Ugly Car guide! Audi.

I wonder if people would actually read this if I updated more? No matter, here's the next installment in the Ugly Car Guide. I admit to skipping Aston Martin, but then again they all look the same and all look completely kick ass, so what's the point?

Audi Q7



It really isn't hard to design an SUV is it? You take a big station wagon shape, add some big wheel flares and pointless black plastic around the bottom, and then sell it to people with more money than sense. In the Audi's defense, the Q7 has decent proportions, and looks much better than its VW Toureg and Porsche Cayenne cousins. Even then, it looks like a great reason to do the sensible thing and buy one of Audi's nice station wagons instead.

Verdict: Ugly

Audi R8



A supercar should have two things going for it: sex and violence. The Audi R8 has both. The angry eyes and big mouth say it will probably eat your children, and the muscular, no nonsense shape says it will probably bed your wife while doing it. And yet, it has a stupid panel right behind the door that's a different color for no reason. But really, that's more of a beauty mark than anything.

Verdict: Good looking

Audi TT



The first TT wasn't really a sports car. Sure, it had two doors and sometimes four wheel drive, but it was mostly a way of getting your hair from one place to the next. A fashion accessory over a mode of transportation. Sure it looked fashionable, but there wasn't really much forward motion going on in the arches-on-arches looks, and with its alarming tendancy to lift, there wasn't much forward motion going on when you drove it either.

The latest TT, however, tries to be a sports car. So, they tried to make it look speedy by leaning the whole thing backward slightly and tossing in some speedy accent lines. It didn't work. So now we have an Audi TT with slightly more generic looks and slightly more fussy detailing. In short, they ruined it. Now how will you get your hair to the salon?

Verdict: Ugly

Audi A3



A cynic might say that the A3 is a VW Golf in wolf's clothing. Sure, but it's also tightly styled, nicely detailed, and sends the message that you're a tough, smart professional. Which is a lie, because you just bought a Golf in wolf's clothing.

Verdict: Good looking, anyway.

Audi A4



The A4 was designed before Audi adopted its pointlessly gigantic corporate grille. The early ones were actually pretty, but now it looks like someone glued an unnecessarily gigantic grille onto the front of it. Which they did, actually

Verdict: Ugly, but just barely.

Audi A5



I can't quite figure out this one. Sometimes, it looks really terrible, with its gigantic grille, flat-ish front end, annoyingly formal roof-line, and the same undulating accent line that Hyundai is really fond of lately. Then, if the sun is just right in the sky, and my mood is in just the right range, that same flat front end looks agressive, the roof looks classy and luxurious, and the stupid accent line instead becomes muscular. Maybe one day I'll make up my mind on this one

Verdict: Right now, good looking. Call back in five minutes.

Audi A6



The A6 looks expensive. It looks powerful. It looks like an original choice in the luxury field.

Verdict: I never said it looked good.

Audi A8



The official car of mobsters used to be the Lincoln Town Car. It looked imposing in black, was fairly luxurious, and had a big trunk for all of those corpses you have to haul around. The replacement should be the A8. Not much looks more imposing, especially in black. It's also extremely luxurious, being Audi's flagship. Even better, it comes with a Lamborghini engine in the S trim. So we can also assume that it's much faster than the old Town Car, which might be nice if you have a time sensitive whacking to take care of. I'll admit that I'm not quite sure how many corpses the trunk holds, however.

Verdict: Good looking, albeit in a Tony Soprano/angry bull dog sort of way.

Ugly Car Guide! Half a month late, for your convenience

Acura

Wow, this showed up way later than intended. No matter, here's the start of the Your Car is Ugly Guide, our attempt to make sure you're buying the least ugly cars around. I might go ahead and get pictures up eventually, but I figure this is being posted so much later than I intended that I should get the text up at least.

Acura CSX:



This is, basically, a Honda Civic. Yes they changed the headlights. They even changed the taillights. Then, satisfied, they took a nap. But, even if they clearly expended no effort whatsoever in making it unique, that does not affect whether something is good looking or not. So, in spite of being incredibly lazy, the CSX is in fact a good looking car. It's got the regular Civic's space-pod design, which is both daring and exciting, and you get the added bonus of having slightly different taillights. So, I assume, you can lord it over other Civic owners. I don't know.

Verdict: Good looking. Pointless, but good looking.

Acura TSX:



Yes, it's named after a stock exchange. And yes, all of your friends in Europe will chuckle at you, because you just bought a tarted up European Honda Accord. But, regardless, it's a good looking car. It manages to look sort of aggressive and sporty, or at least as aggressive and sporty as you're going to get in a family sedan, and it has really nice taillights. Sure, in 50 years nobody's going to look back on the TSX as some sort of design landmark, but you can drive it and still be proud of it. Until some Europeans start laughing at you.

Verdict: Good looking.

Acura TL:



This is not a tarted up Euro Accord. No, really! Sure, it looks basically just like a TSX, except for a nice accent line and a more boring rear end, but it's actually a different car!

Verdict: Yes, still good looking, even if they should have tried a little harder.

Acura RL:



You know, since I have given all of the other Acura's passing grades so far, you might wonder if I'm much softer than I intend to be. Hell, two of the cars mentioned before were barely different from cars Honda already makes. What on earth is wrong with me? Well, nothing, because those are all good looking cars. This one, however, isn't. Oh, sure, it's not ugly. It has decent proportions, none of the lines are all weird and wrong, and it's a generally fine car. There's nothing really all that wrong with it, per se. But then, there's nothing really right with it either. It's a car so bland and uninteresting that it doesn't even have any defining features anymore. The perfect getaway vehicle, nobody could tell you what on earth it was.

Verdict: Boring. Worse than ugly, because if something is ugly, it's at least notable in some way.

Acura RDX:



People buy SUVs because they look tough. People buy CUVs - "Crossover utility vehicles", basically the dumbest vehicle descriptor known to man - because they realize that SUVs aren't as good as cars, but still want to look tough. The RDX, then, succeeds admirably. With its narrow eyes and tough grille, it looks like something out of a kick ass sci-fi film. You half expect Schwarzenegger to jump out and shoot people.

Verdict: Good looking.

Acura MDX:



Michael Bay wants you to believe that all good Transformers are made by GM. But the MDX has this big shield on the front of it, right where the Autobots logo would go. So, Michael Bay is covering for the real good Tranformers, which are actually posh Acura CUVs. Either that, or he's right, and it's a Decepticon, and thus evil. Oooooh, scary.

Verdict: I'm not going to say anything mean about a giant transforming robot, am I? Though, to be honest, it is on the unattractive side, with stupid flared wheel arches and a dumb front bumper. Please don't kill me robot overlords.

An announcement? On my day off?

The 2008s are slowly trickling onto the market, so I've decided that I need to start a Your Car is Ugly Buyer's Guide! How else will you know if the car you're looking at is ugly or not? I'm going to do it brand by brand, starting with North American models, and if people are actually reading this thing by the time I look at them all (and let's face it, even if they're not) some foreign brands and models too. Stay tuned for Acura tomorrow, to kick this shebang off.

Well, at least they tried - Kia Amanti

In about the mid-90s, Korea's biggest car manufacturer - Hyundai and their Kia subsidiary - decided that, dammit, they weren't going to be regarded as cars you buy when you're lacking in both standards and dollars. They weren't going to go outside of the country for all of their design and engineering expertise, they'd go in house and learn to make great cars. And they did. Sure, it was only with the relatively recent introduction of the newest Hyundai Sonata that a Korean car could really be considered a world class contender, but the intervening years had leaps and bounds over previous products much larger than had ever happened before.

With this plan, they also decided that they'd take their styling in house. Most of the time before they'd commission foreign talent to do most of that, but now, since they were world class now, they'd better learn how to design cars all by themselves.

It actually worked at first. The Hyundai Tiburon was, and is, a very good looking car, even when they put silly round headlights on it for no apparent reason. The first Accent looked something you'd actually want to own and drive. It wasn't, really, but it did look the part. Then, recently, they figured it out again. The new Sonata is one of the better looking family sedans on the market, though I suppose nobody would accuse it of being adventurous. The new Accent again looks like something you'd actually want to own, and it's not entirely bad to drive either. But between then and now, there was a glorious moment where nobody actually had the slightest clue what they were doing. The styling was bizarre, pretentious, and hilarious. There were big chrome grilles, weird accent lines all over the place, and cues that suggested that the designer had never seen another car before in his life. And, on the same cars, there were a multitude of cues so flagrantly ripped off of other models that you wondered just what was going on in the studios over in Korea.


It's hard to pick exactly which of these miscues is the best candidate. I wouldn't even count out them appearing here in the future. The previous generation Sonata is by no means good looking, but I almost have to give it credit for being in the most common market segment and yet managing to be completely unique and kind of off putting, no matter how ubiquitous it might be (the infamous '96 Ford Taurus also pulls this trick, and will also show up here eventually). The first Santa Fe had a collection of curves so misguided that it always looked damaged. But if I'm going to give an introduction to Hyundai/Kia's weirdest styling, I have to pick the most representative sample, the model that perfectly sums up everything wrong with their design philosophy at that point.



Hellooooo Kia Amanti.

Parts of this look like a Mercedes E-Class. Well, what one might imagine an E-Class to look like if it were described over the phone. Four round lights? Check. Big Chrome grille? Check. Not a great execution of the concept, but it does get the jist of it. Then you go past the grille and notice the strange formal roof line, and the soft rear end, which doesn't mesh with the more upright look of the rest of the car. With its tall roof and big vertical grille, they're trying to make it big and tough, but since it's not that long, it actually makes the car look significantly smaller.

They had clearly intended to make a car that had class and style, since it's the most expensive Kia. Instead, it looks like an adorable elementary school art project which got way out of hand.

And, because of that, how can you hate it? Sure, it's terrible, but honestly, you can see the enthusiasm in it. They're trying to make themselves a car that looks classy and luxurious because they believe they've made the best car ever to wear a Kia badge. They believe in themselves, and their abilities to such an extent that you almost feel as though you're crushing their dreams in criticizing it. It's crap, but don't tell the designers, it'd be like telling a six year old that Santa isn't real.

I suppose I made up for missing last week by making an extra long post.

I want to see the bright lights tonight. (2001 Pontiac Sunfire)

I'm going to assume that the front end is some sort of tribute to a tragedy, every light representing someone lost and how we can't ever forget them. That, or Pontiac got massive kickbacks from the light supplier. Take your pick.

2008 Buick LaCrosse.

I suppose that, with the second post, it's confession time. I...didn't mind the old Buick LaCrosse. Fine, it looked like a face-lifted Ford Taurus. And yes, it was purchased primarily by old ladies. And the interior had a big swath of fake wood just to remind you that Buick's interior decor was still firmly stuck in the 70s. And in Canada it's called the Allure because in Quebec LaCrosse is slang for, how shall I say, "jerkin' the gherkin". I can freely admit all of this. But, I couldn't help but be a little fond of it. It might just be because it could have been so much worse. I mean, it came out right after GM gave the world the Saturn Ion, and the Pontiac-which-shall-not-be-named. It could have looked like an abstract expression of a horse's ass at that time, and since it just looked like a Buick Taurus, it was probably the best looking new car GM had produced in years.

Yes, that tells you just how bad GM design was only a few years ago.

So, even though I wanted to set myself up as some sort of ugly car critic, I couldn't, because I just couldn't be too mean to something like the LaCrosse. It was terrible. Luckily, GM realized my problem, and gave it a facelift. And, as a result, it now looks like a Ford Taurus which just crashed through a backyard barbecue.

The purpose of this gigantic chrome shield is, ostensibly, brand identity, though it might be more appropriate for defeating Medusa in some sort of ancient legend. It looks like it belongs to another car, which it does really. And I love it, because it means that I don't have to like the LaCrosse anymore. And frankly, I like that most of all.

Your Car Is Ugly. An introduction.

Not to be mean, but let's face it, your car is probably an aesthetic abomination. It might not even be your fault, it might have just been the only thing you could afford. Maybe you just don't have a strong aesthetic sense. Maybe, deep down inside, it's a good car, the best there is, but someone decided to give it a downright dreadful body.

This is why I've come along. I'm tired of ugly cars, even though I used to drive one. I'm here to point out every aesthetic abomination I come across. I'm here to shame designers into making something that's perhaps a bit more attractive. I'm here to help you avoid buying something truly hideous. Most of all, I'm here to amuse myself with a little blog nobody else will read.

Prepare, then, for erratic (though hopefully weekly) updates on all manner of ugly forms of transportation. Hopefully funny updates as well, but considering this introductory post, perhaps not.