The Grand Wagoneer looks weird because its pillars are all* body color, so let's fix that

"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein) 09/04/2020 at 14:45 • Filed to: None

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Oh look, another Grand Wagoneer post! It’s been playing tricks on my eyes and I figured out why it bothers me: except for the blacked out A-pillar that’s part of the 2-tone roof, all its pillars are body color. Not only did Jeep make these pillars body color, it accentuated them by giving the windows chunky metallic trim. It’s weird.

M ost SUVs disguise at least one of their B- and/or C-pillars, and pretty much all cars with 2-tone roof panels hide most or all of their pillars. In the case of the Grand Wagoneer, I didn’t have to look far for an alternate idea: Jeep did a pretty good job with the 2-tone roof on the Compass.

Overall this is a much more successful 2-tone roof design than the one on the Grand Wagoneer. So I decided with the Grand Wagoneer to keep the piece of metal trim that separates the roof from the rest of the body, black out the window trim, and black out the B- and C-pillars while leaving the D-pillar body color. Here’s my quick n dirty photoshop attempt at bringing it over to the Grand Wagoneer.

Now this isn’t exactly like the Compass because the Compass pillars are more disguised and not full-on separate pieces of sheetmetal (which I just darkened here along with the window trim) but you get the idea.

Should’ve been more like the Compass roof treatment.

ttyymmnn > Textured Soy Protein 09/04/2020 at 14:48

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Nice work. However, I would argue that it looks weird because it IS weird. 

HammerheadFistpunch > Textured Soy Protein 09/04/2020 at 14:52

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I like the effect, but the black to bring down the glass area visually is a little much.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > Textured Soy Protein 09/04/2020 at 14:56

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Maybe I’m an idiot (ed. yes), but wouldn’t it make sense to go with chrome? Like... if single-panel chrome was too ostentatious, maybe black with a chrome bar running up it, or two separated chrome bars ?

In either case, the window “box” needs a clean visual break from the lower half to support the long and lean look.

HammerheadFistpunch > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 09/04/2020 at 14:59

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Agreed.  The Iconic “look” of the orginal for me is 100% the greenhouse and roof look.  i.e. not like a bank vault, defender or Tahoe.

HammerheadFistpunch > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 09/04/2020 at 15:02

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p.s. you know what is way closer in visual style to the original than the new one? The SG forester.

Wagon body with tall greenhouse. little to no visual pillars. Even the arch treatment is visually similar.

RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht > HammerheadFistpunch 09/04/2020 at 15:06

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More in that vein, I think the D-pillar should have had the kink at the top to be a visual callback to the “parasol” post on the original, if there was any way to pull it off structurally. Maybe mute/disguise having a kink like the current design, but bottom line, I don’t think the design is served well by looking like just about every other crossover out there.

Textured Soy Protein > HammerheadFistpunch 09/04/2020 at 15:06

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Yeah it could use a little more of the gunmetal trim maybe on the D-pillar and/or a continuous line of it along the bottom window line where it crosses over the blacked out pillars, a la the previous 2 generations of Hyundai Sonata.

Textured Soy Protein > RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht 09/04/2020 at 15:08

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That look might be tough to pull off nowadays because pillars are so much chunkier. But we’re on the same page with it needing some kind of visual break between the top and bottom. 

UserNotFound > Textured Soy Protein 09/04/2020 at 15:09

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It looks weird because it looks like a pug-faced Tahoe/Navigator mashup .

Textured Soy Protein > UserNotFound 09/04/2020 at 15:13

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The front doesn’t even bother me that much. But the top of the grille/headlight trim would look better if it were a continuous line instead of having that bit in the middle pop up to contain the WAGONEER lettering. Those letters could just as easily be affixed to the leading edge of the hood a la the Explorer Sport. 

Kar Wai Wong > Textured Soy Protein 09/04/2020 at 16:06

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I never realised it, but yeah the whole blacking out thing is weird. Why do a black roof if the pillars are body colour? Why is the A- pillar the only one that’s blacked out? A floating roof makes it look like its, well, floating! A re they trying to make it look like the car’s roof has been lopped off? And how did Jeep mess up designing a boxy looking SUV, which are inherently good looking?

WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI > Textured Soy Protein 09/04/2020 at 16:13

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Here’s the real question: If the A-pillar and roof were just body color, would that help the other pillars from standing out like they do now?

(I’ll maintain that I don’t mind the current look, but it seems a lot of people do)

Textured Soy Protein > Kar Wai Wong 09/04/2020 at 16:16

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It’s really quite baffling how the Grand Wagoneer ended up with this floating roof plus highly accentuated body color pillars.

Ford understood the floating roof concept with the Flex. All its pillars are blacked out but the roof could be either body color, white, or black to make the whole top half of the car blacked out.

All of these variations make some kind of sense.

Textured Soy Protein > WasGTIthenGTOthenNOVAnowbacktoGTI 09/04/2020 at 16:22

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The way the metal is shaped here, what you’re describing could end up looking like a GMT900 Tahoe.

The WK Grand Cherokee also had body color pillars, but I think it looks better with blacked out pillars . They have little indents that flow with the shape of the windows and there’s a continuous chrome strip running along the bottom. All of which says, “black out these pillars!”

I had a dark green one like this for about 18 months, but never bothered to buy the little gloss black trim pieces which are definitely available for this purpose.