the other side of nowhere

2004 Ugliest Car of the Year

Well, it's that time of year again. "What time is that?" you may ask. The time when I tell you the winner of the ugliest car of the year. Each year car manufacturers spend a lot of money to produce hideous creations of steel, plastic and snobbery. And I get the privelege of letting you, the public, know who's done the most unbelievable job of getting some poor sap to buy their "product."

So without further ado, the ugliest car of the year for 2004 is...

The Infiniti QX56

I had a little bit of a hard time picking a winner this year. Not that there weren't a lot to choose from. But I have a rule that, as the inspiration for the competition, the Pontiac Aztek is ineligible to win again. The Vibe (also by Pontiac) made a strong showing, but it's basically just a mini-Aztek so it loses points for originality. Another strong contender is the Cadillac STS, mostly because I had to watch that "Break on through" commercial roughly eleventy billion times during the Olympics. It looks to me like Cadillac confused their new sports sedan project with their Sea/Land Assault Vehicle project. That thing should be pulling skiers on a lake somewhere, not taking up two lanes with Granny at the wheel.

So anyway, after careful evaluation, I made my final decision based on being confronted with the ugliness that is the QX56. Last night my wife and I were out to eat, celebrating yours truly, and up pulls a QX56. My first thought was "Man, that's ugly" and then seeing how the woman behind the wheel responded to the guy who offered to park her car my second thought was, "No...that's ugly."

Once again, the car industry has put a lot of effort into making a large SUV to protect the mother and her young as she drives her precious ones to their play date. Unfortunately, they all seem to think it's ok just to tear the end off the old, small design and add a box to the back. They must assign their design team to work on the front and interior and then, due to budgetary constraints, have the payroll intern do the back end.

The picture above doesn't really do it justice. This piece of machinery is UGLY. It is overly large (the QX in QX56 stands for quite excessive), but the front looks like it should be on an S-10 pickup. It really does remind me of a regular SUV with a camper thrown over the back.

Of course, unless they let me down, the yuppies and their tennis-playing wives will buy this thing up like it's going out of style (not that far-fetched). And as we saw last year, ugliness is rarely a deterrent in car sales. Those blasted Elements are everywhere.

Well, until next year, keep buying those ugly cars and hopefully the industry will keep piecing these heaps together.

Posted by levy at September 24, 2004 12:00 PM