2 Million Dollars of Ugly

The Lamborghini Pregunta has many impressive features:

• 530 horsepower V12 engine
• $2.1 million dollar price tag
• 207 mph top speed

Sadly good looks is not on the list.

I searched the article to find an angle that looked good and could not find it.
The car may use the same paint as a Dassault Rafale fighter jet but the jet looks cool at any angle.

A $2.1 million car that's ugly from any angle.

Can One Ugly Feature Ruin a Whole Car?

I think the answer is "YES" and I'll try to make my case using the GMC Terrain

Looking at this picture you may wonder which feature I'm going to single out...

The fenders and the wheel wells. The picture does not do them justice. To really see them in all their ugly glory you have to see them in person in a side view.

Here's a picture that helps illustrate the ugly

 

"Round peg in a square hole" comes to mind

I hear you saying - "This does not look so bad, what's the big deal"

Maybe comparing it to one that is not ugly will help.

 

Here are some good looking fenders with wheel wells made to have wheels in them.
"That's not fair, you are comparing a sports car to a truck" comes the objection.

I would argue that the Terrain is not a truck it is a "crossover" vehicle - because GMC says it is.
What is a crossover? According to Wiki it is
"a vehicle built on a car platform and combining, in highly variable degrees, features of a sport utility vehicle (SUV) with features from a passenger vehicle, especially those of a station wagon or hatchback"
I like to think of a crossover as being a chubby station wagon and an SUV is a fat station wagon.

Anyway - I should compare a crossover to another crossover or SUV.

 

 

Mercedes did a much better job than GMC. Do a search on "crossover" and look at images and you will find many auto makers who did a better job than GMC.

Wheels and fenders are critical to the aesthetics of a car. The Terrain / Denali is ugly. Put the Terrain fenders on the Mercedes and it would be ugly too.

Eye Of The Beholder - A Discussion On Proportions

There are people who like the Lexus SC430
The fact that you are looking at pictures of it here indicate that I do not.

What makes a car pleasing to look at? Many things but in this case the proportions are wrong.

This is the 2001 to 2005 version
About 60,000 of these were sold in the U.S.

This is the Australian version
Just like a dog with a head that's too big for their body or a tail that's twice as long as it should be cars with incorrect proportions look strange.
I suppose that 60,000 people in the U.S. felt that these proportions were endearing - kind of like the character in E.T. was "cute"


The back of the car is too long in proportion to the rest of the car.
The door line is too high making the windows too small.
The front end is too big and the grill is too small

And just like dogs, every possible aberration has been built and purchased/liked by someone.

In fact, I bet you could build a business model around the premise that there is always someone who will like something no matter how ugly it is. Maybe there are already several businesses based on this...

Maybe a class on aesthetics should be taught in high school.