We’re a long way away from the days of automakers making significant design changes to a car each and every model year. What we get now is a facelift every few years during a full product cycle. According to you, a bunch of the ones that have taken place since 2000 were complete botch jobs though. In a recent question of the day, we asked which were the worst and now we’re counting up the biggest offenders.
Your top five include a trio of Germans and we start with the Volkswagen Jetta. According to Devin C. it was already ugly but things got even worse in 2022. To put it kindly, he thinks it looks like a little kid pulling their mouth as wide open as they possibly can.
Next up, the Mercedes SL-Class, which, like the Jetta got ten upvotes and no downvotes. According to Jesko, it went from sublime and classy to “the god awful facelifted R230 SL.” Frankly, we have no idea what MB was doing with those headlights.
More: What Was The Ugliest Retractable Hardtop Convertible?
Taking third place is the Peugeot 308. Meskley’s entry got 11 upvotes and no downvotes. They said that they like how “expressive” the first generation 308 was but then they turned it into “a blob fish.” Yea, OK, we see it. Certainly not as sharp as the car it replaced.
With a very strong silver-medal performance is the fifth-generation Chevrolet Camaro which was “ugly to begin with but they made it so much worse” according to Jerry90. Notably, Jerry90 received 21 upvotes and only a single downvote for this comment. However, two of you disagreed with his view of the pre-facelift muscle car.
Finally, at the very top of the pile is the 2016–2023 W213-codenamed Mercedes-Benz E-Class. Aura saw an incredibly lopsided 26-0 vote in favor of their opinion. Some of that might have to do with their excellent explanation of the problems. Essentially, it boils down to a design that’s no longer cohesive and sound. The argument is compelling to say the least.
Truly folks, the whole reply thread is worth a gander as a few cars got more upvotes but also had at least one or more downvotes too. Among those honorable mentions are the Skoda Octavia and the Citroen Cactus.
