I saw An Car but what was it? - Mystery SOLVED!

[vulgalour]

I saw An Car today.  About the size of a Nissan Stagea, very bland 2000ish styling, that point where cars stopped looking like 90s designs and were super generic as a result.  It was silver, and an estate, and every edge was smooth and rounded.  There was a large chrome badge in the middle of the grille.

It was like a Nissan Cefiro, but rounder.

The body was a lot like a Primera.

The grille and headlights had a little bit of bodywork between them, like a Subaru Legacy, but the headlights and grille were all the same depth.

It stood out because it had no stand out styling at all.  It didn't even have a 'face'.  It made a Honda Logo look memorable.

I suspect it was some sort of luxury Japanese estate car.  Other than that I'm stumped.

[Schaefft]

Crown Wagon maybe?

[Split_Pin]

96-01 Camry Wagon?

https://images.app.goo.gl/kqs2BFihZCvUPf3ZA

[inconsistant]

Didn’t Infiniti release a re-badged Primera? Wonder if they did an estate version?

[320touring]

Honda accord aerodeck from the mid 90s?

[cort1977]

7 minutes ago, inconsistant said:

Didn’t Infiniti release a re-badged Primera? Wonder if they did an estate version?

Yes.

Never seen one in the States but Japan has all sorts of good stuff so possibly.

[Alan_Green]

Nissan Rasheen? 

 

[sdkrc]

[vulgalour]

48 minutes ago, Schaefft said:

Crown Wagon maybe?

That's very close but too upright and fussy.  Imagine it with less styling and squashed a bit flatter/stretched a bit wider, and all the corners rounded off on the headlights.

[vulgalour]

35 minutes ago, 320touring said:

Honda accord aerodeck from the mid 90s?

Similar sort of headlight/indicator proportions but otherwise too heavily styled.

[vulgalour]

19 minutes ago, sdkrc said:

 

 

 

Headlight and grille area on this is very similar but again, it's too fussy otherwise and has too much styling going on.  Imagine that front end but leaning more towards a 2000ish Audi A4 front end (it wasn't an Audi that I saw), that sort of smoothed out but not quite Audi TT levels of smoothed out look.

[320touring]

A caldina of some description?

[sdkrc]

 

[sdkrc]

Jesus, this a good mystery

[vulgalour]

Okay, imagine a 2000 Chevy Malibu but with LESS styling that somehow also looks like a big Japanese estate car.  That  sort of flat front that the one @sdkrc just posted is the right sort of squarish front (not the styling, the styling is too 90s), it doesn't have the corners knocked off like the Malibu below, the headlights were very slab fronted and wrapped around a little into clear indicators.  I wish I'd been able to take a photo, it would have made this so much easier!

[inconsistant]

Draw it!

[brownnova]

or 

[inconsistant]

 

lolz.

[brownnova]

[vulgalour]

That blue-ish estate and the two-tone estate is very similar, the grille is wrong, but the overall look is similar.  It's also a bit like a Toyota Chaser like this:

The grille/headlight set up on the Chaser above is almost the same, but the rest of it is a little bit too old looking.  That's the closest I've got so far to what I saw.  It didn't have an obvious bodykit or lots of vents up front.

[brownnova]

Both the blue and two tone ones are a Nissan Avenir…. 

[brownnova]

Less body-kit one… 

[vulgalour]

Yes and no.  I'm not sure if it's the picture, but that looks too small?  This thing had the same sort of road presence as a Nissan Stagea or a Lexus LS400.  It was pretty slab sided and the front bumper was pretty smooth.

[vulgalour]

Speaking of Stageas, this one is very, very close.  Make the headlights smaller and remove the frownyness, shrink the grille a bit, but keep the bodywork devoid of flourishes and you're pretty much there.  Also, raise the grille and headlights up to square the front end off a bit.  So basically put the Chaser lights and grille on the front of this Stagea and proportionally that's more what I saw.  The wheelarches are a bit big looking on this Stagea too compared to what I saw.

 

I have tried drawing it and I can't get it down right so I'm just doing a lot of image hunting instead.

[wuvvum]

Almost sounds like a pre-facelift Nubira estate.

[vulgalour]

That's the headlight shape.  Everything else is wrong, but that's definitely the headlight shape.

[wuvvum]

I'm struggling a bit with this one.  Some of the late '90s Holden Commodores had similarly bland front end styling, but the rest of them looked exactly like an Omega so not very Japanese.

[brownnova]

 

[brownnova]

This is a fun game, I’m discovering new cars tonight! I really should be sleeping! 

[vulgalour]

This has been bugging me since I saw the car in traffic at about 5pm yesterday.