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2. Pontiac Aztek
The road to hell will be filled with Pontiac Azteks. It may have been a crossover with good intentions, groundbreaking interior design and not bad to drive, but it is pure ugly from bumper to bumper in a convoluted mix of plastic, metal, glass and a back end that looks as if it was chopped off with a meat cleaver.
The ribbed gray cladding on the original 2001 model only made it look worse. The most ubiquitous Aztek, though, came in Ticonderoga-pencil yellow, and sported black cladding. It looked like a giant bee on the road.
A buyer could get an air compressor to pump up car-camping sleeping mattresses (as well as the attachable tent), four-wheel drive and a slew of other driver friendly features. We liked the center console that doubled as a removable cooler. But it’s awful looks killed the Aztek in one generation and set General Motors back a decade when it came to creating great crossovers.
Why it’s so dumb: At the dawn of the surge in crossovers, GM chose to build the Aztek on the platform of its minivan, the most spectacularly awful and most reviled minivan in the industry no less. Do you recall the GM minivans that resembled giant dust-busters? Yup, those minivans. In 2000, months before the launch of the Aztek, the head of GM North America was already predicting failure of the vehicle to reporters. That was a tip-off. GM execs cheaped out here, and were leading a system that minimized the influence of competent designers, and maximized the influence of accountants who sought to produce cars at the cheapest cost.
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