Beauty, the saying goes, is in the eye of the beholder. But it’s also in the eye of the person behind ya. We usually make judgments about whether a car looks good or bad based on the front-end design, but in real life traffic situations we spend far more time looking at the back ends of cars in lines of traffic rather than the front ends of cars that are only fleetingly visible as they pass in the opposite direction.
Which got us thinking about the ugliest automotive butts on sale today. We can all name plenty of cars whose faces we like or dislike, but which vehicles have the best back ends, and which ones have the worst?
Related: Which New Car Or Truck Has The Ugliest Grille Today?
One of my current least-faves is the Hyundai Kona, which debuted in late 2022. That long strip of LED lights across the nose gives the front of the Kona a techy look, and it’s replicated at the back. But instead of cramming all of the rear lights into the LED bar, Hyundai added another pair of light pods below it that appear to be the result of a pin-the-tail-on-a-donkey game at the automaker’s design center. And while I’m moaning, that big gouge above the rear wheelarch looks terrible on models not fitted with the plastic arch trim, like a cement truck has sideswiped it.
Next up on the hate list is BMW’s latest X2. The Bavarian brand is capable of creating some great-looking cars but going right back to the original 2008 X6, I’ve never thought its coupe-style SUVs were among them. They always look clumsy and blocky, and the X2 launched in 2024 is one of the worst.
The weird double rear light clusters look like they copied onto the trunk lid from the rear quarter panel with Photoshop’s clone tool, and just look at that mess of a rear bumper. Upgrading to M Sport trim usually improves a BMW’s appearance, but not on the M2, which gets a huge expanse of inelegant ribbed, piano- black plastic that appears to take inspiration from a George Foreman grill.
Other derriere disasters arguably include the Land Rover Discovery, whose offset license plate still looks odd almost nine years after we first saw it, and Hyundai’s answer to Land Rover’s Defender, the Santa Fe. I love the front of the Hyundai, but like the rear, with its too-low lights, a lot less. And proving you can have too much of a good thing, we should probably give an honorable mention to the very busy back end of the Mansory Lamborghini Urus.
Leave a comment below and tell us what you think are the butt-ugliest back ends on sale.
