What is the weirdest lookin car ever?

[phoenixfan]

Hello, I'm new here, and just going through some of the threads. I am not up too much on F1 racing, I'm afraid. I quit following it when Jim Clarke died. I do know a Guy Rolland who lives here in Arizona now, and was once an F1 driver.


djb: How can you call those "dirt track thingees" ugly? Those cars are Modifieds, Super Modifieds. Built in a back yard garage late at night, maintained by a thread bare budget, and friends willing to kick in a few extra dollars. Just to race on a local dirt track on a Friday or Sunday night, not for the money, but for the sheer fun of racing. A car like that is built with heart and soul in it, which makes it a thing of beauty.

Crash: I agree the late 1950's and early 1960's cars were ugly. Ever see a Nash or a Ford Edsel? LOL

[Dino IV]

The first 6 wheeled 'F1' was actually very beautiful:



Maurice Trintignant in the sole Bugatti T251 entrance at the 1956 French GP wasn't exactly of overwhelming beauty:



And March indeed wasn't exactly very sensitive about esthetics. They held on to the table-top front-wing for almost a decade, as this Eliseo Salazar drive in the March 811 at 1981 Long Beach shows:

[Jeanburrasca81]

The weirdest looking car ever? Great topic!
All cars you meant are weird, but the 2000-Minardi, even though I like Minardi, had the most ugly colour ever seen on a bolid.

[djb]

phoenixfan: no offence intended re: modified and s.mod. I was saying that just from the visual aspect, such a seemingly short wheelbase and such a huge rear wing! I have never seen a whole race, but what I have seen sure is impressive with the car control with those entire turn opposite lock slides at what looks like fairly impressive speeds... and I agree, any series where a bunch of guys slog away to put their cars together and race just for the love of it deserve respect...Mario Andretti raced dirt track stuff early in his career didn't he?

[phoenixfan]

djb - no offense taken at all. I grew up as a kid watching those cars develop. Yep, Mario Andretti got his start in dirt track racing, as did most of the earlier drivers did in United States racing. Guys from the old days grew up in garages...they could take apart a Ford motor, Chevy motor, Dodge motor and put it back together blindfolded before they ever got behind the steering wheel of a car. Not like today where drivers are groomed to be just a driver, and don't really know that much about the motor. Dirt Track racing has pretty much been relegated to the local sports scene here. But I get off the subject of this thread. Sorry.

[Speed Demon]

The ugliest car of recent years has to be the 1995 McLaren, with it's silly mid-wing and brutal nose. Everything about it looked wrong, and it performed accordingly.

Although it never raced, Cosworth's 4WD car of 1969 was startlingly angular, although it was claimed to be be quite aerodynamically efficient for the time.

The Ensign N179 would not have been too bad, were it not for the fact that the radiators were mounted at an angle in the front nose cone, giving a rather incomplete look. Evidently Ensign agreed, re-engineering it with side radiators.

And although it was probably the best car of the year in 1982, the Ferrari 126C2 struck me as being horrible to the eye, although that may have more than a little to do with the slap-dash way the livery was applied. And in 1978, Arturo Merzario's team tried to clone the Ferrari's he once drove, to a spectacularly dumpy effect in the form of the A1. He was better as a driver than a car designer...