In a slight hijack, how about the ugliness that people purposely impart on their already ugly cars:
Ever want to see a gallery of horrendous spoilers, stick-ons, fun with paint, etc. this is for you.
Come on. These are nothing. There’s always the Edsel.
OMG, RickJay you are absolutely correct. No other car is even in the same class (on the same planet?) as the Aztec. Ugly AND pointless. Do you want an SUV, Van, Sports Car or Space Ship? Pick one and only one.
I’m a Pathfinder guy, that Nissan Rasheen made me LOL. I would guess it serves a purpose in developing nations.
Low Rider trucks also make me crazy. Talk about defeating the purpose of the vehicle. And, I actually saw a low rider Jeep CJ7 (wrangler) the other day.
Here is a link to the list that came out a bit ago from Click and Clack (the guys that do Car Talk on NPR) of the worst cars. It is pretty humorous.
Chrysler PT Cruiser - I think you’ve gotta start here. Not the most useless but certainly the ugliest.
Any Roadster - the most useless. No cargo space and are less than stellar on gas. I love them though and I’m probably gonna pick one up.
That’s so ugly I might just buy it, just to piss-off the neighbors.
Oh come on folks, nothing beats the Merkur:
I will take a older style Hummer any day. Those new-sytled ones GM came up with after buying the company? Sheeeesh.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned the AMC Pacer. Ugly AND stupid! See all that glass (in the linked picture)…that was before safety glass. In an accident the inside of those cars was like a Cuisinart of flying razors.
Someone mentioned the Humvee earlier and while it is ugly it is ugly in a cool way (kinda like E.T. was ugly but in a cute way).
The Aztec and the Vehicross certainly get top honors as well.
And in the event that the sun was shining, the inside of those cars was like a farging greenhouse. Especially the back. My aunt had one for a while, and even with the air conditioner going full blast, we could have melted lead on the rear (vinyl!) seat.
But it’s easy to forget how ugly the cars of the '70s were. Everything was pretty ugly back then.
How the hell can you be a desinger at Nissan and get away with unveiling the Rasheen? How does a meeting like this go? Rasheen: http://www.nissan.co.jp/RASHEEN/ras3/3s.htm
I mean, you have a design that you agree on and are going to roll out to management. How do you unveil that? How does the group respond? What it’s sound like in Japanese?
How does “fuckin’ ugly” translate?! How about, “Hey, when did we hire blind design engineers with no arms to design a crude box/box/box design?”
I could have got a designer who was blind, deaf and had no arms and legs, and someoe could have picked him up, smeared his face across the surface of that poor-excuse for a truck and he would have protested that it was a grotesque shape needing a redesign.
Know what? There are incompetents everywhere - even at the top automakers. Dipshits.
Oh! Can’t post without another nomination:
>Who designed the rear end of the new Corvette? Why the desire to make it look like it has a load of shit in it’s diaper? Huh? What’s up with THAT!
>Oh, and isn’t Ford a little too committed to extra big blocks of charcoal and black colored plastic stick-on panels on everything from Lincoln Navigators to Ford Explorers? Does that cushion the rollovers, or what?
>Oh, off the subjet a bit: HEY! Acura! - remove your head from your advertising ass. BIG WHOOPTY-DO-DA…your Type S Integra has a whole 200 hp…so does every friggin four door snoozer now…and thanks for another round of dufus styling…YAWN!
I pulled that picture up off of Google’s “Advanced Search” option to the right of the input box. [sub]It’s written really small.[/sub] I apologize, I must check myself to keep in tune with America’s general modesty.
As for the Nissan Frontier and Rasheen, I love them both. Nissan makes a great vehicle, especially under the hood. They ride like a dream(newer models) and their 4x4’s have an outstanding reputation, but always in the shadow of Toyota of course.
I enjoy the utilitarian styling of the Rasheen and have always been saddened by the unavailability in the U.S. of those models usually seen filmed over seas in wildlife documentaries. Range Rover has put out the Defender model but is it gussied up to the hilt in American models and way overpriced. Usually those vehicles seen roaming the African grasslands are basic models and don’t come standard with leather and a 10-speaker stereo systems.
I actually find that Mistubishi RPM 7000 alluring, in some weird sci-fi militaristic sense of the word. Then again, I thought the new Jeepster concept looked neat. And with a twin-turbocharged four, the damn thing might just rev higher than 7000 rpm.
I’m gonna second (fifth? sixth?) the Prowler judgement. The damn thing is all flash, which is inexcusable. I can excuse an ugly car with good mechanics, but it doesn’t work the other way around. I also can’t stand any minivan. They look like, and handle decidely worse than most, bricks. I always feel like a little push will send one tumbling over.
For accuracy’s sake, it’s spelled AZTEK. With a “K”.
I would like to know what’s up with these SUVs that have the grille way up high so that they have to come up with some kind of filler (invariably ugly) below. The Isuzu Axiom and Acura MXV (or whatever it’s stupid non-evocatic designation is) are prime examples of this. The Aztek itself has a similar problem.
[Jeep guy] Those are two different things. The Wrangler was the yuppie-fied replacement for the CJ. [/Jeep guy]
Oh man! That was my favourite hot wheel car when I was about six or seven years old. But I have to admit, in reality it didn’t really work out.
I would like to add a vote for those butt-ugly slab-sided Citroen pieces of crap you see all over Europe. They kind of look like a Volkswagon that went though a bread slicer.
And you know, after I started seeing Azteks in photos all over, I started thinking, “Hey, they’re not THAT ugly…” And I liked the cool tailgate tent thing. It looked like fun.
Then I saw one in person. No amount of photograph viewing can prepare you for the gawdawfulness that is a real live Aztek. They are uglier than you could imagine.
As for the PT Cruiser, my wife fell in love with the stupid things. So we had to go and test drive it. Up close, it doesn’t look too bad, and at they were brand-new and had a pretty good novelty aspect about them. Still, I didn’t like it.
Then I took one for a test drive, and my vague dislike turned to utter hatred. The thing is nothing more than a dressed-up Neon. Try to accelerate, and the engine screams at you like a cat in a bathtub. One of those whiny 4-banger screams that announces to the world that you have the most gutless vehicle on the block. And the thing has a strange seating position - I kept wanting to tilt the seat back. To me, it felt like I was leaning forward all the time. It was not comfortable at all.
Everyone goes on about how much ‘utility’ they have, but jeez… Around here, they go for about $26K. For that, I could buy a small Dodge Caravan minivan and have about $10,000 left over for my utility belt.
Is the Rasheen actually a capable off-road vehicle? In Japan they use anime characters in their ads, not off-road scenes.
I’ve never found the Plymouth Duster to be especially attractive. Even the logo/name looks a bit cartoonish to me. I sure see a lot of them around, though.
Good heavens. Where are you posting from? I haven’t seen a Duster in years, and I live in sunny Phoenix, home of old cars that don’t rust through and for which you get an incentive to keep your old car in the form of an exhorbitant Vehicle License Tax.
I always thought the Duster logo looked like Oscar the Grouch when I was a kid.