We asked our Facebook friends to give us their picks for ugliest car of the past decade.
As Tanya M. says, "clearly, beauty is in the eye of the beholder."
That's true Tanya... except when it comes to the Pontiac Aztek (sorry Elizabeth C.!).
If our Facebook friends were stranded on a desert island with twelve strangers, and they were the last ones standing, clearly they would not appreciate being given an Aztek as a tribute to their survival skills.
Of the 65 comments we received, the Aztek got 37 votes for ugliest car of the decade. Jan W. wrote:
My husband claimed the Aztek should have come with a tarp to cover it up when parked in the driveway. Uuuuuuuuugly!
And apparently the world agrees.
Dan Neil, a Pulitzer prize winning automotive critic, said it was one of the "worst cars of all time" in a 2007 Time magazine article. He wrote:
I was in the audience at the Detroit auto show the day GM unveiled the Pontiac Aztek and I will never forget the gasp that audience made. Holy hell! This car could not have been more instantly hated if it had a Swastika tattoo on its forehead.
The London Daily Telegraph said it was the ugliest car of all time out of 100. In that poll, it even beat out the Fiat Multipla, the scary looking car we posted on Facebook - a car that one of my Michigan Radio colleagues says "should be beaten with a stick" - and another colleague (inventing a new verb) said should be "Thelma & Louised."
Our Facebook users also panned these cars... in order of 'fugliness':
- The PT Cruiser - even those who own a PT Cruiser admitted to its shortcoming. Kate W. wrote in defense of her PT Cruiser, "It is an excellent comparatively fuel efficient vehicle for me to haul produce to farmers' markets. But, yeah, kinda ugly too."
- All Scions
- The Honda Element
- The Nissan Cube
- Any Hummer
- The Chevy HHR
Other honorable mentions included:
The Chevy Avalanche which one poster referred to as the ""Crashalanche." Laura B. said the truck was:
"An El Camino on tainted steroids that combines a totally nonfunctional truck bed with the visual appeal of cheap plastic all over the body."
The Lincoln MKT which Dave H. said "is a sad-faced, slab-sided, station-wagony SUV with so much junk-in-the-trunk, that it makes me angry just thinking about it."
The Volkswagen Toureg - Curt W. bent the rules a bit saying:
"How's this for ugly: The Volkswagen Touareg ranks as the worst polluter on the road. It earns the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's lowest possible air pollution score: 1. Most cars score about a 6 on this 1-10 scale (1=most polluting, 10=least polluting)."
O.k. - that's it for your thoughts. Next up... what the auto critics thought (poor Aztek).
