Who doesn’t love style? We all want our cars to look good, or at least so-bad-it’s-good, right? But it’s also nice when a vehicle can back up those looks with real performance — whether that’s on-road, off-road, or even plain old comfort while you’re hauling down the highway. Earlier this week, we asked you for the cars that only pulled off the first half of that equation: Style over substance. Here are the cars you came up with.
[Just a photo of the Cybertruck]
It’s tough for a vehicle to have any substance when we still haven’t seen one in the wild. Do they perform? Are they watertight? Who knows?
The Prowler. Still glad they made it, but feels like it could have been so much more
This is a good answer. So wild looking, so out-there — and so, so slow.
The BMW X6.
A car that is a frankenstein’s mishmash of vehicle classes and ends up as the worst of all worlds. It’s a sports car with the center of gravity of a large, high-roofed SUV. It’s a luxury vehicle with the harsh ride of a sports car. It’s an SUV that can’t carry anything or even more than 2 people in comfort with that sharply sloping roofline. It’s an off-roader with low profile sidewalls and an 80K starting price. I’ve never seen a vehicle that does nothing right other than seem “cool” and IMO it doesn’t even do that.
See, the problem with the X6 is that it also has no style. The proportions are bad, the design language is bad. It’s not nearly as bad as the comparable Mercedes, but it’s not good.
Countach, Hands down. But we loved the style so much it didn’t matter.
I mean, do you really need to see behind you while reversing? Is that substantively adding to the car’s function?
Pontiac fixed it towards the end, but the Fiero is possibly Pontiac at its peak style over substance, and I sort of hope the slideshow in a couple days is just 10 Pontiacs.
I’m sorry, Maymar, but the list isn’t just 10 Pontiacs. This isn’t the only slide from the brand, though.
What’s the verdict on these? I guess the performance isn’t as horrible as other cars on the list, but that is a TON of style and I’ve never seen one flying down the highway or a backroad.
I honestly want to try one of these. Trying a stock one would be fine, but what I really want to test is a rental-spec Slingshot — bald tires, Christmas lights, bluetooth speaker blasting the most bass-boosted music you’ve ever heard.
The 70s Disco Sticker cars - when HP was replaced by graphics.
Listen. Don’t you talk shit about the Bandit Trans-Am in my good Christian comments section.
Were these ok? I’ve never driven one let alone the SRT-6 version. The performance from what I was able to look up was very decent for the time but I don’t know...looks aggressive
The Crossfire looked the part, but wasn’t exactly an incredible performer. Well, it looked the early-aughts part. Its style is... of its time.
The prettiest Chevette you’ll ever see: the Isuzu Impulse.
But, God, what a pretty Chevette.
I would like to throw any recent Camry with the full sporty trim treatment to the list. They look racy and fast but all that cladding can’t hide the fact that it still has the performance, feel, and fit-and-finish of a large economy car with a V6 that has seen minimal development for over a decade.
I guess my biggest issue is that if you want to mod or tune a car, the Camry is a pretty terrible platform and at that pricepoint, there are many better cars for the money. Hell, a stock Accord can drive circles around a Camry in terms of performance, feel, and build quality. Every time I see one on the road, I wonder why they didn’t just spring for a modestly equipped A4 or 3-series instead.
The secret no one will tell you with the Camry is that, in V6 trim, it hauls. I’ve spun the tires on an XSE from a dig — sure, there was some gravel on the road, but it was still a fun time.
These things sold like hotcakes the first two years it was out.
150 hp to that rotten mopar 4 speed slushbox doomed it to be an underpowered disaster.
The Cruiser sold in droves, sure, but was it really stylish? Eye of the beholder, I guess, but... stylish?
for me its the Toyota C-HR. it looks like it would be a fun sporty small CUV. its bold and decently well designed. But its a horribly slow boring car to drive
Hey Toyota, put the GR Corolla engine in the C-HR and we’ll start talking. Slam the thing to the ground, lower the beltline a little, and — this is just turning into a GR Corolla, isn’t it.
The mitsuoka orochi. It looked like this, had 230hp and did 0-60 in something like 7 seconds; google results aren’t definitive, but it was not a fast car. From wikipedia -
“Mitsuoka says “Orochi is the car to ride to gather attention from everyone”, and categorizes this car as a “Fashion-Super Car”.”
Bad style is still style.
Y’know what? That’s honestly fair. The Orochi does have a defined style, recognizable in an instant. Just because it’s not good doesn’t mean it’s not style.
Submitted by: threeserious
When you think NISMO, what comes to mind? Fuel economy? A CVT? Slower than a Hyundai Elantra? If not, you need to get your mind right and behold one of the most laughable examples of “style over substance”, the Nissan Sentra NISMO. It was all the punishment of a stiff suspension and vague steering without any of the performance payoff at a higher price than the regular Sentra. At least it had enough “performance” bits and bobs tacked on to the exterior that everyone would know how much you like to piss away your money. A real head-scratcher, that one.
Had this just been a Sentra, it would’ve been fine. But Nissan just had to go and toss that NISMO badge into the mix, huh?
I’d like to just blanket call out current gen full size pickup trucks. These things have become so massive, especially with the massive grilles, that they have become really difficult and potentially dangerous to drive. These have taken the place of sports cars as the midlife crisis vehicle of choice for aging boomers who are increasingly dependent on little blue pills, at the cost of real world usability for people that actually need trucks for work.
Modern trucks have actually reached a point where style impedes substance — they’re so tall that loading and unloading the bed is genuinely difficult. This is why vans reign supreme.