What's the ugliest car ever made?

[brawler]

(ford raptor picture)

prefacing with this first: i am not a car person. i know nothing about wheel boxes. i have only ever driven a car one time for practice, and that was six months ago.

that said, i have a rather vivid memory of some time within the last six months where i was walking from my dorm at uni to the food court, and in the parking lot, i saw a mom driving a Ford truck very similar, if not exactly this one. slim orange lights, gray body, and WHY IS IT SO BIIIIIIIIG???

these things agitate me ever since getting more into cars and understanding just how boned america is in terms of them. this isn't a truck anymore so much as it is an ego-powered death machine.......

all so true. and don't forget that for some god forsaken reason, this truck (the ford raptor) also has on-par, if not, more horsepower than the current super cars. They can come from factory with 700+ horsepower! That way you can make sure whatever you hit is definitely dead!!! And they aren't the only brand doing this either! Chevy with the TRX, the new EV Hummer and Cybertruck, the GMC Sierra Sport (800 hp.. jesus), etc.

Another little cherry on top is that these trucks cost well over 100k, so keep that in mind when you see one.. some moron spent that much money.. on a truck

Sure, I think a fast truck is cool--- I am an American, after all. But I am thinking of something more akin to a Holden Ute, a GMC Syclone, etc. You know, smaller, lower to the ground trucks. Not these massive land whales. The fact that a truck this big can also outpace many of the performance-benchmark cars of the time is just insane.


to stay on topic i will share a few more of my top ugly car picks:

this one might be controversial, but i think this thing is so ugly.. the Mclaren Senna:

The amount of random edges, vents, etc. just make it so busy and hard to look at. and that wing is sooo ugly to me. I don't care that it handles good, its tooooo much.
To me, less is more, and they nailed that with their original re-debut design, the MP4-12C. It has aged so well, and I think it will only get better, unlike this one.

BMW xM:

If the new M3 was bad, then this really takes the cake. At least the M3 is a "performance car", this? Is just a guady luxury SUV. It was quite literally marketed to influencers. It brags about simulating the night club lifestyle in many of its advertisements! What in the world does this have to do with M!!! At least make it attractive, but it looks so swollen, congested.. Ugh.

Its funny that when it comes to ugly cars, I can only think of new stuff. I have such hatred for the current state of automotive trends, that anything bad from the past just doesn't bother me as much. I will share one that makes me shake my head every single time I see it. The Jeep Wagoneer.

These things are HUGE in person. Genuinely, insanely big. It is boring, uninspired, dangerous. A car that looks as generic as this, being as unnecessarily big-- its soul is ugly. Its purpose is ugly. And its price tag is over 100k. It is a symbol of Suburban America's consumerism and fear mongering. I hate hate hate it. And it has that classic, unchanging Jeep build quality, meaning it is a horrible driving and owning experience.

 

[Andrew]

The Jeep Wagoneer.

This makes me think of a vehicle that only appears in my nightmares. Behold the 2024 Hummer:

 

[Nyaonics/June]

all so true. and don't forget that for some god forsaken reason, this truck (the ford raptor) also has on-par, if not, more horsepower than the current super cars. They can come from factory with 700+ horsepower! That way you can make sure whatever you hit is definitely dead!!! And they aren't the only brand doing this either! Chevy with the TRX, the new EV Hummer and Cybertruck, the GMC Sierra Sport (800 hp.. jesus), etc.

Another little cherry on top is that these trucks cost well over 100k, so keep that in mind when you see one.. some moron spent that much money.. on a truck

Sure, I think a fast truck is cool--- I am an American, after all. But I am thinking of something more akin to a Holden Ute, a GMC Syclone, etc. You know, smaller, lower to the ground trucks. Not these massive land whales. The fact that a truck this big can also outpace many of the performance-benchmark cars of the time is just insane.


to stay on topic i will share a few more of my top ugly car picks:

this one might be controversial, but i think this thing is so ugly.. the Mclaren Senna:

The amount of random edges, vents, etc. just make it so busy and hard to look at. and that wing is sooo ugly to me. I don't care that it handles good, its tooooo much.
To me, less is more, and they nailed that with their original re-debut design, the MP4-12C. It has aged so well, and I think it will only get better, unlike this one.

BMW xM:

If the new M3 was bad, then this really takes the cake. At least the M3 is a "performance car", this? Is just a guady luxury SUV. It was quite literally marketed to influencers. It brags about simulating the night club lifestyle in many of its advertisements! What in the world does this have to do with M!!! At least make it attractive, but it looks so swollen, congested.. Ugh.

Its funny that when it comes to ugly cars, I can only think of new stuff. I have such hatred for the current state of automotive trends, that anything bad from the past just doesn't bother me as much. I will share one that makes me shake my head every single time I see it. The Jeep Wagoneer.

These things are HUGE in person. Genuinely, insanely big. It is boring, uninspired, dangerous. A car that looks as generic as this, being as unnecessarily big-- its soul is ugly. Its purpose is ugly. And its price tag is over 100k. It is a symbol of Suburban America's consumerism and fear mongering. I hate hate hate it. And it has that classic, unchanging Jeep build quality, meaning it is a horrible driving and owning experience.

God am I glad somebody else hates the xM as much as I do, I could not agree more with what you've said. To me it really is the culmination of shit that is the current trend of "performance SUVs". It's big, it's styling overly aggressive, it's marketed towards "alphas", it's heavy and it's poweful.

Oh and little sidenote to the xMs' marketting which really grinds my gears is that earlier on BMW really, really tried pushing this narrative that the xM is some sort of homage to the BMW M1 with boneheaded statements like this:
BMW really is a car manufacturer.
The fact that not just this SUV but so many high end SUV produced by a european company (e.g. Lamborghini Urus, Audi Q8, MB AMG G500, Ferrari Purosangue etc.) is so confusing to me. What happened to sleek, elegent and timeless design? This all just seems so short sighted and trend oriented.


Now besides all the SUVs mentioned prior I want to add one that's annoys me the most personally and that most of y'all americans will have had no exposure to.
And no, it's not a Citreon or a Peugeot despite maybe some of them deserving a spot in this thread it's this:

THE 2024 CUPRA FORMENTOR



God. Fucking. Damn.

A little background first: Cupra was formally known as "Seat" which was your average VW Group econobox manufacturer based in Spain. Seat has had a surprising success during the 90s and the mid 200s in various motorsports such rally with the Seat Leon, winning 14 races and getting 31 podiums in the 2000cc kitcar class between 1996 and 1998 and in the WTCC with a more modern TDI powered Seat Leon winning both the 2008 and 2009 world championship. For the spanish the brand Seat meant something. Being pretty much the only manufacturer based in Spain that has had any sorts of motorsports success the brand was something to be proud of for the spanish.

So VW decided to ditch the Seat branding and instead turn it into Cupra which since it's rebranding in 2020 has been deligated to making souped up VWG products with goofy names (what the fuck is a Formentor???) and "alpha" styling. Because we really needed more of those.

 

[Super Crab Deluxe Turbo X]

too lazy to grab pics because I'm on my phone (sorry), but Walt's Pontiac Aztek from Breaking Bad is pretty much perfect casting for a car

they gave it a deliberately ugly paint job, sure, but it looks amazingly joyless. reflects his life at the start of the series so well

 

[brawler]

too lazy to grab pics because I'm on my phone (sorry), but Walt's Pontiac Aztek from Breaking Bad is pretty much perfect casting for a car

they gave it a deliberately ugly paint job, sure, but it looks amazingly joyless. reflects his life at the start of the series so well

I can't remember where this interview was, but I remember hearing/reading somewhere about that the vehicle casting for the show was just as important as the main cast. It was all very deliberate (maybe until the later seasons when it felt more like paid advertisements). I always respected that and take that mentality very seriously with my personal work as well. The main cast of cars should feel just as much of a character as the human characters themselves.

It's no surprise the collector market on Aztek's shot up when the show was in its prime.

And regarding the Aztek itself, its so funny in the modern era; it still outperforms most modern SUV's where it counts: going off road. Hahaha. Also, side note, but the concept version of the Aztek actually looks decent. Sucks that the production version is so.. meh.

 

[inlinesix]

this isn't a truck anymore so much as it is an ego-powered death machine. say goodbye to safe neighborhood streets, kids, cause the drivers of these things ain't gonna see you chasing after your soccer ball with how annoyingly tall the front end of it is.

there's a *very* slim use case for american trucks but 99.99% of the time, owners NEVER use them for anything and drive them like hatchbacks, pisses me the fuck off. (they have *very* torque-y engines in them which *would* be good for towing/hauling/etc)

i wish the america got australian utes at least once. they're literally *the* perfect solution to this problem imo. they're based on family sedans, so are nicer, faster, safer, more comfortable, and have WAYY more torque for utility/towing/carrying than the kei trucks people keep bringing up as the "perfect" alternative.

 

[inlinesix]

If only I could afford the life of a car enthusiast haha

also i only just saw this, you don't need to have an expensive car and everything to be an enthusiast! if you like cars and like talking about them, you're an enthusiast to me and probably most other sane people. gatekeeping is really bad in the car community.

 

[Andrew]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1801799255880855606

We live in hell