A gape grille is like having a big nose/nostrils and weak chin. It just looks insubstantial.
You know how they say a person's face is beautiful if the eyes/nose/mouth occupy only a certain percentage of the face? It's about proportions.

Toyota probably realized this with the Highlander, which came out with a dumpy looking face. Now the refresh looks so much more balanced and aggressive with a smaller main grille. No longer looks like a pig from Angry Birds.

Can you imagine the mustang with a bigass hole for a face?

Hyundai went and put a gape grille on one of its Sonata trims. The regular trims have balanced facial features.

 

audi manages to pull it off well, imo.

 

I hate it, very much.
MB/BMW/Porsche haven't caught up to it, thank god for that!

 

On the fence. There's some applications I find attractive, others not really.

The refreshed IS non F-Sport looks pretty sharp now without that lower honeycomb IMO

 

Not as well as they once did. IMO Audi grilles looked MUCH better before they went to the Gape-O-Matic look.

 

It depends on the car, but in general I'm okay with it.

Its funny you mention the Highlander. To me the new grill looks bigger and more "in your face" but I like both so I'm fine with it.

 

It's just one of those phases, which I think is getting old already. Someone will come up with something new soon and this trend will finally be over.

 

Yup, like any styling trend, this one has been around a while and before long the next in-thing will appear. It will be interesting to see who does it first.

 

I think it looks terrible on most cars to be honest. I don't care for it on most of the current Lexus'.

 

Both Mercedes-Benz and BMW have long-established and recognizable grille shapes, and how the grille fits within the front-end style of the vehicle; a large grille that extends down below the bumper just does not fit that established, trademark style. Porsche also has a well-established front end style of the hood sloping down to meet the front bumper; there is no room in the Porsche style for a large grille.

Other brands that have adopted the large grille did not have a well-established, instantly-recognizable style. Lexus is trying to establish a recognizable style; it just so happens to be a large grille that extends from the hood down to below the bumper. Infiniti, however, to its credit, had a recognizable shape, which it is now refining and adapting to all its vehicles, even on cars that have a hood that slopes down to meet the front bumper.

Honda and Toyota, as other examples, have never had a recognizable grille shape that symbolized the brand. Both are now trying to do that, with Honda perhaps having better success (its shield) at adopting a style that it is trying to implement across its whole lineup.

 

The facelifted Highlander has a much bigger gape and grille than the last. You have it backwards. There once was a bumper running between the sections, now there's no bumper to be seen. I like the newer look. It's very modern, edgy, masculine, and Lexus GX-like. Other gapes aren't as attractive, like the Avalon and Camry, which look like a fish out of water.

 

Started out that way, yes. I had the exact model pictured above, then the facelift quickly dated my car. There was a learning curve with the Audi grilles. The first gape on the A4 and A6 was ugly and too much. Then, Audi toned it down with future models, cut off the upper edges, and add some shape to the perimeter Much better today and future Audis will have an even slimmer gape (next A8). Ford and Hyundai pretty much went the Audi route. Kia and BMW have not. Kia's front styling sits okay with me, but BMW's split kidney grille is severely out-dated now compared to the other big players. After thirty years of the exact same grille shape, it's time for a change there.

 

One thing that I really like with this facelift is how they finally reconnected the lower front airdam with the side panel (just below the foglight). The former model always looked like the joints were never glued together properly, leading to a cheapened, unfinished appearance. Now it's all one piece, as it is on all other cars.

 

Kia's newer Tiger-grille is a little garish-looking itself, though not to the same extent as some of the others you've need.

I'd rate the new RX350 as (arguably) the most garish-looking grille of all. In my book, it is the very definition of the term.

 

I think it works well on most cars. Toyotas always have awkward styling so it comes as no surprise that they find ways to make their cars look ugly to some degree.

Lexus did a great job implementing it on their sedans but all of their SUVs look downright stupid. When I was at a auto show earlier this year even my friends who weren't that into cars felt that the Lexus SUV grilles looked cheap because there is so much visible plastic on them.

God bless the base model RX trims. What a horrendously ugly vehicle. Saw one of these in beige parked the other day, I would've loved to see a video of my facial expressions when I came across the thing.