Call 911

Somewhere, a Porsche 997 is missing it's taillights.

What the Hyundai Honda?

Presenting the 2013 Honda Accord sedan.  Although it's miles better looking than the current Accord, it also looks remarkably like a Hyundai. And not even current Hyundais, but the previous generation Sonata (up front) and pre-facelift Genesis (out back). In fact if the current Sonata were one of those "coupe sedans", the styling of this Accord could definitely fill in for the "regular" version.

2013 Mercedes-Benz SL

The 2013 Mercedes-Benz SL could have been a looker, if only they chose not to mount though hideous headlights, made that much worse because they're so gigantic.  I think it's mostly the fault of the blob-like light piping / LED section on the upper edge.  If that were a thin strip on the upper edge with quad circular reflectors below it would look infinitely better.  It's a shame as it's mechanical improvements and weight reduction most likely make it a better driving car.  Pictured here is the recently unveiled SL63 AMG.  Note that the revised lower fascia with larger, more aggressive air intakes are still overwhelmed by the brutal headlights sitting above them.

Here's my quick and dirty fix for the headlight units.  Overall I think they would look better as smaller more intergrated units.

Bentley EXP 9 F(ugly)

Are those satellite dishes or fog lamps?

Behold the Bentley EXP 9 F, the awkwardly named Bentley concept that foreshadows it's upcoming SUV. Not digging the headlights, or the little mini-grilles on their inside edge either. I think it would look much better to get rid of the grilles and move the headlights inward so it looks a bit more like the Mulsanne. And replace those fog lights/running lights with something that doesn't look like a Star Wars prop.

The side and rear end are much better, but there's still a few iffy areas.  The dash to front axle length looks really short which makes it look like a FWD based crossover.  Due to that has less of that long hood look of the sedans that implies a massive engine lies beneath.  And those wide rectangular tail lights make the rear end kinda look like an 80's Range Rover - upscale but not exactly current, and at odds with the rest of the truck.

Lincoln Mark VILE

Yes, this is a Mirage – but sadly not an actual mirage. A company by the name of Phaeton thought it was a good idea to make a coupe out of a Town Car by cutting out the rear seat section, thus creating the Mirage.  Strangely, the much better looking Mark VI was avalable at Lincoln dealerships at the time.

FBS Engineering Census V6

 
I can only guess FBS stands for “Fugly Bull S***”. Not really sure about the originals of this car, but it appears to be a British cottage industry make that never quite got off the ground, most likely because it looks like a mutated Alfa Romeo Spider. Seems to be powered by a Ford Duratec V6.

Tailor Made Ferrari: Letting Money Preside Over Taste

I stumbled across Tailor Made Ferrari this morning; a personalization program from Ferrari offering exclusivity their clients by creating unique cars to their (often misguided) tastes.


There are three Tailor Made collections here, broken into Classica, Scuderia, and Inedita. However, there seems to be mainly two trends going on here – one is creating a look which recalls the past, and the other is a look that is the definition of excess.


The Classica Collection is what it sounds like – modern interpretations of classic themes and cars. While this collection seems to be the most tasteful, there are thumbnails that appear on the site that aren’t, like the wire-wheeled California below.

The Scuderia Collection is similar to the Classica Collection, in that it contains modern interpretations of classic Ferrari race cars and liveries (the seem to focus mainly on classic racing paint/vinyl schemes). The problem here is that taken out of context, most of these packages look garish.

Lastly, the Inedita Collection is the main offender. It seems to exist solely to produce exactly what the client desires, regardless of whether the outcome is retina-searingly garish. Take for example the matte blue California with blue chrome accents, whose interior is lined with denim, blue leather, and loads more blue chrome. Or the two tone yellow and carbon fibre California with gold chrome accents.

Although the products featured on this site are obviously renderings, that doesn’t mean these products don’t exist. Witness Lapo Elkann’s denim California, which seems to be the basis for the denim Ferrari above and is in fact reality. If that sounds vaguely familiar, this happened before to a 599 Fiorano.

Pininfarina Plagiarism

I started a “Guess That Car” thread over at the Car & Driver Backfires forums – basically a car picture is posted and the users have to guess the make and model. Every time one of these quadruplets appears I never know which one of the Pininfarina designs I’m looking at. Sure they’re pretty, but talk about milking something for all it’s worth.  At least the Alfa Romeo 1900 has a little variation up front. The Peugeot 404 convertible and Fiat 1600 convertible are near clones of each other, especially the later models with the grille mounted driving lights.  They even share chrome bodyside detailling that ends midway through the doors.

Chery Faira is disgustingly cute.

Behold the 3 and 5 door versions of Chery's Faira sedan.  They basically look like rolling emoticons.  I feel like I'm getting diabetes just looking at them, they're so sweet.  The 5 door below is even more so, kinda looking like a Mazda 2 with the cuteness turned up to 11.  The dimples from it's smile are even poking into the lower edges of the headlights.

Zagadon't

Zagato is one of those styling firms that has a few misses in the past, but in my eyes they've had more misses than hits in recent memory.  Take these two blobby and almost identical rebodies - the 2006 Ferrari 575 GTZ and the 2008 Bently Continental GTZ.

More Zombie Packards

It appears that these neoclassic Packards just won't die, regardless of how hideous they are.  I've found yet another Bayliff Packard, and it looks substantially different from the last Crown Vic one I posted.  Also lucky enough this time around to have multiple views, including the interior which features a gigantic steering wheel emblem that I presume is the size it is to make up for the lack of other interior upgrades.

 And if that wasn't bad enough, it seems the luxury coupe is susceptible to the Packard virus, as witnessed by the unfortunate Mercury Cougar below.

Defugging the RDX

I haven't really stated on this blog before how fond I wasn't of the first generation Acura RDX, other than posting some of it's resemblance the the X6 M.  It's leering chrome beak on later models and squinty headlights mounted high on it's front end always looked off to me, not mention the tiered inlets in the bumper of the pre-facelift model.  It kind of looked like it was gasping...

2007

However Acura has finally given it a full redesign and it's been completely defugged and looking like a mini MDX (although some would argue anything with that grille is always slightly fugly). Unfortunately, Acura decided to remove the turbo 4 cylinder engine and SH-AWD with the fugliness so it's unsure if it will be as much of a hoot to drive.

  2013

IAMFUGLY

So apparently Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas is starting a car company called IAMAUTO, and will produce the glorified Lego car posted below that's about as tasteful as their music.  One can only hope it performs better than it looks, because if not it'll perform about as good as a K-Car firing on 3 cylinders.  It's also strangely lacking humps...

Spyker C12 Zagato

Spyker cars aren't exactly known for their subtlety.  In fact there are probably a lot of people that would say all Spyker cars belong on this blog.  However, I believe that for Spyker cars the beauty is in the details.  It may be overwhelming at first, but the more you look at them the more everything tends to meld together cohesively.  The same could be said for the Pagini Zonda.

However, the Zagato bodied Spyker C12 crosses the line in my opinion from fabulous to fugly.  The front end isn't too bad - it's a sleeker interpretation of the Spyker themes.  As you move back you meet some broad hips, but they're sleeker than similar treatments on recent Zagato bodied Maseratis and Ferraris - they looks less bloated and more muscular.

However the seemingly aquatic inspired rear end treatment is excessively overwrought and vomit inducing.  It's gigantic taillights and venting/tail pipes that look like chrome gills are more fitting to a Mitsuoka Orochi than Spyker's predominantly aviation inspired cues.

The Torino Lutteral

This Argentinian atrocity has an interesting past. Industries Kaiser Argentina (IKA) is an Argentina based subsidiary of the North American Kaiser Motors, formed in 1956.  Initially they sold slightly modified Jeeps and Kaiser Manhatten, expanding to sell modified Renault cars post 1959 (after which they became known as IKA Renault).  They sold a variety of modified Jeep and AMC products in the 1960s before being completely bought out by Renault in 1970's to become Renault Argentina.  To make matters even more confusing, they were also associated with Alfa Romeo in the early 1960s, buying the body models for Alfa Romeo models and producing cars that were mirror images of those sold in Italy...

Their most famous car was the Torino, which was essentially an AMC Rambler redressed by Pininfarina.  While this was a very attractive car, something went wrong after the Renault buyout.  Renault Argentina decided to continue to produce the Torino due to it's popularity, becoming the only non-Renault based car in it's lineup.  In doing so a facelift destroyed it's pretty lines, and all bodystyles adopted this furrowed brow look with rectangular headlights.  A revised coupe called the Lutteral appeared with a strange fastback reminescent of a homemade 1964 Plymouth Barracuda - in 1973.  A sad end for what were originally very pretty cars.

Bugatti Veyron EH 1.5

Only missing 14.9L of engine displacement.