About This Quiz
What makes a truck ugly, anyway? Some trucks, like the Unimog U500, look like they suffered a terrible bought of swelling. Others, like the Dodge Ram Daytona, have a massive and mostly useless wing strapped to the back. But are they ugly? That's one of those questions with which no one will ever fully agree. There's a good chance you're going to look at our list of trucks here and think some of them look amazing. But make no mistake, to most people, these are some hideous vehicles — trucks like the Chevy SSR, which are just total engineering mistakes from the wheels up. They came and went quickly because somehow, someway, they were designed to be atrocious.
It's not easy to define ugly, but we've tried our best to refine a cringe-inducing list of the most unfortunate-looking beasts ever to roll down the street on four wheels. If you think you know the history of ugly trucks — from the massive-grilled 1939 Ford pickup to Elon Musk's not-yet-released Tesla Cybertruck, which has been setting the automotive industry on fire — take the quiz and see how many of these visually offensive trucks you recognize!
While it's nice that Henry Ford finally started including hydraulic brakes in 1939, the 1939 Ford Pickup has gone down in history as one of the most unfortunate looking vehicles the company ever made. The large, oval grille looked a lot like a weird mouth framed by frog eyes. It was an odd choice, and they only made it for a year.
Made in the 1950s, the Volvo 445 pickup looked like the Silly Putty version of a regular pickup, stretched to weird proportions and not quite normal. The front end was elongated, all the curves were soft and bubbly, and they just gave up when it came to the bed in back.
From 1956 to 1965 the Jeep Forward Control was uglying up the roads across America with one of the most perplexing designs ever seen. The snub-nosed cab, the tacked-on grille and the overall squatty look were just weird. At least it was memorable.
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Hummers were known for being massive gas guzzlers, but the H2 SUT just didn't quite look right. The pickup version of the H2 was just so ostentatious, so bulky and pushy and all over the place. Even if it was good on gas, it would still be an eyesore.
Take a look at the front end of a '61 GMC 1000 series truck and see if you can figure out just what the heck is going on. It looks like someone is trying to hide a smaller car inside the truck, and it's peeking out over the hood. Why they made it this way is anyone's guess.
As a medium-duty truck, the GMC TopKick had to be kind of big, but what happened here? The truck looks like a jumped-up Transformer that got swole and then someone tried to wipe the features down off the front with a squeegee.
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Ford, like any truck manufacturer, makes large trucks for commercial uses, but the F-650 Supertruck was a massive oversized pickup truck for people who wanted something that looked like it was designed in Jurassic Park.
The Dodge W-Series was the third series of truck Dodge made after the T and the V series. The massive grille is bisected by a cross, making it look like someone tried to tie it down, and the headlights gave it a bug-eyed appearance.
The Chevy SSR failed on every front. The engine wasn't powerful enough to move the preposterously heavy frame that came in at nearly 5,000 pounds, and the retro-inspired style was something that was made fun of in nearly every car magazine and website in the world.
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If this truck looks familiar, it's because it's essentially a VW hippie bus. The Transporter model was a bus with the back chopped down to make it a pickup truck, and if it was a not particularly attractive van, it was a downright ugly truck.
The Suzuki X-90 was only made from 1995 to 1997, and it was just as well. This runty little beast was a mix of SUV and pickup truck on the smallest possible scale. It looked like someone had kicked a real truck in the back and forced some of the length out the front.
Rinspeed made the Tattoo as a concept vehicle and judging by its appearance, their concept was Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. The only reason people remember it today, aside from is baffling appearance, is because it was the first vehicle with internet access.
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In 1957, the International Harvester A-100 Golden Jubilee was offered with gold paint, but jubilation wasn't guaranteed. The headlights and grille worked together to make it seem like the truck was both surprised and horrified.
The Subaru Baja was inspired by the Subaru BRAT, another particularly ugly option Subaru had introduced a few years earlier. The Baja looked like a restyled Pontiac Aztek with a small bed and a station wagon body.
Sometimes called the Rambo Lambo, the Lamborghini LM002 was a major departure from the sleek and sexy cars for which the company is known. The hood is a jumble of bumps and ledges that make it look like the entire thing was conceived as a Lego project before it was finally made into a real truck.
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The Ssangyong Musso is something of a toad-like truck that not only handled terribly, it looked like someone forgot to finish making the back while the front had a bit of a piggy aspect. Drive.co.uk said it was like trying to put lipstick on a pig, and it failed miserably.
COE stands for Cab Over Engine, and that explains to some degree the awful design choices of the 1953 Chevy COE. It looks like it's suffering a massively swollen forehead, or maybe the grille started melting off its front. Either way, it was not a great look.
Many take exception to the design of the Toyota Tundra but, all things being equal, it's not a hideous truck. That said, the 2002 Tundra Stepside was just a stupid version. They put one tiny foot hole in the side of the bed, hence the name.
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Like the Chevy El Camino and the Ford Ranchero, the Dodge Rampage was one of those half cars half pickup trucks that never really fit into either world. But at least the El Camino had a little charm to it. The Rampage had an awkward and pointy front end that made the back look even weirder.
International Harvester's D-Series committed a less atrocious design crime than some trucks, and it's the crime of boring. This truck is ugly just because it looked like no one even tried to make it look good. If you ask a child to draw a pickup truck, this is what you'd get.
The Subaru BRAT or Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter was an ugly car with a terrible name and for that reason, it achieved a bit of a cult status after all these years. Looks aside, they were also poorly made and were known for being rust buckets.
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The BMW M3 is a nice-looking car but it was not a nice-looking truck. It's said that BMW employees made one of these out of a convertible model to drive around the factory. They used it for 26 years as well, apparently.
The Tempo Matador is weird-looking at first glance, but if you think about it for a moment, it looks like a kissy face emoji, and that's just extra weird. These were used as military vehicles for a time and were sold under a number of names.
Fiat rolled out the Oltre at a car show in 2006, and it looked like a Hummer that was made of fondant icing. Amazingly, the inside of the Oltre was somehow even uglier than the outside, in all white and blue Playmobile style.
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The Cadillac Mirage was a luxury car, but for one very weird year it was also a pickup truck. Clearly inspired by Chevy's El Camino, this was a huge luxury grandpa Cadillac with a flatbed. It couldn't have made less sense.
The Chevy Avalanche was an over-designed truck with some clunky cladding that covered almost every exposed surface on the truck, making it look like it rolled right out of a post-apocalyptic movie in the 1980s.
The Mitsubishi L200 dates back to 1978 and, weirdly enough, it has been ugly the entire time. If you had to pick a worst one though, the fourth generation was a true standout. It had so many soft edges, it looked like chewed-up bubblegum.
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The Datsun U521 was a weird departure from the standard truck designs for Datsun thanks to the crew cab design that gave it an overall look of two different vehicles mashed together, hoping it would somehow work out.
The Honda Ridgeline is a fairly popular truck, but it had some very buggy features. When Jalopnik wrote an article about how weird it was, they said that during a test drive, people would pull up next to them to tell them how ugly their truck was.
The Dodge Ram Daytona had a wing on the back, which is really all you need to say about the look of the thing. By all accounts, it was a good truck with a powerful Hemi engine, but it also had a wing ... on a truck.
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The Dodge Ramcharger had the option of coming with a rear bench seat and absolutely no top on it whatsoever. But whatever way it came couldn't make up for the perplexing way it sat on its wheels and the massive front grille that looked swollen.
Ford Thames Traders had some very distinctive designs in every generation, and they were all weird. If you consider the windshield a pair of glasses, then this truck clearly had a snub nose and a frowny clown mouth. Try to unsee it.
Sometimes called the VW Caddy, the VW Rabbit Pickup was front wheel drive with a 1.7 L 4-cylinder engine that was barely enough to move the thing. It also had a bare-bones interior and looked like it was designed by someone who just didn't care.
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The Reynolds Boughton RB44 was released in 1989 for military service in the U.K. It weirdly looks like the "A-Team" van from the 1980s though, which is kind of cool and yet kind of disappointing at the same time since the actual "A-Team" van would be much cooler.
As a van, the Dodge A100 bore a strong resemblance to the Mystery Machine from "Scooby Doo," which made it kind of cool. When they chopped off the rear and made it a pickup truck, it looked just like a van that had been chopped into a pickup truck. Not a good look overall.
The Unimog U500 looks like something a small child might design if given carte blanche to make a truck. There isn't a single part of this truck that's in proper proportions, but despite that, these things have been in production since the 1940s.
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Tesla's recently unveiled Cybertruck has a lot of amazing features and may very well be one of the best trucks on the road — electric or otherwise — if it holds up to the hype. But none of that changes the fact that this is what it looks like on purpose.
The Chevy LUV's name means "light utility vehicle." It first went on sale in 1972. The name "LUV" was plastered on the side of the undersized and unimpressive vehicle. Later generations got a design overhaul, but those gen one models were not fooling anyone.