oh my god I am so excited and thankful that you finally tackled that A-Pillar transition. Now that that's done, its looking seriously tight and well put together. It takes a lot of time, but getting small details like that right makes all the difference in the world, and I can personally say that this car is looking VERY close to dev quality, fit and finish. Seats are looking 10X better, everything about it is really nice. Keep up the good work!
I'm personally not a fan of the heckblende. It might look better if you move the reverse lights up one position and put a rear fog/stop light where the reverse light currently is. The Euro licence plate is very flat, I would suggest a garnish or handle above it like the very rough photoshop above. Also, a lot of more modern mpvs tend to have trapezoid shaped plate recesses, would look a lot neater than just having a recessed oblong exactly the shape of the plate. If you make the recess tall enough you could have the same trunk on both Euro and US spec as well.
I can see about trying something like that. My only concern is that the EU and USDM versions will look too much alike if we don’t have different cosmetic parts like that, but I suppose there are smaller things that could be changed. As for the heckblende, do you think a white version would look better to match the reverse lights? I feel like there at least needs to be something there, to add some interest to the otherwise blank panel. And C/K was already discussing adding some kind of rear foglight, the only issue being that the current light setup is a bit awkward for that. We could potentially do like entirely different taillights for the EU version though.
I think if you're going to do one, a tail light set up like the Nissan Elgrand could work. Alternatively the Nissan Presage manages to help break up the trunk with the recess and integrated trunk lights, while maintaining the high mounted lights. I also like the wrap around lights on the Toyota Estima, though that would be a complete re-work of the rear end. Perhaps a crease around the rear, following the line of the door slider like the Nissan Serena would help break it up a touch?
For me actuall heckblende is pretty good. Just redesign of talights may help Actually I doing some research. Maybe I will make quick edit for test.
Hm, something like the Presage may work well for the EU version. It could have auxiliary hatch lights like that, so that there would be space for both reverse and fog lights. I also quite like the continuation of the door slider line on the Serena, but I think that may look too 2010ish for a late 90s-early 00s car.
Or we can make it like in Ford cars (Focus MK1), auxilary lights in bumper, reverse light and fog one. When in us version it will have clean bumper. Meanwhile i got idea for different pattern of tailights to get brake lights in one line with heckblende (us spec variant). Update: I made also small compare of tailights of Focus for eu (left) and us (right).
I made some alternate versions of the tailights using the best software, MS Paint. The one to the left is with the reverse lights integrated into the tailgate, the middle one is with the reverse lights integrated into the rear bumper, and they are round to mimic the front bumper's round fog lights, and the image to the right is the same as the middle, except the left housing is a EU spec rear fog light. Keep in mind, that these are just suggestions.
I think the Focus like lights look good for the EU-spec, as they're different and give the car more variety.
Ok, I'm right after brainstorm with @Re:Z_IA. We have some ideas, just it will take some more time to get really good desing of these lights, because needs some custom textures. We gonna get something like there. So my actuall progress for eu spec lights is really similar to your idea For US spec we rather leave that what we currently, not my quick edit, it's too "like a candy cane". Also in US Spec bumper will be normal, without any additional lights. For EU spec we will add these additional, asymmetric lights to bumper. Probably something like in Suzuki Ignis. Hatch will be reworked, probably one for both versions.