Five cars that are ugly for a good reason
Tuesday, 22 January 2019
Ugly cars are usually ugly by mistake. But some are ugly on purpose, whether it be because the designer wanted to make it stand out or to be imposing. But there are other reasons to make a car ugly and today we take a look at five cars that are ugly for those other reasons.
Smart ForTwo
Why it looks like it does - safety.
The original Smart ForTwo is a remarkable piece of engineering, but you could never say it was attractive. Funky or quirky, maybe, even possibly 'cute' if you think ugly dogs are 'cute', but attractive? No.
**READ MORE
* Five cars from appliance makers
* Five cars you didn't know had targa tops
* Five cars that aren't made where you think**
But the reason for that was all down to the remarkable 'Tridion Cell', which was a steel hemispherical safety-cell that made up not only the car's platform, but also a large part of the external body as well.
The challenge of making a tiny car remarkably safe dictated the shape of the Smart at least as much as the need to keep it short enough to perpendicular park in a parallel space.
Fiat Multipla
Why it looks like it does - packaging.
Regardless of what you think of its looks, the Fiat Multipla was an absolute masterpiece of packaging, aesthetics be damned.
It was shorter than the three-door Fiat Bravo it was based on, yet had vastly more interior space and was a genuine six seater, with three seats across the front and rear.
The seats were incredibly versatile, with the rear seats able to be moved or removed entirely, if needed. It also boasted 430 litres of cargo space that ballooned up to an incredible 1,900 litres with the rear seats removed.
McLaren Senna
Why it looks like it does - pure speed.
McLaren makes some seriously good looking cars, but as awesome as it is, the Senna is not one of them.
And it is not supposed to be, because literally everything about the Senna is designed to nail the fastest lap time possible.
The car it is based on - the720S - is a pretty enough thing, with elegant, swooping lines and those distinctive headlight intakes, but the Senna is all brutal, blunt lines and blatant functionality.
And that might not make it pretty, but it does make it damn cool…
Any FWD hardtop convertible from the early 2000s
Why they look like they do - roof storage.
Back in the early 2000s there was something of a craze for small FWD hardtop convertibles.
It makes sense on a practical level - a hardtop offers all the freedom of a convertible, but with the comfort and security of a sedan or hatch. Except there was one problem - where to put the roof.
The solution most manufacturers came up with was simply to do away with the rear seats and give the unfortunate car a massive rear that was taken up entirely by the roof when retracted.
It looked awful and the concept is largely dead now. Thankfully.
Pontiac Aztek
Why it looks like it does - sheer incompetence.
Okay, so its not a particularly good reason, but it is a reason.
The original Aztek concept, while still a long way from pretty, was actually quite a cool thing - with a wide track, it had an aggressive and purposeful stance that suited its angular shape, with a much lower roofline that gave it a wedgy look.
When it came to translating that into production form, however, GMs designers completely missed that point of what people liked about the concept and delivered a tall, narrow-tracked monstrosity that stripped away all of the aggression and sportiness of the concept, and just added more plastic cladding.