Optimus Fug

WOW. That's some spoiler. Everything on this car is extreme to the extreme. And he stole a grille and headlights off some poor Mercedes and stuck it on. Unless that IS a Mercedes...

Nagoya - when all the weirdos turn crazy.

A side note about all these recent posts. Most of these cars appeared in the parking lots of large cars shows in the city of Nagoya, Japan. Maybe there's something in the water there...

Here's a bonus pic of some custom Sylvias at Nagoya.

Grand Style, Pt. 1

Now we enter some of the car clubs in this scene in Japan. They've appeared in windshield banners previously, but I can't read Japanese. Thankfully some of them translate it to English for us. "Grand Style" is notorious for it's 'grand style'.

Only thing new about this purple people eater is it's dual tiered, highly functional rear spoiler.

Lexus maybe? Mercedes maybe? Fugly definetly.

Here's a classier representation of the breed. I'm pretty sure this is a Toyota Crown - it has a very Lexus-like greenhouse. This one has a Koenig inspired widebody kit, with S-Classe tails. And DUAL-QUAD pipe organ exhuast pipes.

# 44

Car number 44 is a good representation of the breed. Actually, it was parked next to "Sexy Crown"! Huge air damn - check. Boxy body kit - check. Ugly paint - check. Hood scoops - check. Too small though. Huge spoiler - check. Exterior intercooler - check. Unexplained stars decorating the exterior - check.

Notable differences:
- QUAD sky high exhaust pipes!
- two headlights replaced with plastic. On some classic car based racers, one of the headlights is replaced with a air intake. Basically a tube (as the headlights were round) leading directly to the air box for fresh air - sorta like Pontiac's "Ram Air" back in the day. Also, some racecars have their headlights replaced or covered with plastic during races. I think a combo of both of the above leads to the plastic light replacements in these custom cars.

Pink & Yellow Fugstravaganza

Another hood extension here, and another huge air dam up front. This one has one of the beautiful paint schemes that coat most of these cars. Pink and gold - who would have thought those two colours combined would look this good?

This car in particular is different from the previous ones as it's wide body kit isn't as extreme - it consists of wheel well extensions and very wide running boards. The (very) tall spoiler is different from the previous, but very typical of this custom. The one vents it's exhaust through pipes too - but they stick out through the hood! For those who are wondering, that black breifcase on the air damn attached with hoses is actually an intercooler. This actually makes sense technically though - as there might not be anough room inside the car, and would get cooler air as well being outside the car. Sadly though in these cars it's usually just a gimic.

Star Car

This one looks relatively normal up front, with a bit of a Lotus-like black-with-gold-pinstriping paintjob (well - except the star). Here is what a typical hood extention on these cars looks like. I saw this and thought it actually kinda look good - well it would be is it were shorter. But this car is devoid of the huge bodykits of most of them, where to hood extention just looks as strange as everything else. That's another thing. If people build these things to be unique, why do they all basically do the same thing?

Is some of the previous pics, you may have wondered what all those poles were in the pictures. They're not poles in fact - they the most mystifying aspect of these cars. They're EXHAUST PIPES. They look so stupid it devies reason. WHY are they like this? Do they think it looks good? Is it supposed to look "racey"? Race cars don't have them... Is it supposed to vent greenhouse gases higher into the atmosphere? Sadly - this car's tailpipes pale in comparison to other cars...

Also note what appears to be a red crushed velour interior.

Sexy Crown

The car that started it all (well - the one which turned me onto this strange trend). As with most of these cars, this one appears to be home-made. However this one is without the customary fugly paint job. These cars all basically feature standard ill-fitting scoop in air inlets on boxey widebody kits. These are accompanied by hood extensions to make a more menacing front, bizarrely huge front air dams and huge rear spoilers. This one has pinstriped taillights - other feature slanted/croocked ones to match the slanted / croocked headlights (which I think are meant to look menacing but just look broken). Another note - most of these cars seem to be made out of 4 door sedans, and because of the bodykits the rear doors are no longer useful, but still there under the bodywork.

As on some of the others, this one features hood scoops and triangular appendages sticking vertically from the hood. I noticed the Silvia racecar has these, so I think in racing terms there help aerodynamics.

A couple special features about this car is that the hood extentions is much crappier than some of the other cars, and triangular. Also it seems to basically have the same stock paintjob as it's donor car (which is a Toyota Crown I think?) - which is two tone with a plastic trim piece. Interestingly the also seem to have either painted or applied more of the trim piece on the body kit.

I particularly like how the rear spoiler of this car makes it look like a moveable skateboard/halfpipe ramp. Also note the text on the door - "Sexy Crown".

Origins / Explanation of the Following

I'll start off by saying I'm not sure what the following cars are, how they originated or what they are made in reference to. Pictured above is a Nissan Silvia racecar from the '80s. It looks similar to some of the following cars (but more cohesive and less fugly) and may explain some of the work that went into them. However it seems to be a mix of this, as well as a tribute to Koenig wide body kits (not a good thing) and possibly speed racers. Or they could be a mockery of people who make cars for the above reason, or of those in the Japanese car modification scene (aka "ricers").

Therefore I'm not sure whether they belong on this site. Here at AutoFug, I wish to only display cars that aren't made to be fugly. What I mean is that whoever made the car thought it was attractive and fit for public viewing. Yet to my eyes is severly unattractive. People do make cars to be fugly though. Cars like American "art cars" (you know - the cars with crap like dolls and cameras glued all over them), deliberately made ugly so that they become conversation pieces.

I do not wish to encourage this behavior (the defiling of the automobile) so I don't want to put deliberatly ugly cars on this site. If that is what these strange creations are, I may have to remove them.

Reaching into new AutoFug worlds... Japan.

Formula-S emailed me a truely disturbing picture. It was a link to an image on a site. It was awful. Then I decided to go the the index page of the site, just to see where this disturbing image came from.

And I have uncovered a truely disturbing, possible dangerous trend of Japanese automobile modification.

I remember seeing images of truely strange and ugly Japanese vans in the past. But I had no idea how deep and widespread this trend had spread. It's a disease I tell you! I will be posting some of these monstrosities soon, but it's too late a night to start now. Be prepared - and be afraid.