Author: Rain Noe
Date: 2 March 2017
Publisher: Core77
Link: https://www.core77.com/posts/61976/The-Honda-Elements-Unsung-Interior-Design-Brilliance
Out of all the cars he has driven in his lifetime, only one made Rain Noe consistently grateful for the effort put in by its designers. That car is the decidedly unsexy but fantastically utilitarian Honda Element, first released in 2003. A friend of his owned one, and started lending it to him when they first got his dogs, allowing him to easily haul them out to the countryside.
First off the suicide doors make it super easy to load not only dogs, but cargo and people. Once one loads and unloads a four-door car without a B-pillar, you’ll wonder why all cars aren’t designed this way. Rain also mentions that he could also leave all four doors open wide when chilling out.
The unique design of the rear seats made the interior unbelievably flexible. The seats could be folded completely flat, meaning passengers could use one as a sort of couch when parked.
The rear seats were also designed to swing up and out of the way, giving owners an absurd amount of floorspace for cargo. And, they could also be removed altogether.
Though he never used the car in this manner, all four seats can be made to lie flat.
The floor is rubberized. This made it super easy to clean out after the dogs have tracked mud into it. The Element became a big hit with dog owners, winning a “Dog Car of the Year” award in 2007, and Honda noticed. At the 2009 New York Auto Show they rolled out a “Dog Friendly” package for the Element. It included an integrated bed and restraint system, a lipped, recessed spill-proof water bowl, dog-friendly seat covers for the rear seats, and in a somewhat cutesy move, they also upgraded the pattern on the rubber flooring.
Sadly, the Element was discontinued in 2011. As cool as its interior design features were, most consumers in the market for a small SUV weren’t willing to pay for them; lower-priced and inferior offerings from other carmakers proved to be winning competitors. There were also rumors of internal strife at Honda, with their own CR-V apparently chosen to have its sales efforts focused on over the Element. As proof of this, note that the CR-V was updated every four years on average, whereas the Honda brass didn’t allow a major redesign of the Element even once.
Though lots of our focus has been on families and young first time car buyers, I think this is a great blog post that summarizes the contentment of pet owners with the interior design of the Element. It’s easy to see why pet owners would be so pleased with the design of this vehicle, and perhaps some aspects of the features that have been retired in this model can be brought back in a semi autonomous vehicle experience. Lots of the features such as seats that can double as couches and can be laid flat for a bed would be interesting to see integrated with a sleek aesthetic to make a next level passenger experience.
Noe, R. (2017, March 2). The Honda Element’s Unsung interior design brilliance. Core77. Retrieved September 20, 2021, from https://www.core77.com/posts/61976/The-Honda-Elements-Unsung-Interior-Design-Brilliance.
