Picture Collage of the Ten Ugliest Cars
The Ten Ugliest Cars to have been launched in India –
Table of Contents
Cars have been manufactured in India since 1942, by Hindustan Motors first. Though Cars have plied on Indian roads since 1897, the first Indian owner of a car was Jamshedji Tata in 1901.
In the ’50s, there were only 3 passenger car manufacturers – Hindustan Motors, Premier Automobiles and Standard Motors. In 1983, Maruti Udyog Limited entered the market and severely dented the duopoly of the Ambassador and Premier Padmini. However, after 1992, following economic liberalization, global car manufacturers began flocking to India’s massive market.
However, this is not about the evolution of the Indian Automobile industry, it’s about some real ugly Cars launched by the manufacturers, which have sometimes flopped and sometimes met with moderate success, but are really UGLY to look at!
The list of the Ten Ugliest Cars below is purely my personal opinion and many readers may disagree on some of the choices, but some I know, would be unanimous! There’s no order as to where each car appears on the list i.e. the No. 1 on this list is not the worst of the worst and vice versa. So, let the debate begin!!
1. Maruti Suzuki Zen Classic – No. 1 in the Ten Ugliest Cars List
This particular model rolled out in 1999, and was based on Suzuki Cervo Mode. The original Zen was an extremely successful model for Maruti, raking in large volumes; peppy and fun to drive, it even had a variant which topped 100+bhp and coupled with the reliability of Maruti, it was a winner.
Then, somebody at Maruti decided to go retro with the design and this was the result! Though the Zen Classic was essentially the same car from inside it was so bad to look at that there was hardly any demand for the car and it was soon discontinued.
2. Mahindra Quanto – No. 2 in the Ten Ugliest Cars List
Mahindra launched the 7-seater Quanto in 2012, with a 1.5 liter, 3 cylinder mHawk Diesel engine under the hood. It was spacious inside and had a good engine but Mahindra really lost it on the design part! Looks chopped off from the back and had an extremely poor ride quality. Thankfully, production stopped in 2018 and you don’t see too many of them on the roads anymore.
3. Premier RIO – No. 3 in the Ten Ugliest Cars List
This was a rebadged Chinese Zoyte Nomad – which in itself was a rebadged Daihatsu Terios, marketed as the RIO by Premier Automobiles in 2009. It was powered by a 1.5 liter diesel making about 65 bhp (talk about under-powered!). It looks bad, worked worse and sank without a trace. In fact, I’m sure most of you didn’t remember it till you saw it here! The company went into bankruptcy in 2018 and that’s the end of of the story for now…
4. Renault Lodgy – No. 4 in the Ten Ugliest Cars List
Renault launched the Lodgy in 2015, in both a 7-seater and a 8-seater variant. It comes with two 1.5 L diesel options and two petrols (1.6 and 1.2 turbo) and like other Renaults is a dependable car to drive but looks like a designer’s worst nightmare. Mostly because of that, it clocks abysmally low numbers in India – double digits in all months of 2019 and 0 since Jan 2020!
5. Maruti Ritz – No. 5 in the Ten Ugliest Cars List
The Suzuki Splash was launched in India in 2009 as the Maruti Ritz, with the K12 petrol and the K13 diesel engines. Being a Maruti, it enjoyed super success following its launch, selling 200,000 units in 37 months. It was a good car but the rear end looked like someone took an axe to it and chopped it off with a vengeance! Some may like it, but overall opinion rates the rear view of the Ritz as one of the worst ever!
6. Hyundai Elantra 2004 – No. 6 in the Ten Ugliest Cars List
The Hyundai Elantra 2004 facelift launched with a new look, a ‘waterfall’ grille and redisgned headlamps among other things. But it looked quite ugly, the grille was puny, the hedlamps looked bulbous and overall looked like a grandfatherly design. It came with 4 engine options (in both petrol & diesel) – 1.6 L, 1.8 L, 2.0 L DOHC and 2.0 L CRDi. There wasn’t much wrong with the car in 2004, except how it looked. Thankfully, shortly thereafter, Hyundai shifted to its ‘Fluidic’ design language and the reat, as they say, is history!
7. Tata Manza – No. 7 in the Ten Ugliest Cars List
The Tata Manza was launched in 2009, and was based the popular Indigo platform.It was significantly larger than the Indigo, particularly the 500-liter boot! It was a spacious sedan, with quite a few bells and whistles like front airbags, ABS with EBD, integrated music system, leather upholstery, diamond cut alloys and all for the princely sum of 4.8 Lakhs to 6.75 Lakhs! Its BS4 engines included the 1.4 L petrol sourced from Fiat and the 1.3 L Multijet diesel Quadrajet. But it was a ugly-looking car and because of the ungainly-looking big boot, it had the grace of a waddling elephant!! Discontinued in 2016, you still see a few around…
8. Honda Mobilio – No. 8 in the Ten Ugliest Cars List
Honda launched the Mobilio in India in 2014, though this was around in the international market since 2001. From the front it looked exactly like the Brio and I always wondered, the company that designed the City, Accord, Civic and CRV, how could they design this weird looking Brio…..then they launched Mobilio! It was like kids were given a stretchable car and they pulled and pulled and got Mobilio from Brio!! A 7 seater with the excellent 1.5 L iVTec and iDTec under the hood, poor looks killed it and Honda discontinued it in India in 2017 due to poor sales. It continues to be sold in Thailand and Indonesia and looks nothing like a stretched Brio!!!
9. Chevrolet SAIL Hatchback – No. 9 in the Ten Ugliest Cars List
The Chevrolet Sail launched in India in 2013 as both a Sedan and a hatchback and from the front they both looked quite good. But a plain jane side profile and the hatchback’s hacked off rear looked incongruous to that front. It had a 1.2 L S-Tec II petrol engine and a 1.3 L diesel Multijet same as the Beat. Both were priced at the moderately higher range for their segments at the time. Though touted by industry experts as a ‘Safe’ car at that time, the hatchback sold very little due to its weird looking rear end and GM exited India in 2017 to put an end to its struggles in the country.
10. Hindustan TREKKER – No. 10 in the Ten Ugliest Cars List
Who else but Hindustan Motors could come up with this movable box they called a car? With a scale, pencil and A4 size paper, someone designed this car and to call it a design is an insult to all Car Designers. Used as a people carrier all over rural and semi-urban India, it shared its insides with the once ubiquitous Ambassador but if one were to hand out the Worst Designed Car Oscar – this would be the unanimous choice and you can see in the picture above, why…..
Lastly, some that narrowly missed being on this list of the Ten Ugliest Cars but were UGLY nonetheless are, in no particular order :
Nissan Evalia, Renault Scala, Honda Brio Mahindra Supro, Mahindra TUV 300, Hyundai Verna Transform, Mahindra Logan, Reva (later e2O), Maruti Ignis, Maruti SPresso and a few more….
