5 Of The Worst-Looking SUVs Ever Designed

Despite the lessons many of us were taught in childhood, people often judge books by their covers, at least when it comes to vehicles. It's important to be aware of the full picture of a car's capabilities, but you have to accommodate for good taste as well. A car could have the best gas mileage on Earth and a built-in shoulder massager, but if it looks like some kid's ratty wagon on the outside, it's going to be a hard sell.

SUVs, in particular, have run the gamut of designs over the decades, with some employing ... mildly questionable aesthetic sensibilities, to put it politely. Such a beefy, multifunctional vehicle archetype gives manufacturers a lot to work with, but some try too hard to reinvent the wheel, resulting in SUVs that leave us scratching our heads and asking, "Why?" 

To clarify, we're not making any statements on these SUVs' efficacy. An ugly SUV can still be a beloved family wagon — it's just going to look a little silly on the highway.

It's fairly normal to see faces in the fronts of cars. The headlights are eyes, the grilles are mouths, and so on. We don't know if cars are designed with distinctive fronts on purpose to give them more personality, but that's a pretty typical side effect. 

With that in mind, though, a car with an overly distinctive front can sometimes rub people the wrong way. This was the case with the Nissan Juke. Manufactured from 2011 to 2017, it was derived from another Nissan vehicle, the Versa. Where the Versa had a fairly standard sloped front profile, the Juke has what we can only call a pair of pudgy cheeks. Two pairs of headlights place one set higher than you'd expect, making the front look almost like it's perpetually flashing you a giant, mildly unsettling grin with big dimples. 

This pudgy vibe permeates most of the car, and not just on the outside; the cabin's center console is apparently supposed to be "motorcycle-inspired," but just looks like an exaggerated circus-mirror reflection. This is one of several reasons Nissan discontinued the Juke in favor of the Nissan Kicks.

You know how bumper cars have large rubber rings jutting out of the bottom so the rings hit stuff and absorb impacts before the rest of the body? It serves an obvious purpose, and it doesn't look unusual when every other vehicle nearby (that is, in a bumper-car rink) has them as well. But what if you were driving the only vehicle nearby that had that distinctive bottom rung? Well, then you'd know how it felt to drive an Isuzu VehiCross.

Manufactured for just four years, from 1997 to 2001, the Vehicross' defining feature is blatantly obvious from any angle: It's got a blobby ring completely encircling the lower half of its body. This ring even encompasses the rear hatch, which also has an odd bulge for storing a spare tire on the inside. To its credit, this bottom-heavy design made it very roadworthy, but boy the Isuzu VehiCross looked ugly out on the road.

Remember that plastic Little Tikes car that was popular in the 1980s and '90s? The red and yellow one? There have been a couple of efforts over the years to realize that design as a car for grownups, with varying levels of success. The problem is that, while it's perfectly fine for a toy, that kind of weird, disproportionate design isn't really meant for the open road. We can't imagine that Suzuki was trying to evoke the image of Little Tikes' Cozy Coupe with the X-90, but it's the first one that comes to our minds regardless.

The X-90 was highly experimental and only available for a couple of years in the mid-'90s. It kind of looked like a sports car that had swallowed an SUV. Despite having SUV specs, it was only a two-seater, sporting a T-top roof for an open-air vacation vibe over a bulkier bottom. We don't claim to know what Suzuki was shooting for with this one — perhaps some kind of unknowable Frankenstein of a car that could haul couples long distances while still having everyone's hair flowing in the wind? Whatever the intention, it looked like a toy and this Suzuki is regarded as one of the worst vehicles of the '90s.

Be honest with yourself: The first time you ever tried to draw a car, you probably just drew a square with some circles on the bottom, right? There's no shame in it — cars are hard to draw accurately, with their subtle swoops and slopes. The best way to draw a car is just to practice, but if you can't be bothered to do that, you could just keep drawing boxes with wheels and say every car is a Honda Element.

Manufactured from 2003 to 2011, the Element is an offshoot of the Honda CR-V, which is still alive and well today where the Element is not. The Element is, in a word, boxy. Compared to similar SUVs, both of its time and today, it has a much more box-like profile than usual. This on its own is a bit off-putting, but the bit that really makes you tilt your head is the doors. The front doors open like normal, but the rear doors have reversed hinges that open in the opposite direction. The whole side of the car opens up like an oversized dollhouse, and it feels like it's going to eat you.

We'll be the first to admit that aesthetics are not an exact science. It's not always clear what makes one car ugly and another one cool. Sometimes it's just a matter of instinct. When you take your first look at the Pontiac Aztek, the immediate thought is, "Wait, that's not right, it shouldn't look like that." It's difficult to say what it was that repulsed drivers from the Aztek, but whatever it was, it left a lasting impression from the word go.

Manufactured from 2001 to 2005, the Pontiac Aztek is often considered one of the quintessential uncool cars. It looks like a hodge-podge of two or three different cars, with its wide, smirking front, its oblong middle, and a sharp, angular trunk. It's a car that doesn't know what it's trying to be and doesn't care enough to make an effort at figuring it out. It probably wouldn't even be in the public consciousness if it weren't used as Walter White's car in "Breaking Bad."