The Pontiac Aztek will forever (and unfortunately) be remembered as one of the ugliest automobiles ever made. But you know what (arguably) made it even worse? When GM, in an effort to “smooth it out,” ditched the contrasting body cladding that at least gave it some character in the first place. What they should have done is double down and made it even more grotesque, like the one in this rendering.
Imagined by artist Rain Prisk, this Aztek has been virtually converted to competition spec and packs even more addenda than the original. It has wider fender flares packing big racing slicks, a side exhaust, and enough aerodynamic elements to make a DTM racer look streamlined by comparison.
Of course there’d be little reason the Aztek would ever have been raced, unwieldy as it was. And this one still has rain deflectors on the windows and a roof rack, mind you, along with a license plate and a little Easter Egg of a Walter White sticker, in deference to the Brian Cranston character who drove one in the critically acclaimed television series Breaking Bad. But then dreams (or nightmares) needn’t confirm too closely to reality, after all.
For those of you reading from outside the North American market (to which the Aztek was largely confined), we’ve included a another rendering based on what could only be described, in terms of the ugly scale, as the European counterpart to the Aztek. With a similar treatment by the same artist, the Fiat Multipla, like its American counterpart, somehow looks more beautiful with more ugliness dialed in. Or maybe we’ve just been staring at these images for too long.
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