18 UGLIEST Cars of the 1970's

1970 AMC Gremlin the gremlin sold for 2third the cost of most small cars which is appropriate because it looked like 2/3 of a car truth be told the gremlin was a stroke of corporate genius cheap to develop and right for the times and it was a runaway sales success at least by AMC's modest standards but did it have to be so ugly it could have been worse AMC considered a shortened version of the Hornet that design Chief dick Teague said was even uglier though considering that he signed off on the gremlin we're not sure his opinion can be trusted 1970 Buick Riviera the second generation Buick Riviera was a breathtakingly beautiful car at least from 1966 until 1969 with its racy lines and inboard hidden headlights and then this happened it takes a moment to appreciate just how ugly this car is probably because of the mind's defensive mechanism of blocking out extreme trauma but look long enough you poor thing and you will see it the way the grill seems to be sliding down off the front of the car the way the skirted rear fenders seem to be growing over the wheels like runaway mold and the way the whole body is bloated like a drowning victim Riviera sails steadily Rising through the late 60s dropped like a girder in freef Fall when this bastardized blob hit the showroom floor mercifully it was replaced by the controversial but beautiful boat tail Riviera in 1971 1970 Ford Thunderbird the late 60s t- birds were if not exactly pretty cars certainly non-offensive and then 1970 came along and Ford decided to stick a giant beak on the front seriously Ford the emphasis should be on Thunder not bird 1970 Porsche 9914 it is difficult to design a well-proportioned mid-engine car though we'd argue that Chevrolet has finally done it but there's more to the Porsche 914 strangeness than the huge expans of space between the B pillar and the rear wheel there's just something about the 914 its awkwardly swept back Greenhouse its super Square squared off Bodywork its relatively unadorned lines that makes it not only a dorky looking car but one that has accepted its dorkiness we're not saying that dorkiness is unappealing we love the 9114 but we think a Porsche should be styled like a car you dream about not the reality you wake up to 1970 sa Sonet 3 the third generation Sonet was designed with American buyers in mind and someone must have told the swedes that Americans like cars with huge front overhangs that was a joke sabab a joke nevertheless the Sonet showed up with this ridiculously elongated snazzle made worse by the Big 5 mph bumper jammed onto the front end and as if the proportions weren't bad enough the elongated front contrasted sharply with its awkwardly curtailed tail no wonder Americans didn't take sabs seriously until the 900 came along 1972 Subaru GL Coupe Subaru like other Japanese automakers was making steady inroads into the US market with smart efficient and practical small cars that were sensible if not exactly stylish so their designer tried stylish and this is what happened our guess is that the Subaru GL was just a little too long to fit into the shipping crate and the solution was to cut 8 in off the tail stick on a bumper in tail lights and send it on its way 1973 Leland p76 lest you think that British Leland only made Brits miserable the p76 is proof that the world's most notorious crap car conglomerate tried to spread that despair to the farthest corners of the Commonwealth the p76 was a big car produced by Leland Australia and our guess is that the design mandate was to eliminate any lingering desire to reform the Empire the wedge shape allows the trunk to accommodate a 44 gallon drum preferably one full of something incendiary besides being ugly the p76 was built with all the Care and quality for which Leland was known in other words none and after 2 years and just 18,000 sales the p76 was history 1973 Reliant Robin three-wheel cars don't have to be ugly though most of them are the problem with the Reliant Robin is not just that it's ugly but that it's so desperate even its predecessor the ironically named Reliant Regal managed some barely detectable smidgen of visual dignity but the robin looks like exactly the car you would buy when you can't afford to buy something that is exactly a car austere goggle-eyed and seemingly satisfied to wallow shamelessly in its subar status the robin seems to be begging for the smallest scrap of our affection which we feel completely justified in withholding 1974 brickland sv1 Malcolm brickland is the man who foed the Subaru 360 and the Yugo on American buyers and if that isn't proof of malignant intent we don't know what is his one attempt at making a car of his own was the Plastic Fantastic safety vehicle one and it was terrible in so many many many many ways including visually there are the gundo bumpers front and rear the guns slit windows and those Oso 1970s turbine vein wheels that belong on a Chevy van with shagen wagon painted in daylow balloon letters on the side assembly quality was abysmal body panels warped often before they were attached to the chassis the hidden headlights like to stay hidden the cars leaked like they were made of cheesecloth and the 90 lb Gullwing doors would bend or break under the force of their hydraulic a actuators if they opened at all that is a buggy electrical system often trapped owners inside the cars ugly to look at and ugly to own that was the brickland 1974 sabering Vanguard City car if you've ever wondered how electric cars got a reputation as glorified golf carts well here you go the city car brainchild or perhaps brain fart of a company called Sebring Vanguard literally was a glorified golf cart with a 2.5 horsepower motor later upgraded to 6 horses and a wheel chock shaped body that must have cost tens of dollars to design it had a 40m range and could accelerate to 60 mph in 6.2 seconds oh sorry that's how long it took to accelerate to 25 mph which is 3 mph shy of the original version's top speed a company called commuter Vehicles bought the design in the late '70s renamed it the kamuda car and added the ridiculous bumper extensions you see here we're not sure why as it was an inherently unsafe car every time they got in the driver risked dying of embarrassment 1974 Ford Mustang 2 we'll skip the debate about whether the downsize Mustang 2 was a stroke of Genius or a national tragedy that's a conversation for another time sure the Mustang too looked silly but the major visual offense was the luxury themed guia model a victim of Ford's notion that any car could be made better with the addition of Opera Windows it it was one thing to shrink The Stang but attempting to give it a luxury Vibe with a padded vinyl formal roof and color keyed bumpers was nothing less than a crime against humanity and did they think we wouldn't notice that the hub caps were lifted from the Granada come on the Mustang 2 was a strong seller but we think this was in spite of the Mustang Gia rather than because of it 1974 Vanden plaz 1500 the Detroit 3 were rightly criticized throughout the 1970s and ' 80s for badge engineering the process of taking a crappy car and putting a fancy Grill on it thereby magically transforming it into something truly special but British Leland raised this to an art form provided your definition of art involves spreading feces on canvas witness the ven plaz 1500 based on the miserable Austin Allegro it featured a standup chrome grill genuine leather seats deep pile carpet and fold down Walnut tables for the back seats presumably so that the owner had a comfortable place to enjoy lunch while waiting for the tow truck and for this BL charged nearly twice as much as the Allegro presumably the target buyer was someone who looked at a jaguar xj6 and said it's lovely but have you got anything smaller and shittier 1975 AMC Pacer ah the Pacer the first wide small car AMC's concept did make for some cute commercials but it also made for a seriously unattractive acve car the Pacer's huge glass area was designed to give drivers better visibility but instead it made them feel like a goldfish being boiled in its own bowl out back the tail lights looked like they were designed with a cake frosting spatula the Pacer got even uglier in 1978 as shown in our photo AMC fitted a bulging hood and standup grill that provided clearance for the new optional V8 an attempt to give the Pacer the power it needed to move all that heavy glass with no worries about economy since the cast iron six-cylinder engines were already Glutton poorly conceived and poorly executed the Pacer was a car for dorks before dorks were cool 1975 British Leland princess the princess is yet another Abomination from across the Atlantic originally introduced under the Austin Morris and wolley Brands the car eventually became a standalone Mark presumably because none of the existing BL makes wanted anything to do with it the princess was an awkward wedge-shaped car that looked like a hatchback except it wasn't what trunk sorry boot space there was had to be accessed through a tiny lid that made it impractical as well as unattractive and unreliable shortly after the princess was introduced British Leland collapsed and had to be nationalized was anyone surprised 1977 dos 200SX by the late 1970s Datsun later Nissan had earned a good reputation in the United States thanks to handy little economy cars like the B 210 and 510 and Brilliant Sportsters like the 240Z and then this happened the 200 SX was a rear drive sports coupe with a 2 L engine and a grill apparently influenced by an electric shaver surprisingly there were very few complaints about the C pillar blocking rearward visibility most likely because there were very few buyers the 200 SX was too slow to be sporty and too thirsty to be Thrifty what it was best stat was rusting something it did with admirable rapidity and enthusiasm the end result being that few are left to assault our eyes today 1977 Lata cabalero the Chevrolet chevet was a pitiful car slow noisy and thoroughly miserable but at least it wasn't tragically unattractive that's something Mr Donald E Steinbach of Port Falls decided to set right he slapped on 350 lb of Bondo and fiberglass endeavoring to endow his Franken car with styling cues from the first generation Monte Carlo and resold it for nearly double the Chet's price amazingly he made nearly 100 of the things including a handful of El Camino inspired pickup trucks that if you can believe such a thing is possible look even more ridiculous apparently he named the car after his wife grounds for divorce if you ask us though why he coupled that with a mispelling of the Spanish word for gentlemen is anyone's guess Mr steinach apparently lost his shirt on on the whole works so there is some justice in the universe 1977 Volvo 262c hemings reports that when Henry Ford II came to Sweden to see Volvo's Cutting Edge Calmar plant his team brought a failan of Lincoln Continental Mark fifs to drive around and the swedes were so taken that they decided to build their own version a stupid idea that begat a stupid car The Story Goes that Volvo didn't bother with a clay model and that's too bad perhaps it would have stopped This Disaster before it happened to create this rolling horror Volvo sent perfectly good 262 GL cpes to Berton in Italy which chopped 2.6 in from the roof line and rendered the car unusable for anyone over 6 ft tall amazingly some 6,600 were built over a 5-year period apparently there are a lot of short people with bad taste 1978 olds mobile cutless aeroback when the time came to downside its successful midsize cars General Motors decided that the Buick Century and Oldsmobile cutless ought to have a European look and what could be more European than a hatchback the results as you can see were predictably awful technically the arrowback cars weren't hatchbacks as they had a conventional trunk lid but consumers didn't complain because they were too busy not buying them GM was so confident in the design that it didn't bother to offer a traditional sedan version Uber oops sails tanked but didn't die out completely thanks to the conventional wagon and rather attractive Coupe GM rushed a proper sedan into production for 1980 though for reasons that can't quite be explained the two-door arrowback got a stay of execution until 1981 if you're wondering why GM styling was so Bland throughout the 1980s well now you know [Music]

Channel: American Legends

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Keywords: top 10 ugliest cars, top 10, The Ugliest Cars of the 1970s, worst vehicles

Id: 4wsdu9zjjDA

Length: 13min 59sec (839 seconds)

Published: Wed May 29 2024