Top-10 lists are inherently subjective, but Adam Wade’s (2026) ugliest “classic” cars strikes me as being particularly quirky.
On his YouTube channel called Rare Classic Cars & Automotive History, Wade focuses on American cars from 1957-90. His list has some obvious names, but he also throws in some questionable choices.
His rankings are as follows: 10) 1958 Lincoln/Continental, 9) 1958 Buick Limited, 8) 1974 Ford Gran Torino Elite, 7) 1977 Lincoln Versailles, 6) 1957 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser, 5) 1990 Imperial, 4) 1961 Dodge Lancer, 3) 1980 Lincoln Mark VI, 2) 1961 full-sized Plymouth and 1) 1977 Chrysler LeBaron.
A 1980 Lincoln is uglier than a 1958 model?
I can’t tell how much meaning Wade (2026) gives to where each car sits in his rankings. However, it strikes me as backwards if he considers the 1980 Lincoln Continental Mark VI to be the third ugliest car whereas a 1958 model was in 10th place. By the same token, I would consider the 1961 Plymouth to be uglier than the 1977 Chrysler LeBaron, which is the opposite of his ranking.
Another quirk of his list is that nine out of 10 cars come from 1957-80. Only one car — a 1990 Imperial — is from more recently. Why no cars from later in the 1980s, such as the 1981 Ford EXP, 1981 Chrysler Imperial, 1986 Buick Riviera or 1989 Chrysler TC by Maserati?
It’s interesting that Wade also does not include obvious candidates such as the 1958 Edsel, 1961 DeSoto and 1962 Dodge Dart. What’s also notable is that he doesn’t single out any cars from American Motors — even the 1956 Rambler six, 1957 Hudson Hornet, 1961 Ambassador, 1965 Marlin or 1974 AMC Matador sedan.
Meanwhile, he only includes one General Motors car — the 1958 Buick Limited. While I would agree that this may be GM’s all-time ugliest car of the postwar period, the automaker had its share of other questionable designs. As a case in point, how about the 1959 Chevrolet, 1970 Oldsmobile Toronado, 1971 Buick Riviera, 1971 Cadillac Eldorado, 1980 Cadillac Seville or 1986 Buick Riviera?
Is it truly ugly or merely less appealing?
Another quirky aspect of Wade’s list is that he includes cars that, at least in my book, were fairly innocuous looking such as the 1974 Ford Gran Torino Elite. Is he really going to argue that this car is uglier than the Chevrolet Monte Carlo? To my eyes the Elite may be less distinctive, but it is a cleaner design.
By the same token, I am perplexed as to why Wade is singling out the 1961 Dodge Lancer. While the first-generation Chrysler Corp. compacts were decidedly unorthodox in their styling, I think that the Dodge looked better than its Plymouth sibling because of a more conventional grille and taillight treatment.
Wade (2026) goes on to argue that the 1977 Chrysler LeBaron is ugly because it is a “hodgepodge of a bunch of different vehicles and it never really comes together.” I would agree that the styling wasn’t very good, but No. 1 of the top-10 ugliest? At most I would rank it around No. 9 or 10, if it made the list at all.
Also see ‘Adam Wade is wrong that the 1959 Continental flopped’
Wade (2026) muddies the waters by stating that LeBarons “were pretty miserable from a quality standpoint” and “not fun to drive.” Wait, this is more than a ranking of ugly styling? Here we have another example of how this top-10 list has a thrown-together quality. Nevertheless, I would imagine that it will get a whole lot of clicks.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 1993, 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, IL.
- Wade, Adam; 2026. “Top 10 Ugliest Classic Cars: The Stinkers from GM, Ford, Chrysler & AMC.” Rare Classic Cars & Automotive History.
PHOTOGRAPHS & ADVERTISING:
- oldcarbrochures.org: Buick Limited (1958); Chevrolet Monte Carlo (1974); Imperial (1990)
Adam dislikes boxy styling. Some of the cars on Adam’s list like the Ford Elite, Chrysler LeBaron, Lincoln Versailles, 1990 Imperial, and 1958 Buick have good basic styling but too much gingerbread. My ugliest car list would include most pre-1963 Ramblers, most early 1960’s Chrysler products, 1959 Chevrolets, and 1960 Fords.
Yup, the 1959 Chevrolet would be a particularly good addition if one sought more than one GM entry on the list. I’ve added that to the article.
Regarding the Elite, I was not a fan back in the day, though I would have chosen it based on style instead of the grossly overstyled Monte. How Chevy could go from the beautiful and understated 70-72 Montes to this abomination, I’ll never know.
I’m one of the few who like the 1958 GM cars, over-chromed and swollen as they are. Of the group, the Buick may be my least favorite. I don’t think the Lincoln Versailles is ugly either (standard ’70s design), just a poor idea much like the Cimarron.
The points that Steve made in this article are certainly valid and like the video said, keeping the list to only ten cars, even restricting it to 1957-1990, is going to leave out a lot of duds. I consider most of the cars in the video to be unattractive rather than outright ugly, but you have to keep your content distinctive if you want views. The Edsel and Matador are over-represented on these lists.
I both like and respect Adam as a car enthusiast, but I’d personally disagree with most of this list. I think most of these were, and still are, attractive cars. If I were doing this list, off the top of my head, the ugliest car would be the bustleback Cadillac Seville that premiered in 1980. Ugh! The boattail Buick Riviera from 1971. WTF? The “bustleback” Oldsmobiles Cutlass from circa 1978. The Pontiac Aztek. The Chevrolet Nomad truck. The Mustang Mach I from early 1970s with rear window parallel to the sky. The last Mercury Cougar from circa 2000. The original (Plymouth) Valiant from early 1960s. The Dodge Calibre. And finally, the first Jeep Compass. And there you have it, my 10 ugliest vehicles, from 1960 – today.
I don’t think he often features cars from the 80s onward. Wasn’t he reacting to a different list of ugliest cars?
I hate most ’58s but I do like the audacity of the ’59 Chevrolets, even though they were a one year design. It’s more distinctive than ugly. Same with the boat tail Riviera.
I am not going to look everything up but…sticking with domestics:
Just about any 1958 car (The Olds/Buick/Pontiac plus I just don’t like the bass mouth Thunderbird, though I appreciate its place in car evolution)
That late 50s Lincoln with the tilted headlights
Exner early 60s MOPAR… perhaps Valiant or warthog Dart
Last gasps of Rambler & Studebaker
Some of the early 70s large Pontiacs with the huge noses and fenderskirts
Brougham-tastic early 70s Fords with the double opera windows, vinyl tops, and too much trim
2nd gen Pacer. The Gremlin is cute in its oddness, and the first Pacer at least had a cohesive look. That 2nd gen hood is horrible.
Bustle Back Seville. I was a teen when it came out and I knew it was bad even then. No one but Bill Mitchell had nostalgia for that look.
In general, I don’t like the Monte Carlo (usually customized in my region) or the sweepspear sides of Buicks.
The GM X body cars. Special shout out to the Cadillac Cimarron. A lot of the small 70s GM cars were just not going to get import drivers to switch back to the domestics.
I am not a fan of many Chrysler/Dodge/Plymouth cars.
It’s not a car, but I really dislike that beige 70s color that looks like flesh. I particularly remember it on Delta 88s but it was everywhere.
It’s easy to pick on cars from ’73 on as they began adjusting to the bumper standards.
Probably peak years were 65-67… cars still had slim bumpers, slim A pillars, dashes that did not have so much plastic, colors were attractive, and there was just enough trim.
Just like all politics is local, all judgments about design are subjective.
And subjectivity itself depends on context and perspective.
In the context of the early to mid-seventies, the second-generation Chevrolet Monte Carlo was something of a breakthrough design. It was, in many ways, a Cadillac Eldorado for the working man. The initial offering in 1973 sold nearly a quarter million copies and even hauled home the coveted Motor Trend Car of the Year award.
Ford’s response, the Elite, came across more like a Torino that had eaten one too many plates at the K-Bob’s buffet.
Fifty years later, both cars look like what happens when a design committee spends too much time arguing in a fluorescent-lit conference room. Opera windows, landau vinyl tops, chrome trim everywhere you could possibly glue it. All of it layered onto otherwise ordinary midsize coupes to appeal to the rapidly swelling ranks of the American middle class.
To call one more attractive than the other is a little like choosing Mary Ann over Ginger. They’re competing characters in the same comedy. The answer says more about the judge than it does about the contestants.
As much as I enjoy Adam’s fine work and appreciate the automotive knowledge he displays on his channel, his Top 10 list of the ugliest cars misses the mark by a pretty wide berth.
The Lincolns on the list, both the 1958 and the 1980 models, are certainly not what anyone would call beautiful. But they don’t stand out in their grotesqueness any more than most of their competitors from those same eras. The same could be said for several of the other entries he included.
Granted, the 1961 Plymouth appears to have been penned during a design meeting where someone passed around a bottle of something that probably should have stayed locked in a pharmacy cabinet. But the truth is, most Chrysler products of the era were wandering around the same stylistic desert.
A buyer trying to choose between a brand-new 1961 Plymouth Savoy and a 1961 Dodge Dart faced a genuinely difficult decision. Mostly because whichever one he picked, he was going to spend the next several years explaining himself in parking lots.
If Adam’s goal was to spark polite debate in some places and bar fights in others, then mission accomplished. But if the intention was to produce a list that could stand up to serious scrutiny, the effort comes up a little short.
Any list of the ugliest American cars ever produced that doesn’t include the AMC Pacer, the Pontiac Aztek, or at least one of the many Nash experiments that rolled out of Kenosha simply can’t be taken entirely seriously. Every one of those cars was ugly the day it arrived at the dealership, and each of them has fought hard to hold onto that title ever since.
Some things age like fine wine.
Others age like a mayonnaise sandwich left on the dashboard in August outside the Dairy Twin.
PS
Troy, tap the brake pedal before you even think about putting the 1960 Ford on that list.
The ’60 Starliner was a beautiful car in 1960 and remains an icon today.
And the Fairlane 500 sitting in my garage isn’t exactly an eyesore either.
When you judge them against the competition they faced at the time, they were probably better looking than most of the cars parked at the dealership down the street… and certainly better looking than most anything rolling out of Detroit today.
You make some good points. The thing about subjectivity is that it can still be informed by meaningful criteria. For example, if one were to assess the styling of mid-sized personal coupes circa 1974-77, we might ask the following questions:
How was a design received by the automotive press of the time (and were any awards earned or “bought”)? How well did the car sell through its entire life cycle? To what degree did the design influence the industry’s subsequent direction — and with the wisdom of hindsight, was that an admirable direction or an evolutionary wrong turn?
Of course, the latter criterion requires one to make a judgment grounded in a set of aesthetic values. As a case in point, I may value efficient packaging and more “European” design cues than some Indie Auto readers.
I suppose one could downvote the Elite because it did not have unique sheetmetal like the Monte Carlo. But neither did the Cutlass Supreme — which for a number of years approached the Monte Carlo in sales before exceeding it in 1977. Or if we are focusing on weak sales, the Matador coupe could be pointed to as having most flagrantly misjudged the market — and being given increasingly ugly refinements in a vain effort to look more broughamtastic.
But then again the Matador coupe did have something lacking in any other mid-sized personal coupe — unusually clean-looking bumpers that didn’t have a bunch of cladding that made them look like battering rams. That was an interesting design innovation, but it didn’t get picked up by other automakers. A net plus, minus or who cares in the grand scheme of things?
Beauty and taste are in the eyes of the beholder. The non-Cruiser Mercurys of 1957-1958 are exciting cars, to me anyway, much nicer than a 1958 Oldsmobile. The Ramblers of 1955 to 1962 were more a concept rather than a cohesive styling exercise. Exner’s heart attack and Chrysler’s boardroom battle between Colbert and Newberg left Chrysler struggling for a direction after 1960. Ford had its own struggles as George Walker’s influence waned, but the post-1960 FoMoCo cars were consistent in their direction. (By the way, the 1960 Ford and Mercurys were great to my eyes.) The retirement of Harley Earl and the rise of Bill Mitchell created a time where Mitchell put his stamp on G.M. styling, but by 1961, Mitchell had set a thematic direction, in my opinion. All Studebakers were variations of a Lowey theme established in 1939.
The real problem, especially for G.M. after 1957, was too many models that overlapped going after imagined different market segments that only existed in product planners’ minds, but not in the thinking of the consumers in the showrooms. Robert McNamara turned out to be right: Ford did not need five distinct divisions. In 1961, three were more than enough (although I think Ford needs a true halo car or two: The Thunderbird and the Lincoln Mercury !). In 2026, watching G.M. try to make Buick a desirable brand again (think 1952-1953) is for me painful.