Ugliest cars of 2010

While the combined push towards better fuel efficiency, increased safety and better ergonomics might threaten that all cars will end up looking identical, there are designers out there who are committed to making their creations individual. And not always with the best results.  The Carsguide team gives their votes for those vehicles that stood out from the pack this year - for all the wrong reasons.

Ged Bulmer
It may not have been new in 2010 but with its second placing at this year's Targa Tasmania it's fair to say that 2010 was the year the world sat up and took notice of the Skelta G-Force.  Sadly, what the world saw, was one of the most hideously mal-proportioned automotive creations since the Pontiac Aztec.

But while this creation of Toowoomba-based entrepreneur and champion rally driver Ray Vandersee scores a dismal `F' for flunk in the aesthetics stakes, it more than makes up for its grotesque looks by delivering shattering A+ performance.

Vandersee's Franken-car has been frightening school children and puppies since 2002 but with each passing year the clubman-inspired road-race weapon has also increasingly been putting the frighteners into over-price and over-weight exotics from Italy, Germany and Japan.
Since taking its initial international tarmac rally podium at Targa NZ, the thoroughbred Skelta has been adding trophy after trophy to its groaning cabinet, culminating with its stellar 2010 Targa Tassie performance, where it was bettered only by a $500k and 412kW Lamborghini Gallardo V10.

With the Skelta G-Force Vandersee has taken the notion of a clubman racer to new heights, combining a lightweight high-strength structure, incorporating exotic materials such as Kevlar and carbon-fibre, with sophisticated aerodynamic aids that deliver enormous down force, and fusing this with a stratospheric high-revving reliability 2-litre Honda four-, sourced from the S2000 sports car. Together it make for a devastatingly effective package.  Now, if he would just hire Mike Simcoe to sort out the looks.

Peter Barnwell
The new Nissan Micra. Its lines have a really disturbing resemblance to a duck-billed platypus.

Neil Dowling
Holden Barina Spark: Alarmed and pained facial expression looks like a deep-water marine species that's suddenly hit air. Narrow body reminds me of the crushed VW Kombi in Barbra Streisand's "What's Up Doc!" and interior looks like a latex-fetish bachelor's (small) bedroom. Other than that, a stylish masterpiece... not.

Craig Duff
The Subaru Forester - this is a box within a box. It's still appreciated and well constructed, but so is cubism.

Paul Gover
The BMW Mini Countryman design inspired by a blowfish. Perhaps even designed by a blowfish too clumsy to get a proper grip on a drawing pencil.

Mark Hinchliffe
Peugeot RCZ: The boomerang roof line - especially in silver - looks a little like a coat hanger. But it's the rear window cleavage that resembles a butt that clinches this as the ugliest car for 2010.

Stuart Innes
Perhaps this is cheating because it's not a new releaase in 2010, but still on sale and so ugly it can't be ignored: the SsanYong Stavic.
Its stablemate, the Actyon, runs close to it with front-end design, but Stavic wins with the rear. How many separate sub-committees contributed to the rear design of the Stavic?

Stuart Martin
The Nissan Murano. It might well be a smooth, comfortable _ even almost-frugal _ city SUV, but that's not the only reason you want to get behind the wheel.  Anyway you can find to avoid having to look at the outside is worth considering. The rump is reasonably inoffensive but the snout reminds me a plankton-eating whale that's had a run in with a Japanese whaling ship's hull. I know it's won a design award but I'm not sure how.

Karla Pincott
Toyota Rukus: seems to be the end result of pressing a Camry into a wool baler. Rather like forcing chooks to lay square eggs - they might stack better in the shed, but it's a painful experience for the eyes. Probably hurts a bit for the chook, too.

Paul Pottinger
Subaru Impreza WRX sedan. It's the same old dance... Subaru bust out a new Rex. Public and critics collectively gag. Soob's plastic surgeons seek to make amends. Result? A collision of compromised design cues that act as visual analogy for a company that increasingly appears to have forgotten how to do what it used to so very well. At least it doesn't resemble a Toyota. Like the Liberty