of exterior design at least, appears utterly contemporary.

Whether it's the triangular LED rear lights, the neat Italian tricolore that adorns the flank vents, the negative return at the rear end, the staggered 22 and 23-inch wheels or the trapezoidal intakes, the design language is shockingly contemporary for a car penned 14 years ago. It's not just Lamborghini either.

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The 991 generation of Porsche's 911 was first seen at the 2011 Frankfurt Show before morphing into the cosmetically almost identical 992. That's a decade of development and the 992 will probably be in production until 2026. Now consider that in the same fifteen years, the 911 moved from the 911 SC to the Carrera 3.2, introduced all-wheel drive with the 964, multilink rear-suspension with the 993 and then on to the first designs of the water-cooled 996. That's at least four very distinct shapes.

Without recourse to Google, could you name the external difference between a current G30 BMW 5 Series and its 2010 predecessor, the F10? I'm certain you'd be able to talk at length about the difference between an E28, an E39 and an E60. Each of these cars look so radically different.

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But, I hear you say, that's what happens. Designs mature around a winning form factor. Look at mobile phones. There were, initially, all shapes and sizes until Jony Ive designed the iPhone and that became the template for ever more minuscule exterior design changes. Until, that is, something genuinely genre-busting comes along. Maybe that's Samsung's latest generation of flip phones. Where's the innovation in car design?

We've seen little of promise of late. McLaren's Speedtail was something fresh as was Tesla's vapourware Cybertruck, although largely for the wrong reasons. Neither had any real impact on modern car design. The last vehicle I can think of that had a genuine impact on a decent-sized slice of the market was the 2009 Nissan Qazana Concept, which became the production Juke, which in turn popularised the notion of the supermini SUV, for better or worse. Tesla has tried, but it's slightly depressing that the company's best-resolved shape dates to 2012.

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In the performance car sector? Pickings have been surprisingly thin. Name one meter-moving car launched in the last decade that has translated to commercial success? Has there been a better-looking supercar launched since the Ferrari 458 Italia in 2009? I know that there's an element of subjectivity to all of this and that safety legislation has had the effect of making cars less elegant, but challenges are there to be overcome.

Looking at Lamborghini's Estoque now, it's easy to see how many of its features were inflated to become the Urus' fat suit. The subtly bulging rear guards, the squinty headlamps, the body sculpting above the sills and the V-shaped prow all carried over into the Urus.

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It's a shame that at a time when changes beneath modern car's skins are accelerating at a dizzying pace as ever, the exterior presentation has stagnated. I'm not saying that modern cars are ugly. They're just unadventurous. And that needs to change.