The five ugliest cars ever made

Some cars are so ugly they render the old adage ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ redundant. Or do they?

Our recent story on the “world’s ugliest car heading to auction” got tongues wagging. Sure, the 1995 Alfa Romeo Castagna Vittoria prototype is no looker, hit by the ugly stick thanks to the efforts of Milanese coachbuilder, Carrozzeria Castagna.

But is it the world’s ugliest car? Putting aside the Alfa was a one-off prototype built for the Geneva motor show, we reckon there are few other candidates that could lay a not unreasonable stake to that title.

Beauty – and ugly, for that matter – is of course, in the eye of the beholder. I know plenty of folk who think the Fiat Multipla is easily one of the ugliest cars ever. But I kinda like it. Same with the Pontiac Aztek which, while certainly not a handsome beast when it was first launched in 2001 has grown into its features today. It’s no swan, to be sure, but it certainly doesn’t look as polarising as it once did. Or maybe that’s just me?

I’ll hear no arguments. I think the Fiat Multipla is cute.

Still, for every duckling-turned swan there are a host of automotive creations that have simply by-passed beauty. Here then, is my top five, in no particular order. I’m sure yours will differ.

Alfa Romeo SZ

The Zagato-designed Alfa Romeo SZ is what happens when designers leave their French curves at home and use a T-square and ruler instead. There’s nary a curve to be seen, leaving the SZ looking like an amalgam of straight edges and planes, emphasised by the gargantuan slabs of injection-moulded composite body panels that draw the eye no matter the viewing angle. And not in a good way.

It’s said the SZ was an early example of Alfa’s designers using CAD (computer-aided design) and it shows. Still, enough people saw the beauty in all those flat planes to hand over their money with over 1036 rolling off the production line.

Marcos Mantis

Marcos was a small British carmaker, producing low-volume models, any number of which could have made this list. Picking just one model is, as it turns out, quite difficult.

But it’s 1970’s Marcos Mantis that gets the nod here, and for all the right (or wrong) reasons.

It’s fair to say the Mantis is a wedge-shaped monstrosity that tries to capture the 1970s automotive zeitgeist and utterly fails at doing so. Looking more like an agglomeration of 1970s design features, the Mantis comes off looking unwieldy, mis-proportioned and out of its depth. About the nicest thing one could say about the Marcos Mantis is that it had nice alloy wheels.

Marcos managed to actually produce and sell 32 of these wedged conveyances of ugliness over a two-year period from 1970-71. A 1997 revival of the nameplate fared only marginally better in the aesthetic stakes, the Marcos Mantis GT blending bits of Dodge Viper design with the crayoned doodlings of a five-year-old.

Marcos revived the Mantis nameplate in 1997. It was still ugly

Ford Scorpio MkII

The second-generation Ford Scorpio had many design problems: from the overuse of chrome garnishes, to the slabby bootlid and American-influenced (and not in a good way) tail-light treatment, the Scorpio simply looked like an American car trying to disguise itself.

Part of that was down to Ford of Europe borrowing from its U.S. stablemate’s parts bin.

Like the Alfa Romeo SZ on this list, the Ford Scorpio was the first car from Ford developed entirely using computer-aided design (CAD).

But perhaps the Scorpio’s biggest design fails were the treatment of the ‘widemouth frog’ grille that led into those droopy headlights which lent the mid-size executive a distinctively sad face.

One consolation was the station wagon, or estate, variants which traded the blobby Lincoln Town Car-style rear end for something familiar to most Australians, the rear-end treatment straight out of the Ford Falcon wagon playbook.

The Scorpio wagon’s rear end borrowed liberally from our very own Falcon station wagon

After just four cruel years on sale, the Scorpio shuffled off the automotive mortal coil with Britain’s The Guardian newspaper sending the sad-eyed saloon on its way with the headline, “Unloved, ugly Scorpio axed”.

SsangYong Rodius

Known in Australia as the Stavic, the SsangYong Rodius looked like it had been designed by three people, none of whom spoke to each other during the process.

Except, just one person was responsible for the Rodius. And his name is Ken Greenley, the one-time head of automotive design at London’s Royal College of Art

Greenley’s brief, allegedly, was to ‘capture the essence of a luxury yacht’. It’s fair to say he didn’t quite reach his objective.

Britain’s motoring press at the time of its launch were quick to dub it the ‘Odious Rodius’ while one notable contemporary critic described it as looking like a “surprised hippopotamus”.

In Australia, where it was sold as the SsangYong Stavic, the Sydney Morning Herald described its appearance as looking like a “collapsing bus shelter”.

Despite its hideousness, the first-generation Rodius/Stavic enjoyed a 10-year production run before making way for an altogether more resolved, in terms of design, second-generation.

Mitsuoka Orochi

Okay, I know I started this list with the disclaimer ‘in no particular order’ but I lied. For me, it’s this, the Mitsuoka Orochi that is deserving of the undisputed title of “the ugliest car in the world”.

First revealed to the public – and without health warnings about the visual assault that was about to take place – at the 2001 Tokyo Motor Show, the Orochi was described by its Japanese maker as a “Fashio- Super Car”. Luckily, or so we thought at the time, the Orochi was destined to remain as a one-off concept. But it wasn’t so with revised concepts appearing in 2003 and again in 2005 before Mitsuoka stated it would go into production in 2006 with deliveries slated to start in 2007.

Chopping the roof off didn’t improve things much but at least it had a cute name, the Orochi Nude Top

The company said it would limit production of the drooping, eight-headed dragon-inspired (no, really, that was the inspiration design) to just 400 cars. While no official numbers were ever made available following the end of production in 2014, it’s believed – mercifully – to be much less than that.

Of course, you no doubt will disagree with my list. And that’s perfectly fine. Think of it as Readers’ Choice Award so please let me know what you think is the absolutely, most positively, and definitely without a doubt, ugliest car in the world in the comments below.

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