Even if we don’t worry much about it ourselves, we’re all familiar with the concept of a “good side” from which one prefers to be photographed. Objects can have “good sides” as well, and that certainly includes cars. All automobiles have a best angle, I think, but any well-designed machine will look decent – or at the very least, inoffensive – from any of its other angles.
There are exceptions, of course.
Case in point, our topshot subject: Ferrari’s 1993 concept car, the Conciso. It’s seen here as it appeared in its 2018 Sotheby’s auction appearance, where it fetched €109,250 (about $128, 280 in freedom bucks). Let us consider it in profile:
It’s good, right? A fun little roadster, and a Ferrari no less. You’ll get bugs in your teeth, and best not to roll it over, but YOLO etc. Would drive.
And now, the rear quarter:
OK, the massive, cylindrical front fenders probably would look better in red to match the rest of the car, but it’s certainly an interesting and not-ugly look. Also, two big thumbs up for the classic round brake lights and amber turn signals. Let’s spin it around …
My eyes, right? Yeah, it’s not good. Unique and memorable, sure, but … oof. Jason said the face is giving H.R. Puffnstuff vibes, and I can see it. Also Mayor McCheese, if you ask me. The straight-on front view is even goofier:
Better with my Photoshop pop-ups? You tell me.
Stephen of Walter Gossin fame replied to today’s Ask with the Dodge Charger, opining, “The new Charger looks strange from the rear three-quarter view. The proportions of body and rear wheels seem to favor the body too greatly.”
I see it too, SWG. Not a Conciso-level situation to be sure, but suboptimal.
Your turn:
What Cars Only Look Good From One Or Two Angles?
… or have one really bad angle, I guess. You get it.
Top graphic image: Sotheby’s
Honda Fit GE generation 2, at least the US version. Nice from the front and front three quarter, not bad from the rear (at least on sport models). But when viewed from the side, holy schnoz! Such an unweildy long front overhang!
Gumpert Apollo if it’s on fire upside down in a ditch
Alfa Romeo Brera.
The nose is sexy.
The rear is attractive.
But the profile is on the same level as the Borgia Pope….
Never thought I’d see my last name on this site, but here we are.
Mercedes SLR McLaren. Everything’s really nice in a ’00s blingy way but the F1 nosecone motif is really awkward looking, though the pictures in white seem to hide that bulge fairly well.
I absolutely hate the way that car looks, and the SLK that tried to copy it is just as bad.
You mean you don’t like the penis Mercedes?
My vote is for the CTS/CTS-V Coupe. Looked great from the front, great from the front quarter, but downhill from there. The rear was barely acceptable, but the rear quarter and profile just screamed full diaper.
I’m pretty close with you on this, but sadly my vote goes to the wagon instead. Everyone loved it, but it was because we were so wagon-starved (especially the V). Most of your complaints apply there too, and it just didn’t do a very good job as a wagon. Basically a luxury Malibu Maxx. And that’s generous.
This is as best I can show what my head thinks. Lines indicate the top edge of the rear bumper to the bottom of it, which to me is where the exhaust tips start. Once you hit exhaust tips, we’re in diffuser territory and my brain doesn’t equate the stuff next to them with a filled diaper. Red is coupe, Blue is wagon. You can see that the diaper is much larger on the coupe.
https://i.imgur.com/YnW6pt4.png
And the tiny rear window made it more exaggerated.
Infiniti QX80 is okay from a couple angles, but most of the time it’s pretty awful. Before the Wagoneer came out, I would have called this the hands-down ugliest large SUV on the market. It’s whale-like in so many ways, and the bulbous design language that worked on everything from the FX to the G- and M-series never translated well to those huge slabs.
Yet they’re everywhere in suburbia. And they haven’t grown on me, they’ve only gotten worse. For whatever reason, I have no problem with the nearly-identical Armada.
To me, there’s few things worse than originally inoffensive and now dated design like here.
It has always bugged me more than it should that the BMW Z3 M Coupe viewed from the side angle appears to be bent at the A pillar. It’s like a giant stepped down on the hood right at the base of the windshield and bent the frame just a bit.
I guess this is why it was affectionately known as the clown shoe but it just really bugs me.
Otherwise a very desirable car. If only I could fit inside one.
I was hoping to see the clown show here. See also Porsche 928 & Panamera.
The Cadillac ELR doesn’t hold up in profile, effect is a giant doorstop with Conestoga wagon wheels
I can totally see that, but at the same time I also admire how much it still looks like a concept car. You won’t mistake it for anything else, that’s for sure — even if it is just a Volt under the skin.
My SN95 New Edge Mustang – pleasing from most angles, but the full-on side shot isn’t its friend in the least.
Looks both too long (due to the slab-sidedness that the original SN95 didn’t have) and too soft in profile, as all those new edges only appear in angled shots.
I like the Ioniq 6 from most angles, but something about the rear end looks too much like a cockroach to me.
Great description, but I will admit it’s starting to grow on me for being almost purposefully odd.
If your goal is to actually drive your childhood racecar bed, Ferrari has the car for you!
top 3 examples?
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and of course
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You guys gots to get image support for the comments.
I’d like to see the site start working normally before I go asking for fancy stuff 🙂
For whatever reason, this is one of the only sites I frequent that lags when typing, loses formatting when editing, and the notifications just don’t work unless I switch to mobile. I know most of that is a “me problem” but it’s just weird when it’s one site malfunctioning out of 30+ on Edge or Chrome. I’m stuck with a work PC most of the day and can’t really change that.
Nope, not just a “you” problem.
Autopian lacks a proper CDN so it’s slow and laggy reacting to clicked links. The comment notifications are also broken and have been since their inception. Sometimes they don’t show up at all, or show up but never go away or you have to perform a Mortal Kombat fatality keystroke combo so they actually go away after you read them.
I mean, running a site is not easy and has become even less so recently, so I understand and accept these limitations, but the problems are there. Definitely not just you.
The CDN part is relatively fine, honstly. Looks like they’re using Cloudfront, and the static assets tend to load in a perfectly reasonable amount of time. The bigger issue is that the pages take on the order of 3 seconds to render before they’re sent, and the Javascript is kind of a mess. It’s improved since the start, but it still definitely suffers from being dealership software/hosting that’s been mangled into working as a news site.
Walking past any mirror reveals that I don’t seem to have a lot of good angles. Eventually I may find one of those angles that could work for me.
The angles that used to kind of work for me in my 20s and 30s don’t seem to have aged well now that I’m in my late 60s.
Most of the late 90s/ early 00s Mercedes fall in this regard but especially the w210 era E class. From the front its librarian levels of plain, the rear is even more nondescript, either three quarter shows the mishmash of hard straight lines of the past clashing with that future rounded design.
But that side view, especially around the c pillar is one of the most beautifully Sacco stretches of chiseled and planed metal. For a car thats visually pretty nothing, its profile is the definition of confidence.
An interesting observation I can fully comprehend.
Since there’s going to be a new Dakota, let’s talk about the last generation Dakota (2005-11). The only acceptable angle to look at it is from the back, and that’s not great.
But then there’s the Durango from 2004-06.
Oof.
That thing’s only good side is the underside.
The Tesla Cybertruck looks bad from all angles because it’s all angles.
The best angle for the incEl Camino is turned the other way, looking at something else.
Thanks for taking one for the team!
Ssangyong Rodius has entered the chat
I think most if not all the cuvs suffer from this. They tend to have one good side or angle where you think it’s not terrible looking then you see it from another and go nope it’s terrible looking. There are a few exceptions mainly from Hyundai Kia and Ford maybe some vag stuff possibly a Toyota or Honda but the majority at least one side looks like it was styled by a blind person who’s service dog really needed to piss.
New Jeep Wagoneer. Not good per se, but inoffensive….that is until you see the rear boxiness proudly proclaiming the designers had no bleeping clue how to handle that area (without it looking like a Rivian, I suspect).
I really don’t like the Wagoneer or the Grand Wagoneer. I saw a 2nd gen Grand Cherokee, today and it looked almost elegant. We owned a 1st gen and it wasn’t bad. The 3rd and 4th gen ones looked decent from the front , but I despise the grill on the 5th gen. And the rear ends look awful too.
Jeep Gladiator. Fine from a front view, Bad from every other angle.
I am even a 5 time jeep owner saying this.
Agreed. From a practicality standpoint I like the Gladiator. Had one as a loaner for a week and was like I should give the 4XE back for one of these (first month of ownership and in the shop immediately). The Gladiator is a vehicle where you accept the ugly for the utility.
Yes. I actually think it would look better as a 2 door long box.
Or even just keep the 4-door and shorten the box even more. Toss a cap on there and it’s like a Wrangler Unlimited^2
Give me secure bed-mounted storage for all the doors, too.
I always really wanted to like the Gladiator, but it’s just 90% there on everything and none if it is 100%. But that also mostly applies to Wranglers, IMO.
I wish they’d just drop the price 20% and sell twice as many. I wonder if the margin would support that.
I’m completely smitten with it. I’ve never driven one but i would gladly have one in my inventory if i could.
I think the profile of a Model 3 is great. But then I see it head on or from behind… ew. But this is all personal taste and quite subjective.
I’m gonna say the Gordon Murray T-50. Looks great from the front, but that ass looks like… well… ass.
I think the rear of the T-50 would look miles better if the turbine fan thing were smaller (which I know, that’s a functional part not aesthetic so you can’t just shrink it on a whim). That, and I don’t think the full black is doing it any favors… behold my amateur edit:
https://i.imgur.com/EagNs3R.png
Ric Ocasek, obviously.
He was good enough for Paulina Porizkova for 28 years.
For the younger crowd : https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/BP9z.YasI7cJlY5B3p3byg–/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTU0MDtjZj13ZWJw/https://s.yimg.com/cd/resizer/2.0/original/zMX4wH0BBTeJ5OBjyuurdI9eHYA
I once heard someone mention Paulina as the reason a whole generation of people learned guitar and/or songwriting.
To be fair, there’s a running joke about how bands looked before MTV (and Youtube) vs after. A few of them made it to the other side, like Billy Joel.
Yes, and even moreso, Tawny Kitaen. Daaaaaaaamn.
Another dorky musician who landed a smokin-hot model.
I mean she still looks quite good, considering.
Ferrari F50, it only looks good when you can’t see the nose.
It’s not horrible, but the current Nissan Z is beautiful – except from head on.
Beat me to it. The new Z looks great from the rear 3/4 and side, but the front…woof.
I’ll nominate the Audi A7 as well. From the back and sides? Beautiful.
From the front? Completely generic, looks like every other Audi sedan from the same generation
It’s because they messed up on the grille. It was the first thing the Z community started complaining about.