Posted : April 2014
Author : the admin
No hybrid engine, no plug: Just a light little econobox that makes the most of
its fuel.
Emphasis on “little” and “econobox.” The only 2014 model to make Reed's list of
terrible cars this year, the Mirage is about 12 feet long and little more than
5 feet wide. It doesn't even provide the illusion of space. Made in Thailand
and built with a pokey 1.2-liter three-cylinder engine, the Mirage has all the
power of a stiff breeze. It's built in the grand tradition of the Geo Metro,
Hyundai Excel and the other tiny, fuel-efficient hatchbacks of the late '80s
and early '90s, but with all of the stripped-down qualities that soured U.S. drivers on
those cars in the first place. Not only are Mirage drivers investing in an
unfortunate-looking toy, but they're not getting a whole lot more than mileage
out of their investment.
9. 2014 Toyota Prius
Take your pick of the original-recipe sedan, the Prius C compact or the Prius V
wagon: They're all dowdy little utilitarian vehicles that nobody's buying for
their exterior features.
Don't believe us? Ask auto pricing site Edmunds' John Pearley Huffman, who
referred to the Prius as “The polliwog of green piety. Efficiency reduced down
to the point of ennui.” Yeah, it doesn't get much prettier from there.
When discussing the Prius with Forbes in 2012, New York Times automotive writer
Lawrence Ulrich noted that customers buy a Prius – the best-selling hybrid in
the U.S.
– in spite of its looks, not because of them: “It’s as frumpy as any car I’ve
seen, like an over-full colostomy bag.”
Well, Toyota,
it could be worse: The Prius could look like the contents of that colostomy
bag. But as long as it's roughly a third of the base price of a Tesla Model S
and gets about 50 miles to the gallon, the Prius doesn't mind having its name
dragged through the mud ... or worse.
8. 2014 Nissan Juke
Nissan absolutely loves the ugly in this car.
The Juke has been out there for four years and instead of making its freaky
performance crossover with six headlights into a staid bore headed for the
rental lots, Nissan opted to go full-tilt weird with it. The grill now has a
triangular shape, the parking lights on the top of the fenders now have LED
daytime running lights built into them and Nissan has countered the car's
“ugly” label with a term of their own: polarizing.
In their view, people once called Eames chairs, the Guggenheim
Museum in New York and the original iPod “ugly.”
Sometimes, “ugliness” is just design that the middle of the road isn't quite
ready for yet. In the Juke's case, there are a whole lot of people who are into
keeping the Juke weird. Though Nissan sold fewer than 9,000 Jukes in 2010, that
figure rose to 38,000 by the end of last year. You may call it ugly, but Nissan calls it a pretty decent niche.
7. 2014 Lamborghini Veneno
You don't see the words “ugly” and “Lamborghini” occupying adjacent real estate
in a sentence very often, so cherish this moment.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Lamborghini, the Italian automaker decided
to make a supercar with a 6.5-liter V12 engine boosted up to 740 horsepower.
They also decided to make it look like a Decepticon that didn't make it off of Michael Bay's cutting room floor during
post-production for one of his Transformers films. Seriously, it's the Batmobile that Bruce Wayne sent back. There were only three
of these roadsters made, with each of them starting with a base price of $4.5
million. The critics have been less than kind to evil-twin Speed Racer's
aluminum-foil Mach 5, though.
The hottest take comes from Edmunds' Huffman, who declared it “the worst thing
out of Italy
since Fascism.” Somewhere, Fabio breathes a sigh of relief.
6. 2014 Mini Paceman
Since its roles in the Austin Powers series and The Italian Job, the Mini
Cooper has been embraced in the U.S.
as a compact with a whole lot of power and style.
But that was way back when the British had a say in what the Mini looked like
- back when the Mini was actually Mini. But no. Instead, the Mini's German
overlords at BMW stretched the Mini Cooper into the five-door Countryman and
then, for reasons unknown, kept the Countryman’s brutish headlights and grill,
stuck on a set of massive taillights, added a bulky chrome frame and dared to
call it a Mini.
Awful would be a better term. But that seems to be where BMW is taking the Mini
these days. As Vanity Fair automotive lifestyle writer Brett Burke said to
Forbes two years ago about Mini's overall aesthetic, “Cool yarmulke is an
oxymoron and should never be used as a design inspiration.”
5. 2014 BMW X6
The very purpose of the crossover is to get the space and utility of an SUV
onto a sedan's frame. It's meant to take the best of each vehicle type and turn
it into one vehicle that's both more practical and more efficient.
It's why you don't take an SUV and try to cram it into a coupe. BMW didn't get
that memo and made a $62,000 vehicle that isn't as compact as a coupe, isn't
nearly as spacious as a compact SUV and isn't very good at justifying its
existence.
Its year-over-year sales are completely flat and it's the third-least-popular
BMW behind the still-limited i3 electric vehicle and the quickly fading Z4
convertible. That it looks like a crossover giving birth to a coupe doesn't
help its cause.
In Huffman's words, “It looks like a Bavarian cockroach.”
4. 2014 Nissan Versa Sedan
At least Nissan can defend its strange-looking Juke as the artistic product of
free-thinking designers. The Versa looks like it was produced in plants in the
former Yugoslavia and Czech Republic
by Eastern Bloc bosses who thought the Yugo and Skoda had too many amenities.
Nissan could have just named this vehicle “Car” and gotten away with it. There
are a scant 14.9 cubic feet of trunk space that actually comes up short of the
Note hatchback version's cargo room by 10 cubic feet. It has traction control,
ABS brakes, airbags and a whole lot of other safety features that are fairly
standard by now.
Its 109-horsepower engine is tiny, its NissanConnect tech offerings are extra
and its chrome accents, trip computer, outdoor temperature gauge, four speakers
and 60/40 folding rear seats are listed as key amenities. What would draw
someone to this car beyond price? Well, the automatic does get combined mileage
of more than 35 miles per gallon. From a buyer's perspective, that's the only
thing that looks remotely attractive about this faceless sedan.
3. 2014 Lincoln
MKT
Get it? MKT, like market... because it's a grocery-getter wagon?
Don't worry, most U.S.
car buyers didn't get it, either. Though Lincoln
calls this beast its "touring” crossover, the MKT looks as if it's spent
more time touring the depths for krill. With a grille straight out of a
whale-watching excursion, a nose even a prizefighter would cringe at and
bloated frame modeled on the Ford Flex, the MKT is inefficient and unpleasant.
But that's kind of what you'd expect out of a car that's being used as a hearse
in some portions of the U.S.
With the Lincoln Town Car gone, Lincoln
was leaning on this as a car-service replacement. Instead, it gave the MKT a
facelift last year that actually sent sales plummeting to 6,000 from 7,000 a
year earlier.
2. 2014 Honda Pilot
Snub-nosed like last decade's SUVs, boxy as an '80s Volvo and with a big-eyed
face of giant halogen headlights that even a parent couldn't love, the Honda
Pilot is the ugliest reminder of the nation's pre-”cash for clunkers”
proclivities.
It looks as if Honda slapped the rear of an entirely different SUV onto the front
of a sedan it never got around to making and called it a car. In Car and
Driver's words “the rear end simply looks irritated to share a vehicle with the
front.” It's one of the most brutish vehicles on the road in 2014 and drivers
rarely seem able to grasp its clunky corners.
That doesn't mean they don't love it, however. After a 2009 redesign that came
right after a recession sales soared from 84,000 that year to 127,000 last
year. That's still shy of a pre-recession U.S.
record of 152,000 Pilots sold in 2006, but it indicates that U.S. drivers
haven't completely lost their love for big, ugly SUVs.
1. 2014 Infiniti QX80
QX4, QX56, QX80 ... whatever name Infiniti finally lands on for this vehicle,
it shouldn't be pretty.
The former QX4 and QX56 got a new badge for 2014, but it still has the size,
chrome and schnoz of a vehicle that got its first major facelift in 2004. A
giant chrome grill, chrome vents and other chrome accents spread along its
hulking exterior give it the look of a truck that came off the set of a
mid-aughts Birdman video that never aired.
It's a garishness typically reserved for the Cadillac Escalade, Lincoln
Navigator, Lexus LX and other full-sized SUVs that faded out of style after the
recession. But the folks at Infiniti felt confident enough in the QX80 and the
12,000 vehicles its sold since last July that they not only kept it as big and
awkward as ever, but they're giving it a super-luxurious Limited trim in 2015.
It's a big, ungainly throwback that still draws as much attention for its
400-horsepower V8 engine as it does for its hideous frame.
~Blog Admin~
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