The Triumph Dolomite Club - Discussion Forum

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But it looks sort of OK-ish from that angle, the real horror of the thing is in the side view.....
No, my browser's anti-obscenity security won't let me copy the link to that image.

There are worse above!

Sorry but i beg to differ!! Looked it up and it's positively gorgeous compared to the Toyota iQ http://www.toyota.co.uk/cgi-bin/toyota/ ... MSR_IQ_NEW

Not even sure it's a car - only appears to have 2 seats and doors and appears to be some sort of half baked attempt at a bloated Smart car . . . . . . . . . . .

Don't get me started on the damnable heap that is the IQ!
I was thinking of having one as a Motability purchase, about this time last winter as it happens, so went to take one out for a short test drive, unaccompanied.
They're dangerously slow! Trying to join a gap in the busy traffic of the A1058 Coast Road near the dealership, I gave the optimistically named Accelerator pedal a squeeze. The same sort of squeeze in the Automite results in my being able to match the speed of the traffic in lane 1, slip gracefully into said gap and then start planning my move to lane 3, which I'd need to take to get off the Coast Road at Shields.
In that dreadful little pile of sh*te, I ended up having to stay in the slip road and found myself taking a 4 mile detour to get back to the dealership. Then there was the noise, the woeful economy (a shade above 19mpg according to the onboard display), the fact that someone I knew from down that way may have seen me in the car and the seat. Think of the chairs that 1st year infants use in their classrooms and you get an idea of the proportions and the level of comfort.
The Smart Brabus Edition, by comparison, was only disappointingly sluggish, not dangerously so, but it had rubbish brakes. Have to say, the Smart at least looks quite, erm, amusing, but in a good way so probably shouldn't be named in this thread.
Sorry, don't mind me, but please don't ever mention the Toyota ** again!

More ugly cars. Porsche Cheyanne? Skoda Roomster?

Without a doubt..



Absolutely horrible, it'll kill you if you crash it, it looks shite and not even good for the environment. They're also downright dangerous to pedestrians as you can't hear them coming! Nearly all driven by eco-warrior wannabe's with a "holier than thou" attitude.

They have a certain sort of ugly charm that helps excuse their ugliness. Unlike the aforementioned offering from the land of the rising sun, apparently co-developed and built by Pugrot in Frogland!! No wonder it's so bad John!! If i ever get my Sterling down to 19mpg, i start hunting for the problem!! It's currently down to about 24-25mpg thanks to a blowing front pipe but i know what the cause of it's excessive thirst is!! Come to think of it, my 3.6 Jag used to return about 19mpg round town on a cold engine!! And that was hoofing it!!

Skoda roomster looks like a cut and shunt!!



Daewoo Matiz



aixam cycle car



Now going to wash my eyes out with petrol

You reckon the Aixam looks bad? Try driving one! 505cc vertical twin Diesels should only ever be fitted to generators and small boats, not to a single-row CVT that snaps its belt on a regular basis and takes the radiator out with it when this happens. Compared to its general hideousness, the looks are, IMHO, far the least bad thing about it, and the Ligier Ambra, Microcar and any other light quad of the sub-550Kg genre should be crushed but, sadly, their spaceframe construction makes them pretty strong.

If you're an old biker with Grandfather rights and only a B1 category on your licence, buy a Reliant kitten instead, if you have car entitlement, then buy a car!

whilst I agree that the Axiom is hideous, it's only small so there there is at least twice as much of each Rodius to be puke making

My money is on the Rodius too.
I saw one once on the A303 and couldnt believe it. I'd only laughed at pics before.
It makes a roomster look as good a grande punto by comparison.

Lucky Ive only seen the 1....else I might have lost the will to drive.

Jonners

I reckon almost all Nissan cars are heading for fugly street as is the hideous red pick up monstrosity with a Bull transfer on the side.

The Rodius is a classic emperors new clothes car. When it was being conceived, the British designer Ken Greenley was the greatest thing since sliced bread, so he was asked by Ssangyong to oversee the design.

Thing was, Ken had this real thing about dramatically split waistlines, and had always been previously "tamed" by his partner John Heffernan. By then, they had gone their own ways so Ken had a free hand comparatively on the Rodius. It ended up how it ended up, but the management liked it because it was by this great British deisgner. Ahem.

I will say one thing (and only one thing) in Greenleys' defence. A few years later he was asked in an interview about the Rodius, and he said it was designed from the inside out - he started out wanting each journey in it to be an experience. When you ride as a passenger in the rear of the machine (plenty of them cab round my way), you can actually "get" what he means. The seating layout is thoughtfully designed to all face forwards, or to have the middle row facing the back row club stylee. The seats are all at subtly different heights so everyone gets a view out. The cabin is airy, spacious and light. It sort of works. Then you get out of the thing, and just must not look back.

Ugliest car ever? Definitely a contender, no doubt about that. But there have been worse I am sure. Japan in particular, has given us some horrors over the years; as has the USA. The Rodius probably takes the post-2000 prize. One of my personal earlier favourite horror shows is the Mark 3 Toyota Celica 2 door.

This Ssangyong thing is probably not as ugly as you think Martin, certainly when pitched against it's rivals. However, you later cite the USA & Japan as giving us some ugly cars and use the Mk3 Celica 2 door as an example. I had the 3 door version of one of these and while i'm not a lover of hatchbacks (or liftback as Toyota insisted on calling), IMHO it was a credible alternative to the Capri in both looks and performance. It also had a few nice touches that no standard Capri was ever equipped with, although the standard fit "sub-woofer" was very lame!
Interesting to note that you use a USA spec Celica coupe as your evidence - the fugly plastic wheelarch extensions that rivet on (with plastic rivets) not for show on the Celica Supra (before the Supra was a car in it's own right) as they helped cover the then massive 205 section tyres. On the normal Celica though, they aren't really necessary and look like an ill-advised boy racer "goody". Thankfully they weren't fitted too UK spec models, except on the Supra variant.

As for the rest of the looks of the car, while the "X-Wing" styling isn't to everyones taste, i don't think it can be condemned as ugly. Certainly not when you pitch it against the exaggerated bullnose styling of things like the iQ where the nose of the car is bigger than any other separate area of the car giving it a caricature like disproportionate stance. Then again, i see you have a Citroen Growfungus (Berlingo) in your fleet. I've had the misfortune to have nearly been killed on numerous occasions by these vehicles and also had to suffer them as company vans. The early ones with the 1.8 then later 1.9 NASP diesel units were particularly slow, barely able to get much above 80mph. Even with the diesel turned up, the last one i had struggled to reach an indicated 100mph downhill with the wind behind it and a full load on board - no doubt gravity played a part in creeping this slug near to the ton! As for the looks of this horrendous beast, my mates were constantly taking the juice out of it! One of the favourites was which is more aerodynamic - Daves van or a housebrick? The Housebrick obviously!
I could go on for hours ranting about them but i won't - suffice it to say i think you've been a tad unfair to the mk3 Celica!!

Cheers,
Dave

I did not think this thread was about how fit a vehicle was for its purpose, but merely about how it looked!

The Rodius is a perfectly good carrier of people - it is just ugly.

The Celica Mk3 was a perfectly good sports coupe judged against its peers, and in Liftback form was, I agree, a decent looking car. But for me, it all went wrong with the 2 door, which doesn't look good from any angle at all, arch extensions or not. What it was like to drive is irrelevant for the purposes of this discussion.

The Berlingo makes no pretences at being anything other than a box van with windows and a rear seat. As box vans go, it is far from the ugliest (in my view). Again for the purposes of this thread, its driving characteristics are irrelevant, but my latest 110 bhp HDi 16 valve variant had no trouble maintaining high speeds for what it is worth.

In any event, I have now sold the car, so I must update my signature!

This is a classic example of the fact that beauty is in the eye of the beholder - we all like different things. I happen to like the Skoda Roomster for example; and I have utter respect for the designers having achieved such a good looking car given that they were told they had to use the Fabia bulkhead, screen, front wings and front doors. Right-o then...

I think the Fiat Coupe was a very ugly car, yet the press at the time raved about its "trendsetting" design. Similarly, I think most Bangle BMW's have completely lost the quiet elegance of their Paul Bracq predecessors.

You pays your money.....