Ugliest Car

Hi,

I think you are probably on to something there 

Have you even noticed how the grills of some of the new cars look like the vocal section of the Cylon Centurian from the original Battlestar Galactica?

Hi,

My office is near a bus depot and I see alot of off duty buses where, above the scroll bar listing their route (above the window), they have an amber square scroll back and forth, which kind of always reminded my of a Cylon.

Hi;

 I don't know about you , But , I thought the Metro was fun to drive . Little car , Tiny 3 cylinder engine and a five speed ! I had to drive my business partner's wife's car from San Jose to Sacramento . I still had a quarter of a tank when I got to their house . Laughing all the way !

 The only thing that bothered me was looking at door handles of the normal sized cars. Then I remembered my Austin Healey and felt alright !

plasticjunkie

There’s another auto thread going on and thought about ugly cars from our past.

 

When I think of ugly I picture the AMC Pacer followed by the Pinto and Gremlin. 

 

I was going to mention the Pacer.  One of the most godawful designs ever thrust upon the motoring public.

I heard the reason they had such a large rear cargo area with the short hood was that they designed it to be an electric car.  The batteries would have covered the floor back there, but the technology wasn't ready for a reliable rechargeable electric.

So they looked at licensing the Wankel rotary design.  But that fell through.

They car was almost ready to go when they had to reengineer everything from the firewall forward to accept one of AMC's current powerplants.

The Gremlin was actually so ugly it was cute.

Knew a guy in high school that bought a '75 Gremlin X 5 litre (no idea why AMC was using the European spelling of liter) V8.  304 CID, he bought it was the heads ported and polished, headers, dual exhaust that exited to the sides behind the rear wheels.  Factory 4 speed, lime green with a Levi's denim interior (indigo denim, orange stitching, rear jean pocket on the armrest and an orange Levi tag).

Pretty good mufflers, so at a light the other driver wouldn't know.  Light would turn green and he'd pull away.  Went on for a couple weekends before the word was out that the little green Gremlin wasn't to be messed with.

Not this car.  His had white decals, and no runroof.

There was one car he couldn't beat.  Small block Chevy powered Vega.  Tubbed out, wide rear wheels, stall converter, shift kit- someone's drag car he drove on the street.

Not that car, didn't have the rear spoiler and paint was much nicer.

Another car I never thought looked very good was the Chevy Corvair.

Seems like that tried to design it the way they had been with front engines, instead of a rear air cooled engine.

The front end looked like it was supposed to have a grille, but they just put a solid panel over it.

The first design of the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia (type 34) was not pretty to look at either.

But eventually they got it right.

American Grafitti and Christine notwithstanding, I've never thought the '57 Plymouth Fury was very attractive, even by the standards of the day.

Never thought these looked very good either.  1960-1962 Chrysler 300 F/G/H.

Among more modern designs, I thought the Subaru Tribeca was pretty bad.  Looked to me like there was something stuck in it's grille.

Never thought these were particularly attractive.  But they came from a ultiliarian design where form followed function.

Along with the above off road vehicle, the late model Jeep Cherokee front end looks so much like a pregnant cockroach.