spot_img

WSIB – UGLY Cars Edition

As you know we’ve asked many of our guests about the “mythical 3 car garage” or “cars they had as posters on their wall as a kid” or “sexiest car of all time” – but we thought this time… let’s turn the conversation around, and see what’s the ugliest car we could recommend for someone else… 

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Listen on Apple
Listen on YouTube
Listen on Spotify

In keeping with the tradition of What Should I Buy? – we have to set some ground rules, in this case we have to define ugly. Our usual suspects are always the Aztek, Pacer, Edsel, Bricklin and even the HHR. But if you suspend disbelief for a moment, you could argue that there ARE ways to make those cars cool. But tonight we’re talking about an entire new caliber of UGLY, the designs where no amount of mods could make them better, cars with looks that only a momma could love. This episode was inspired by Matt Y’s article:Whatever happened to Automotive Styling?”

Listen to the whole story!

Listen on Apple
Listen on YouTube
Listen on Spotify

Notes

Follow along using this slideshow!

and much, much more!

Transcript (Part-1)

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Our panel of break fix petrol heads are back for another rousing. What should I buy? Debate using unique shopping criteria. They are challenged to find our first time collector, the best vehicle that will make their friends go. Where do you get that? Or what the hell is wrong with you at the next cars and coffee?

As you know, we’ve asked many of our guests about the mythical three car garage or cars. They had his posters on their wall as a kid, or even sexiest car of all time. Well, we thought this time, let’s turn the conversation around and see what’s the ugliest car we could recommend for someone else, and we can’t wait to see what you all come up with.

And as always, I’m your host

Crew Chief Eric: Brad. And I’m Eric. So let’s roll. In keeping with the tradition of what should I buy, we have to set some ground rules. In this case, we have to define ugly. Our usual suspects are always the Aztec, the Pacer, the Edsel, the Bricklin, and even the HHR. But if you suspend disbelief for but a moment…

You could argue [00:01:00] there are ways to make those cars cool. But tonight, we’re talking about an entirely new caliber of ugly. The designs where no amount of mods could make them better. Cars with looks that only a mama could love.

Crew Chief Brad: Alright, let’s kick this off. What car would you wish on your worst enemy?

Crew Chief Eric: I have a 17 slide PowerPoint.

Crew Chief Brad: I only came up with 11 cars.

Crew Chief Eric: 11. That’s my first three slides. What are you talking about?

Crew Chief Brad: Well, because I figure I’m, I’m probably picking stuff that some of you may not have thought of. Like there’s the obvious choices like the HHR and the Cobalt and the PT snoozer and crap like that. And of course the square bodies.

Mountain Man Dan: Those are beautiful cars. So we’re talking about ugly, but the sad thing is so many different styles of stuff’s been done with cars. It’s like they’re running outta stuff to do. ’cause what has been done that we haven’t already seen in some concept of former [00:02:00] variation on a car already. Hopefully all we can hope for is the fact that they stop leaning towards the ugly aspects and start looking towards the more appealing when they build stuff in the future.

Well, the problem you’re running

Matthew Yip: into right now is one, one shape teats the wind. I mean, in all seriousness, next time you’re in a parking lot, don’t look at the car and they all look the same. There’s not a whole lot of, well, that’s just it.

Crew Chief Eric: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Mr. You, you, you have to quantify ugly when it comes to a car because they’re ugly, but then You, there’s a whole nother, when you really do your homework, a whole nother level of ly out there, that is, that is easily distinguishable because this is where I draw the line with what should I buy?

Ugly cars, right? Is that a car, like an h H r, put some wheels on it, maybe a body package, do some, some aftermarket stuff. You could, you could make it look better than it is, but there are cars out there that are [00:03:00] impossible to modify and they are ugly from the word go. And I’m going to highlight a bunch of them.

Crew Chief Brad: Making it look better than it already is, is like taking a liquid turd and making it a solid turd. It’s still a turd.

Mike Crutchfield: Now I will say, since you have this spread, this, this PowerPoint presentation that has 5 billion cars on it. I

Crew Chief Brad: think Eric’s first slide is just going to be a bowtie. It’s just going to

Crew Chief Eric: From 1979 through 19 through

Crew Chief Brad: the

Mike Crutchfield: present, but the three hour government presentation commence,

Crew Chief Eric: not a government presentation, but we’re going to bring

Mountain Man Dan: the laser pointer out here in a

Crew Chief Eric: second, but you guys can see my screen.

Yeah,

Mike Crutchfield: yeah. We got the Aztec, the vagina, the safety car and the HHR.

Crew Chief Eric: So we’re going to, so we’re going to, we’re going to take a step away from what I consider the mundane. Right? Because the Aztec, yes, we all agree. It’s ugly. The Edsel is ugly. The HHR is ugly. The Bricklin, which is the car in the bottom left corner, is ugly.

But

Mountain Man Dan: so [00:04:00] if I get the Bricklin and paint it silver, it’ll look like it doesn’t rain. Pretty much.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, people will be confused. There’s some pictures out there. The Bricklin is as long as a C three Corvette, and when you put them side by side, they actually don’t look too different at the right angles, even though the Bricklin is much more square.

They kind of run a similar profile and it’s kind of and, and it’s kind of interesting.

Crew Chief Brad: Sorry. I will say the C three Corvette is terrible. It is the worst Corvette ever.

Matthew Yip: It’s the worst. It’s the St. Worst Corvette. The Stingray.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s not a stingray.

Matthew Yip: Well, it’s a Mako shark.

Mike Crutchfield: I mean, I loved my stepdad’s, but his was a 78 20 fifth anniversary.

Matthew Yip: Yeah, and it had 125 net horsepower.

Mike Crutchfield: How do

Matthew Yip: you say that?

Crew Chief Brad: Out of a 7 liter motor.

Matthew Yip: No, it was 5. 7, but it just went 0 to 60 really slowly.

Crew Chief Eric: There are cars that are far beyond the level of ugly that we know every day. Do we want to take a trip into the truly ugly? Go ahead.

Mike Crutchfield: Yeah, go ahead. Are you guys ready? I think the Prowler is an ugly goddamn vehicle.[00:05:00]

Executive Producer Tania: Trapped right up there with the PT Cruiser and all those.

Mike Crutchfield: Yeah, and, but the thing that gets me about the Prowler is you could buy a Prowler with a trailer that was the back of a Prowler.

Mountain Man Dan: I take a little offense to that because I have the back half of a original Austin Mini that I’m planning to make a trailer for behind the Mini.

Mike Crutchfield: It was a factory option.

Matthew Yip: Well, and what’s wrong with that? I mean…

Mountain Man Dan: Well, you had no trunk space, so you

Matthew Yip: had to have the trailer. Yeah, I mean… There’s a lot, there’s a lot worse things they could have done. But, look how

Executive Producer Tania: There’s not worse things that could have been done. This is like that chest that they used to sell decades ago, like, the front end of a car and you put it in front of your bed and like, it opened and it was like a chest to store things in.

Like, that’s the same thing except you drag it behind your car.

Matthew Yip: The biggest disappointment with the Prowler was the fact that it was a six cylinder automatic. Look at, look at my Prowler. It has this furious 2. 7 liter V6.

Mike Crutchfield: What they should have done is stuck a bigger motor [00:06:00] in the Crossfire and called it done.

Because the Crossfire wasn’t bad looking, especially compared to the Prowler.

Crew Chief Eric: What other motor should they have put in the, in the crossfire? And it had a 3. 2 liter Mercedes six cylinder. It was a great engine. Okay. That’s right. That was after the merger. The problem was they made the crossfire end up looking like the, the Lincoln Blackwood with all those stupid stripes and ribs and

Mike Crutchfield: Oh, so Yeah, the blackwood

That always makes my, my list of hideous things, but I always forget about it because I try to forget about it. , pinstripe paint job, I mean, can you imagine the pin that that wasn’t a paint job that was chrome piping on the side of the bed? God, all the way around the bed, but it stopped at the bed, so it, it broke up.

Once it got to the doors. I, if memory serves, it actually had barn doors for the bed, for the tailgate doors. I think

Crew Chief Eric: that’s correct. Yeah. I mean, it’s a terrible idea. So not only that, but it had a

Matthew Yip: carpeted bed. Yes, it was, it was a giant trunk. The concept of the Prowler was great. Unfortunately, [00:07:00] just like the SSR, it was pointless.

If you want a hot rod, build a hot rod. Don’t buy, don’t buy a

Executive Producer Tania: brand new car. The side view of the Prowler, does anyone, does it remind anyone of the Panther DeVille? Well, think of Cruella de Vil’s car.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: When I see the Prowler from the side, I think of that car. But like a more modern version, a concept y modern version.

I don’t know why.

Mike Crutchfield: Because that was kind of the era they were hearkening back to. So it’s gonna look kind of like that. I just don’t like how the Prowler like went to a nose, went to a point, and then had just those tiny little plastic things that stuck out to the side for the reflectors. You guys

Crew Chief Eric: talked about the Prowler, but do you know about the Ford Indigo, which resembles Geordie LaForge?

It’s the Forge Indigo. The Forge Indigo, exactly. What do you, what do you guys think about that? Talking about ugly cars.

Mountain Man Dan: It looks like [00:08:00] something that should be on Mario Kart.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s smiling. Yeah, I can see Bowser sitting in

Mountain Man Dan: it. It seriously looks like a go kart.

Crew Chief Eric: Now, for those that don’t know, Ford designed this alongside of the GT90, which I’ll let you guys look up on your own, because I happen to like that car as a prototype.

It was the mid stage… The GT90 looks like Epcot Center. The GT90

Mike Crutchfield: looks like the Nintendo 64 rendering of a GT40.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s a very good description. I like that. Yeah. GT 90. Unfortunately, it’s so ugly. It’s awesome. Along with like the Bugatti EB 110, but those don’t make my list of ugly cars. The indigo is definitely up there. That weird Cyclops front light and smiley face as Mike pointed out, it’s pretty heinous, but along with it, we got to enjoy the prowler, which probably should have stayed in concept form.

Next up, we got the Bulldogs.

Crew Chief Brad: TT, first gen, terrible looking cars. Especially with the Dodge Challenger spoiler. Oh, that actually enhances [00:09:00] the ugliness.

Crew Chief Eric: Right? You guys think the TT is ugly? Audi decided, you know what? We’re gonna make a SUV, we’re gonna make the Steppenwolf, and we’re gonna build a prototype race car on top of the Avis chassis, which later became the Nardo and a bunch of other cars.

And we’re just going to take all the TT’s body panels and stretch them in every direction we can.

Mountain Man Dan: It looks like somebody took a TT and just put it on a four wheel drive chassis. So that’s just a TT sitting on a damn Suzuki Sidekick, you know, four wheel drive chassis. But the far right one looks like they were trying to reach back to like the era of like the 30s.

Yes, it’s supposed to be like the Silver Arrows, yeah.

Mike Crutchfield: Okay, hang on. The Rosenmayer is a Bugatti. Veyron now and the a2 looks like something bmw released which was like the one series

Crew Chief Eric: Van correct, but mike the rosemeyer is actually built on the avis prototype which came out years earlier Which all of those cars are built on but i’m

Mike Crutchfield: saying i’m saying it looks like what?

It looks like they took that and said This will be the Veyron.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s much longer [00:10:00] than the Veyron. Unfortunately, it’s a very, very long, but yeah, you’re correct. So I equate the bulldogs is what I call them. Cause they all look like little French bulldogs, right? Which the TT does as well. I’m not, I’m not, I’m not saying that the TT is the most attractive car in the world cause it isn’t.

And we’ve called the terrible toad for a reason, but I equate all these to Adam driver. Like, he’s not a handsome actor, and yet we cast him to play Kylo Ren, and he is been g in Girls and a bunch of other movies. So he’s, it’s like one of those Hollywood stars that’s famous because they’re ugly. Right. So these cars fall in the, you should put

Mountain Man Dan: CEMI on the screen.

Mike Crutchfield: We’re getting, yeah. So, so, so you’re saying all of these are very bad idea.

Crew Chief Eric: A a hundred percent, yes. So moving on from the Bulldogs, Negative a thousand points to Ferrari for developing the Mondial T. This is the ugliest Ferrari ever, and there are some ugly Ferraris, and there are some extremely beautiful Ferraris, but this takes the cake.

As the dumbest idea they ever came up with, which is [00:11:00] let’s take a 308 and turn it

Mountain Man Dan: into a convertible. The proportioning I see on that reminds me of like the 1980s Barbie car convertible because it’s not proportioned to a real car. No. I

Executive Producer Tania: had one of those.

It was better looking than this.

Mike Crutchfield: I mean, it’s ugly, but it’s not. Something about this doesn’t scream at me, this is an ugly car, it just, it just screams at me, they didn’t fix the proportions right, but it’s not an unattractive car at its heart.

Crew Chief Eric: Until you see one in person. But, I will say, the only redeeming value of the Mondial T is that it was featured in the John Hughes film, Weird Science, just like the Mondial T.

Turd man is also in that movie. So I put the two of them mentally together, turd man and the Monty Alti, just because it made

Mountain Man Dan: it onto the silver screen. Doesn’t no, it’s a terrible [00:12:00] car. Plenty of shit.

Mike Crutchfield: My biggest issue is the side vents. The proportions are a little off, but the side vents really look off.

And that’s because you’re expecting Tessarosa down at the bottom. Of the door, not at the top, and you’re expecting them to be taller. So that’s the thing that sticks out to me as the oddest. And of course, the convertible top stuff.

Crew Chief Eric: But they are also functional because the motor is still back there, right?

So you have zero trunk space. It’s a completely useless car. It’s a bad idea. You’re right. It looks like a Ferrari.

Mike Crutchfield: Does it have a frunk? Uh, yeah. Well, then it’s not, you know, totally useless.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, I guess

Mike Crutchfield: you could, you

Crew Chief Brad: could

Mike Crutchfield: carry

Crew Chief Brad: your

Mike Crutchfield: purse.

Crew Chief Brad: You’re not carrying it anywhere. Cause the car won’t run.

Crew Chief Eric: And I think the T stands for turd in Mondial T.

That’s why I also make the association with turd man, because nobody knows what the T is for, but the Mondial T anyway, this, this. Piece of Italian history into more Italian history. So you know how, you know how L for love, well, [00:13:00] L in the Italian car badging system is Luso, which means luxury, right? So Alfa Romeo, unfortunately, they also have a history of designing some very exquisite vehicles.

Right. And then we have these three gems. Here we have the GTV six spider, which is heinous. If you’ve ever seen the back of it, it looks like it was in a train wreck. Shigeru, which in dialect means missed. And then you have the winner of all winners here, the Arna Lusso edition, which in my opinion, you know, the Corolla, the terrible unto itself, whatever, but Alpha found a way to make that car even worse.

Mountain Man Dan: He’s with that. I owned it.

Mike Crutchfield: So the Arno reminds me of the only both. Yeah, the Omni and the Datsun hatchback that my, my dad had when I was a kid.

Mountain Man Dan: Oh

Mike Crutchfield: God, I don’t even know what it was.

Mountain Man Dan: So if we’re gonna go with like 80s type cars, like the Dodge [00:14:00] Omni.

Crew Chief Eric: I like the Omni! It was the, it was the Did you get a turbo

Mountain Man Dan: 4 cylinder in the Omni?

That, that, you should be slapped for saying that.

Crew Chief Eric: It, it, it had a Volkswagen motor

Mountain Man Dan: in it! And that’s a good thing? My cousin had one, and that thing was the biggest heap of shit we ever rode in. But we didn’t have to ride the bus to school. So we rode it.

Mike Crutchfield: That’s the thing. Yes. I know, I know the, the house is falling apart, but it has a good furnace.

Matthew Yip: Has anybody ever, did anybody ever drive the GLHS? Oh, I knew you have, right? Yeah, it’s still a horrible car, , and they tripled the horsepower even at a hundred miles an hour. It’s a horrible car. The best was that it had the, uh, the 4 46 pack hood on it. So as you go down the road at 60 miles an hour, you watch the hood going, kind of wait for it to open.

They

Crew Chief Eric: call that the shaker hood. The

Mountain Man Dan: shaker hood. Yeah. It was shaking all.

Crew Chief Eric: But the thing, the problem, the thing with the Omni is again, Like a rabbit. If you’re [00:15:00] not a fan of an original rabbit, if you’re not a fan of the panda, or any of those really boxy hatchbacks, or the Renaults, or whatever, it is, it’s still in that category.

I don’t know that it’s truly ugly. I mean, you guys are putting out some softballs. Okay. Oh, it’s, it’s ugly. I don’t know. I still like that Shelby Omni. I’m sorry. It looks good in black. Well, the

Matthew Yip: Shelby Omni because it’s ugly. It’s it’s again. It’s one of those cars. It’s so ugly. You have to either so it’s so ugly You love

Mountain Man Dan: it Runs one on the road course stuff that has an Omni and I don’t know Maybe it’s just the crazy the bright color paint job and stuff He has on it, but it actually looks kind of cool what a stock Omni.

It looks horrible The Shigera looks like somebody had a sports car inside. Hey, let’s take it chop it in half and stretch it

Crew Chief Brad: Stick a Hoover on the front, a comparative car from an automaker that makes some of the most beautiful cars in the world, Lamborghini. But this car, I think it follows the same kind of, I guess, route.

And it’s the, the [00:16:00] Veneno it’s, it’s another one that’s blisteringly fast. And it’s probably. We had an amazing car to drive, but looks wise, it just looks like some kindergartner took his pro tractor and it just drew a whole bunch of triangles and stuff. And he’s like, here, mommy, here’s my car.

Crew Chief Eric: The computer said that that’s a good looking car.

That’s what that boils down to, but that’s not the first time Lamborghini has made an ugly Lamborghini. Because if you look at the gala, I think it was heinous. Right. It was ugly, just, just disgusting looking Lamborghini, in my opinion. Um, not to say that some of the older ones, the designs that led up to the Kuntosh, like the Jalpa and all those, those weren’t great looking either.

Cause, and everybody was doing wedge cars back then between the Esprit, Alfa Romeo, everybody was like, Oh, here’s one shape. They’re all the same. So that, that’s. You know that that’s pretty much par for the course, right? So what we don’t know here is, and I’ll fill in, so Giugiaro, famous Italian designer, designed many cars from the Rabbit all the way up to the [00:17:00] NASCAR BMWs, to all sorts of prototypes.

He’s involved with Dallara and a lot of other companies. Famous Italian designer, some really iconic cars.

Mountain Man Dan: So during this car, did he have like some sort of party and drinking drug phase?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, because his son designed it instead. Right. So the one thing I, when I look at the Shigeru, A, I see the Lamborghini that Brad was talking about.

Like I can see where that came from because this is much older, but I also see the Italian Harlequin design where you draw the black makeup through the eyes. It’s a very, it’s a very Milan thing. So I get the face. But it is a face that you really have to love.

Mountain Man Dan: It is pretty terrible. How old was the son that designed it?

Crew Chief Eric: I have to look that up. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay. So moving on.

Executive Producer Tania: Rad alpha Romeo SC and

Crew Chief Eric: I will talk about

Executive Producer Tania: that.

Crew Chief Brad: You know, I did a search for ugliest cars of all time and there were some, some commonalities between all the articles. This was [00:18:00] one of them.

Executive Producer Tania: Yep.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m gonna, so this is, this is the one card. I don’t hate it. Okay, I hate the back. I

Mike Crutchfield: hate the back.

Executive Producer Tania: You must also like whatever BMW it is that looks like that from the front, because that one’s hot trash too. I mean, the only, the only

Matthew Yip: people who missed the 850 after, when it went out of production were hairdressers.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s, that’s the front end BMW that that alpha reminds me of. Both hot trash.

Mike Crutchfield: So I will admit to liking the 850 just because it’s a massive coop.

Matthew Yip: Yeah. Yeah, but considering what it replaced, it was a huge disappointment.

Crew Chief Eric: So I gotta say… I got a chance to see one of these in person in Italy. I was out with my uncle one night and we went to some car show that they were doing or whatever.

And I got to see it and I thought this car as a kid, it was interesting, right? I don’t like the body line. Yes, but it looks like it was in an accident. [00:19:00] No, but here’s the problem. When you see it in person, okay, you realize, no, no. What you realize is it doesn’t photograph well because it’s very low and very squat.

It looks like a tall car, but it’s not. It’s about the height of an A2 Scirocco. It’s really really short, right? I will have to take your word for it. Trust me. It’s alpha’s version of the Corrado. It’s just way uglier than the Corrado, but because it’s ugly and because it’s funky and it’s, it is about the same size as a Corrado and it’s rear wheel drive.

It’s got the classic. Alfa V6 in it. It sounds amazing car. And I’m going to talk about this in a little bit, too. It’s a neat car. It’s different. Again, they’re stepping out of their box. They wanted something that compete with the Corrado, Scirocco kind of era of cars there. And Alfa was experimenting. But again, when you see it in person.

It looks way better and it’s [00:20:00] way more impressive than it does in picture. So had

Mike Crutchfield: you had you had like two bottles of wine and five pounds of pasta before you saw this? So you’re in a carb, a carb wine crash? To

Crew Chief Brad: me, to me, it looks like. It looks exactly like a Lego brick with wheels on it. That’s exactly what it looks like.

It’s a Lego brick.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I mean, it looks like hot trash in a photo, so I can’t speak to what it might or might not look like in person, but in a photograph, this thing. It’s a, I

Mountain Man Dan: don’t know what you’re saying. You’re trying to say it’s good looking. You see this picture. It really

Matthew Yip: is weird looking. I can’t even describe, I can’t describe it.

Mountain Man Dan: It’s, I look at it and I see multiple different cars trying to be made into one. And it’s like. Yeah. They don’t gel together.

Mike Crutchfield: Reminds me of that Subaru, again. It’s one picture

Mountain Man Dan: of the back that looks

Crew Chief Eric: like a CRX. Correct. It’s really odd. Again, it looks very different when you see it in person. Cause you realize like those rear [00:21:00] fenders that photograph weird, it’s flared out.

So it doesn’t photograph well, and they only came in this color. So red doesn’t photograph well. And the one thing about red, you guys don’t realize is, or maybe you know, this is Brian, Mike knows this is red throws off your depth perception. So it’s hard to judge what it actually looks like. That’s why if you play on a red pool table, it’s 10 times more difficult than playing on a regular green one.

Like if you’ve ever done it, red just throws your eyes off. So again, when you see it in person, you’re like, dude, this car is kind of slick because again, it’s low, it’s wide, it’s short. I

Mountain Man Dan: could see the flaring in the picture, the other angles. I could see it. And I don’t mind the way the flaring looks, but it’s just, there’s something, there’s something that just it’s off.

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike Crutchfield: But it was hit with a cricket bat on the back shortened at two

Crew Chief Brad: feet. I, I think I’m with Eric. I think it’s, it’s an interesting car. I would actually, I’m going to reserve judgment until I actually get the chance to see one in person, which will probably happen never, [00:22:00] but I. I’m reserving judgment on this one.

Crew Chief Eric: You’re taking the easy way out, Brad. I mean, you, dude, you owned a Corrado. The back of the Corrado’s not, it’s, it’s chopped flat on the back. It’s the same idea.

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah, but looking at that, the way that tail and everything sits up, I guarantee you can’t see shit out

Crew Chief Eric: that back. Oh, probably not. But that doesn’t matter because you look cool as hell and everybody goes, wow.

But I will say this,

Executive Producer Tania: the back of the Corrado doesn’t look like hot, trash, burning,

Crew Chief Eric: wow. And it’s

Mountain Man Dan: like, wow,

Crew Chief Eric: what

Mountain Man Dan: the hell was that guy thinking?

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly. He likes it

Mike Crutchfield: because he thinks it’s a Cylon in the back.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes, it does. I do. A hundred percent. But did you guys know you can take the FSZ to the next level and go with the Cabriolet?

Right? That’s amazing.

Mountain Man Dan: Because how short the roof is. That looks like a body kit on a Geometric convertible. Yeah,

Matthew Yip: I mean the roof the roof line or the windows are tiny.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah So that takes it to a whole nother level of ugly. [00:23:00] So again when I look at the sz I don’t think it’s terrible, but the convertible version.

Holy cow

Mike Crutchfield: So so I mean if you’ve ever seen the convertible version Yes, I can now understand why you thought the sc looked okay Because you’ve seen this and you can’t forget this

Crew Chief Eric: And so

Mike Crutchfield: now so now this is the this is like looking at the steaming pile of shit And the SZ is just like, eh, that’s just, you know, poorly cooked ground beef.

Right. We’re going to, it’s really, it starts to grow on you after a while. And then you start as fungus. So fungus grows on you too.

Mountain Man Dan: The hard top version, dark top and the red bottom. Especially in that right picture reminds me of like the talons how they had the right top

Executive Producer Tania: and then the green.

Mike Crutchfield: The eclipses

Executive Producer Tania: it’s, it’s ugly.

It’s ugly from the front, the headlights, the, the, the, the hood, this weird nose that it looks like it has. Cause they ridged the headlight down to the center triangle [00:24:00] grill. Those headlights are garbage. The side, especially from the back, it looks like it was in an accident that somebody. In a big, huge pickup truck, just t boned it in the quarter panel, the rear lights, fine, it’s a single bar, but then there’s this, you know, eight foot of trunk lid, you know, and then this weird wing, or whatever.

It has a

Mike Crutchfield: highbrow, highbrow, Neanderthal.

Mountain Man Dan: I just picked up something on this picture, the right picture there, that Stands out to me. Now I understand why Eric doesn’t mind it because the hood line there is very similar to that on a Viper. Yeah, that makes sense. You being a Viper fanboy. Now I see it

Crew Chief Eric: next.

All right, so up next dad ass. These are some of the worst rear ends that I could find. And the Arna makes the list yet again, because that car is terrible [00:25:00] from every angle you look at the Marlin. I don’t understand how they designed that car. If you want to talk about 11 million feet of a rear end, the Marlin takes the cake and it’s all one contiguous piece.

I don’t even know how they developed that glass and the glass retracts. I mean, it’s terrible, but the Cerbera looks like an ogre. And when you, and I have to take it from this angle because it’s the only flattering angle, it literally has tusks coming out the back. It’s like you could sit on that and have lunch with the

Crew Chief Brad: exactly.

It’s functional bonus. Hey, I, I really liked the Cerbera. I’m a huge TVR fan though.

Mountain Man Dan: And only look at the line body line down the right. It’s a Viper again.

Mike Crutchfield: But yeah, I mean, the Sabera is the, is the sticking your jaw way out and putting your, your, your closing air, but it, it, uh, it’s functional just like, you know, a spoiler makes a nice, uh, picnic table.[00:26:00]

Executive Producer Tania: That’s not how they came. That’s just the body kit.

Mountain Man Dan: Did it have function to get downforce?

Crew Chief Eric: No, that is a factory build for that car. That is not a body kit. That came from TVR that way. I

Crew Chief Brad: think it’s the Cerbera Speed 12 or something like that. Yeah, it’s terrible.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m sorry. That’s pretty ugly.

Mountain Man Dan: I still see your voice.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, next. Soviet block cars, right? These are the Clint Howard of vehicles did. They don’t get uglier than the

Crew Chief Brad: Fiat 128. I love I love the Clint Howard forehead and the scion Hakko forehead. Right? I’m

Crew Chief Eric: saying man, like there’s a whole lot of the frickin Trabant. Like there’s a bunch of other Fiat’s the 127 the 131 really in its plain form.

They’re just East German, you know, Soviet, just bricks on wheels. You want to talk about,

Mountain Man Dan: I’m going to throw it out there. I like you, but many people don’t the Hillman. Am I like it? My [00:27:00] God, the amp is, it is, but ugly. The Hillman super amp is awesome. It

Crew Chief Eric: is, but that’s another multiple roof line.

Mountain Man Dan: I

Crew Chief Brad: like

Mountain Man Dan: that.

Crew Chief Brad: I

Mountain Man Dan: don’t

Crew Chief Brad: know why I like the roof height.

As someone who’s tall. So I’m okay with this.

Mike Crutchfield: So you say you like the roof height, but you have to realize that’s probably like a foot tall total. So I didn’t look time your left shoe. I mean, come on. And it has the, uh, yeah, I don’t

Executive Producer Tania: really bad when you look at a car like the Hakko there and you go. Is the multi plug better looking than that, right?

But it’s still not, but I had to stop and think about it.

Mike Crutchfield: The thing, the angle of that Hako picture makes it look like the windshield is slanted in reverse.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes. It

Mike Crutchfield: makes it look like it comes out from the base of the windshield and then goes back again.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. But again, again, again, there’s, these are ugly cars.[00:28:00]

Nienderbrow.

Mountain Man Dan: Would anybody use trendsetter and fashion in the Soviet in the same way?

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, a hundred percent. No. But you want to talk ugly. I mean that you’re talking, that’s ugly straight up. Right. And the Lada, the Trabant, they’re based like the Lada, especially, and some of the other Russian cars, they’re based on terrible Fiat, right?

So it’s like, Oh my God. Talk about ugly. So anyway, moving on from that.

Mike Crutchfield: Well, no, so, so the cyan Hakko is how the Japanese thought a Russian looks in a sweatsuit.

Crew Chief Brad: It’s missing the Adidas stripes down the side. And the gold chain. But, but still.

Crew Chief Eric: I just like the fact that Brad picked up on the resemblance from the Hakko to Clint Howard. Oh

Crew Chief Brad: my God. It’s totally his forehead.

Crew Chief Eric: Right? The French. Oh my God. The French. I mean, you want to talk about quintessentially ugly vehicles.

The French. Yeah. Take the cake. And one of my absolute top [00:29:00] of the list, French terrible cars is the ami, which means friend Monami. So the first generation, which is the middle picture in the right picture. I mean, from every angle, this car is terrible, especially from the front. When you look at it, it has a face.

And obviously the people at Citroen were like, I want to see how complicated I can make the hood. It’s bad, straight up, bad period, bad. And then they decided we’re going to make the ami. Generation, which, you know, by all means, it’s very plain, very kind of, you know, uh, utilitarian, but it is still a very ugly car.

It’s

Crew Chief Brad: very 70s.

Crew Chief Eric: The

Executive Producer Tania: original looks like a bug.

Mike Crutchfield: This is what happens when you put any freeze… This is what happens when you put any freeze in the wine to prematurely age it. Laughter

Mountain Man Dan: So, I’ve never understood why so many of these cars look like a dog dragging their ass against the carpet. Right. Because the ass and squats, I’ve never understood why they designed them like that.

It’s like, there’s no [00:30:00] explanation

Crew Chief Eric: for it. It just is. It exists. It exists. Therefore it is. It’s, it’s like surrealism, right? You’re just like, you look at it and go, oh, it’s French.

Mike Crutchfield: It’s three bottles in. That’s what it is.

Matthew Yip: The hydropneumatic suspension. Yes.

Mike Crutchfield: Like the, like the De Chavot,

Crew Chief Eric: correct?

Matthew Yip: Yeah. Or no, the ones that, you know, would raise up and down the pneumatic.

Moving on from the AMI.

Crew Chief Eric: We go to the goddess herself, the Citroen DS, this car literally angers me. I’ve seen too many. I hate this thing. It is terrible. Everybody says it’s one of the most gorgeous cars ever produced. I think it is one of the most heinous vehicles. It looks like a pill bug, potato bug, water bug, whatever you call them.

It’s fugly from every angle. It never got better. It only got worse and they built it for like a hundred years.

Executive Producer Tania: It doesn’t

Mike Crutchfield: anger me.

Executive Producer Tania: There’s no way this is one of the most gorgeous cars in the world. No way.

Mike Crutchfield: It’s not gorgeous, but it’s [00:31:00] not… I see it as the, you know, it’s a plain Jane car. It’s not an ugly car.

It’s not an attractive car. It’s just a car. It’s like the Camry of the time.

Executive Producer Tania: That fiat, whatever, was just a car. This is ugly . This is terrible.

Mike Crutchfield: I mean, it, it, it looks like trying to capture that teardrop shape before they understood aerodynamics.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, I can sort of, the upper right picture, it’s like, okay, I squint a little bit and blink really fast at the same time, and I see a SOB

Crew Chief Eric: in

Executive Producer Tania: profile

Crew Chief Eric: and I don’t know.

Matt, what, how do you feel about the dss? I’m sure you don’t.

Crew Chief Brad: Matt has left the building. That’s how he feels about it. He hated it so much. He got blessed.

Matthew Yip: Listen to you guys. No, those are, they were hideous. Senator Haley hideous. Now the kicker is that the Citroen SM is so similar. That’s true. [00:32:00] And yet we like the SM because.

It had a Maserati engine in it. Maybe that’s a case of where it’s so ugly it looks good.

Mountain Man Dan: I just realized something. The Citroen you were just showing. The DS? Yeah. Which Dr. Seuss had those cars in it? Really? I don’t remember that. I’m telling you, one of the Dr. Seuss movies had them cars running around in town.

Matthew Yip: I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m just trying to think which one it was.

Crew Chief Eric: If you look up the Di er, the DS, not the Diane. The Diane came later. If you look up the DS, there’s lots of articles that are like, Oh, one of the prettiest French cars and one of the gorgeous cars of all time. And I just do not see it. I hate this.

And what made me mad, what, I don’t know why I have an association, but if you ever watched the original Highlander, Adrian Paul drove one of these after he got rid of his Thunderbird because they moved back to France or whatever. And so for whatever reason, when I saw him driving this, it just, it just lit a fire [00:33:00] inside me.

And I hate this thing.

Crew Chief Brad: To me, this car epitomizes what it means to be French. Because it exudes a certain arrogance when you have no reason to actually be

Mike Crutchfield: arrogant. Well, and, and, and you, you said it yourself. You said articles describe it as the prettiest French car.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s not saying much bingo. So although the Renault Megane and the Renault Clio are actually really good looking cars to me, I will give you that

Mike Crutchfield: some of the generations.

Yeah. But it’s like, you know, it’s, there’s not much you can say the prettiest French car. Okay. You know, it’s the best toilet wine.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s the

Crew Chief Brad: best

Crew Chief Eric: hooch you can buy. The DS gets my blood pressure up, but we’ll move on from that. And we’ll talk about cars that look like fish. And there’s a lot of them. So as you can see on the screen, we have a Stutz Bearcat. We have a car that I can’t pronounce the name and we have the MR2 TTE [00:34:00] along with the Marcos Mantis which is a British car and these are pretty terrible.

Real

Crew Chief Brad: quick, did you by any chance put in this PowerPoint, the will I am car because that car is fucking atrocious to

Crew Chief Eric: I did. I did not.

Crew Chief Brad: I don’t have to pull that up.

Crew Chief Eric: We will. We’ll go back to that. But these cars to me all look like fish.

Mike Crutchfield: So so the the Mitsubishi Orochi

Crew Chief Eric: Yes,

Mike Crutchfield: actually is a good looking car except for the front bumper.

No, it’s not.

Crew Chief Eric: No, there’s no way that has out of power Rangers. I mean, it looks like it’s smirking at me.

Mike Crutchfield: So, I mean, like if you get rid of the headlights in the front bumper, the rest of the lines are actually very sports car y, but the problem is you can’t get past looking at the front bumper.

Crew Chief Brad: No, it’s not good looking at all.

It

Crew Chief Eric: kind

Matthew Yip: of looks

Crew Chief Eric: like a Jaguar HGT 20S. I can’t get past the fact that this thing needs to be filleted and put into a rice roll and [00:35:00] served to me with some spicy yum yum sauce. I mean, it looks like something I would pull out at the sushi bar. Now, the Bearcat

Matthew Yip: is god awful. Yes. Pontiac. Pontiac should be embarrassed.

Well, it wasn’t

Mountain Man Dan: technically a Pontiac. Yeah, it’s a Pontiac base. It was built on a G body platform, but it also had Italian designing in it. The worst thing is, like, they had multiple different variations of powertrains and stuff. Well, that that in the, uh,

Matthew Yip: what was the Excalibur? You remember, you remember the Excalibur that looks?

Kind of like the thirties car, but not

Crew Chief Brad: right. I think, I think Dan should take his, his Bonneville and you should give it the bear cat treatment.

Mountain Man Dan: Slap you. It’s not on three.

Mike Crutchfield: Oh,

Crew Chief Brad: your grand Prix or

Mike Crutchfield: whatever. I actually had a G body car when I was in guy school and Jesus to know that that was built on a G body that depresses me because I had a Cutlass Supreme Coupe G body.

Is that on this

Crew Chief Brad: list? It should be.

Mike Crutchfield: I actually liked that. So, you know, that was the weird cut list that had the like grills [00:36:00] that were on springs. So like, if you hit something, the grill would spring into the car, but the rest of the bumper didn’t. So it’s pointless. That car that’s that’s Bearcat is offends me deeply.

Yeah, right thing

Mountain Man Dan: back in the 80s when they were making them. I think if I recall correctly, they were starting out at around like 85, 000.

Crew Chief Eric: I wouldn’t give you 85 cents for that thing.

Mountain Man Dan: I’m saying that wasn’t the model, but like, I know Elvis Presley had

Executive Producer Tania: one. I bet you can see really well at night with those headlights that are bigger than my head.

To

Crew Chief Brad: Tanya’s point earlier, that car just screams Disney Villain.

Mountain Man Dan: Yes, it does. Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: The problem with those headlights is you had to fill them with whale oil and then ignite them in order for them to work.

Mountain Man Dan: No, other than Disney Villain, it screamed 1970s pimp.

Mike Crutchfield: So, yeah, I had an 80s G Body, not a 70s. Now, I will say the MR2TT looks like a Dustbuster with a nose.

Mountain Man Dan: Right. For some reason I see that and I [00:37:00] don’t know if it handles with them, but I’d like to take it on track. I

Crew Chief Eric: would drive the heck out of that car,

Crew Chief Brad: but look at the door. To me, it reminds me of an aerial add on, but the doors I can see where the Senate got the door idea from.

Mountain Man Dan: So, I mean, the fact that I wouldn’t Montana track is the fact that it’s so ugly.

I wouldn’t put it in a wall, but

Crew Chief Eric: here’s the thing. Here’s the thing, though, that MR two, if you drove down the road and then MR two and you were talking about the alpha, And how people would be laughing at you, dude, I wouldn’t be caught dead driving on the track. I drive that going down the road. No way. At least the alpha people go, what the hell is that this?

They would physically either vomit or laugh to the point of crying.

Matthew Yip: Nobody knows what it is. The MRQS is a great car because it handled really well, but it was just the styling was confused,

Crew Chief Eric: terrible.

Matthew Yip: Well, and there’s, and there’s no storage space at all. I looked at one once at a dealership. And, um, you, you could not pack for a nudist weekend.

Not only that, they were the first to offer a manumatic [00:38:00] transmission. You know, a, a, a paddle shifter. And you know why it didn’t sell? Because it did not have an automatic mode.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, wow. So a lot of

Matthew Yip: people blew their engines up. Yeah, a hundred

Crew Chief Eric: percent stuck in first gear.

Matthew Yip: No, they, well, they didn’t buy it because it was too fucking small.

I mean, it’s a waste of money.

Crew Chief Eric: So then we have this piece of excellent French engineering, and you all were talking about how the interior has to be better than the exterior. Well, this is literally called the Karin. And when I saw this, I was like, somebody call the manager. Because this. Is an ugly, ugly car, but leave it to the French to take it to the next level.

I think I saw this in Total Recall.

Mountain Man Dan: That’s 1980s sci fi right there. That’s what they thought we’d be driving now. I mean,

Executive Producer Tania: well, actually that middle picture, it’s very cyber trucky. Just take the headlights away.

Mike Crutchfield: Nothing sucks like Electrolux.

Crew Chief Eric: I just like the fact that the [00:39:00] interior shot was taken by opening the lift back, and then you see that like cyclops camera that poses as, I don’t know, a rearview mirror or something. The proportions are, it’s mental. You sit in the

Mountain Man Dan: middle. I was going to say, did you sit in the middle? Yeah, you sat in the

Crew Chief Eric: middle like you can see from the upper picture.

And then the people sat behind you like on a couch. Right. I mean, and it’s a moving pyramid.

Mike Crutchfield: Which, uh, Ferrari did that or was it a McLaren? The original

Crew Chief Eric: F1.

Mike Crutchfield: Yeah. The F1. So you had the single center seat and the two back seats.

Crew Chief Eric: This is just, I mean, this is pretty bad. You want to talk about ugly?

Mountain Man Dan: This is right up.

I’m just dreading the headroom for the people in the back, because the slope of that going into a point, you go around a turn and they’re going to be banging their heads against the window. It’s disarming. It’s disarming. It

Executive Producer Tania: is. Oh my, there’s a picture. The 1980 Caron front three quarter view with the Cybertruck underneath in 2020.

They’re, they’re, they’re freaking siblings.

Mike Crutchfield: And I will say it probably has more rear

Crew Chief Brad: headroom [00:40:00] I’ll say that to Daniel’s point, you know, the passengers, if you’re driving one of these, you don’t have to worry about that because you don’t have any passengers with you. You have no friends. If you have no friends, your friend is Karen

Mountain Man Dan: and

Crew Chief Brad: she doesn’t even like you.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man.

Mike Crutchfield: Anyway, now, now, is it a rear motor or a front motor? Cause you can’t really tell from those pictures. Electric. I mean, it is an Electrolux, but you know,

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, I can’t tell you which way stuff opens. Like I can’t tell from up or down on this thing. It has,

Crew Chief Brad: it’s, it’s fueled by the discounts you get

Mike Crutchfield: by calling the manager.

It actually has red headlights and white taillights. You just get, you know, the pictures are backwards. I mean,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s like that Renault I posted the other day, the project 900, which. You can’t tell if it’s coming or going. It’s got two front ends. somewhere in there. It makes no sense. But when I saw this, I was like, you gotta be kidding me.

Mike Crutchfield: I do want to bring up one because I have a feeling it’s going to come up. [00:41:00] You should bring up a lot

Crew Chief Brad: Mike.

Mike Crutchfield: This is a

Crew Chief Brad: flowing conversation.

Mike Crutchfield: All right, let’s go. But I think someone on this call has expressed some affection for this vehicle in the past. It is the Fiat Multipla.

Matthew Yip: Well, was that the one that had the headlights that were like eyelet?

There were There was some, were windshield level as well? Oh yeah.

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t think anyone has ever expressed a like of that car.

Mike Crutchfield: It is, I mean, it is amazing.

Executive Producer Tania: It is the fuggliest thing, I mean that, what an embarrassment. Fiat, really?

Mountain Man Dan: Alright, I’m gonna throw it out there because first time I saw one was just, I didn’t know what to think of it.

When I was stationed over in England, a girl that I was talking to went out to meet her one night. And she showed up in that thing and I’m like, what is this?

Crew Chief Brad: It looks like the car from Demolition Man. It reminds me of that.

Mountain Man Dan: It’s, and the weird thing is sitting inside of it. Like, see if you can get an interior shot of like the dash and everything.

Because it felt [00:42:00] so weird to me.

Executive Producer Tania: Here’s the worst part is there. Here’s the worst part, though. The second row picture. Don’t go yet. The orange one. There was a version that was still ugly, but it didn’t look as hot trash. Why they decided to, to lift the windshield and add those lights there. I mean, it was already not great, but at least you were like, okay, it’s some sort of weird van thing they’re trying to do with more windows.

Mike Crutchfield: Oh, that looks like a Volkswagen Polo that hit a wall.

Executive Producer Tania: Then, and then they came up with this. They thought this was the next step. I mean, this was first, I guess. Maybe the other one is the one that came after. I

Crew Chief Eric: mean, when you chop the roof off of the previous multi plug and put it on top of a neon, that’s what you end up with.

I

Executive Producer Tania: mean, yes. Well, look

Mountain Man Dan: at the third row. See, wait, wait. I think I know what happened with this one. Whoever did the design, they faxed it over to the people who were building it. It ran. Stuck, and that’s [00:43:00] why I lifted that section at the back of the boat. And that’s what they went with the picture to build.

Crew Chief Brad: I think they sent it over as a joke.

And they’re like, ah, they’ll never make this. We should just send it like this. And then the next day it went into production.

Executive Producer Tania: If you take this car here and you stick your hand and you, and you don’t look at the top part, that front end actually isn’t that bad. That front end would actually look pretty cool if the rest of the car, the roofline, was something that made sense for the bottom half.

Mike Crutchfield: It reminds me of the Civic Wago van. If you took out the little bump under the windshield, it reminds me of the Civic Wago van. The height of the windows is two thirds the total height of the car. It’s like a big old fish bowl on

Crew Chief Brad: top. But you know, in comparison to the Multiply, I found the car that was very similar to it that I’m gonna put up now.

Crew Chief Eric: Hohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohohoh What is that?

Crew Chief Brad: It’s a Japanese French mixture. It is the Nissan S Cargo. [00:44:00]

Matthew Yip: Oh, god, I remember that. That was really… That was really popular for a while.

Crew Chief Eric: It looked like a snail.

Yeah. It literally looks like a snail. Holy cow, that thing is terrible. What is up with that window? That’s like the uh,

Mountain Man Dan: That’s the SVX. SVX. Yeah. For Subaru, yeah. There was a Ford that had windows like that too, that went like the bottom half of the car. The

Crew Chief Eric: DeLorean had that as well. The, the, the toll booth windows.

Yeah, I never understood

Mountain Man Dan: why.

Crew Chief Eric: But you know what, you know what still makes more sense than the cyber truck? I mean, if you look at, but, but is more functional.

Mike Crutchfield: But will its windows take a ball bearing without shattering?

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, probably. Probably, yes. .

Mike Crutchfield: Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: exactly. So we, we love the multiple, obviously, and every time I see the multiplier, especially in this color, I am reminded of the movie Life Aquatic with Bill Murray.

I mean, I’m sorry. It is what it is. Super turd, but we’ve covered that in detail.

Crew Chief Brad: I love how this one has dents in the hood. It missed [00:45:00] the bumper that sticks out about six inches past the hood,

Matthew Yip: but it’s

Crew Chief Brad: still got dents in the

Matthew Yip: punch at it. What was that one that they made? That was the Mercedes safety car, something, something 11.

I can’t remember what the hell the net model was.

Crew Chief Eric: The C one 11 was a prototype mid engine sports car. Yeah,

Matthew Yip: well it was a safety car too, just like Volvo used to make.

Crew Chief Eric: Now there’s three versions of the C111. The earliest ones are heinous. They had

Matthew Yip: like a weird coupe looking thing, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: That picture, last one on the second row there, Brad.

That has all three generations of the C 111. So the very first one’s in the back. It’s terrible. The middle one. Yeah. The middle one’s not great. And the last one, they kind of finally got it right. And it’s all terrible.

Crew Chief Brad: They are all terrible. But if I was to choose one, I would choose the middle one.

Mike Crutchfield: The last one is the front of a GT 40 and the back of a Fiero, but what they were trying to do

Crew Chief Eric: outside of being a safety car.

And from that angle, it looks way better. They were trying to compete with the M one. So that was the idea behind that car. It’s a [00:46:00] goal. It’s got a lot of weirdities. I like it because it’s different. And Mercedes was stepping out of the box. It’s a mid engine sports car. There’s a lot of things that are redeeming about it.

Executive Producer Tania: Sometimes you shouldn’t

Matthew Yip: step out of the box. Because Volvo made some safety car thing as well. And it was equally as bad.

Crew Chief Eric: All right. So from there, we go to the Volvo safety car, also known as the Duckville Platypus. I mean, you want to talk about ugly. This thing is my number two pick for ugliest car ever and we are getting close to number one But I mean those bumpers front and rear I mean look at them, right?

Mountain Man Dan: I love the opal

Crew Chief Eric: manta black hood though to really give it that sporty

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t mind the line. If you hold your hand and you block the whole front end and you take the A pillar line all the way to the back of the trunk, excluding the bumper. I don’t even mind it. I like, I would want to see what the Volvo front end would look like on a car like that.[00:47:00]

Crew Chief Brad: It reminds me of a Mark 2 Jetta.

Executive Producer Tania: But then the front, it looks like fricking some sort of Plymouth turd.

Mountain Man Dan: I’m going to throw out just a huge generalization. All of their cars were ugly, but you can’t, the P1800 is a good looking car. They were known for being the safest cars, probably because nobody wanted to drive them.

Mike Crutchfield: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s very true.

Mike Crutchfield: Well, so I think that, I mean, I’m pretty sure this is based on an actual Volvo and they just added the safety bumpers too, correct, Eric?

Crew Chief Eric: I believe so. Yeah, it’s our, there is, there are some early Volvo’s like this. However, the earlier Volvo’s of this Have a more, um, a more flat grill versus this is where they try.

This is kind of that cab forward design. Cause if you look at how the windshield is raked, how they rake the grill, extended the bumper, because it’s for pedestrian safety,

Executive Producer Tania: knock you at the knees and then flip you over the hood of the car,

Mike Crutchfield: is it actually, is it actually pedestrian safety or [00:48:00] is it a. Better five mile per hour impact bumper that actually can absorb higher speeds.

Crew Chief Eric: I understand it’s like all of the above, and again, that’s with the sloped grille and everything. Um, because again, the Volvos of that era, they could have put this grille on those Volvos, but they were much more square. So, so…

Executive Producer Tania: I don’t see how this is for pedestrian safety in any way.

Crew Chief Brad: I think pedestrian safety when designing a car is a complete myth.

How about don’t get hit by a fucking car?

Matthew Yip: Everything you buy today is built for pedestrian safety.

Mike Crutchfield: So yeah, so, so to Matt’s point, and I can, I can argue why this would be for pedestrian safety, is that it would kick them up onto the hood rather than under the car. Right. And modern cars are designed that the hood actually has a gap between the hood and the motor, so that if the pedestrian gets thrown up onto the hood, there’s some…

Crush zone to absorb the impact. So so I can understand where this is coming from both from pedestrian safety and from a car crash [00:49:00] safety You

Crew Chief Brad: know, we should just adopt what they do in the in the locomotive industry and just put cow catchers That kind of push the pedestrians away Screw all this other bullshit flip them onto the hood.

No, no, just push them out of the way

Executive Producer Tania: front loader.

Mountain Man Dan: So having b I don’t care what you say front. It hurts like hell I think your idea of pede the fact of the game of

y Based off of what type of person you need to kill.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, that’s like, uh, death

Mountain Man Dan: rates.

Mike Crutchfield: Double points for rollerbladers.

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah, so it’s like, I think that was the concept here because that thing sticking out, I think their idea was completely backwards in the fact that that sticking out there, that single point of force is going to hit you at the knees or whatever and snap your knees.

Executive Producer Tania: Exactly. Exactly. If that thing was maybe six inches lower and then it could scoop you up and then you slide up this angled front end, I could maybe buy it. [00:50:00] But that right there, that, that lops you off at the knees.

Mike Crutchfield: Better to be alive, alive without shins than dead.

Executive Producer Tania: Well, yeah, but all it’s going to do is lop you at the knees and you’re just going to go whap right on the hood.

You ain’t ever going to get scooped up on the hood. Your face is going to… faceplant into that grill. You’re going to knock your brain out right on the hood.

Mike Crutchfield: I mean, we weren’t exactly smart in the 70s.

Crew Chief Brad: I think it’s, I think it actually is designed to hit more pedestrians because it gives you less time to get out of the way because it sticks so far out in front of the car.

Crew Chief Eric: I just like the fact that if you notice in the first picture on the left, once you have You know, if you’ve retained your knees and flipped up over the hood and you’re sliding across the windshield, you have a ridge along the B pillar to grab so that you don’t fly off the back of the car. Did you guys notice that?

There’s a lip.

Mountain Man Dan: Nice. No, no, no, no. That’s not the catch. That’s like, you know, the, uh, vegetable

Crew Chief Eric: slicer.

Mountain Man Dan: That’s so it takes a huge layer of skin off you as you go [00:51:00] off where you just straight me onto the asphalt. Once you hit the ground behind the car. But the, here’s the thing, even more than the pedestrian safety.

Anybody who ever did drive this, I’m curious how many times they had to get out, write a note, put it on a car in front of them when they were parking, because they went up and hit them, because how far the damn bumper stuck out.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, dude. And they, they do what the, what the 80 year old people do. And they put the little flags at the end of the bumper on both sides.

Mike Crutchfield: The bumper collapses, so when they start to hit something, maybe a light lights up inside so that the bumper, they know the bumper hit something and start to compress.

Executive Producer Tania: So according to the Volvo Cars Global Newsroom, okay, and I’ve skimmed this really quickly, but there’s one bullet point here. The extremely pronounced bumpers gave the car a characteristic profile.

They protected the body against panel damage in low speed impacts at up to 16 kilometers an hour.

Mike Crutchfield: Yeah, so they’re better five mile per hour bumpers. They hate

Executive Producer Tania: [00:52:00] saving you as a pedestrian.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, so all this talk about pedestrians is bunk because they don’t give a shit.

Crew Chief Eric: But I will say this, bear in mind, if you guys ever dealt with some old European cars, you’ll realize that they, they were very Uh, simple in the fact that they were basically strapped like railroad ties to the front of them, right?

You ever look at like an old rabbit? It’s like, here’s a piece of metal that we bolted to the front of the car. They were not light. So my question is, how heavy are these bumpers to be this large on both ends of the car? Because you gotta remember the tail end is the same way. They’re huge, right?

Mountain Man Dan: Well,

Crew Chief Eric: they got away to 150 pounds a piece.

Look at the picture.

Mountain Man Dan: There is no wheel well space. Yeah, right. That’s lower. Before the bumper was up, there was probably five inches of gap there.

Mike Crutchfield: When they put the bumper on, it lowered it bumpers from the 80s could withstand some decent impacts because I might have been involved in some car tag with some friends in [00:53:00] slow traffic.

Crew Chief Eric: It guardrails to the front of those old

Mike Crutchfield: Bingo. So that’s back when we had five mile per hour bumpers that were actually not damaged the car compared to nowadays, this is probably a better design because nowadays you, you have a select fender bender and it’s 12, 000 worth of damage because you need like five new bumper covers and three sensors and all that other stuff.

So, you know, in that regard, this is actually a good design.

Crew Chief Eric: I like the fact that you can sit on this and have lunch. I mean it’s, it’s very convenient. It’s a multi

Mountain Man Dan: purpose. You can have a fucking picnic. You can go to a sporting event, sit there with the headlights on, so the headlights are shining out in the field and you just sit in between the lights and watch.

So,

Crew Chief Brad: so what you’re saying is this

Mike Crutchfield: tailgater, what you’re saying is this should be on an Italian car. So you have somewhere to sit when it’s broken down.

Crew Chief Eric: A hundred percent. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I think you guys would agree up until this point, I have brought to light some very ugly cars, way uglier than the Aztec and the HHR, but

Mike Crutchfield: you’ve sullied the poor name of the [00:54:00] duck bill platypus.

Come on,

Crew Chief Eric: but you can’t, you cannot deny. It doesn’t look like one.

Mountain Man Dan: I will deny it looks like the Platypus doesn’t have a deck hanging off its ass.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, it’s got that big old tail back there. Yeah, they have a, they have a beaver tail. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they do. That’s the beaver tail back there. But there is a car that goes beyond all reason and understanding.

It re defines the word. Ugly. Redefines the word ugly. Are you guys ready for this? Are you ready? Little drumroll.

1957 Aurora safety car. This is the ugliest car ever built.

Mountain Man Dan: I’ve noticed one key thing is attributed to ugliness. Safety.

Crew Chief Eric: So what do you guys think of this? And this gentleman is the proud owner and restorer. What the hell is it based on? I don’t [00:55:00] remember off the top of my head.

Matthew Yip: There’s not a straight line on that thing.

Mike Crutchfield: Someone took a balloon, blew it up, squeezed it down, covered it in plaster, and then called it a body.

Executive Producer Tania: Apparently so. Now this thing is designed to scoop up pedestrians.

Mountain Man Dan: That’s a parade mobile where you just have people sitting on it while you’re driving down the parade and they’re sitting there waving. I mean, can you imagine this guy?

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, he is, he is proud of this car. This is a car, he goes out into his garage and he looks at it and he goes, yeah, this is awesome.

Executive Producer Tania: This company went out of business. producing one of these prototypes.

Crew Chief Brad: No, I don’t believe that.

Executive Producer Tania: Manufactured

Mountain Man Dan: by a Catholic priest. Yes. So you said they were making one. Is this the only one that exists and this guy is the owner?

So there

Crew Chief Eric: were pictures of, well, like, I guess I found them on the internet basically where it was like rotting in a, like a yard or whatever. And they were pictures of them, like them with the bucks and stuff, but yeah, this guy, Oh, this is a, apparently a running production [00:56:00] car. And this guy, this younger gentleman here then, because they built this in 57, he doesn’t look like he was.

Probably he’s like born in 57, right? But again, I mean, this thing takes the cake. Yeah. But I mean, it’s one of those

Matthew Yip: where, uh, there, I mean, there has to be, I’m trying to find some reasoning of what it has and to why, Oh, here we go.

Executive Producer Tania: So it does describe that that front end is to scoop up pedestrians.

Mountain Man Dan: You’re still gonna, it’s taking you out of the angle.

There’s,

Executive Producer Tania: I know, I’m, I know, I’m agreeing, I agree 100 percent. Also that windshield is bulging, bulging out like that so that if you were launched forward you wouldn’t hit your head into the windshield.

Mountain Man Dan: Well remember those seatbelts weren’t required yet. Okay, 1957 glass was not shatterproof. So whoever you hit was coming through and you’re just, so instead of hitting against the glass, you’re headbutting the person coming up on the hood.

No,

Executive Producer Tania: no, no. It’s not for the person outside the hood. It was for you shooting through the hood to give [00:57:00] you more space not to smack your face, apparently. And this did have seatbelts.

Mountain Man Dan: I get what you’re saying with that, Tanya. But what I’m saying is, he goes forward and it’s domed out so he doesn’t hit his head on the glass.

Executive Producer Tania: Yeah.

Mountain Man Dan: Because they didn’t use shatterproof glass, then the person coming up over the hood is going to come through the glass and it’s

Executive Producer Tania: going to be the same solution as

Matthew Yip: the human. Yes. So, it was a fiberglass prototype built on a 53 Buick chassis, partially funded by Father Alfred Juliano’s parish,

Mike Crutchfield: but it was planned to be available to be built on top of a Chrysler, Cadillac, or Lincoln engine.

Builds on the BO chassis.

Matthew Yip: It said, uh, reverse angle windshield eliminates glare, prevents dust, rain, sleet, and snow from impairing visibility. Automatic seat adjustments and telescoping steering column eliminate driver strain and travel fatigue. Rear trunk area is unencumbered by spare tire or other space.

[00:58:00] Stealing accessories total area 20 cubic feet. Oh, here’s the good part. Built in hydraulic jacks operate through push button controls. Provide safe and easy tire changing. Extra large shock resistant doors. Latches are flush. Upholstery is the newest spill proof miracle fiber fabric. Oh, fucking vinyl.

Oh my God. This is, it’s, it’s quite, um, astonishing.

Mike Crutchfield: It’s the, uh, the new Jeep wagon here. If the interior was made of modern materials now, it would be sham Wells, right? Yeah. Spill proof.

Matthew Yip: Oh my God. It’s like the Cadillac CTS. It was pretty interesting.

Mike Crutchfield: Oh, this, this gets even better reading, uh, the wiki page.

It would have been priced just under the most costly car in the U. S. It would have only been 12, 000 in 1957. [00:59:00]

Matthew Yip: Well, and remember that in America, safety does not sell. Ford tried that multiple times in the past as a, uh, as a, as a marketing ploy. And people don’t buy cars to be safe. They may say they do, but they don’t.

Mike Crutchfield: Well, so nowadays they do. They buy big SUVs to be safe from all the people in little cars. They don’t care if they kill the people in little cars, but, you know, they’re safe in their big SUV.

Matthew Yip: Well, yeah. I guess, yeah, I could see that. So there you have it, folks.

Crew Chief Eric: Ugliest car on the planet. 1957 Aurora safety car.

Crew Chief Brad: I think we should still go around the horn and see what other people say. So that’s your number one.

Mike Crutchfield: Uh, you’re going to come back to me. My, my, my, I think he’s a little slowed right now.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, if I have to go off what was in that presentation, sure.

Crew Chief Brad: No, go off whatever. I mean, it doesn’t have to be in that presentation, whatever you want.

Executive Producer Tania: Personal opinion. I, there’s too many ugly cars to say just one. Yeah, [01:00:00] okay.

Crew Chief Brad: I think the Nissan S Cargo or the, the, the Multipla.

Executive Producer Tania: The Multipla is definitely a top three.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s why I came before the duck billed platypus, man. Multipla. Volvo safety car.

Mike Crutchfield: I mean, so duck bill platypus, if you see them in person are actually pretty cute. They’re very confused and very poisonous, but they’re actually really cute.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, I would also list that, uh, that Karen, that’s pretty bad. That’s pretty bad.

I

Mike Crutchfield: mean, if you’re going to list the, yeah, yeah. If you’re gonna list the Karen, you have to say the cyber truck. I mean,

Executive Producer Tania: I was going to follow on with, and right next to it is the cyber truck. Cause those are cousins.

Crew Chief Brad: The Karen haircut, too, was pretty bad.

Mike Crutchfield: I will say I have a very visceral reaction to the PT Cruiser with the fake wood trim and the fake back tire on the back [01:01:00] hatch.

That is like one of the worst thing for me to see and it just is painful to look at.

Mountain Man Dan: So what you’re saying, Crutch, is since you dislike that so much, the one that rides around in Thurmont that I see regularly, I need to start taking pictures of and sending to you?

Mike Crutchfield: Growing up, we had the eighties square front priest wagons that had the fake wood paneling.

And even that, like the wood trim on that didn’t feel as painful to look at as the fake wood trim on the PT cruiser. It just bothers

Mountain Man Dan: me on the outside of those cars. I

Crew Chief Eric: think, I think the ultimate unicorn would be a GT cruiser convertible with the wood trim. And a manual transmission. I mean, that is like the ultimate of the PT series cars to have.

Would you, and by

Mike Crutchfield: ultimate, you mean you, you know, for someone who likes getting enemas every day,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s awesome.

Crew Chief Brad: I think a followup to the ugly cars should be ugly interiors.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh god, I could go on for days on that one. Don’t even get me started. The

Crew Chief Brad: [01:02:00] 90s Firebirds interior was atrocious. The cars went like stink, but the interior was like sitting inside a Walmart.

Mike Crutchfield: The back of those Crown Vic cop cars, I mean, let me tell you.

Mountain Man Dan: We’re talking about ugly cars, and I have to throw out the fact that… Looks are the main appeal, but functionality overrides looks any day of the week. And is that the excuse of the Aztec?

Executive Producer Tania: There’s a lot of people that’ll say that when they’re buying a new car. It’s like, I don’t care what it looks like on the outside.

I care more what it looks like on the inside. And I care about all the things that it comes with. Because I’ve heard some people say, well, when I’m driving it, I don’t see the outside of it. I see the inside of it.

Mike Crutchfield: And that’s why they sell a lot of Toyota Camrys.

Mountain Man Dan: I mean, and don’t they try to teach children growing up?

It’s not what’s on the outside, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

Crew Chief Eric: And on that

Mountain Man Dan: note,

Crew Chief Eric: Brad, what do you think? Is it time to end?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, I think we’re good.

If you like what you’ve heard and want [01:03:00] to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www. gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram at GrandTouring Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can call or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey listeners, Crew Chief Eric here. Do you like what you’ve seen, heard, and read from GTM? Great, so do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it. But please remember, we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization. But we still need help to keep the momentum going, so that we can continue to record, write, edit, and broadcast all of your favorite content.

So be sure to visit www. patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports or visit our website and click in the top right corner on the support and donate to learn how you. Can [01:04:00] help.

Transcript (Part-2)

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Grand Touring Motorsports podcast, break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motorsports related.

Crew Chief Eric: So, as you guys heard, we did a ugliest cars episode.

Crew Chief Brad: So yeah, there were some cars that were too ugly even for their mama to love, and they got left out on the cutting room floor, unfortunately.

Crew Chief Eric: But we also put together a BSides. So this is really a sidebar conversation as we’re sitting around drinking and getting prepared for the real episode.

A whole bunch of other cars fell out on the floor.

Crew Chief Brad: And as always, I’m your host Brad. And I’m Eric. So let’s roll.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re gonna talk

Crew Chief Brad: about some ugly cars. Ugly cars, ugly, f ugly. Let’s get, let’s, let’s get it going. Who’s, who’s got some ugly ass cars that they wanna talk about? Other than the obvious choices? I mean, we’ve got the ancient r, the PT cruiser swear body Chevys.

Here. I’ll, I’ll kick us off by Roland. Let’s [00:01:00] see what I think is an ugly car, especially when it first came out. I think the Mark five Jetta specifically, but the mark five golfs and GTIs and stuff too. They were terrible. They were ugly, ugly, ugly cars. When I, when it first came out, I thought I was looking at the new Corolla.

That’s how terrible I thought it was. I thought someone took a mark four. They put like an air pipe onto it and just blew a bunch of air into it and expanded it. I think they’re hideous. I will give you the taillights look like a Corolla.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, it’s, it’s the David drunk on the, on the floor of the Burger King trying to eat a cheeseburger.

That’s the mark five to me,

Mike Crutchfield: the non g l i, there was way too much chrome on the front of that car.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah.

Mike Crutchfield: That entire front grill was Chrome unless it was a G L I.

Crew Chief Brad: Volkswagen. Spent too much time watching Paul Wall videos. They had to get that chrome grill. The R might as well be Lil Wayne. It’s

Crew Chief Eric: like all chrome up front.

Crew Chief Brad: I

Crew Chief Eric: mean, it’s bad.

Crew Chief Brad: Yet their commercials were unto [00:02:00] what other ugly oddities do we want to talk about before Eric pulls up his PowerPoint A

Mike Crutchfield: as a, you know,

Executive Producer Tania: typical,

Mike Crutchfield: typical twe,

Executive Producer Tania: the Aston Martin LA

Matthew Yip: Oh, come on. I like that car.

Executive Producer Tania: Okay. Okay. That’s

Matthew Yip: one of the news. Yes.

Mike Crutchfield: Oh, that looks like it was stepped on.

Crew Chief Eric: That is a horrible car.

I mean, Honda, they went to track auto and bought all of the Wagner square headlights they could find and just bolted ’em onto the front of that thing.

Mountain Man Dan: The best part of that, that car was big, big, big dollars. The front end of that reminds me of a dust buster.

Mike Crutchfield: Wait, does it have massive flip up headlights as well in addition to all those lights in the front grill?

Just in case you couldn’t see, but because there’s like two big trap drawers

Crew Chief Brad: in the front of the hood. You know what other vehicles got something like that? The Jeep Cherokee, it’s got the little eye slit lights that aren’t actually headlights and it’s got headlights

Mike Crutchfield: on top of that. Oh, so that, so a related one to that was on my list, which is the first gen Nissan [00:03:00] Duke.

Like, oh. Like it had these little like weird slanted things that were the headlights. And then below that were fog lights. That looks like they should be the headlights.

Matthew Yip: Yeah. Yeah. That was the one.

Executive Producer Tania: Mike. It does have popup lights, so when it pop up there’s an additional, total of four extra square lights.

There’s two on each side.

Mike Crutchfield: Wow. Just

Executive Producer Tania: put, put in headlight.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s the family truckster. But you know what’s funny, Mike? With the headlights up, tell me, it doesn’t look like a BMW eight 50.

Mike Crutchfield: I see, I see the family truck store with all those headlights. Yeah, but that’s not necessarily anything good. You know the, what is that thing?

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, what is that? That looks like a Hearst version of that card. Volvo and a Lagonda had a baby. Like that is horrendous. Is that actually a, it’s

Crew Chief Brad: the Lagonda V 70.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s the Laa shooting brake.

Oh. There isn’t enough. There is not enough Tannerite in the world to take care of that.

Crew Chief Brad: That car is probably 35 feet long

Crew Chief Eric: odd. [00:04:00] That’s the Inspector Gadget car, right? It does look like that. No. What did he drive? He drove the, uh, it was a Nissan, right? It was that weird Nissan that they made in the nineties, I thought, or the late eighties I thought.

Crew Chief Brad: I think this is Mike’s next wagon.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh my God, that is brutal.

Mike Crutchfield: That, I mean, that is, yeah, it does. Remind me of the Inspector Gadget car.

Mountain Man Dan: That reminds me of an El Camino with a cap.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s awesome.

Crew Chief Brad: Here, you’re gonna love this one. You are gonna love. This picture, I swear, hopefully it shows up.

Executive Producer Tania: Oh, Holland Oats.

Crew Chief Brad: Poor Man Fi Ferrari.

Crew Chief Eric: You gotta describe it for our listeners there, Brad. What do, what do we got here?

Crew Chief Brad: We’ve got the Pontiac Firo Holland Oats Edition. She’s a rich girl. Ho notes aren’t rich girls apparently,

Crew Chief Eric: cuz they’re driving Pontiac Fi And let’s not forget, tested is one of 1980 four’s best handling American cars.

Crew Chief Brad: Well that is not saying [00:05:00] much,

Matthew Yip: you know, compared, compared to what else was for sale in 1984 from America. It is. And you know, the, the, the real shame of it is cause I read an article about those stupid things. What did, when did they discontinue with 1987 or 88? I think

Crew Chief Brad: not soon enough. I think actually the best handling American car in 84.

Was probably a square body schiffy.

Crew Chief Eric: You just made Dan the happiest person in the world. I know. I was

Crew Chief Brad: looking to get a smile outta him.

Crew Chief Eric: Here’s the thing about Firo. I actually like them. I do too. And they can be modified to, to look really good.

Crew Chief Brad: The body kits on them make ’em phenomenal. I’m not, you’re the ones that make ’em look like another car.

Yeah. They’re great talking

Mountain Man Dan: about the Ferrari kits that you can get for ’em. I’m talking the actual, they had some, uh, ground effects kits. Yeah, they did. They looked phenomenal.

Crew Chief Eric: And the two M six, the last ones, yeah, the last year, the 80 eights, I think they were with those, but they finally

Mountain Man Dan: fixed all the problems that they had with ’em.

And the last year was a, it was a phenomenal

Crew Chief Eric: problem. They also had those B Bs, gold [00:06:00] Bs, uh, basket weave wheels. I mean, they weren’t bad looking. In the last year, they put the spoiler on them, the body kit from the factory. It wasn’t like

Crew Chief Brad: too raw. The, the real reason. Well, there’s two reasons why I added the Fiero one because I don’t fit in them, uh, so that it kind of makes me a little jealous.

And two, I just wanted to share this picture.

Crew Chief Eric: Classic hall notes right there. That’s pretty. Pretty awesome.

Matthew Yip: Well,

Crew Chief Brad: the

Matthew Yip: last, the last year of the, of Fierro is when they finally got rid of the TTE hearing.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Matthew Yip: When it, it was introduced too early and it was basically a Chevy Chevette, a mid engine Chevy Chevette, Hey, hey, hey.

The X 19. Yeah. You weren’t talking about fucking, there’s

Crew Chief Brad: the Italian firo.

Matthew Yip: It’s not that it’s ugly, it’s that it was just a fucking dog. The only thing, the only good thing about an X 19 is you. You

Crew Chief Eric: could be seen in it for a long time. I mean that is, that is the downside. The X one nine, honestly, it’s a good looking car, but it is slow as dirt.

I mean, you could, you could floor it to pull away from the stoplight and they’d still see you for 20 minutes. If you [00:07:00] handed me an X one nine, I’d be all over it. I’m okay with that.

Mike Crutchfield: No, I will say whatever. Whatever ugly car you’re talking about, if you wanna make it uglier, throw some nineties Pontiac rims on it.

Matthew Yip: Look at, look at any of those eighties, nineties cars today, and you just. You can’t believe that people bought them, but that

Crew Chief Eric: was what they had available. And you know what, Brad? I don’t like yellow cars, but the X one nine looks good in yellow. I like this one.

Mountain Man Dan: If it has to be a cartoonist s rendering of a vehicle, you know it’s ugly.

Crew Chief Eric: What’s wrong with the X one nine?

Mountain Man Dan: It looks like a Fiero.

Mike Crutchfield: God, but not near as cool.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, so does the nine 14. Nine 14 is an

Mike Crutchfield: ugly duckling too. That right there is what’s wrong with the X 19. That picture alone

Crew Chief Eric: with the pop-up headlights,

Mike Crutchfield: the way those pop-up headlights look on the front of the car.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah.

Nine 14 looks identical. If you pull up a picture of nine 14, the pop with the headlights up, they’re the same. No, it has a, it has a bumper. It doesn’t end, it doesn’t terminate

Mike Crutchfield: immediately. Well, there you go. You, you have a piece of crap in your, your garage then, cuz that looks like garbage. I [00:08:00] don’t like the nine 14 with the headlights

Crew Chief Eric: up.

I, that’s the only angle I don’t like. I like the nine 14 a lot actually.

Mike Crutchfield: I like the nine 14 more than the X 19, but, but those headlights have to be welded shut at this point. Just weld them shut

Crew Chief Eric: and, and, and Brad to the Fiero are argument about being ugly. Like, I can appreciate it because a, it’s mid engine and then everything else, but when you take that design and you kind of stretch it out and add these, like big prison doors on it and call it a Beretta, Then we have a problem.

Crew Chief Brad: You also gotta give it that really powerful, different looking. You gotta give it that really powerful 3.4 liter v6 too.

Crew Chief Eric: So I’ll tell you this. Jess owned a Beretta in white with a bird. Oh, I’m sorry. With the 3.4 liter, right. I drove it doors. He must have been L built with out of lead and filled with cement.

Because they were, they were like bank vault doors. And so Jess used to always say, that was like the ultimate like rapist car because when you got in it, it was very difficult to get [00:09:00] out. You were like trapped into Beretta. His doors were like so heavy.

Mountain Man Dan: You parked, you parked nose uphill and they can’t get the door.

Pretty, pretty much. Yeah. You were done.

Executive Producer Tania: I’m drawing a complete blank. What is that? A Pontiac car that

Mike Crutchfield: Aztec.

Executive Producer Tania: No, that’s a troll piece of crap as well. But no, I think it was a Pontiac. It it was, it was like a Sunfire. Yes, it was ca

Crew Chief Brad: the Cavalier’s Pontiac cousin. I broke one of those on a, on a business trip.

Yes,

Executive Producer Tania: that thing. Thank you. Drawing a blanket. Well,

Mountain Man Dan: with the sunfire was to get women’s attention. They came in these weird pinks and shit like that, that it was for the purpose of getting women in interested in them cars.

Crew Chief Eric: But the problem was they took the, they took the, the Camaro and they tried to shrink it cuz it had the same funky rear end and those wide hips.

It just didn’t look right.

Crew Chief Brad: I think all Pontiac sun fires were owned by strippers [00:10:00] and they all smelled, they all, every single one came from the factory smelling like cigarette smoke.

Mountain Man Dan: Well, you and Strawberry

Mike Crutchfield: Body Joe.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes.

Mountain Man Dan: Here’s a big problem with any of the cars in the US because all of the big wigs in control of design stuff, when there’s a good idea, they shoot it down every time and the is a huge.

Example of that cuz that car originally designed was supposed to be way better and the big was like, nope, we don’t want to dump the money into that. So we’re gonna Then how

Crew Chief Eric: did, then, how did the Aztec make it into production? The same reason the Ford l t d made it into production? No, no. The Ford l t d say what you will about the Ford l t d,

Matthew Yip: but it was just another big American car.

The Aztec looks like it got beat by the ugly stick and then someone broke it over his

Mike Crutchfield: head. They went to all the focus groups and picked one thing out of each focus group. Said they, that they said they wanted, did they? Were they all and threw everything else out?

Crew Chief Eric: There was some redneck in the background.

Go. I [00:11:00] like nostrils on the Firebird. I need that on my suv.

Crew Chief Brad: I for the Aztec. I think the writers and directors from Breaking Bad long before the story was written, went to General Motors and said, we’ve got a story. We want to, we want to write in broadcast. We need a vehicle that says I’m a midlife crisis loser with no life, no soul.

I’m going to die. And that is paradise to me. I need a car for that. So they, they already made that. It

Mike Crutchfield: was called the Geo Metro.

Matthew Yip: No, you know, you know who bought the Aztec? Cuz if you look at, if you look at the packages, the Aztec, nobody,

Crew Chief Brad: nobody bought the Aztec. Well, I’ve seen exactly zero on the road. Well,

Matthew Yip: general Motors, you know, they, you can lease a, uh, a General Motors product if you work for General Motors for, you know, for practically nothing.

And this is when I was working in Detroit, apparently quite a few of those middle managers had Aztecs [00:12:00] because there was nothing else on the roster. In other words, you wanna, you wanna lease a, uh, 60 a Pontiac 6,000 s t e. You have to have an Aztec, you you want to get a Firebird, you have to have an Aztec, you want a Cadillac?

You have to have an Aztec cuz they couldn’t sell them. Yeah, it was the same, was the same reason why Ford corporate guys were driving two door explorer sports forever. Couldn’t sell ’em. I just wanna

Crew Chief Eric: know what the Aztec is built on. Because if, if it anything, if it was built on a GM 360 chassis, like the Trailblazer and the Equinox and all those, it’d be one thing, but it’s kind of like, what the hell is it built on?

It’s a piece of crap.

Mountain Man Dan: I’m gonna speak in its defense for a minute. Because the Aztec did have some cool options, like the camping aspect where they had the tent that came out the back.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Did you just use Cool and Aztec in the same sentence? Sadly, yes.

Mountain Man Dan: It was.

Crew Chief Eric: Well,

Crew Chief Brad: if you, but did it have to be shaped like a juice box?

Matthew Yip: Well, if you don’t look at it, it’s, it was a, it was wonderful, but So is the Porsche 9 [00:13:00] 28? Yeah. I mean

Mountain Man Dan: the, the, it had a lot of cool options. But it was not functional. I mean, if you wanna go camping, where are you going with an Aztec? You’re going to the mall parking lot. You can’t go off-road with it didn’t have road clearance, it didn’t have traction.

Mike Crutchfield: You’re going the same place. Most Jeep owners go the mall parking lot. True. Yeah. When we get to the next car, bring up the link I sent in chat. It’s a comparison of the new Mitsubishi Eclipse, s U v. And a Pontiac. Aztec, it is brother from another mother.

Crew Chief Brad: We talk about this in the drive through and we ask the question, the hard hitting questions.

Why the f does Mitsubishi still make cars? This is a prime example of that question. Why the F Do they still make cars?

Mike Crutchfield: Well, that’s the thing in, in the US market, they don’t make any cars anymore. They only make crossovers and SUVs. This is a

Crew Chief Brad: car I, this is what I mean by cars. I

Mike Crutchfield: don’t mean, but, but specifically a car.

I believe in the Japanese market, they still make small cars cuz they sell, [00:14:00] they’re one of the over here. They don’t sell

Matthew Yip: manufacturers one of the largest industries in the industrial, uh, enterprises in the

Mike Crutchfield: world. You can buy your Mitsubishi TV and haul at home with your Mitubishi Eclipse suv.

Matthew Yip: That’s right.

Mike Crutchfield: Along with your Mitsubishi air conditioner. Right. Well

Matthew Yip: that’s your, that’s, that’s Mitsubishi.

Executive Producer Tania: That’s great if they sell cars in Japan, but they should not sell car, they should not sell vehicles with four wheels that provide forward motion in the United States market.

Mike Crutchfield: They barely do anymore. It’s like, it’s like a zuzu before a zuzu died.

Crew Chief Eric: Uh, see, I’m cool with the Aztec like that as an off-road or I think it’s, I think it’s, if that’s how

Mountain Man Dan: they would’ve built it originally,

Matthew Yip: I would’ve been okay with it. Yeah. Well, but you know, funny except I think it’s two

Crew Chief Brad: wheel drive,

Matthew Yip: but it’s funny you say that because remember the, the Suzuki Samurai was a joke.

There you go right

Crew Chief Brad: there. Then chicken Aztec

Matthew Yip: and then all the four wheel guys wanted bought em because they, cuz they were awesome off road.

Mike Crutchfield: And they were great cuz if they rolled over they were the same height and width and, and and length. So you could roll ’em over easier. [00:15:00] Here’s the Pontiac Aztec tribal

Crew Chief Brad: tattoo edition.

Mike Crutchfield: Well scroll that screams nineties in early two thousands. Oh yeah. And whoever drove,

Matthew Yip: what the hell is that official case? What

Mike Crutchfield: body

Mountain Man Dan: spray? Come on

Mike Crutchfield: Ax. Body sprays

Mountain Man Dan: reserved for hhr. No, trust me that tribal Aztec had plenty. But,

Crew Chief Eric: oh man, that is,

Crew Chief Brad: these are the people that buy the Pontiac Aztec.

Crew Chief Eric: Look at that one with the gray one with the wheels, man, you keep skipping the good ones. That one? Yeah. Hang on,

Mike Crutchfield: hang on. That. I don’t think, here’s the best one. God. I’ve had a good bit of scotch, but no amount of scotch prepared me for that taxi Aztec picture.

Let me tell you,

Mountain Man Dan: I’m, I’m

Mike Crutchfield: okay

Mountain Man Dan: with that. Actually, that looks pretty good. Scroll back up, Brad, because on the top left pictures there was, now keep all

Executive Producer Tania: these cars with double layered headlights and double layered grills just look ridiculous. They look stupid and maybe it’s an artifact that. Most cars aren’t that way and we’re very, [00:16:00] uh, trains in, in thinking of a car has a set of lights and one grill, not, oh, let me decide to double stack front ends.

Mike Crutchfield: So along those lines, and that brings up a good point. The Tesla model three, an the front end of the Tesla Model three annoys me due to the lack of grill.

Executive Producer Tania: Yes, I also dislike that I also dislike no grill, and that also is probably an artifact of just being so trained visually to have a grill on a or on front.

Mike Crutchfield: But yeah, the, the Aztec has like nostrils and of mouth. It just looks weird.

Matthew Yip: Well, the first ones were even worse when they had that cladding on them. Like the, the ones that they had, the cladding were really hideous. The ones that were at least mono color were mono color quite as bad.

Mike Crutchfield: So that the cladding, the only reason the cladding was removed was cuz of the economic crisis, GM one, to save money.

So they made the cladding and option on not just the Aztec, it was also on the avalanche.

Matthew Yip: Wait, you made a shitty decision based on economics. No, that would never happen.

Mike Crutchfield: No. [00:17:00] Actually by, by your definition, they made a smart decision by removing the cladding for economics. No. Yes.

Mountain Man Dan: So you mentioned the, uh, avalanche, Mike and I agree.

When they did the plastic molding for the back section, I get what they were trying to do with going back like a throwback to the seventies and eighties where they’d have like the roll bar or something in the back. But when they did it out of plastic, everything faded so badly. It just made ’em look hideous.

Mike Crutchfield: Well is so they left that part on, they took off the body clad cladding on the bottom side of the door.

Matthew Yip: Yeah.

Mike Crutchfield: Which I, I actually preferred how the Aztec looked with the cladding cuz it provided the contrast without the contrast. It looked weird. Yeah. The

Matthew Yip: top, I feel, I feel the other way around. I, they’re ugly either way, but,

Crew Chief Eric: all right.

What else we got on the list?

Matthew Yip: But you wanna talk about bad general moron’s products? Cadillac Cimarron.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh dude, that is, that, that, I mean, my daughter would design the look of that car. It’s, it’s like what a kid would draw in terms

Matthew Yip: of, well,

Crew Chief Eric: how do you

Matthew Yip: take the shittiest, cheapest car GM makes? I. And then make it worse.

[00:18:00] Let’s add leather and wood.

Mike Crutchfield: But they didn’t learn cuz they made the katera, which was literally a Chevy Malibu with a different badge.

Matthew Yip: No. What? No, actually it was an opal. And in Europe it was an awesome car. But we’re Americans and we want big, soft, cushy, automatic transmission cars.

Mike Crutchfield: I wanted the. Was that the Carra was a, was a Malibu, was an cut list, was the, um, What was the Buick version?

I don’t remember. Skylar. Skylar, yeah. But, but like the, the Katerra of those years was literally the same exact body. They only changed the front grill between the Cadillac and the Chevy and, and the Oldsmobile.

Crew Chief Eric: I thought it was based on like the Opal Omega or the Vector. Yeah.

Matthew Yip: No, it was, it was, it was an opal.

It was, it wasn’t GM parts bin. At least not US parts bin. But then, Gt the GTO O is not, is parts been gm but not us. Parts been either.

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah. That’s Holden. This

Matthew Yip: was

Crew Chief Eric: British GM parts, Ben, if I [00:19:00] recall. Yeah.

Mike Crutchfield: Right. It’s, it’s the Opal omega B. But they, they sold it in the US as all of those, right, right, right.

They sold it literally, they just changed the grill for the, the Oldsmobile and the. A Chevy when they changed from the aro to the Cutlass. You know, Alro had different body style.

Crew Chief Eric: Aro was

Mike Crutchfield: weird, but it wasn’t ugly. Like I could tolerate that car. Christie had one. It was, it was actually a fun little car. And what’s really funny is in, in Germany, they sold it as a Chevrolet.

Matthew Yip: Really, you guys, you guys are way too young for this, but you, you don’t remember this beautiful car from my childhood. The Chevy Citation X 11

Executive Producer Tania: Citation.

Matthew Yip: Citation. Oh yes. The Chevy citation. The first front wheel drive, the X 11 was a V V6 performance car. The citation. I love that. Look. Look it up. Yeah. Yeah.

Crew Chief Brad: It it’s the shit Tation.

Matthew Yip: Yes. So, oh,

Crew Chief Brad: that reminds me. There’s a

Matthew Yip: reason why. So, and there was a kid I went to high school with who had one who thought he was hot shit for years. [00:20:00] All right. So who’s got another one for us to pick?

Executive Producer Tania: Well, I wanna go back to the citation.

Matthew Yip: Yeah. The, the citation. The citation. Yeah,

Executive Producer Tania: because if you, in that time period, if your cha choice was the citation, let’s go with the X 11 cause Yes.

Would you still choose the citation or would you choose the K card? The Plymouth Aries. I’m an I coka man. I’m taking the Aries. Well, it’s considering, talk about the most boring, mundane office car. I hate my job kinda. There you go. I

Crew Chief Brad: was thinking about the

Matthew Yip: Dodge Intrepid was a little barren. Well, come on the, the best ca car ever made was a Chrysler Imperial.

What’s wrong with you people? Oh my God, there’s so

Crew Chief Eric: many Ca K based cars. It’s not even funny. We

Mike Crutchfield: had a Chrysler New Yorker when I was growing up. That had the air ride su, the air leveling suspension in the back. Oh,

Matthew Yip: God

Mike Crutchfield: was the only, the only reason I can think that existed [00:21:00] was so the mobsters could put bodies in the back and it wouldn’t sag.

And you, and you say that like it’s a bad thing.

Executive Producer Tania: Didn’t someone once compare the intrepid to a.

Matthew Yip: You may or you, you, you guys again, are way too young for this. Ford had an advertisement for the Grenada and it was, uh, who wouldn’t need ma car? A Granada that it wrote, it wrote so well that the guy would, that the guy was going to, uh, Cut a diamond in it because the ride was so smooth. And of course he cut his balls off.

Well, well it gets better because Saturday Night Wive did a parody on it with a doing a mall in the backseat of a Granada as it’s been driven. And the Rabbi, you hear why it’s a boy.

Mountain Man Dan: I mean, if we’re gonna talk about ugly Fords, that’s a huge list. But the For Granada, my uncle had one. Two [00:22:00] or four door.

Yeah, the two door. Okay. So it wasn’t quite as bad. It was the inline six. Oh. The hood was like probably eight foot long. Yep. Shorter than a viper. So, and that car was ugly as hell. And for the smooth ride, it’s because you seriously felt like you were going up and down constantly on a water bed. Because there was no stiffness of the suspension.

You were just like floating around water

Crew Chief Brad: filled shocks.

Mountain Man Dan: That’s the road hugging weight that the Ford shocks. And uh, I’ll give it credit though cuz the one my uncle had, Lasted to the point where the frame was about to fall in half. He had, and he finally, actually, it was probably about 12 years ago, finally jumped it.

Wow. He, he drove it. It was so bad, like, and it, and it’s brand new condition. It was hideous, but it was even worse because as the rust spots on it got bad. He would sand her down and he’d prime. Whether there’d be squares or different color of primer in different spots.

Mike Crutchfield: You’re supposed to, you’re [00:23:00] supposed to leave that patina.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, I was gonna say it’s least mod now.

Mike Crutchfield: Patina

Crew Chief Brad: Granada.

Crew Chief Eric: We’re gonna go straight to the jugular of the Ford catalog. There is, I only have to say one word, Thunderbird.

Crew Chief Brad: You’re

Crew Chief Eric: gonna tell us, we’re too young to know this, but all I have to say is Ed Soul.

Matthew Yip: Well, yeah, but that wasn’t really a Ford. That was that Well, that was, that was just, that was stupidity in, in Incarnate

Crew Chief Eric: and it is a heinous looking car.

Mike Crutchfield: It looks like someone wanted to, to have something to screw in the garage at night. I.

Crew Chief Eric: That grill man. That grill.

Mountain Man Dan: Woo. All right, so I’m gonna step out of the box a little bit from cars and go to trucks. Oh God. Having to

Crew Chief Brad: Ford F-150.

Crew Chief Eric: Did Mike have Cuz that was a ugly F-150.

Crew Chief Brad: That was an ugly F one 50. That

Mike Crutchfield: was the Taurus F-150.

Mountain Man Dan: Oh my god. So having to drive one on a daily basis. While I was stationed over in England, [00:24:00] the DAF like box truck was a hideous, worthless vehicle. It had a four cylinder diesel, five speed. And I think the top speed I was ever able to get up to was like 38 mile an hour. It’s basically look

Crew Chief Eric: for the nineties.

DAF van. D a f. Yeah. But it’s, so PEO made a van that looks the same. Veco, which is owned by Oh yeah. Fiat.

Matthew Yip: Mm-hmm.

Crew Chief Eric: They all look the same, basically. They’re just, they’re kind of like the, the sprinter of the 1980s. I mean, if you think about it, they’re really nothing fancy.

Mountain Man Dan: Speaking of Veco is their actual box, like a flat nose box trucks.

I had to run one of them when I place, I worked at. Oh, the one where you were like sitting on top of the wheels. Oh, they’re terrible. And that I hated that truck and I’ve ridden

Crew Chief Eric: in one of those. I will never do it again. It is scary. So I used to have

Mountain Man Dan: to make runs from Frederick to Hagerstown hauling auto body supplies and heading up South Mountain.

Crew Chief Brad: That actually doesn’t look that bad to me. If it was lifted with some knobby tires. It actually looks like it’d be pretty good about

Mountain Man Dan: a [00:25:00] DAF fan if you did it right. They were too top heavy cuz you wind up going, turtle and turtle’s not good.

Mike Crutchfield: So you wanna talk some ugly trucks? How about the lm uh, 0 0 2?

Crew Chief Eric: Dude, that thing is pretty gross. And then there was, what? The cheetah, I think was the other version. It is not cool, but on the same token, it is cool because it’s ugly. It’s kind of like, honestly, I see that

Mountain Man Dan: and it makes me think of a Hummer. The Hummer. Well that’s where the Hummer got its inspiration from the Hummers, the vehicle.

Why? The only reason it is

Crew Chief Eric: famous is cause of Arnold. Well, no, not only that. Well the Hummer or this Yeah, the Hummer. Well this is famous cuz it’s a Lamborghini and it has a v12,

Matthew Yip: not just that it has a v12. It has the Kunta V 12 with a five speed.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes.

Matthew Yip: And it’ll do 120 miles an hour. The Hummer is lucky if it’ll move.

Hey, now

Mike Crutchfield: my Nissan pickup, my old Nissan pickup truck did 112. This was known as the Rambo Lambo, right? I mean,

Crew Chief Eric: dude, this thing, I think it might be ugly, [00:26:00] but on the same token, the more you look at it, the cooler it is.

Matthew Yip: Well, it’s, it’s like the M coop. It’s ugly. You don’t like it. Wanna see the taillights. Yeah.

Well,

Crew Chief Brad: I think, I think off rotors are supposed to be ugly. Like I don’t think off rotors are supposed to look pretty. They’re not. They’re not. They’re not designed to be art.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ll put it this way. It’s not any more attractive than any of the old Land rovers. I mean, for that matter. And that’s not the point, what I’m getting at.

Sure. Yeah. I’m gonna throw this question out to the field. Did the LM two two. The uru, which would you take?

Matthew Yip: You don’t mirror what the Uru looks like.

Crew Chief Eric: You, uh, pull it up Brad. It’s the new Lamborghini,

Crew Chief Brad: uh, u v to tap into my Colombian Colombian cocaine drug. Lord roots. I want the LM 0 0 2.

Crew Chief Eric: I’m with you on that.

I bet that comes with bulletproof glass.

Mike Crutchfield: There’s the ugly in the conventional sense, which I think the LM 0 0 2 is ugly in the conventional sense. Yes. US car guys are gonna probably appreciate it more than Joe Schmoe off the street.

Crew Chief Eric: Right.

Mike Crutchfield: And then there’s the, just. [00:27:00] Stop, which is the URIs. Just, just stop.

Just, I kind of

Crew Chief Brad: like the URIs actually. I think it’s cool looking.

Executive Producer Tania: I, I don’t even look at these two and put them in the same category for comparison. I, I’m with you on that, Tanya.

Crew Chief Eric: No, I mean, s your car potentially after a bodily part or function.

Crew Chief Brad: Now the s convertible, that brings me to another classic.

Cross Cabrio.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man. This turn.

Matthew Yip: Is that the Mor? Is that the Morano? Convertible?

Mike Crutchfield: Yeah, Uhhuh. I passed two in a single day once in Maryland. It was the same one. They were close. No, they were different

Crew Chief Brad: colors. It was white and black. Yeah. It’s still the same one. You just saw it twice.

Matthew Yip: I remember when the Murano first came out, it was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen and then they made it.

Made the convertible.

Mike Crutchfield: It still is. They said, hold my beer.

Crew Chief Eric: My dad used to always say you had to be a morano to own one of those. Oh, they were horrible.

Matthew Yip: Well, they, who [00:28:00] was it? Uh, Michael Johnson’s girlfriend had one and it wasn’t, again, it’s like the 9 28. It’s a very nice

Crew Chief Eric: car. As long as you don’t look at it.

I mean, the nine, so again, the 9 28, the early 9 28. They were made famous, obviously because of Scarface and all that, but the later nine 20, God, look at that thing. Uh, the later 9 28, like the S four and the G, uh, the S four s, which were the very first GT

Crew Chief Brad: and the gts. Yeah, the 9 28 GTS was a great car. It was a great looking car.

I should say.

Matthew Yip: I wouldn’t go that far. It

Crew Chief Brad: might’ve been a great car, but it’s

Matthew Yip: another one of those cars that convertible.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, wait, wait, but let me finish my thought on 9 28. Hold on. Because there is one thing that is. Exceptionally important about the 9 28 and its design. And Matt knows this. I know cuz he’s the one that told me and I had to go look it up and fact, fact check it got its inspiration from the pacer because the German guy that designed the 9 28 of the Porsche Mafia thought nine 20 that the pacer was a good looking car.[00:29:00]

Matthew Yip: So figure that out. What it, what it just shows you is that there was crack available. In Germany in the seventies, they were chasing the dragon.

Mike Crutchfield: They, they had money back then. It was cocaine, not crack.

Mountain Man Dan: Cocaine’s a hell of a drug.

Mike Crutchfield: Ugh. So there’s one car that I think is, traditionally, it’s not, it’s not an attractive car.

It’s not necessarily an ugly car either. First car to do something in the us. And Daniel has probably 5 billion of these things on his, on his lot. Pretty stable wagon.

Matthew Yip: It is

Mike Crutchfield: actually, the Ford Taurus was the first car in the US to have aerodynamic headlights because it had replaceable bulbs rather than sealed beams.

But it is an ugly fucking car.

Matthew Yip: Well, the, the original, I mean the original Taurus Ford Bank banked the farm on the original Taurus.

Mike Crutchfield: Yeah, but when they made the oval, the oval Taurus, yeah. It was the first one with arrow headlights in the US cuz they were the first one to get approval to have replaceable bulbs rather than sealed beams.

I’m wondering though, [00:30:00] Mike,

Crew Chief Eric: I gotta, I wanna, I wanna double check that because the Audi 5,000 was not everybody’s cup of tea, but it also was, had one of the lowest coefficients of drag for the longest time. And I’m wondering if that doesn’t beat out the Taurus in terms of aerodynamic headlights and all that kind of stuff.

So I’d, I’d have to dig into that a

Mike Crutchfield: little bit. By aerodynamic headlights, I mean ones that were not a sealed beam headlight off the shelf that you buy an auto parts store. It actually had a molded piece of plastic that was the lens of the headlight itself,

Crew Chief Eric: right? But the five thousands and the coops and all those cars from the eighties were not sealed beam headlights with the wraparound headlights.

You, you could take the bulb out and change them. So I’m thinking that might, it might be the first American car that way. But I don’t know that it’s the first car that has air. It was, it was supposed to be the first car

Mike Crutchfield: available for sale in the US that had approval to not use seal beam. Well, I mean, I mean, thanks to, uh, what’s that

Crew Chief Eric: guy from, uh, the Green Party?

What’s

Matthew Yip: his

Crew Chief Eric: name? Nader, thanks to Ralph [00:31:00] Nader. The 5,000 wasn’t sold for very long in the us. I’m just kidding.

Mike Crutchfield: So, back to the headlight thing real quick. Yeah, yeah. The, the reference I found is that the, That Ford had to actually request that the N H T S A approve aerodynamic headlights. They might not have been the first to release it, but it said that they were the ones to petition the N H T S A to make that change.

Crew Chief Eric: Nice.

Mike Crutchfield: We’ll, we’ll Snopes

Crew Chief Eric: this later. We will. But anyway. No, I get it. I mean, the Taurus, when you look at the Taurus and profile though, you realize it’s just a bloated Ford Sierra. I mean, it’s the same design. The Monday, it’s all the same stuff. So

Executive Producer Tania: why would you chose

Crew Chief Eric: the Taurus versus the Tempo? Oh, the Tempo is just an amazing vehicle.

Executive Producer Tania: I mean, they looked the same.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. Look at that thing. Well, cuz

Mountain Man Dan: the Taurus, you could go with the s h O option, which

Crew Chief Eric: wasn’t even a Ford motor. It was a Yamaha. Yeah. But.

Crew Chief Brad: What is the difference between the Taurus and the Tempo?

Crew Chief Eric: There’s, the tempo is smaller. It’s built on the escort chassis.

Crew Chief Brad: Ah, it’s the Jetta.

The Taurus is the Passat. I get it now. The

Crew Chief Eric: Taurus is built on the, on the [00:32:00] Mano,

Matthew Yip: I think. I think, I think the tempo was its own chassis because one of my buddies, uh, his, his mom had a tempo and then for whatever reason it was a great car to play Cat and mouse in though, cuz we all, we all hated it. So we beat the shit out of it and to get, to get the tempo.

What did she get rid of? Per Audi 5,000.

Crew Chief Eric: And now here’s a winner, Stratus like the seas and the stratus, the early ones, that’s a late, that’s a later stratus.

Executive Producer Tania: These are cars for people who,

Crew Chief Eric: who know nothing about cars. It’s a, it’s a rental car. I mean, you know, those are cars for people who jump bridges in Detroit.

No, that right

Crew Chief Brad: there is how Stratus has come from the factory.

Matthew Yip: It’s a, I mean, it’s a, it’s a rental car. Nobody, nobody buys, nobody actually buys those cars. Yeah.

Mike Crutchfield: I looked at a stratus when I was very, you would, when I was much younger, I was trying to look at an SR or whatever. They were the s r t stratus, and I want you take a [00:33:00] test drive from the Dodge dealership.

He looked at me and said no.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. You know what’s funny? You know how, you know that gold one there that you just, uh, hovered over? The best part about this is my next door neighbor. Her mom lives with her and she’s like 157 years old. That’s what she drives. A gold Dodge Stratus, exactly like the one there in the picture.

Crew Chief Brad: I’m surprised it still runs.

Crew Chief Eric: No, I live next. It’s probably got 30,000 miles on it cuz she never drives it. But

Crew Chief Brad: 30,000 miles and it’s on its seventh transmission. Yeah, that would,

Matthew Yip: that would be a Chrysler Caravan. Thank you. They had the ultra drive transmission, which was their first four speed automatic.

And it had a, apparently a, a phenomenal ability to grenade

Mountain Man Dan: for no reason. Well, I’m gonna go out there. We’re going with that. Buys saw like the stratus and things like that. You gotta bring up the, uh, seabring.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, yeah, yeah. Greatest convertible of all time.

Matthew Yip: Hey, I drove one of those cars [00:34:00] in Erie, Pennsylvania at an autocross and won.

I was beating people with street prepared cars cuz that ca, that chassis is so flexible you can turn it anywhere.

Mike Crutchfield: My college roommate, the only reason his his car survived the tornado that hit College Park was probably because it was the eighties Sebring convertible, cuz the roof wasn’t strong enough to have that car lifted up like the cars on either side of him.

Nice.

Matthew Yip: Alright. Remember the

Crew Chief Eric: model right now, but Brad, search for slur Maserati together.

Matthew Yip: Oh, I know.

Crew Chief Eric: The tc. The tc, thank you. The Chrysler tc. So again, a lot of people might think freaking heinous car. There’s one version of this that’s actually a hard top coop that you could get. No, no,

Matthew Yip: it’s It’s a removable hard top.

Crew Chief Eric: Is it a removable hard top? Okay. So the thing I like about this car is that

Crew Chief Brad: they don’t make it anymore.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, the A, they don’t make it anymore. It’s not a [00:35:00] Chrysler Power plant. Slightly repented by Maserati, but you could get it with a manual transmission. So for me, I’m kind of like, this is the unicorn Chrysler of that time period, especially like the late eighties, early, early nineties.

And I’m kind of like, secretly would be like, I would drive that.

Matthew Yip: It is a

Crew Chief Eric: Chrysler

Matthew Yip: motor. The only difference is it has a different head.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah. That’s right. That’s right. It’s a Maserati valve train or whatever.

Mountain Man Dan: So no matter how ugly it is, if it’s a manual that makes it at least where you could have a little fun drive.

But I mean, look at

Crew Chief Eric: convertible in profile as a convertible. It’s not bad. Like I could, it looks like a Cadillac. I would take that over a

Matthew Yip: little ante. Yes. My question is this, have you ever driven a manual transmission Chrysler of that genre?

Crew Chief Eric: No. And I kind of secretly want to, and that’s why Matt,

Matthew Yip: no, no, you don’t because I, I used to have to drive it fairly regularly because it was.

One of the two cars that I got to drive if I left my car at my friend’s. Yeah. A Chrysler minivan. Five [00:36:00] speed. What Talk about, talk about rare. All right, so looking at that car I, and shifting that car with made, it makes the VW beetle transmission feel, uh, nacio.

Crew Chief Brad: This apparently is Eric’s dream right here.

This is, this is the sign of his perfect life,

Crew Chief Eric: unfortunately, you know, the quarter zip up shirt in dark green. Yeah, that’s, that’s pretty much me right there if you blew that out. But, you know, I, the one thing I like about the Cadillac for the time period, because it’s a nineties car, it’s got that kind of squarish Audi look like I’m okay with the way it looks, especially with a nice set of wheels.

It came in some interesting colors. I think the biggest problem with the, the ante is that, It’s got a North Star, so it’s got a garbage motor in there and that’s what pretty much ruins it from me. You, you say that now

Matthew Yip: and knowing what I know about the North Star is, I agree with you, but when they were new, compare that motor to the 4.9 Cadillac motor.

You will never say that again.

Mountain Man Dan: [00:37:00] Absolutely. I remember when they first came out, we got it as a rental car. I was TDY down in and we were able to rent a Cadillac that had the North Star in it. And the place that we were authorized to rent through was closed we’re like the hell this only went to the one next to it to get a car.

Cause we were getting 35, 40 minutes from the base. So we’re like, all right, what do you have? We’re authorized X number of dollars. And I think it was like for the entire week and a half, two weeks we were there, it was like an extra a hundred dollars to get this North Star Cadillac. I’m like, Dude, let’s chip in 25 bucks each.

Hell yeah, we’re getting the Cadillac. We did it. Get on the highway and a bunch just stomped into, and it had good acceleration for what it was compared to cars at that time.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m not saying, but if you look at that picture of the Benzs versus the Cadillac, obviously I’m gonna take the Benzs over the Cadillac every day.

But only if it’s brown, right? Yeah. It’s gotta come in turd Brown because that’s the only seventies color that matters. So

Matthew Yip: Mercedes hasn’t necessarily made the most beautiful cars either, so

Crew Chief Brad: Well, let’s hear some examples. I don’t hear anybody throwing anything out with the Titan.

Mike Crutchfield: I, so [00:38:00] I will say with the Black Grill it looks better than with the giant chrome thing that mine has.

Matthew Yip: The only Titans I don’t like Mike, sorry, but I hate this, whatever gill thingy is on the front fender, it’s just stupid. And it’s, and it’s functionless.

Mike Crutchfield: Ugh. Yeah. So, and the other, the annoying thing is that, is like, that’s how they announce it. A Cummins or a v8, they’re all actually v eights. Even the Cummins, all the chrome is what annoys me about mine.

And that’s, that’s, I

Matthew Yip: don’t, I don’t mind chrome, but it’s just, it’s functionless. It doesn’t do anything. It’s like the, uh, the exhaust fence on the, the, the. On the front fenders of a TransAm that are nothing but a stick

Mike Crutchfield: ons. Buick did that recently with one of their models to throw back to the old Buicks that actually had functional ones.

They made a newer Buick model that had non-functional ones on the side of the fenders.

Matthew Yip: Well, but Buick Buick has a long history of that. I mean, the port holes on Buicks were around in the fifties. Yeah, they’re stuck on back for no reason.

Mountain Man Dan: They didn’t do anything then either. Brad’s too busy looking up some car porn right now.

Executive Producer Tania: [00:39:00] Debbie Lumina. Yeah. The van. Hey, the

Mike Crutchfield: Lumina. The Lumina won a lot of races.

Executive Producer Tania: The van had

Mike Crutchfield: nothing new with the, oh, the Lumina van. They had a Warner Brothers edition of the Lumina van that came with a little badge on the back that had Bugs Bunny on it. And that was the one that came with the TVs inside for the kids to watch.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, that is, that is the Dustbuster, the van was the replacement for the cylinder. Illumina. Yeah.

Matthew Yip: That. That’s the original dustbuster.

Mountain Man Dan: That’s the original space shuttle like we deal in now. I know, right?

Mike Crutchfield: They uh, when that came out, they’ve raced that in lemons.

Mountain Man Dan: Okay. So look up the Suzuki X 90.

Matthew Yip: Hey, now I want one of those.

They’re hot.

Mountain Man Dan: No it’s not.

Matthew Yip: Oh, that’s awesome. With the plow. The X, the X 90, the

Mountain Man Dan: dry, the X

Matthew Yip: 90 is the only thing I want, aside from a geo metro

Mountain Man Dan: convertible.

Crew Chief Brad: What else we got?

Mountain Man Dan: Oh, I got all sorts of fun stuff. Look up at Suzuki X 90. You’re just asking for. It’s like that’s one of the few, that’s one of the few ugly cars you can still find every now and then too.

Right. But here’s the thing, the Tracker, I think looks better than that. [00:40:00] I mean, look, that’s just Tractor’s a different car. It does look like it’s made by Tom Guy. I mean,

Executive Producer Tania: it’s,

Crew Chief Brad: it looks like it’s made by Hot Wheels.

Executive Producer Tania: I, it looks like it’s made by Fisher Price.

Crew Chief Brad: Yes.

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah, yeah. Fisher Price. That’s, I agree completely on that.

That is terrible. See, and then here’s the thing. Why they tried to do this with the X 90 and I think a lot of it they went the rounded lines and things like that to try to appeal more women to drive it because the Samurai women didn’t like the way it looked so Well,

Mike Crutchfield: didn’t they Also, cuz I remember it was a big thing when I was in high school that Suzuki was getting in trouble for the rollover risk of the Samurai.

Crew Chief Eric: It was the rollover for the Samura, rayan for the trooper. They were very, very top heavy. The amigos, the

Matthew Yip: samurai,

Crew Chief Eric: the

Matthew Yip: samurai had a shorter wheel base and therefore it, it was more prone to rollover than the trooper. I mean, if you, if you, uh, that I know a guy who rolled three of ’em took well, but it, the problem is the exploder, even, even without the tire issues, was more top, was [00:41:00] tippy or was just as tippy as the other two.

Mike Crutchfield: Well in the Explorer, they, they had problems through that production room where one time they upgraded the model to the next generation and forgot to widen the track of where they attached to the, the wheels on the next generation. So the wheels were too close in on one of the generations for the first, the early start of the production run, the explorer had all sorts of issues through its production.

Matthew Yip: Well they were, they were horrible. They were horrible to drive cause it was a ranger pickup truck. It was extended and bloated with all kinds of shit. So it was super heavy. At one point they, I think they gave that model a v8.

Mike Crutchfield: We had one of those with a v8, the Eddie Bauer that, that one a green one. Eddie Bauer edition.

We had one of those. I actually love driving it cuz it was just a nice, nice thing. And when my other choice was the conversion band, that was a nice, uh, change.

Matthew Yip: I actually like conversion vans, but that’s if I were to travel cross country. Cause they’re, I mean they’re, they’re, they’re horrible for anything else.

Conversion vans are great. You know, you, you and 10 of your friends

Mike Crutchfield: and they get [00:42:00] airborne.

Mountain Man Dan: So, Mike, when you speak of the Explorer sport, the two-door version of it, my grandfather had one of those.

Mike Crutchfield: We, we had the, we had the four door. Eddie Bauer.

Mountain Man Dan: Yeah. So I will say this, my grandfather always owned international trucks until international stopped making smaller sized trucks.

And they started buying Ford trucks all the way up till it was probably around 97 timeframe when he had that explorer sport and he decided, you know what? I don’t like it. He went, traded in on a uh, Tahoe and that was the first GM he had ever bought in his life. So I have to thank the Explorer Sport for converting my grandfather from a Ford guy to a GM guy.

Mike Crutchfield: Well, okay, so that’s not a fair comparison though, cuz you’re talking about going from a blazer sized vehicle to a 1500. Tahoe size vehicle. So that’s, that’s not apples to apples.

Mountain Man Dan: It, it’s not, but I don’t care. Just, just cause it lured him to the,

Mike Crutchfield: I mean that’s, you know, just cause that’s what [00:43:00] made him sell his soul of the devil.

You know, you can’t, you can’t blame that

Matthew Yip: the Explorer Sport is as much a Ford truck as a, as a, uh, Chevy. Love as a Chevy pickup.

Mike Crutchfield: How about the Explorer Sport track? No, no, thank you. You see

Crew Chief Eric: those?

Mike Crutchfield: I

Crew Chief Eric: haven’t seen one of those in a while, but yes, they’ll be bad. Gran Bronco too. Sable wagon, dude. You’re winning them all.

Good Lord.

Mike Crutchfield: Uh, so I actually, so the, the F-150 I had is also the F-150 that was sold as the lightning.

Crew Chief Brad: Well, there was a lightning before yours.

Mike Crutchfield: Well, the, the 93 was the one that everyone bought. That everyone wanted to be a poser, tuner or whatever. And uh, I absolutely hate the looks of that truck, but I love the idea of that truck.

Mountain Man Dan: I’ll give the Ford Lightning credit for the fact that they were taking that step up, putting a performance engine into a truck, because prior to that, Ford hadn’t really done a whole lot of that, and GMs always had like their SSS and things like that. Don’t,

Mike Crutchfield: well, not, not, don’t even [00:44:00] talk about what an SS badge Chevy will stick anything on.

They had an SS Malibu wagon. No, the Malibu, max Baby, Malibu Max. I mean, they have an

Crew Chief Brad: SSH R. You can’t trust Chevy for shit.

Mike Crutchfield: And it’s the fastest thing on track. Well, in the early years, you know Chevrolet,

Matthew Yip: uh, yeah, gm, GM SS actually meant something. Oh yeah. And then, you know, towards the nineties it started with the Lua.

They, they had, they had the Chevy Cel, the Chevy Lumina, or the Chevy celebrity. And how do you sell a Chevy celebrity? Cuz it sucks. You call it a Euro sport. Why? Because it’s a Euro and therefore it must be worth buying.

Mike Crutchfield: I, I will say that Chevy was fine when they stuck Z whatever on everything under the goddamn sign, but kept SS for actual performance cars.

But once they stuck SS on the Malibu Max and a couple other stupid models, it’s like, the fuck are you doing? Just stop.

Mountain Man Dan: It’s all about branding for people to buy it. Well, that’s what they, and that’s what they did. I mean, [00:45:00] it’s

Executive Producer Tania: just like the Mustang Mach E, which now everybody just calls the Mach E and they’ve dropped the Mustang, but still apparently a Mustang.

Cause people are, except

Crew Chief Brad: in Ford. In Ford advertising, they said, we made the Mustang, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Electric something. Something something. So what else we got?

Mike Crutchfield: Gy. Woogie.

Crew Chief Brad: Woogie.

Mike Crutchfield: Yeah. Sorry. I’ve had a lot of scotch. Um,

Matthew Yip: I’m trying to remember what year it was that Nissan had a Maxima and it had this giant buck tooth grill, like an Audi, but it had a center bar that was Chrome and it looked like a big giant chrome buck tooth.

Mike Crutchfield: Trying to remember, that would be early, early two thousands I think.

Matthew Yip: I think you’re right. That was the most godawful Well, that was the same car that, uh, Nissan and their infinite wisdom did not install a sunroof. They installed. Yeah, they they had those, the long clear window. Yeah. What the fuck were you think?

Well, their minivan was better. It had little, uh, what do they call ’em? Portals.

Mike Crutchfield: Nissan gave you

Matthew Yip: a skylight over [00:46:00] each seat.

Mike Crutchfield: So that was, that was actually, I. The late two thousands, early 2010 model Maxima, cuz the nineties Maxima was actually good looking. The the one after that was, eh and then the one you’re describing Yeah.

Went to hell.

Matthew Yip: And the best, the best thing I’m learning about maximas, the front core support. What’s the first thing you do when you buy a 10 year old Maxima? Replace the core support cuz it’s rotten. I was gonna say drive it into a wall, but no, they’re, they’re actually not, that, not sell it.

Crew Chief Brad: You sell it, you buy it to sell it.

Yeah. Let’s see, what else do I got? Unless somebody else wants to jump in. Oh. S uh, is zuzu via cross. I like the CROs. I wanted one so bad when it came out.

Mike Crutchfield: I mean, that just shows there’s no accounting for taste.

Crew Chief Brad: The the Iron, the Iron Man via cross I thought was awesome. That V6 with 200 some odd horsepower.

The sea Cross was

Matthew Yip: weird. I was wondering. I

Crew Chief Brad: wanted to buy one and go right to the Dekar rally.

Matthew Yip: I don’t [00:47:00] know that it was ugly. It was just weird. But then, I mean, look, the all time ugly, but kick’s ass car is still the bmw, the original BMW M Coupe. The clown. The clown shoe. The

Mountain Man Dan: clown shoe. So a car that a lot of people love that I thought was ugly, the first generation super, I thought it was an ugly ass car.

In, in no way, shape, or form is appealing to me. Looks wise. The

Matthew Yip: original super was just

Mountain Man Dan: a, it was just a, it was just a, a celica. Yeah. I mean, if you got one of the, but if you got one of the twin turbo ones

Matthew Yip: that fourth,

Mountain Man Dan: a fourth gen a way later. No, no. The first guy know had a, a turbo, like

Matthew Yip: 70, like 78. Yeah. It was, they weren’t turbo.

They were six cylinders. I was gonna say. Yeah. The one he had had a turbo on it and it, that was, that was an add-on. Yeah. Oh, you’re think you’re thinking. You’re thinking that big heavy thing with the teeth, with the, with the, uh, were tar. Yeah, with the tar roof. They were huge.

Mike Crutchfield: But

Matthew Yip: that’s, that’s the

Mike Crutchfield: FC or whatever it is.

Matthew Yip: The tar, the targa roof one. That was, that [00:48:00] was its own. That was its own unique car. It wasn’t, that wasn’t a silicon. Yeah, it was ugly, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t anything special either. Cause it was heavy past and furious.

Crew Chief Eric: Supra, which was the third gen Supra?

Mountain Man Dan: That was the round one. Like Uh, no,

Crew Chief Eric: that was the fourth gen.

That’s the fourth gen.

Matthew Yip: That’s the last supra until the new one.

Mountain Man Dan: I’m trying

Matthew Yip: to, I think the third gen’s, the one that he’s talking about, which is the one right. It had, it had a target top and it was a big, heavy thing. But

Crew Chief Eric: the first two supras were like old school celicas, like the very, very early supras.

Like a, a, a a lift back or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It was called a

Crew Chief Brad: Celica Supra,

Matthew Yip: correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And all. And all it was was a Celica with a six cylinder. Right. Which, which was pretty cool cause I, to be wholly honest with you, I kinda liked the original, the second gen was more, uh, it was still rub wheel dry, but it was that really, really, uh, rectangular look.

Yes. It looked like aerion basically

Crew Chief Eric: is what

Matthew Yip: it looked like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The second gen. Yeah, that second gen was, it was, I mean, it was square. Square could be.

Crew Chief Eric: I didn’t mind that. I didn’t, I didn’t mind the second gens, the [00:49:00] third gens were just bloated versions of the second of the second gens.

Matthew Yip: Well, the pro, the problem with the, with the, with the third gen was that it had the charger roof and it had a turbo motor, but it was its own unique body and it didn’t do anything.

It was just, It’s sort of like a gtr. It’s big and bloated.

Mountain Man Dan: Right. Well, and then so like speaking of Celicas, when they came out in the early two thousands, when went back to that really boxy look. Oh yeah. The really Yeah. Fan of that look. I just think it’s an ugly look. Well, even the

Crew Chief Eric: ones that Ron has it, they look Little birds, right?

It’s like they never made a super version of that car. They were like, no, Selica super there.

Matthew Yip: Well, they stopped making supers after the last 98, 99. Well, the last Supra had no bearing on O, on Selica at all.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, well it did. It did. Because if you look at its lines, especially the fourth gen, it looks like the very last version of the.

Like Carlos Sands era rally cars, if you really look at its lines, they took that car and widened it and lengthened it, but it’s still [00:50:00] basically a, a sica at the end of the day. Yeah, but

Matthew Yip: it’s, yeah, but it was front engine, rear drive, you know, so on and so on and so on. That, you know, and, and the, the sica by that point was front wheel drive.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Except for the all track versions of it, but still, it still retained like the window shape and some of the silhouette of the Celica. So you could say it’s loosely associated with it. But the fourth gen super’s a good day, in my opinion. Much like the rx.

Matthew Yip: Yeah. I mean, and, and they’re, they’re commanding big money.

Yeah.

Mike Crutchfield: So the fourth gen actually had more in common with Alexis than it did a silica.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, like the, what was that one called in the SC 300?

Crew Chief Brad: SC

Mike Crutchfield: four, yeah. Yeah. It used the DR the, the drive train parts from those, as opposed to a seller. It

Crew Chief Eric: had some name, it was like a solar name, like Solar

Mike Crutchfield: Soer,

Crew Chief Eric: Soer there.

It’s Soer. Yeah. Which was the original SC, I think right as well was based on that. The SC 300?

Mike Crutchfield: Yeah. Sc, yeah. 300 and 400.

Crew Chief Eric: All right, so what other, what other ugly cars do we have out there? Mike [00:51:00]

Mike Crutchfield: Subaru Tribeca.

Mountain Man Dan: Oh God,

Executive Producer Tania: yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh,

Mountain Man Dan: the first one with the tombstone? Yes.

Executive Producer Tania: That one was on my list, the 2005.

Mountain Man Dan: So I’m gonna throw it out there cuz it’s not a four wheeled, uh, vehicle

Mike Crutchfield: Reliant Robin

Mountain Man Dan: is I, I do agree with that.

Many

Crew Chief Eric: of the three wheel vehicles are just weird looking camera. Well, Brad will fight you on that because he likes the the Morgan three wheel thing.

Mountain Man Dan: Oh, well, the, the trike, they’re cool. They’re weird, but they’re cool. But I’m not, I don’t see it. The BMW C one, it’s a scooter, has like a windshield and everything comes up over you.

It looks like a big old wall cage where you could hit the brakes hard enough and you would just roll over back to your tires again.

Crew Chief Eric: I mean, it’s like, I mean, have you seen the BMW Z one? The prototype before the z threes where the doors would go down into the rocker. Those,

Mike Crutchfield: that was amazing. I saw one in person.

They’re,

Crew Chief Eric: they’re wicked, but they’re not the most attractive car in the world, that’s for sure.

Mike Crutchfield: No, but I saw with the BMW museum down in, uh, North Carolina mm-hmm. At the factory and per like, those [00:52:00] doors are awesome.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah. They’re pretty sl.

Mike Crutchfield: Did

Crew Chief Eric: you see the episode of Top Gear where Clarkson tried to drive one?

Mike Crutchfield: No.

Mountain Man Dan: Oh yeah. I can’t remember. I wanna say GM had a car back in the, like sixties. It was a prototype where the doors went down into the floorboard under the, well, the

Crew Chief Eric: reasoning apparently, according to Clarkson. I remember watching this episode, the reasoning BMW had for the doors retracting into the rocker panels on Z one was so that because at the time period, women and miniskirts could get in the car without showing off their late

Mike Crutchfield: this’s unless, unless their name was Paris Hilton.

Well, yeah, but that’s, that’s different. She was trying to show off

Matthew Yip: brand new Camry actually doesn’t look half bad. Funny. It’s not nearly as bland as it had been

Mike Crutchfield: except those, like if you look at the performance models of the new Camry, you see those vents on the back bumper that aren’t really vents.

Crew Chief Brad: Oh, look, not, not being bland, it doesn’t mean it’s automatically a good looking car though.[00:53:00]

Just because they made it does not make it good. Look at,

Matthew Yip: look at the new civic. Look at the new Civic. You wanna talk about a bunch of fake vents?

Crew Chief Brad: I’ve got another hot take for an ugly car.

Matthew Yip: Oh, go for it Brad.

Crew Chief Brad: This one’s new. Ooh,

Crew Chief Eric: is that the Senna?

Crew Chief Brad: Yes. It functions or it is it it. Fastest car in the world right now, or whatever, but holy crap, it’s got a face.

Only a mother can love. Yeah, computer and the back and an interior and everything. Only a mother could love, but the car is hideous. I think

Crew Chief Eric: the Senna

Crew Chief Brad: is,

Crew Chief Eric: it’s weird. I mean, they took like a what, a P seven 20 and just really let the, the boffins do whatever they wanted to do on the computer. I mean, it’s, it’s.

It looks like something outta Forza. It’s weird.

Crew Chief Brad: That’s what happens when engineers design a car completely.

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out on www.gt motorsports.org. You can also find us [00:54:00] on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows. You can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief gt motorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey, listeners, crew, chief Eric here. Do you like what you’ve seen, heard, and read from gtm? Great. So do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it, but please remember, we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization, but we still need help to keep the momentum going so that we can continue to record.

Write, edit, and broadcast all of your favorite content. So be sure to visit www.patreon.com/gt motorsports or visit our website and click in the top right corner on the support and donate to learn how you can help.

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

  • 00:00 Introduction and Panel Setup
  • 00:41 Defining Ugly Cars
  • 01:17 Ugliest Cars Discussion Begins
  • 03:17 PowerPoint Presentation on Ugly Cars
  • 04:57 Debate on Specific Ugly Models
  • 10:41 Ferrari Mondial T and Other Italian Disasters
  • 26:21 Soviet Block Cars and Their Design
  • 28:49 French Cars: The Epitome of Ugly
  • 31:44 Matt’s Departure and Citroen SM Discussion
  • 32:07 Dr. Seuss and the Citroen DS
  • 33:01 French Cars and Arrogance
  • 33:48 Fish-like Cars and the Stutz Bearcat
  • 36:51 The Ugly Truth About the MR2 TTE
  • 41:10 Fiat Multipla and Other Design Disasters
  • 46:21 Volvo Safety Car and Pedestrian Safety
  • 54:39 The Ugliest Car Ever: 1957 Aurora Safety Car
  • 59:36 Final Thoughts and Outro

Learn More

Play along – Vote on our UNCOOL Wall! 

Thanks to our panel of Petrol-heads!

Guest Co-Host: Daniel Stauffer

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.
Listen on Apple
Listen on YouTube
Listen on Spotify

Guest Co-Host: Mike Crutchfield

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.
Listen on Apple
Listen on YouTube
Listen on Spotify

Guest Co-Host: Matthew Yip

In case you missed it... be sure to check out the Break/Fix episode with our co-host.
Listen on Apple
Listen on YouTube
Listen on Spotify

Don’t agree, let’s agree to disagree? Come share your opinions and continue the conversation on the Break/Fix Facebook Group!


This content has been brought to you in-part by sponsorship through...

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Gran T
Gran Thttps://www.gtmotorsports.org
Years of racing, wrenching and Motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge, stories and information.
Previous article
Next article

Related Articles

IN THIS ISSUE

Don't Miss Out


Latest Stories

STAY IN THE LOOP

Connect with Us!