Chevrolet Silverado

The other day I saw a Chevy Silverado driving down the street. I thought to myself "You don't see those very often, they must not be too successful," before realizing that it was my neighbors' truck, I drive by it every day, and I actually drive by tons of them constantly. Yet, somehow, I don't notice them. It's a gigantic vehicle with no presence, how did GM pull that off?

I'm not particularly biased towards or against any particular brand when it comes to trucks. In fact, the GM has made the best looking trucks for decades, up to the 1998 model, which finally ceded the crown to Ford. The model before that was possibly the best looking truck ever made, in spite of an interior filled with bad ideas and tiny buttons to ensure that people wearing giant work gloves could never adjust the climate control or radio. Actually, the fact that the electronics were notorious for breaking also contributed to that. Still, it was a good looking vehicle, and eventually even got an interior that was functional. Farmers and construction workers were happy.

The '98-2007 model, while not particularly good looking, at least had presence. It was odd, with the slightly melted curves and ample swaths of ill-considered plastic additions it had a toy-like appearance, but the thing was so big that it was no toy. It was a scaled up Tonka toy, and while I hated it at first glance, it has since grown on me and I can admit that it had a certain distinct presence.



This new Silverado has no presence, and instead of forging ahead with some of the good ideas from trucks past, it just repeats what Ford and Dodge have been doing. Yet, it does that to lesser effect, and it winds up being a massive vehicle with no presence. It could be any truck, it's pretty much every truck.

The problems start at the front end. The giant grille is certainly trendy, though it doesn't really fit anything GM had done before. So, here's a massive grille, that pushes the headlights to the periphery and takes over the front of the truck. In an obvious cost saving move, it also is easily switched out for the GMC grille, which leads to the first loss of identity.

Chevrolet has never really been about the grille, their trucks have been marked out primarily by the thick bar which divides it and the headlights. It's the most distinctive part of the design, and one of the ways you can tell immediately you're looking at a Chevy truck. So, the obvious thing to do is de-emphasize it to the point where the bar is barely even a design element. It's cheaper, but it's less interesting and is part of the any-truck problem that the vehicle has. It's a grille swap away from being a GMC, but it doesn't have any identity outside of that grille. You could swap on a Ford badge and it'd fit just as well, though Ford actually has a design language on their trucks. It could be anything.

The indistinct looks continue as you go. The comically large fender flares are sort of unique, but such things are a truck cliche at this point, and by making them absurdly large it somehow dulls the impact. It's something anybody could do, but it doesn't actually add anything, and in spite of being massive they're also kind of subtle, since they're not emphasized in any other way. Giving the truck flat sides would have been more unique.



One thing the massive flares do is most noticeable on the back of the truck. The wheels are lost in the massive opening. It looks like a body mod gone horribly wrong, or that you're going along on your space saver. The thing is, the wheels aren't small, and even on the gigantic heavy duty models they never actually fill the fender. I wonder how much box space is wasted by the gigantic wheel wells.

Still, that's something which is unique, and the only unique thing from a rear 3/4 view. The taillights are a direct rip of the Dodge Ram from the same era, and since there's so little that can be done on the back of a truck, using the same shape and style of taillights is a definite no-no. The badge, at least, is gigantic, so people have some idea of who made the truck. There's also a character line that doesn't really have enough of an impression to really stand out, and the half-spoiler/half-rubber step on the top of the tailgate, which always looks like a last minute addition even though GM has been using it for years. One would think some effort would me made to integrate it a little.

The problem is, that mistake is the only thing that makes the truck unique. It could wear any badge with no problem, something that cannot be said of any of its competitors. It's surely a challenge to make a large and imposing truck without giving it any presence whatsoever, but GM managed it, and now I'm always surprised when I actually notice one driving down the street.

Chevrolet Silverado owners, your truck is boring.

Scion tC

After an...ahem...three year hiatus, Your Car is Ugly is back! Alright! It'll continue to be about critiquing the looks of cars, so it'll be exactly the same. First up in YCIU Mk. II, the Scion tC.



The Scion tC stands for, I'm assuming, Scion Toyota Celica. It fills the same role in the Toyota lineup, as the small two door coupe which is supposed to appeal to the sporty, cool, interesting people who buy such things. Or rather, used to buy such things, there aren't very many on the market anymore. The first one was a perfectly nice two door coupe, this one is slightly less so.

From the front, the first thing you notice is that the headlights are a lot like the headlights on a Honda Accord. Actually, the front end as a whole is a lot like a Honda, especially on the lower bumper, with a big rectangular hole. Honda loves doing big rectangular holes for their lower air intake, generally with the absolute minimum of styling. Combined with the Accord lamps one wonders if the badges were wrong. Actually, this car seems to ape a lot of Honda's less admirable styling qualities.

One thing you can't see from this angle is how short the thing is. The vertical lines around the cabin emphasize the length on that part of the body, which really deemphasizes the length of the hood and trunk. It looks short and squat, which isn't exactly sporting.

The roof is bizarre, actually. For one, the windows are really too narrow, which someone clearly thinks makes a car look cool and low - it's certainly on trend - but here makes the unadorned sides look extremely thick. Then the back window ends in a point way too soon, leading to this massive C-Pillar, and lots of metal on the lower roof. I'm assuming it's an attempt to be sporting, but it looks like a miscommunication, like someone didn't know just how long the roof would be.



Moving on to the back, somebody put the wrong taillights on it. The trunk lid and rear fenders contort themselves to match them - and include a reference to the very much not sporty Honda Pilot in the process - but it doesn't work. These are the wrong taillights. It also showcases how preposterously thick the car is from this angle. That's a lot of sheet metal, and all the accent lines and big shapes in the world can't hide that. A sports car should look athletic, this looks like a small house. Not as visible from this particular angle is the area around the license plate, which has such a big molding on top one wonders if a mistake wasn't made during the manufacturing process.

Is the new tC good looking? It's squat, it's short, it seems to have many of the wrong parts fitted and it doesn't have that sense of movement that a good sports car needs. It's less Usain Bolt, more nuclear bunker.

Scion tC drivers, your car is ugly.

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.