Top 10 Ugliest Car Models in NASCAR History

[Music] nascar has held thousands of races on hundreds of different tracks across his top three divisions drawing in millions over the decades but if you ask any one of those millions who watch those races they'll tell you that the cars and the guys and girls who drove them are what drew them to the event more so than the venue and while personalities have always been nascar's biggest attraction a slick-looking automobile can be an instant crowd-pleaser too but in everyone's haste to put a hit car out on the track there are inevitably some misses some of which live on an infamy maybe car manufacturers wanted to bend the rules looks be damned or maybe it was just an embarrassingly cheesy fad whatever the case might have been here are my picks for the top 10 ugliest cars to ever be fielded in regular nascar competition but be warned this list is just my opinion beauty is subjective so don't get too mad down in the comments with that being said let's get into it number 10 the 1970 dodge daytona and plymouth superbird alright hold on let me explain myself first be honest with me when you first saw these cars you did not like them you merely got used to seeing them my opinion is shared with larry rathgeb who was in charge of chrysler corp's nascar program by 1968 chrysler was getting stomped by ford richard petty was still winning but that was about it chrysler had a missile division yes a missile division they made ballistic missiles for the army but with missile development being sent over to the air force chrysler corp was shutting their missile program down so they offered anyone laid off a position with the automotive department larry rathgib asked a few arrow guys with the missile program to fix their 68 dodges and every single person he talked to made the same fixes clean up the lines add a nose cap and a big rear wing taller than even the roof so that it only catches clean air larry said it was the ugliest thing he had ever seen but his engineers assured him that the car would win and win big so he begrudgingly green led the car now at the time nascar had a rule that in order to run a car in the top division you had to produce and sell at least 500 cars dodge sold the bare minimum number necessary in plymouth followed suit dodge fielded the daytona and plymouth the super bird you can tell them apart because the plymouth has its wing mounted further forward on the deck lid in 1969 the car won in its very first showing in talladega under dubious circumstances after a driver boycott and a possible scoring error but in 1970 it went full time won the daytona 500 with pete hamilton and pretty much all the events at the big tracks and bobby isaac who ran a dodge daytona nabbed the cup that year after that though nascar effectively banned the daytona and superbird and exotic wing cars never ran in nascar again people then and now were very split on the car and its obvious rule manipulations put it just barely on this list number nine the 1998 and 99 ford taurus going into history is the first model ever fielded in nascar's modern era to be of a four-door construction only the taurus was a strange-looking beast to say the least its street fairing counterpart was ugly as sin and its nascar equivalent carried over some of its design features it had a round back window which made rear-view mirror visibility quite limited and the front headlights and rounded grille made it look like a beached four-eyed fish gasping for air mark martin didn't like the look of the car at all but it didn't stop him from winning eight races in its first year as ugly as it might have been the thing did cut through the air even better than its older thunderbird siblings from 1996 and 97. jeff burton mark martin and dale jarrett stomp the field with it in its two years of competition and in 1999 jarrett won the championship stupid looking breaking the decades-long tradition of running two doors and being an overall eyesore be damned the thing got results number eight the 1972 amc matador in 1972 none other than roger penske set out to bring the american motor company into nascar tapping indycar driver mark donahue and rising nascar star bobby allison to be his drivers the car they fielded was the amc matador which would go on to be affectionately nicknamed the flying brick remember this is 1972 two years after the ford torino talladega and dodge daytona changed the game of aerodynamics and amc was putting out a car that looked like something from 10 years ago which was to be expected from amc honestly they had some very strange but eye-catching designs from back in the day whether it was the pacer which looked like a goldfish bowl or the gremlin which looked like it came stocked with an eight-track player and seats that already smelled like cigarettes straight from the factory amc turned heads but for all the wrong reasons and the matador was actually right in line with what you'd expect from them during the 1970s it's lumpy design would be smoothed out over the years and although it didn't win in 1972 it won five races from 1973 to 1975 after penske got the engineers from amc to make the car actually drivable the matador was extremely unpopular with drivers but among fans it did have a cult following much like amc's have today so here it sits at eighth on this list number seven the 1986 oldsmobile delta 88 and buick lesabre i'm kind of cheating here by putting two distinctly different cars in one position but it's my video and i'll do what i want in 1981 buick and olds fielded the regal and the cutlass respectively in response to new rule changes handed down by nascar they did quite well in those early years and buick especially winning the championship three years in a row but by 1985 their day in the sun was over and ford chevy and pontiac were clearly ahead with their forward-thinking designs in the ongoing 80s era wars so buick and oldsmobile changed models and introduced the newly revamped lesabre and delta 88 and they were ugly as hell they look like a ramshackle street stock put together by somebody under the influence of alcohol for a local short track race not a nascar top tier series ride both look boxy and unwieldy but the oldsmobile had these weird looking mirrored headlight things that look all sorts of cursed i know most things in the 80s look cheesy and awful but come on they could have done better the 81 regal looked great and the 1986 monte carlo ss is an absolute classic so why did we end up with these two abominations unto god in 1986 buick and olds combined for just four wins and in 1987 they clean up the lines and make them look somewhat passable as a respectable nascar stock car and by 1988 both oldsmobile and buick would drop their models and return to the cutlass and regal respectively which looked leagues better thank god number six the 1995 pontiac grand prix yeah the 80s and 90s are going to appear a lot on this list it was just a product of the time so get used to it the pontiac from 1989 through 1994 always look kind of wonky with its faux splitter and bulbous design but the 95 variant takes the cake at a time when every other car manufacturer was trying to make their cars as sleek and aerodynamic as possible here comes pontiac with this shovel-nosed monstrosity it looks like a little kid's interpretation of what a race car should look like if this had hit the track in 1987 i might have given it a pass as that was the period of throwing everything at the wall in a desperate attempt to see what stuck but by 1995 this puzzle should have been solved it won only two races in 1995 with kyle petty and ward burton and only then did pontiac realize it was time for a revamp and they debuted the superb 96 grand prix throughout the rest of the 90s and early 2000s pontiac would be pretty hit and miss but after their 95 screw up nobody could argue that their cars didn't at least look the part of a mean race car number five the 1981 and 82 chevy malibu a favorite of short track street stock racers today the chevy malibu of the early 80s is a blocky minecraft inspired mess i could probably make a more aerodynamic design if i had nothing but legos at my disposal with its wide open flat grill and uninspired anc pillar lines i'm surprised anyone even thought of running this car but in 1982 dave marcus would score his fifth and final cup series win with it at a rain-shortened race at richmond raceway then much like today the malibu found its calling at the short tracks where arrow didn't matter but even still it wasn't going to win any beauty pageants still i can't get over how blocky this car was i mean it's 1970s variants at least looked a part of a race car hell some of them even looked pretty slick so how did we regress so much in just a few years whatever the case chevy revamped the monte carlo into the ss model for 1983 and that was the only model chevy going forward good riddance number four the 1981 and 82 ford thunderbird derogatorily and rightfully nicknamed the boxy bird the 81 and 82 thunderbird was hopelessly inadequate in the aerodynamics department it looked pretty similar to the chevy malibu of the same model year but at least the malibu was a pretty minimalist and simple construction the t-bird on the other hand had this weird design with the b and c pillars so that the back seat windows looked like a slit window from a prison or something on the street the bird looked like the type of grocery getter your grandpa would drive to church and on the track it drove like he was still behind the wheel which is to say slow as hell in 61 races in 1981 and 82 the boxy bird only nabbed nine wins its most famous win actually came in 1983 when a young bill elliott scored his very first win at riverside driving an old boxy bird he hadn't gotten rid of yet that year ford had introduced the more aerodynamic model and won back fans and drivers alike just narrowly avoiding an entire decade of disappointment i know the 1981 rules package changes caught a lot of manufacturers off guard but ford took the cake in bad early 80s designs hands down number three the 1951 nash ambassador starting off as nascar's first official pace car eventually somebody had the idea to just start driving it around in the race itself and for the life of me i don't know why they decided to do that the ambassador was a big bulky sedan that was way heavier than the two doors of the day maybe you take a look at its sleek rear cabin and think it must have been a breakthrough in aerodynamics but the vast majority of tracks nascar raced on at that time were dirt and only darlington was big enough to even entertain the idea of aerodynamics and just look at those covered wheel wells how are you even supposed to change the tires on this thing despite its litany of issues you might be surprised to learn that this car actually won a race at the old charlotte dirt track no relation to the charlotte motor speedway of today wait okay what out of his skull mad lad went out and did that well none other than our old friend curtis turner the rich playboy from virginia if anybody from back in the day was going to do it it was going to be him as hideous and unwieldy as the beetle looking car was it should come as no surprise that it is tied with jaguar with the fewest number of wins of any manufacturer at one a piece oh and just a fun fact nash would eventually merge with hudson and create amc the american motor company so you can actually in some roundabout way thank this car for the matador earlier on this list number two the 1985 chevy celebrity by the time the 80s rolled around the xfinity series then called the bush series was looking to downsize the v6 motors to more closely resemble cars out on the street the chevy novas being fielded by most of the teams were holdovers from the late 70s so chevy needed a new model for the new engines but their offering might have been one of the cheesiest looking 80s cars to ever be put to the asphalt it looks something like a librarian would drive and the flat back glass might have caused an ungodly amount of turbulence which was a problem found with the old monte carlo a few years back so i don't know why they went with this design choice the celebrity was quickly retired but for a brief moment in time it was the ugliest thing out on the track for the saturday races since this was the first era of major sponsorship deals and overarching manufacturer contracts a lot of cup guys who wanted to run the preliminary races were forced into this thing daryl waltrip as well as dale earnhardt both found themselves piloting celebrities whether they wanted to or not but with so much talent on payroll and money being fronted by gm the celeb won plenty of races but thankfully never made it into nascar cup series competition thank goodness and finally number one the 2007 through 2010 car of tomorrow nowadays the car of tomorrow has looked back on fondly by the sport's younger fans who grew up with it but when this car was first unveiled in 2006 the nascar world was disgusted this lumpy top heavy design was not at all futuristic looking but the real deal breakers were two things first the front splitter scoop was specifically designed to deflect debris that might cover up the front grille but in reality it just made things worse on top of that the splitter would dig into the ground and cause severe damage and send the car into the air the other no-go was the rear wing nascar fans had watched every car in the field sport a rear blade spoiler since the 70s and to change that basic design feature of every car was tantamount to sacrilege not only that but the new wing would cause cars to go airborne in a heartbeat however in its first race in 2007 the weird-looking car put on a good show but the eventual race winner kyle busch would have this to say about it i'm still not a very big fan of these things i can't stand to drive when they suck drivers complained about its handling but nascar had developed the cot over safety concerns with the old gen 4 cars its lumpy looking design was actually packed with safety modifications energy absorbing foam was placed in the doors there were more spacious crushing zones the driver was moved further towards the center of the car and the roof was raised to allow for more clearance for the driver's head looks be damned the co2 was the very first generation of car ever fielded to not have a single fatality to its name in that respect it did its job remarkably well however nascar replaced the wing with the old spoiler by mid-2010 and in 2011 they even changed the splitter however the problems with them turning into makeshift bulldozers anytime they even got close to the grass still persist to this day but you might notice i haven't mentioned any manufacturers yet this car was essentially a spec card that the manufacturers had no inputs on except the engine and the model decals that was it so it even killed off the era of make and model individuality so that means that this list will most likely remain unchanged forever unless something major happens and if that doesn't put the co2 at number one on this list i really don't know what will so there it is the 10 ugliest cars ever fielded in nascar competition agree disagree tell me what you think i'm always willing to be talked out of this type of stuff anyway i'm slap shoes thanks for watching and until next time y'all take it easy you

Channel: S1apSh0es

Views: 185,418

Rating: 4.7485199 out of 5

Keywords: NASCAR, ugly cars, worst cars, amc matador, top 10, need for speed, Nash ambassador, nascar top 10, 10 to go, Dodge Daytona, plymouth superbird, plymouth roadrunner, Car of Tomorrow, CoT, Bristol 2007, Chevy Malibu, Boxy Bird, Thunderbird, Ford, buick lesabre, Buick Le Sabre, Delta 88, oldsmobile, AMC, AMC Gremlin, S1ap, slapshoes, slap shoes, S1apSh0es, top 10 list, motorsports, racing history, history

Id: tCb6HsscYBo

Length: 13min 54sec (834 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 04 2021