Here's Why the Ugly Pontiac Aztek Is Becoming Cool

this is a Pontiac Aztek when the Aztek came out back in 2001 it was considered one of the strangest most bizarre weirdest and ugliest vehicles ever manufactured by General Motors today more than 15 years later I'm starting to think it's kind of cool this particular Aztec is a 2005 model from the car's final model year and today I've borrowed it from a viewer here in Pennsylvania to give you a glimpse into Aztec life first I'm gonna give you a thorough tour of the Aztec and show you all of its quirks and features and then I'm gonna get it out on the road and tell you how it drives and finally I'm gonna give it a dug score but first a little overview of the Aztec the Aztek was sold for five years from 2001 to 2005 at a time when General Motors was desperately trying to convince people that they were cool and hip even though they had spent the last decade making cars from five different brands that looked identical every Aztec had a 185 horsepower 3.4 liter v6 which was considered underpowered even at the time and of course every Aztec had the same shape which was considered to be tremendously ugly by every car magazine every newspaper every human with eyes the ugliest was the 2001 model year the entire bottom half of the car was taken up with grey plastic cladding and they had three spoke wheel options three spoke hubcaps for the base model or for the upscale one three spoke alloys it wasn't pretty Pontiac did away with the cladding and those stupid wheels after the first year but it was too late the damage was done the Aztek was already branded weird and unattractive the Aztecs started at $22,000 back in 2001 and had a huge price cut the next year in order to try and get more people to buy it but it didn't really work fun fact the Aztec had a luxury version it was called the Buick Rendezvous and while it didn't share the same weird styling it did have the same platform the same architecture in the same powertrain anyway onto the Cork's and features I'm gonna start with maybe the strangest quirk of this car and that would be its name that's a Z Tek not a Z Tec a Z Tec Aztec was the ancient civilization the car has a que like killer whale or knifepoint now when I did my Doug car competition and you people recommended cars for me more people spelled Aztec wrong than light when they were recommending it and I know on the comments everybody's gonna spell it with a C and think they're funny but just going forward Aztec is spelled with a k also Camaro CA ma ro not CA m e ro since we're doing car Spelling how the Aztek is all about versatility and so I'm gonna start back here and maybe the most versatile part to open the back it's split you open you this bit first it comes up and then you open the bottom part now check out in the bottom part you put it down and there are two seats back here it's a bench so you can just hang on your Aztec and sit here some of them had a radio with speakers back here so you can even listen to music and they're even cup holders in the tailgate so you can just sit here and hang out and tailgate in your Aztec you think a bench in the tailgate is cool well check out this this just looks like a normal center console and Center control stack to you doesn't it well you're wrong because right here there's a cooler when it's in place it's just part of the center console but you can pull it out and actually use it to store drinks and take a look inside now on the outside of the cooler it says Aztec on the top and it even has the Pontiac logo printed over here on the side show up with a college football tailgate with an Aztec cooler and you're instantly the coolest person there now when you open it up you will notice that it's actually pretty big and according to owner it does a pretty good job of keeping drinks cool like a cooler shut and if you don't want to use it as a cooler inside it's more versatile than that it has CD storage various CD slots and it even has queen storage General Motors was thinkin when they made this cooler okay so I'm back inside the car I'm done with my cooler I've put it back in the center console and remember that Pontiac logo I mentioned will check this out that logo locks the cooler into place in the center console admit it that's sort of interesting but while a rear bench in the tailgate is cool and a cooler in the middle is cool nothing says versatile like a tent yes that's right the Aztec came with an optional tent and yes this one has it here it is all set up including the awning now I've spared you of having to watch this get put together but needless to say it only took us 10-15 minutes to do it there's just a bunch of clips on that side on the roof rack and the wheel well and it just kind of sticks right in like you'd expect a tent to in fact it seems like a very reasonable legitimate tent except that it's hanging out the back of a Pontiac Aztek in the parking lot of a middle school come take a tour of my tent will you I'll start back here with yes the awning which is stuck in the ground with steaks just like you do if you're going camping right now I'm sitting on one of the rear seats which I took out so I can just hang out in my awning in the shade and the bask in the glow of my Aztec now when you get up to the tent itself you'll notice a couple things first off the giant AE logo on the side and the Aztec logo under the awning in case there's any quest of what car you're driving that has a tent installed in the back of it when you want to climb inside you simply unzip this whole thing and you get back here to find the piece de resistance that would be the Aztec air mattress with Aztec logo on it you can climb back here and sleep to your heart's content inside your Aztec now once you're inside your Aztec sleeping on your wonderful Aztec branded air mattress under your Aztec branded tent you have a couple of pool inside the tent options for example up here there's a little storage area where you can put your stuff Bears won't find it up there and there's also a couple of windows in here in case you want to let in the night sky so you can gaze at the stars from the beauty of your Aztec now when you're done with your tent and your mattress you can just stow them inside this thing is giant tray that sits inside the cargo area now with the seat out it's a little bit difficult to access your rear tray but pontiac's thought of that just push here pull it on out and then you have easy access to your tent in your mattress over here and whatever else you want to store over here in this little netted area when you're done with it just push it right back in and of course you can throw regular cargo items on top of it now in order to get the tent in you have to remove this thing and it's kind of cumbersome but check this act there's wheels in the bottom so you can just kind of aim the quirky Aztec versatility it goes well beyond the big stuff like the tent and the mattress and the rear bench and the cooler there's also some interesting little things like for example in the roof up here you have a sunglass holder a lot of cars have that but this one has two sunglass holders you probably don't have that in your Camry okay and then there's my favorite little Aztec versatility quirk inside the glovebox door you will find a built in tissue holder in case you get sneezy while you're driving your Aztec and the storage versatility it doesn't end there if you don't want your cargo just rolling around in the back here maybe if you want to hide it from view check these out there's little pockets in the side of the cargo area where you can stick stuff and then you can just close it right up so don't get wet or damaged and no we'll really even know it's there another cool feature the windshield washers don't come from the hood but rather from the wipers themselves to maximize their effectiveness it's brilliant and it should be in all cars here it is in slow motion so you can get a better look at how these things work but despite all the cool versatile features in the Aztek there are a few items in this car that aren't quite so beneficial and go from weird to downright annoying for example the fuel door just sits there exposed and not lockable if you ever become really angry with an Aztec owner well it's not that hard to exact your revenge the control for the power mirrors just sits on the door and it's completely unlabeled the gauge cluster refuses to tell you what your tire pressures are it just tells you that they're normal unlike every other SUV with a folding rear seat the Aztecs back seats fold directly in half meaning anytime you want to put down the seats and carry a large item the middle seat becomes unavailable and the Aztec becomes a car for three and speaking of that middle seat its seat belt comes out from an asymmetrical and rather odd hump in the ceiling then there is of course the styling the absolutely bizarre double hood design that makes the Aztec looks like it has four front grilles or the large front overhang that makes it look like it has a huge beak or how about the giant split rear glass with a huge visibility destroying bar directly across the middle of your rear window and finally there's the best hidden court Pontiac never actually got rid of the plastic cladding I never knew this I always knew the 2001 Aztec had that grey plastic on the bottom and later Aztecs were all one color painted but as you can see they never actually changed the material they just started painting the plastic and it looks very mismatched when you get up close but let's go back to the Aztecs appearance for a second that is obviously one of its most unique traits these days every crossover looks about the same a function of crash safety regulations and interior packaging and fuel economy Windtunnel testing and aerodynamics and everything has just gotten dull the cool cars are the ones that stand out and that includes the Aztec even though it's a little bit weird looking this car got a huge bump in popularity when it was featured in Breaking Bad and I wouldn't be surprised if someday people start to really appreciate the Aztec just like people are starting to buy those old boxy Volvo's that everybody thought was really ugly when I was a kid it also helps that you can't really go wrong buying an Aztec the average asking price on auto trader right now for an Aztec is just $3,600 plus whatever the tent costs speaking of Autotrader go to autotrader.com slash oversteer for more of my thoughts on the aztec right now time to get it out on the road alright so we're driving the Aztec now I'm flooring it Oh [Music] it accelerates there's a nice little little bend here oh yeah got some body roll it's exactly as I expected it's not that fast and it's it's not a forward scar and that's kind of the reality one of them is this grab handle which is just hilarious can't believe that's a real real item inside of the heads tank it's night it's got a nice floaty ride to it which is bad when you're going on corners but on it's a 45 mile an hour road without you know stoplights whatever and so it actually just feels it feels kind of nice and cushy which is about what I'm looking for this one day someone will be did 2040 so I'm only driving along in a modern futuristic car that drives itself and they'll see it as take a manta at all faster it drives it lanky to expect it to it's the translated car you know there's not it's not really that much surprise to this car in terms of the driving experience but I mean that was part of the thing with this car General Motors had to build it on an existing platform and so even though it's got all this weirdness that I've already gone through inside of it all these weird versatile features and some kind of cool stuff if they vent had to fit it on to with an existing power train platform transmission and so at the end of the day it was it was always going to kind of just drive like a General Motors vehicle everything seems reasonable the visibility is pretty good those those weird angled back windows don't harm things that badly this bar this bar is starting to annoy me more and more as I look back there I can see what's directly behind it which is helpful this bar in the but I notice it is obscuring what's like way back there I saw I can only see maybe a hundred feet behind me and then the rest of the road is kind of kind of when we're going down the hill in the back of the car is pointed towards the sky it really kind of screws things up you can't see anything yeah so the wind noise is coming off the roof ranks other than that the car is reasonably quiet in fact I'm surprised how a little tire and road noise there is it's reasonably quiet especially for a total of 15 year old well this one's only 12 but the Aztek being a 15 year old General Motors car you'd think that costs $23,000 whatever in this car it's just it's such good shape so this one Li has 78,000 miles which is in Aztec world is nothing I was on auto trader this morning looking at them and they all I have a 150 180 thousand miles actually a nice reasonably comfortable ride the seats feel nice and comfortable GM at this time was focused more on like comfort and smoothness and ease of operation than anything else I think the large buttons are hilarity large terrible plastic buttons are hilarious it's so funny how far GM has come this coolest thing about this car the driving experience is relatively normal it feels like a car I think you'd expect coolest thing about this car is that you just drive it an Aztek and so you know you're driving down the road and there's opinions splitting bizarre weird potentially cool kind of enthusiasts econ so that's the Aztek ugly certainly weird you bet but there's a certain appeal to a bright orange highly versatile crossover with unique styling in a world where everything else kind of looks the same plus it includes a tent and now on to the dug score starting with the weekend categories and styling I think this car is aging fine especially among today's crop of look-alike crossovers but I'm trying to be objective here and I know most of you don't think that the Aztek is routinely named one of the ugliest cars ever made and so it gets a 2 out of 10 just shy have a 1 because really at least it's interesting next up is acceleration it does 0 to 60 and 9.4 seconds which gives it a 1 out of 10 handling is bad body roll slow steering exactly what you'd expect it gets a 3 out of 10 for cool factor the Aztek is starting to grow on me check the title of this video but the category takes into account how the general public feels and if you show up in a valet staying in an Aztek they'll hide it in the corner of the parking lot facing the other direction it's still seriously uncool to most people when it gets a 2 out of 10 finally importance they made of Aztecs thousands too many some would say but it's a significant car in the sense that it's emblematic of General Motors odd and questionable decisions from this era I think it earns an easy seven out of ten I know that's a high score but everyone knows this car it still talked about all the time and I've always said this category is basically a measure of whether you'd put it in a museum and I think the ad spec would easily earn a spot in my car Museum still that doesn't do much for it gets a measly fifteen out of fifty in the weekend categories that were score yet next up are the daily categories that measure how much you'd like to drive the car every day starting the features and equipment the Aztec is undoubtedly low on technology but it obviously has some cool stuff that prevents it from getting a truly terrible score so it turns a four out of ten luxury measures comfort and smoothness the Aztec is a little bit more comfortable than average but wind noise from its factory roof-rack snot sit right down to an average score of five out of ten quality measures materials and reliability reliability is strong but materials are pretty mediocre characteristic of cheap General Motors cars from that era it earns a four out of ten practicality is strong the S Tech has 93 cubic feet of cargo space and a freaking tent easily earning it a ten out of ten finally there's value this is a kooky odd car that stands out from the normal SUV pack it's low on tech and performance but high on specialness more than just about any other car for 3500 bucks then again it's also a low grade GM car and most people wouldn't pay a penny for that ugly face so I'll be safe and stick with a 5 out of 10 giving it a total daily score of 28 out of 50 yes the Pontiac Aztek is a better daily driver than the Lexus LFA this shouldn't be surprising anyway add them together and the final Pontiac Aztek Doug score is fairly respectable 43 out of 100 it only beats out the Cadillac ELR largely due to the Aztecs practicality and its affordable pricing mmm Aztec bad

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 3,113,131

Rating: 4.7993622 out of 5

Keywords: pontiac aztek, aztek, pontiac, pontiac aztec, aztec, ugly pontiac, ugly car, ugliest car, doug demuro, demuro

Id: 33AP0JnXSOA

Length: 15min 44sec (944 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 17 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/jd13jd13]

Car looks better with the tent.

[u/Lawrence_s]

Doug you want to be real careful about rocking up to middle schools and setting up an air bed in your car.

[u/Uptons_BJs]

You know what, say what you want about the Aztek, at least the designers really, really tried to do something. Sure, a lot of the features and gimmicky, but they actually attempted to introduce new features in an attempt to win over the outdoors crowd.

Compare that with most average generic-sedans, at least the guys who made this car tried something new and failed, instead of most others who never even bothered trying.

[u/Protater]

I wonder what millionaire Doug borrowed this one from sheesh!

[u/Fabri91]

/u/Doug-DeMuro should you visit Italy again you now must find a Fiat Multipla to review.

[u/[deleted]]

Oh god, it's even burnt orange...

[u/StaniX]

So this car is the american Fiat Multipla then? Absolutely hideous but actually really practical? Also my civic has a similar rear bar, can confirm how obnoxious it is.

[u/aak1992]

LOL, the chief designer for this monstrosity also led design on the C7 Corvette.

I guess we all have our good and bad days at work...

[u/737900ER]

The thing that's always stood out to me about the Aztek is how right and how wrong GM got it. It was one of the first mass-market crossovers (even if it was on the U-Platform) a few years before other manufacturers were able to get their products to market. But it was absolutely let down by the styling decisions. If they had gotten that right, they probably would have made piles of money with the car, and Pontiac would have stuck around too.