Well, regardless of the reason, I almost feel like America has lost part of it's soul with so many lesser designs. It almost seems to me that we once dared to try different things, and now we just want sameness and convenience. I would think that regardless of safety concerns, you could engineer something that looks like that '57 T-Bird but with today's safety crumple zones and the like.
Speaking of the T-Bird, I suppose that since I posted the classic, I should post the update of the late 90s/early 2000s. This one is a 2005...I don't know offhand when they stopped making them.
Nice, but it didn't have that over the top styling of the original. I like it when they go bold. Either it works, or it fails spectacularly, but in any case you know they bothered.