Posted on 07/24/2010 7:58:22 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Considering how many new cars are rolled out every year, it's no surprise that a few might be just plain homely. There's a chance that certain styles might become fashionable with a dash of retro hip. (Well, maybe not from the 1970s.)
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I gotta disagree with ‘em on the El Camino - just ‘cause it’s got a sedan’s front end and a pickup’s rear doesn’t make it ugly, it makes it useful, particularly back in the day when pickups were all big(gish) trucks, with truck suspensions, truck gearings, and all the rest (the El Camino came courtesy of Australia, where the body-style is known as the “ute” and is still reasonably popular).
My first car was a 63 Chevy Corvair (which wasn't technically a Monza). Worst problems I had with it were fan belts popping off all the time and busted alternator mounts. I must have gone through an alternator a month with that car.
Even still, I loved that thing.
The first years of that postwar Studebaker had a so-called “panoramic” rear window. It was disturbing to look at, difficult to tell the front from the rear at a glance.
Studebaker made up for the ugliness of that one with the succeeding ‘53 Starlight Coupe designed by Raymond Loewy, widely regarded as one of the most beautiful cars of the modern era. The basic body of that ‘53 coupe survived a partnership with Mercedes-Benz and the grafting of an MB-type grille onto it, through tailfins and back again, and through the squared-off “formal coupe” roofline popular in the sixties.
It was a pretty car from start to finish, and was produced right up to the end in 1966 as the Hawk and Hawk GT, when the tooling and dies were shipped off to South America to live on in obscurity.
Great dashboards in those things, very driver oriented and well done. Hand-tooled aluminum, serious functional round gauges.
Yep, they were ugly alright.
Do you remember the pushbutton transmission on the Plymouth Valiant...LOL....never saw it in another car...my brother had one.
My hair dresser drives a car like that. Did I mention he is gay?
Yes Mr. Kimbell already corrected me and I slithered away from the thread in humiliation. lol My step-brother had one of those rinky-dink ugly cars and promptly wrecked it. It was not a sturdy car at all. UGLY and doesn’t matter who made it...ugly is ugly (my justification for my blunder) :)
Miz Dale absconded with a great deal of money, as I recall, with only a few fiberglass rolling prototypes to show for it. It's one of the weirder automotive historical events, right up there with Preston Tucker. Nobody seems to remember it though. Too embarrassing I guess.
Have you been to the Studebaker museum in South Bend? Very cool place.
Why is that thing smiling and what is it?
Absolutely.
I’ve only been to Indiana for business, pretty much in and out, usually flying into Louisville and not Indy. Didn’t get the chance, I’d have loved to go.
I did get to see the big owl water tower in Seymour quite a few times. It’s apparently the high school mascot, get it? Seymour, see more. Owls. Had quite the run of state championships. The only other water tower I’ve seen to compare would be in west Texas. Permian.
Yeah, I don’t get that one. I know a fellow who owns two Enzos. They wouldn’t be my choice for the most beautiful of cars but they are far from being ugly.
Some of those are just outright weird. I would exclude The Thing from the list. It wasn’t supposed to look good.
The ugliest are cars that look the same going backward as forward.
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