Driving Dead

Ah Britian. Land of crumpets, bonnets, al-loo-min-i-um, and defunct car brands. Lea-Francis is one of those brands, and like many of them it started at the turn of the 20th century, only to end midway through. That wasn’t the last the world saw of the brand though, as returned from the grave multiple times in a series of disastrous attempts to cling to the past.

Founded in 1895, they started producing cars in 1903 under license from Singer. In 1919, they started building cars of their own design, but still using mechanical pieces bought from other brands. By the 40s and 50s, they were building sporting cars that looked like a mix of equal parts Allard and MG T-Type Midget. Sales however gradually slowed. The brand needed a fresh reboot to stay afloat.

The reboot came in the form of the 1960 Lea-Francis Lynx. 3 prototypes were made, featuring some rather unique bodywork. Up front a huge, low set round grille dominated the front end. It’s bulbous sides tapered down at the rear, topped with bulky tail fins. If that wasn’t bad enough, the example they brought to the British Motor Show was this hideous dull-pink colour, brightened with gold trim. The public responded by buying absolutely none, and the company shut it's doors for good not long after.



Cue zombie Lea-Francis. Barrie Price – a fan who helped provide service and parts for remaining cars – bought the name and revived the brand by producing the strange looking, coffin shaped “Ace of Spades” in the early 90’s (that bizarre name was taken from the bizarrely named Lea-Francis model of the 1930s). The square-edged neo-classics were powered by Jaguar engines. Only a handful were built.



Yet, like a zombie taking a shotgun to the chest, the brand took the hit in stride and returned again to terrorize the automotive world. Resurrected in 1998 by James Randle in the height of the retro-revival brought on by the New Beetle and Jaguar S-Type, the new car was called the 30/230 and resembled a Z3 with S-Type bits grafted on. One prototype was built before the project was abandoned yet again. Only time will tell if James Randle delivered the head shot Lea-Francis needed to finally rest in peace.

Reboot

Well - it's been two years. That's a lot of time for ugly cars to go by, so I think I'll start posting again. Look for new posts soon!

For now I'll share this local, classy Vaginawagen.

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.