Not every car can be good-looking. History is littered with some incredibly unusual vehicles, and while not all of them are good, some of the strangest-looking vehicles are some of the best.
You probably want to know what these cars are, so in this list, we will have the 14 dumbest-looking vehicles of all time, not all of which are dumb in performance.
Fiat Multipla
Let’s revisit the Fiat Multipla, which has sparked many conversations. The Multipla was a bold concept, a spacious family minivan designed by Fiat with two rows of three seats, offering ample room for passengers and their belongings.
The design was undoubtedly unusual—a slightly blobby-looking front fascia with a large windshield and a strange-looking rear end. Despite that, however, the Multipla proved itself over and over as one of the most practical cars on the planet, and yet it is only now that we are beginning to appreciate it for what it is.
Pontiac Aztek
For many, the Pontiac Aztek is one of the dumbest-looking vehicles on the planet. When it launched in 2000, Pontiac claimed it had “Xtreme” futuristic styling, but it was too extreme for the paying public. The styling was controversial from the off, and it regularly appeared in a few lists of the “ugliest cars ever” and even topped a few of them. Pulitzer Prize-winning automotive journalist Dan Neil heavily criticized the Aztek.
The frustrating thing was that underneath the design was a compact SUV. The Aztek was reliable, spacious, and quite comfortable, and it had plenty of power thanks to its 3.4-liter V6 engine. Sadly, the styling overshadowed all of the Aztek’s good points.
Suzuki X-90
Suzuki is one of the best automotive manufacturers in the world and wanted to have a stab at the compact SUV segment in the 1990s. It came up with the Suzuki X-90, an unusual-looking SUV with a 1.6-liter 16-valve engine under the hood, with just 96 hp.
In the end, the styling of the X-90 would prove its undoing. It was a strange-looking SUV that looked like a mish-mash of sports cars and SUVs, and the small engine didn’t help matters. However, the biggest problem with the X-90 was its tendency to roll over if put into a sharp cornering situation. This, plus the odd design, saw sales of the X-90 plummet.
Mercedes-Benz R Class
From the start, the Mercedes R Class didn’t look like it belonged in the Mercedes range. Many felt that Mercedes had taken another manufacturer’s design and just put their badge on the front of the car at its launch. Mercedes was run by Juergen Schrempp, who believed the United States wanted a European-style wagon pretending to be a crossover SUV.
At the time of its launch, US Mercedes executives privately told reporters that the R Class was an atrocity. The V6 and V8 power under the hood couldn’t save the R Class’s reputation. Remarkably, the R Class lasted in production for some years, launching for the 2007 model year before production concluded in 2013.
Chevrolet Vega
American automotive legend Chevrolet has rare missteps regarding its car designs. However, the Chevrolet Vega was one of the biggest of them all. The Vega launched with a long hood, a short deck, and an unusually proportioned body. If that wasn’t enough, quality control was poor, and Vegas became well-known for poorly fitting panels and poor reliability.
Chevrolet only tried to improve the Vega’s design by sticking chrome at the front and rear, which looked tacky and much like an afterthought. By May 1972, the Vega had suffered three recalls, and by that point, up to 95 percent of all Vegas manufactured before that month had severe safety flaws.
Hummer H2
After the success of the Hummer H1, AM General and General Motors thought the world could do with a new version of the enormous SUV. Enter the Hummer H2, launched in 2002, which all companies involved hoped would build upon the success of the previous release.
The reality couldn’t be any further from that. While you had a large 6.2-liter V8 under the hood, that engine produced just 393 hp. Plus, that V8 had to power a horrible-looking car that weighed around 6,600 lbs, meaning the H2 was criminally underpowered. If you wanted to take the H2 on a long road trip, forget it, as you would be lucky to coax 10 MPG out of the monster SUV.
Chevrolet SSR
In the mid-2000s, Chevrolet wanted to somewhat shake up the muscle car segment. To do this, the SSR was developed. A small pickup truck with retro design cues harking back to the days of the earliest Chevrolet pickup trucks. Adding a V8 under the hood certainly added extra appeal to the SSR.
However, things quickly backfired. For starters, the unusual design wasn’t that appealing. Then there was the fact that thanks to the SSR’s weight, the 300 hp 5.3-liter Vortec V8 wasn’t enough. The LS2 6.0-liter V8 with 390 hp introduced in 2005 wasn’t enough. The biggest issue, however, was that, as the SSR was a convertible, the folding roof occupied most of the space in the bed, eliminating the SSR’s usefulness as a pickup.
REVA G-Wiz
Of all the cars on this list, the strange and ugly REVA G-Wiz is perhaps the worst offender. Its small, squat exterior needs to be proportioned, and a significant downside is that it can only fit two people inside. Even as a relatively early EV, there are no excuses for how poor the G-Wiz was.
Indian company REVA wanted to create a small, practical, affordable electric car that could also be called a quadricycle. The hope was to further EV development, but thanks to the barrage of jokes the G-Wiz endured, its development likely set back the reputation of EVs for years. The G-Wiz is the perfect embodiment of just because you can, it doesn’t mean you should.
Fuller Dymaxion
Not every poor-looking car made it into production. Many unusual concept cars never did, including the bizarre Fuller Dymaxion. Designer R. Buckminster Fuller wanted to create a flying automobile or an aircraft you could drive to and from your local airfield.
With the wings removed, the Fuller Dymaxion looked more like one of the cabins that hung underneath great airships like the Hindenburg. Despite initial promise and testing of prototypes, the idea of a flying car was too radical for 1930s America. Unsurprisingly, the Dymaxion endured several accidents before Fuller admitted defeat and shelved the design.
Ford Mustang II
After the success of the first-generation Ford Mustang, Blue Oval decided to change things up a bit for its latest product. Ford introduced the new Mustang II in 1973, but the new muscle car didn’t have the same warm reception as the outgoing generation.
Critics largely blamed the new Mustang’s styling. Many believed it reversed several design cues that made the first Mustang so good-looking, and Ford based the latest Mustang on the Pinto platform. The lack of a V8 engine at launch also didn’t help, and Ford finally added the 4.2-liter Windsor V8 to the Mustang II lineup in 1974.
Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet
While the Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet is one of the Japanese manufacturer’s rarest creations, it is also sadly one of its ugliest. In the early 2010s, Nissan decided to create a convertible SUV, which is still a concept that intrigues a vast amount of consumers.
However, the Murano CrossCabriolet is so bad that Top Gear even called it a “Fail of the Century.” The idea made sense thanks to the popularity of both SUVs and convertibles in 2010, hence why Nissan combined the two. But the combination didn’t work, with the car weighing over 4,000 lbs and the inline-four or V6 engine under the hood vastly underpowered for the heavy SUV. It is perhaps little surprise that Nissan produced the convertible Murano for just three years, from 2011 to 2014.
Ford Pinto
Even without factoring in its poor safety record, the Ford Pinto was not a good car. During its creation, Ford tried to get clever by placing the gas tank in the small hatchback. However, despite knowing it had issues, Ford put the Pinto into production, leading to horrible accidents in which Pintos would catch fire if rear-ended.
The Pinto’s design positioned its fuel tank between the solid live rear axle and the rear bumper. While this was standard practice in American subcompact cars at the time, the car’s vulnerability to fire was exasperated by a reduced “crush space” at the rear and a lack of reinforcement. At least a dozen accidents occurred with Pintos catching fire, some of which were fatal.
Mitsuoka Orochi
Japanese manufacturer Mitsuoka is well known for some unusual and ugly cars, the bizarre Orochi being no exception. The company utilized the Honda NSX platform to create the Orochi. However, that is where similarities with the Japanese supercar end.
Not only was the Orochi much uglier than the NSX, but it was also much slower. Under the hood, the Orochi had just a 3.3-liter Toyota 3MZ-FE V6 producing 213 hp. It states that you wouldn’t associate with a supercar, even though Mitsuoka classified it as one. However, even if Mitsuoka had given the Orochi over 1,000 hp, there would be no escaping how ugly their creation was.
Mitsuoka Le-Seyde
It is better than the Orochi, but the Mitsuoka Le-Seyde is another strange-looking car from the Japanese manufacturer. It was thrust back into the limelight after Jeremy Clarkson drove it in The Grand Tour special Eurocrash. The manufacturer claimed they styled the Le-Seyde to look like a Mercedes SSK, yet it looks nothing like the German classic.
Underneath the strange 1920s interior is a Nissan Silvia S13, with the same inline-four 1.8-liter engine under the hood producing 131 hp and 117 lb-ft of torque. There were some strange features on the Le-Seyde, such as the front horns and fake wheel covers on the side. Amazingly, Mitsuoka made a few more versions of the Le-Seyde, including the Dore, a convertible version based on the 1979-1993 Ford Mustang Fox-Body.
