What’s the ugliest car ever made? It’s all subjective, of course. But more than 2,000 specialty car collectors were recently asked to select the choices for the dubious honor. And the winner (loser?), at least according to one national poll, is the AMC Pacer.
Hagerty Insurance, located in Traverse City, Mich., conducted the survey. It tallied nearly 2,500 votes and the Pacer, a small hatchback that was introduced in 1975, was one of three AMC vehicles on the list.
The Pacer only lasted until 1980, but it’s not alone among AMC vehicles receiving ugly awards.
The AMC Gremlin and Matador station wagon also made the ugliest list.
“AMC’s only conceivable excuse for this stylistic horror would be if their design crew was tripping on massive quantities of acid … and even then, it wouldn’t be a good excuse.”
The Serbian-built Yugo, a small two-door hatchback, was voted the second ugliest car.
“The Yugo was a car that fell apart while you drove,” commented one of the survey respondents.
The most modern vehicle to make the all-ugly list is the maligned Pontiac Aztek, which bombed in the marketplace before its death in 2005.
Other vehicles selected to the top-10 all-ugly list included: Chevrolet Chevette, Ford Edsel, Chevrolet Corvair, Ford Pinto, and Chevrolet Vega.
James Raia
A sports, travel and business journalist for more than 45 years, James has written the new car review column The Weekly Driver since 2004. In addition to founding this site in 2004, James writes a Sunday automotive column for The San Jose Mercury and East Bay Times in Walnut Creek, Calif., and monthly auto review and wellness columns for Gulfshore Business, a magazine in Southwest Florida. An author and contributor to many newspapers, magazines and online publications, co-hosted The Weekly Driver Podcast from 2017 to 2024.
I don't think the Pacer is ugly, it's retro. You have no idea how popular retro was when it was new. Now Geo has some UGLY suckers! They literally fall apart when sitting still.
Here are some REALLY ugly cars: Geo Tracker, Nissan Cube, Scion xB, Toyota Prius, Ford Windstream (something like that), Toyota Camary, and Honda Oddesy.