I keep seeing white crossovers and SUVs with this stupid matte black vinyl “hood stripe” looks more like a black tongue on the hood. It never continues to the roof or back. I’ve seen it on a few white Cherokees, a white blazer and just now, some small Toyota crossover. Is this some kind of trend or is more likely a local dealership trying to wring out more money from customers?
You can’t see the hood on most new cars, but it really did used to be an issue. Racecars blacked out their hoods and then it became a factory option. It continued as a styling thing to show why your version is cooler.
I have driven cars for 26 years and never had that problem. Even long hooded sports cars. The glare has never come from my hood. Although, I live in the north so maybe that’s why, where 8 months of the year the sun is always just over the horizon either in front or behind you. And it always manages to find a way to be in front. The vast majority of my equatorial driving was in a camo matte HMMV.
Ford Ranger up to 2011. 1960s-1980s Mustang. Really, any pre-1980s American car. 2006-2015 Miata. I can see the hood on all of these cars, just to name ones from personal experience. I wear polarized sunglasses while driving, so glare is greatly reduced from the hood and reflection of the dash off the windshield. However, a light-colored vehicle still throws a bunch of light my way, even if not giving me a direct reflection of the sun. Even if not blinding, that extra light is fatiguing on your eyes. Your eye color, eye condition, and general genetics also play a role in how bad glare affects you.
Again, it comes from racing decades ago, where you don’t have time to use a hand to block the hood and where hours of racing means the sun will shift position noticeably through the laps. And even before that, planes have been using blacked out hoods. P-51D Mustangs come to mind. Like all performance-oriented options on pedestrian cars, they come from high performance situations where they elimante every source of error they can