Ugly-hit with a stick! French cars in general are ugly(save for the facel vega 2 ).My take on that is they like doing things that shock people.Ever see a Panhard or a Simca?? Whooo!!!! Bad to the bone. US cars.Well,any AMC comes to mind,Studebakers and my favorite import the YUGO !!!!! Had the best rear window defogger.Kept your fingers from freezing while you pushed it off the road.
AMC gets a bad rap on car design. Their last design chief was Dick Teague, designer of the 1955 Packard facelift. His designs, when he was operating without crippling budget constraints (which was almost never), were often excellent. The two designs where they really dropped the ball were the Pacer and the 1974 Matador. The Pacer design was specified by engineering so it wasn't the designer's fault. The Matador was an expensive mistake, there was just no way to cheaply make a mid-size sedan into a Monte Carlo competitor with AMC's budget limitations. Also the 1971 Javelin facelift wasn't very successful either.
Has anyone mentioned the Pontiac Chevette, think it was T-100 or something. Not that the Chevette was a looker, but the Pontiac front end was even worse. I always liked the Javelin and AMX. To me, the Gremlin is cute-ugly; kind of like a VW Bug. The Pacer seems like a Gremlin inflated with air, without the cute factor.
thanks for that round of support for amc, dave! one of the reasons i like some of amc's designs is they are just plain different. but i guess you have to be to play forth band in a battle of the bands where the first three are just trying to out do each other on the same concepts. unfortunately, nobody had the mass appeal of chevrolet or the world wide presence of ford. buick or oldsmobile may have fell to the side of the road as well as amc had they not been part of GM. mopar nearly did, and in some respects never did completely recover from the late 70s/early 80s, imho.
on the topic of that nissan wagon, didn't someone have an avatar of one doing a burnout? if not it was another kinda odd mini-minivan looking import.
Gremlin "X"cars Gremlin by AMC were suppose to be Econo cars.Then they came out in 1971 I think the gremlin "X". I belive it was powered by a 304 cu in. V8.Not a very fast car. Well.................. Randall AMC in New Mexico built Gremlin "X"cars with transplanted 401 motors with some mods.I'll tell you,I saw one green "X" spank the pants off of SS454. Power to weight.Wonder if any survived.? o No:
My friend has one of those Randall Ramblers. I think it is a '72. As far as the Avanti is concerned (how could it be considered ugly?) I know the square bezels were a running change and can not be considered '64-specific. I think they did it in late '63 but could be wrong.
Funny you should ask...I say often that El Camino's are ugly. My husband would not agree. I saw an El Camino on the way to work this morning and it almost ruined the drive in. Leanne
chevy chevette / pontiac acadian (later t100) . don't knock those chevettes / acadians . great little cars ! bodies were great , floorboards rusted like craxy , motors ran forever ! i owned a 76 chevette for 10 years (79-89) . had a 4 sp stick on the floor . cheap to operate . had to do the brakes a couple of times. installed whole new stiffer suspension & added a set of 13x6 vega gt wheels . would it have handle after that . anyhow i drove it , my wife drove it & my son drove after he got his licence . car was licenced until 1984 when it went to that boneyard in the sky .
as i recall, nashs as well as packards, desotos, and a couple others were actually futuristic and ahead of their time, the mainstream chevies and fords were for the common man, but if you could afford one you got one of these beauties ou:
Chevette... A crappy but yet durable puddle jumper! Been there, knees against the dash. In '84 I bought my 1st wife an '80 Chevette. A bright yellow 2 door. :gt: I drove that car so hard! And it took everything I put it through! It cornered like it was on rails after new shocks! The floors rotted out and your feet would get wet when it rained, but the body looked new and the engine was quiet when we traded it in on a new '87 Escort for her. That wasn't a bad little car either, it at least had leg room.:laugh:
