Another Chinese clone. I get cloning the Toyota Corolla up front, but what's with cloning the Daewoo Lacetti out back? Is Daewoo a high-water mark in terms of car design for the Chinese?
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Attack of the Clones: BYD FBR WTF
Another Chinese clone. I get cloning the Toyota Corolla up front, but what's with cloning the Daewoo Lacetti out back? Is Daewoo a high-water mark in terms of car design for the Chinese?
Saturday, May 01, 2010
Dodge Caliber Review
So I’m going to attempt my first car review. Well – sorta. I wrote one for The Truth About Cars, but it was heavily revised and eventually my credit was removed… But here goes my first attempt at my AutoFug review – unfiltered and 100% me.
My first review will feature a car previously featured on AutoFug – the Dodge Caliber. Will a car deemed fugly have a fugly personality? In this case, the answer is yes. In short, my experience with the Caliber did not leave me with a surplus of happy thoughts. Why? The answer is varied.
The Look
First off, I don’t think the car is all that attractive. While the looks have grown on me a bit, it’s still a bit boring and cartoonish in its proportions. Its exterior features are exaggerated and make what is actually quite a large car for its class look smaller when seen from a distance. Its fender flares are comically inflated, and an unfortunate side effect of this was that the rear door of the car I drove was peppered with rock nicks from where the front wheels picked up road debris and kicked it off the protruding flares for the rear wheel wells. After a few years of ownership I’m sure it’ll turn an attractive shade of rust.
I would also recommend that claustrophobic people avoid this car. It’s an odd car – they’re trying for an SUV feel with a higher stance, yet a sport’s car feel with narrow windows fit for a tank. There’s tons of headroom, but you feel constricted as the roof curves down on the edges toward the narrow door openings. I'd smacked my head into this a couple times getting out, not being used to how small the door openings are. Adding to the confined feelings are huge A-pillars and the tiny rear window (whose top edge sits way too low to maintain a sleeker profile).
Because of the lack of visibility, I found it very hard to judge distances in this car – something that should not be hard in a car this size. For such a large (compact) car, you don’t get a feeling of spaciousness either. Well – you do in a way, but it’s a feeling of compromised spaciousness. The windshield seems miles away feels like wasted space, and contributes to the aforementioned blind spots and makes it difficult to place the front of the car. The windshield itself was steeply raked and bugged my eyes, either due to imperfects in the glass enhanced by it's rake and distance from my eyes, or from reflections from the expanse of dash sitting underneath. The effect reminds me a bit of a minivan but with worse visibility. In fact I found myself referring to the Caliber as a chop-top minivan to most of the people I talked to.
Its larger size does give it the advantage of a bit more width than some cars in its class – you aren’t forced to rub elbows with your passengers.
Focusing on materials and design, the inside of the car was abysmal. I found the dash layout a bit boring, plain and truck-like, but the main offense with the industrial grade plastics used. Most plastics were as soft as concrete. And this is from a person whose dialer driver is a Hyundai (whose car is from before the time when Hyundai kicked it up a notch in their interior quality). Using the dash while driving seems relatively easy - things are easy to reach and straight forward. Well, except for a few key areas. The most noticeable is the turn signal that you have to slam into place - I often had to do it twice until it stays on. And if it doesn't cancel itself, clicking it off feels (and sounds) like you're breaking it. Another slight annoyance is the placement of the vents. On cold mornings, I like to aim the vents nearest me to point at my hands on the cold steering wheel to warm them. However, the Caliber's aren't positioned to do so. The leftmost vent is knee level and doesn't aim up that high, and the right hand one is centered in the car too far to do much good. Also strange is that the E-brake lever is next to the passenger seat, which doesn't exactly fall at hand. NOTE: I drove and wrote this review about a year ago, and Chrysler has since revised the dash layout, so I’m sure they fixed a bunch of these quibbles.
The car doesn't seem to drive too bad, but there are a few issues. It seems to corner relatively flat, but it bobs up and down when you hit any roughness. Hit a bump on a corner and it upsets the car so much you feel as if you're going to go off the road, likely a product of it’s SUV-ish ride height. Power is mediocre – enough to keep up with traffic. The auto transmission seemed relatively good at downshifting as I never experienced a time that I felt it was in the wrong gear, waiting for a gear change to keep up. Except when at speed on the highway... Although it gets up to speed fine, the auto seems to shift a bit early at cruising speeds (presumably because it’s in a higher gear for increased mileage rather than power). Dipping into the gas at all causes the auto to downshift, if only for a couple seconds, leading to a jerky driving style that isn’t good for maintaining a speed amongst other traffic. Not to mention the fact that the car always feels to be hesitating before it does anything.
Also strange is the gas and brake petal placement. The brake feels as if it sits further out than the gas, and the petals seem to behave the opposite of each other, exaggerating the effect. Put you foot on the gas, and you have to press pretty far (lots of travel) to get a response, but there isn't much resistance. Push your foot on the brake, and there's a ton of resistance and the petal travel seems restricted. It makes it hard to judge how aggressively to brake. I found myself braking too late or too hard a lot.
There isn't really all that much I liked about this car - things that would make me desire this car more than others. Well – the stereo was pretty good and it had a full size spare. But for all that was good (or in most cases mediocre), there was something equally bad about the design to counter it. I have a feeling this car was ruled by form before function. Which is strange to me, given that the form isn't all that satisfying. And in a car like this - which is usually used as day to day transport - shouldn't function before form be the norm anyway?
My first review will feature a car previously featured on AutoFug – the Dodge Caliber. Will a car deemed fugly have a fugly personality? In this case, the answer is yes. In short, my experience with the Caliber did not leave me with a surplus of happy thoughts. Why? The answer is varied.
The LookFirst off, I don’t think the car is all that attractive. While the looks have grown on me a bit, it’s still a bit boring and cartoonish in its proportions. Its exterior features are exaggerated and make what is actually quite a large car for its class look smaller when seen from a distance. Its fender flares are comically inflated, and an unfortunate side effect of this was that the rear door of the car I drove was peppered with rock nicks from where the front wheels picked up road debris and kicked it off the protruding flares for the rear wheel wells. After a few years of ownership I’m sure it’ll turn an attractive shade of rust.
The Interior
I would also recommend that claustrophobic people avoid this car. It’s an odd car – they’re trying for an SUV feel with a higher stance, yet a sport’s car feel with narrow windows fit for a tank. There’s tons of headroom, but you feel constricted as the roof curves down on the edges toward the narrow door openings. I'd smacked my head into this a couple times getting out, not being used to how small the door openings are. Adding to the confined feelings are huge A-pillars and the tiny rear window (whose top edge sits way too low to maintain a sleeker profile).
Because of the lack of visibility, I found it very hard to judge distances in this car – something that should not be hard in a car this size. For such a large (compact) car, you don’t get a feeling of spaciousness either. Well – you do in a way, but it’s a feeling of compromised spaciousness. The windshield seems miles away feels like wasted space, and contributes to the aforementioned blind spots and makes it difficult to place the front of the car. The windshield itself was steeply raked and bugged my eyes, either due to imperfects in the glass enhanced by it's rake and distance from my eyes, or from reflections from the expanse of dash sitting underneath. The effect reminds me a bit of a minivan but with worse visibility. In fact I found myself referring to the Caliber as a chop-top minivan to most of the people I talked to.
Its larger size does give it the advantage of a bit more width than some cars in its class – you aren’t forced to rub elbows with your passengers.
Focusing on materials and design, the inside of the car was abysmal. I found the dash layout a bit boring, plain and truck-like, but the main offense with the industrial grade plastics used. Most plastics were as soft as concrete. And this is from a person whose dialer driver is a Hyundai (whose car is from before the time when Hyundai kicked it up a notch in their interior quality). Using the dash while driving seems relatively easy - things are easy to reach and straight forward. Well, except for a few key areas. The most noticeable is the turn signal that you have to slam into place - I often had to do it twice until it stays on. And if it doesn't cancel itself, clicking it off feels (and sounds) like you're breaking it. Another slight annoyance is the placement of the vents. On cold mornings, I like to aim the vents nearest me to point at my hands on the cold steering wheel to warm them. However, the Caliber's aren't positioned to do so. The leftmost vent is knee level and doesn't aim up that high, and the right hand one is centered in the car too far to do much good. Also strange is that the E-brake lever is next to the passenger seat, which doesn't exactly fall at hand. NOTE: I drove and wrote this review about a year ago, and Chrysler has since revised the dash layout, so I’m sure they fixed a bunch of these quibbles.
The Drive
The car doesn't seem to drive too bad, but there are a few issues. It seems to corner relatively flat, but it bobs up and down when you hit any roughness. Hit a bump on a corner and it upsets the car so much you feel as if you're going to go off the road, likely a product of it’s SUV-ish ride height. Power is mediocre – enough to keep up with traffic. The auto transmission seemed relatively good at downshifting as I never experienced a time that I felt it was in the wrong gear, waiting for a gear change to keep up. Except when at speed on the highway... Although it gets up to speed fine, the auto seems to shift a bit early at cruising speeds (presumably because it’s in a higher gear for increased mileage rather than power). Dipping into the gas at all causes the auto to downshift, if only for a couple seconds, leading to a jerky driving style that isn’t good for maintaining a speed amongst other traffic. Not to mention the fact that the car always feels to be hesitating before it does anything.
Also strange is the gas and brake petal placement. The brake feels as if it sits further out than the gas, and the petals seem to behave the opposite of each other, exaggerating the effect. Put you foot on the gas, and you have to press pretty far (lots of travel) to get a response, but there isn't much resistance. Push your foot on the brake, and there's a ton of resistance and the petal travel seems restricted. It makes it hard to judge how aggressively to brake. I found myself braking too late or too hard a lot.
Final impressions:
There isn't really all that much I liked about this car - things that would make me desire this car more than others. Well – the stereo was pretty good and it had a full size spare. But for all that was good (or in most cases mediocre), there was something equally bad about the design to counter it. I have a feeling this car was ruled by form before function. Which is strange to me, given that the form isn't all that satisfying. And in a car like this - which is usually used as day to day transport - shouldn't function before form be the norm anyway?
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Attack of the Clones: Hyundai Genesis
Hyundai's first foray into the realm of near-luxury has been a relative success, achieving accolades and sales. But it hasn't exactly done so with a daring new design. Like the last generation Sonata, it's more of an attractive conglomerate than anything original. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
I mean, what's the fault in making your car look kinda like the Lexus LS - the Genesis's "I can make a world class luxury car too" spiritual predecessor - but actually looks better? I suppose the similarity falls mostly in the appearance of the headlights and the shape of the grille.
Had the Genesis come over with it's Korean spec grille consisting of narrow, horizontal chrome bars the look would be even more similar. Speaking of that grille - it's one of the Genesis's worst features. Sure it's unique, but it doesn't look very classy. More like a chrome interpretation of a Klingon forehead. Or maybe the guided ribcage of some poor animal.
The rear end and greenhouse look in my eyes like a Japanese take on the BMW 5-Series. When looking at the rear ends of the LS, 5-Series and Infiniti M, you can see slight resemblances to all of them. Which might say more to the slightly bland appearances of all modern cars than it Hyundai's lack of originality.
I mean, what's the fault in making your car look kinda like the Lexus LS - the Genesis's "I can make a world class luxury car too" spiritual predecessor - but actually looks better? I suppose the similarity falls mostly in the appearance of the headlights and the shape of the grille.
Had the Genesis come over with it's Korean spec grille consisting of narrow, horizontal chrome bars the look would be even more similar. Speaking of that grille - it's one of the Genesis's worst features. Sure it's unique, but it doesn't look very classy. More like a chrome interpretation of a Klingon forehead. Or maybe the guided ribcage of some poor animal.
The rear end and greenhouse look in my eyes like a Japanese take on the BMW 5-Series. When looking at the rear ends of the LS, 5-Series and Infiniti M, you can see slight resemblances to all of them. Which might say more to the slightly bland appearances of all modern cars than it Hyundai's lack of originality.
Monday, April 19, 2010
A trip to the glue factory is in order...
The front end of this Mustang isn't too bad, I suppose. Well - if you ignore those fender extensions that just out to meet the side mirrors but don't actually meet anything.
But things get a little intense at the rear. Gigantic rear rims and swollen fenders culminate in what quite possibly the world's largest lip spoiler. And don't forget of course the "euro" tailights. Maybe he was got his inspiration from this guy.
Bentley Town Carnage
Maybe it's the Wal-Mart special fog lights or the vinyl roof, but I think this Bentley is a knock-off. Regardless, the owner when to great lengths - even sticking Bentley badges on the engine cover.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Corvette C-Sick
This poor - and relatively new - C6 Corvette is either a very expensive joke or it's owner is proof that money can't buy taste. Or apparently that can modify your car professionally. Given the workmanship and obsession with dragons, I would estimate his age (mentally, anyway) to be 12.
Close ups below to show just how craptastic the detailing and materials used are. Note the running paint, reflective stickers and misaligned letters.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Attack of the Clones: Aupel V8
Similar greenhouses, bump strips, BBS rims and turn signal placement give the Audi V8 and Opel Senator very similar looks. Slap 4 rings on the Opel and you could fool most people. Not sure who exactly ripped off who, since the Senator actually came out a year earlier and the greenhouse does look similar to the previous generation. But Audi pretty much had it's look set at that point in other models, so I'm going to say it was Opel that was the ripper.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Mohs Ostentatienne Opera Sedan
Yes, the title of this is actually the name of the car featured. I've covered this car's successor before, but I hadn't really come across good pictures of the original Mohs creation until recently.The main difference visually from that of the SafariKar covered previously is that it's NOT covered in pleather. Overall the look is somehow better but worse - it's front end is marginally better due to the fact that the body isn't as tall, but the combo of the huge wheels and the equally tall, Pacer-like fishbowl of a greenhouse give the car a kind of toy car appearance.
Another noticeable change is it's complete lack of doors. The sole entry is through a hatch in the rear - kind of a reverse Isetta. So I guess you'd have to pray no one rear ends you. The reasoning behind this was actually safety - huge steel side rails ran the length of the car to protect the occupant in the event of a side-on collision. Which I suppose is a threat due to the fact that the styling may blind oncoming traffic.
Powered by an ever-so-refined International Harvester truck engine, the car offered fewer out-there interior features than the SafariKar, but you could order one with a refrigerator and Ming style oriental rugs. Prices ranged from $19,600 to $25,600 - in 1967.
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Packardbakers
Packardbaker is the term for late model Packards. Why? Because then owners Studebaker though it would be a good idea to dissolve the once great luxury brand into two ill-conceived models in it's final years, both based on overstyled versions of existing Studebaker models.
Sure - you're probably thinking that GM has gotten away with this for the past 30 years, so why is this a big deal? For one, being one of the first to popularize the idea. But for the most part it's because the Studebaker designed seemed to barely even try. For example, look at the tacked on fender extensions. They basically just stuck on fibreglass extensions to the body and called it a day. And they looked like - well - tacked on fender extensions.
Same goes for the headlight pods, that blatantly bulge out from fenders clearly designed for a single unit. Adding to the hap-hazard "Packardifying" was the overall homely look of the front end. It seems as if they ran out of ideas and just decided to stretch the grille from one end to another, leading to a dustbuster meets catfish look.
The Packard Hawk takes a similar route and turns out looking a bit better, but still gets a mention due to the fact that they ruined one of the most beautiful designs to come out of the 50's - the Studebaker Golden Hawk. Come on - couldn't you have at least thought of an original name? It's vacuum catfish look is a bit more extreme as well on the Hawk. At least they look like each other.
The rear end is slightly better again in that it's devoid of tacked on fin extensions, but then it's mainly that of the Golden Hawk with a huge fake spare tire in the trunk, a la Imperial. Got to do something to make it unique I suppose.
Sure - you're probably thinking that GM has gotten away with this for the past 30 years, so why is this a big deal? For one, being one of the first to popularize the idea. But for the most part it's because the Studebaker designed seemed to barely even try. For example, look at the tacked on fender extensions. They basically just stuck on fibreglass extensions to the body and called it a day. And they looked like - well - tacked on fender extensions.
Same goes for the headlight pods, that blatantly bulge out from fenders clearly designed for a single unit. Adding to the hap-hazard "Packardifying" was the overall homely look of the front end. It seems as if they ran out of ideas and just decided to stretch the grille from one end to another, leading to a dustbuster meets catfish look.
The Packard Hawk takes a similar route and turns out looking a bit better, but still gets a mention due to the fact that they ruined one of the most beautiful designs to come out of the 50's - the Studebaker Golden Hawk. Come on - couldn't you have at least thought of an original name? It's vacuum catfish look is a bit more extreme as well on the Hawk. At least they look like each other.
The rear end is slightly better again in that it's devoid of tacked on fin extensions, but then it's mainly that of the Golden Hawk with a huge fake spare tire in the trunk, a la Imperial. Got to do something to make it unique I suppose.
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