I had to "forced upgrade" my 2003 Accord last year to a 2018 Acura RDX SUV (dumb woman on her plowed into me at an intersection). It's a decent vehicle, but it's the base model and doesn't have all the camera shit. For cars like this, I can understand why they started adding 360 cameras: you can't see anything from the driver's seat! My rear view, even if I turn my head, is completely blocked by headrests, and there are huge blindspots on the sides, even with side mirrors that have a section at a different angle.

Merging onto a freeway is scary in this thing, whereas in my 2003 car, there was a 360 view all around me. Like a lot of things, looks have become more important than function, even in something as safety-critical as a car.

That would be amazing. The only reason I'm not out buying vintage 60's cars is because I don't want to be in one if there's a crash. But the visibility from back then was great, they were basically greenhouses with wheels.

Wind tunnel engineering.

Cars do not have large upright rear windows anymore because a sloping "fastback" design with a higher rear deck is more aerodynamic and gets an extra fraction of an MPG on the fuel economy rating.

I’m not so sure this is entirely due to fuel. A Volkswagen Golf with great fuel economy still has a big rear window and an FJ Cruiser has a tiny one and chugs gasoline. Many of the cars don’t actually have dramatic tapering roof lines, what they have is rising belt lines which cut into the window space.

Large pillars to hold airbags are also a big consumer of window space.

Not all cars have such high beltlines that make you feel like you are driving a sherman tank. American cars seem to have these issues more than imports. Maybe its a way to shirk around some crash testing metrics by deferring to less visibility than to offer more visibility and potentially spend more engineering something just as strong?

My theory with the XC60 refresh with its huge, high, flat-top, snub-nosed bonnet compared to the old sloping one is that all that extra volume is for the fancy double/hybrid engines and so on.

Or maybe people just like to feel like their car is a rhino, but the same refresh also slightly lowered the roofline and the driving position feels lower too.

The other down side is that my wife always shouts that I'm going to crash when parking nose-in because the bonnet feels twice as long as it really is.

Completely different car,. I have no idea where to begin... Maybe the wheels?

While you're not wrong, that's just the current trend of people preferring SUVs to cars.

The "slope" back design seems to hit this sweet spot. Ease of entry, versatility, and capability while not appearing to be a "beast" of a vehicle.

The prius has this fuel efficient design and opted to just give you more window on the back of the car anyhow.

Larger windows mean more cooling and heating needed, and high window sills especially on sedans are needed because of how insanely high SUVs and trucks are these days, because people need to overcompensate.