Wupped With The Ugly Stick

Wupped With The Ugly Stick

When I was a kid I had to walk three miles to school, …..through the snow, ….every day, ….barefoot! No, hold it, wrong story! That’s the line I handed my sons when they asked if they could drive the car to school. Sorry, I’ll start over.

When I was in junior high school I sat in class behind a couple of guys that seemed to be obsessed with insulting each other’s mother. Their talent for this seemed to know no boundaries. Aside from this odd behavior, they appeared to be good friends.

“Yo mama sho is ugly!” “Yeah, well yo mama is so ugly, she has to sneak up on a glass of water just to get a drink!” They seemed to enjoy this banter almost as much as I did. When I would laugh out loud, they would go straight-faced. The teacher would stop and say; “What’s so funny, Mr. Utley? Perhaps you could share with us.” Of course, I couldn’t.

Since that time, whenever I would see something that had obviously been severely thrashed with the Ugly-Stick, I would say to myself; “Self, that Sho Is Ugly?” For me, this especially applied to cars.

Sometimes a car is so ugly that it’s cute. Sometimes the line between ugly and cute gets blurred. I remember (as a kid) the first time I saw an Isetta (shown above). It was difficult for my brain to process what my eyes were seeing. Was it a small car or a large insect? Was it ugly or cute? At that time big fins on big American cars were all the rage. We were told that was beautiful. It was art deco. Who was I to question what was art?

The original VW Beetle was very popular for decades. It was so ugly that it was cute and Volkswagen capitalized on this trait.

The first time I saw an original British Mini, I thought it was so ugly that I fell in love with it. It became the most successful automobile in British history. I was happy to see BMW pick it up and bring it back to life, keeping it …..beautifully ugly.

No one has produced more ugly cars than the French or the Russians. Come to think of it, they’ve never produced one that isn’t. It seems like they were in heated competition to out-ugly each other. All dogs, but nary a cute one in the litter.

To me, a synonym for the word ugly is Peugeot. The video on the link below shows you what to do with a Peugeot.

But alas, we Yanks have had our share of ugly vehicles too. The Pacer, Gremlin, Pinto, Edsel, and many others come to mind. Every once in a while, one of the automakers trots out something that is so ugly, it just nauseates you at first glance.

There is one American vehicle that should get the World’s Ugliest Vehicle Ever Award. Can you guess what it is?

Is it………….?
(1). The Pontiac Aztec?
(2). The Pontiac Aztec?
(3). Or ….the Pontiac Aztec?

The first time I saw an Aztec I became physically ill. It pulled up beside me at a traffic light. It was yellow. Had I been a man of lesser stamina, I would have left my cookies on the steering wheel. It was so hideous I had to look away. Never before have my eyes experienced such a violent assault. What madness could have overtaken the mucky-mucks at Pontiac HQ to approve such a visual disaster?

I guess that beauty is truly in the eyes of the beholder. As my mother once told me, “Everyone is entitled to his or her own stupid opinion”. Even me.

OK, here’s that video I promised you. Click on the link.
http://videos.streetfire.net/video/Tank-Crushing-Peugeot_150208.htm