In 2001, the ‘world’s ugliest car’ made its way to Australia. Thankfully, it didn’t stay long.
Story originally published in Drive on 4 May, 2001
Like a million or so other Australian television viewers, are you wondering what that contraption of a car was on Wednesday night’s penultimate episode of Survivor?
It’s badged Pontiac Aztek, but in its US homeland it’s billed as “the world’s ugliest car“.
So when Survivor contestant Colby Donaldson won Wednesday night’s reward he became famous for (a) making it so far in the American reality TV show and (b) becoming possibly the first person in the world to rave about an Aztek.
In Donaldson’s defence (pictured below, claiming his prize Aztek) he was gaunt and undernourished after 39 days in the Australian outback.
General Motors won’t reveal how much it pays for Survivor sponsorship but the move may have turned out to be priceless.
“How wild is this thing?” Donaldson exclaimed on-air. He loved the interior, he loved the exterior, he loved the paint, he loved the tent that attaches to the rear cargo area, converting the Aztek into a little camper.
As part of his reward, Donaldson got to sleep under the Aztek’s tent. He enjoyed it immensely and said so at length.
For General Motors, it amounted to a great plug on the one of the world’s biggest rating TV shows for a vehicle that has been described by many critics as an ugly disaster and has repelled buyers like no other new car in recent memory.
Whether this exposure will be enough to improve sales remains to be seen. The Aztek has been overshadowed by the resoundingly successful Chrysler PT Cruiser.
This is nothing fatal in a corporation that assembles hundreds of thousands of vehicles each year. But sales of the Aztek have run at about half the predicted annual rate of 70,000, indicating something awry with Pontiac’s all-activity people-mover-cum-four-wheel-drive.
In the US, there are the stories of Aztek drivers being given the thumbs down by other drivers and strangers asking, “Why did you buy it?”
What went wrong? The Aztek is cursed with tall sides and, according to Jim Hall, an industry analyst for AutoPacific. “It seems that in an effort to keep costs down they did away with curvature on the body panels. Whatever form it had has to come from cladding, which should have been body colour, but manufacturing didn’t want to stock multiple colours of cladding, so they are grey.”
It doesn’t help that the tall Aztek rides on tiny wheels, which make it appear to teeter.
The further problem for the Aztek is pricing. Hall says: “If they could sell it for $2500 [$4900] less it would be the roomiest and, in some ways, the most adaptable vehicle in the segment.
“And that would be a reason for a lot of people to buy it. Then the only thing people would be talking about was how ugly it is.”
Compared to such diverse competition as the PT Cruiser, Honda’s CR-V and Subaru’s Forester, the Aztek has comparable roominess but much more room for cargo.
The Aztek is available in front-drive or 4WD. The US price is the equivalent of $8800 more than the PT Cruiser and CR-V and some $6800 more than the Subaru Forester.
Pontiac’s Aztek is scheduled for emergency surgery – a facelift, body-colour cladding and larger wheels – as well as a price cut. The cure is as drastic as the complaint.
The good news is that the Aztek freighted here to be the Survivor prize will be sent back whence it came: America.
So, what happened next?
A hastily-arranged facelift, which brought smoother and now body-coloured cladding in place of the heavily-ridged acres of grey (pictured below), continued to tank on the sales charts.
Pontiac was aiming for sales of 70,000 annually, and needed to sell 30,000 every year just to to break even. The closest General Motors came was in 2002, when it shifted 27,793 of the unfortunately-styled crossover SUV.
GM pulled the pin on Aztek production in 2005, having sold a total of 119,000 over its six-year production run, a far cry from the 420,000 Pontiac had envisaged.
In 2008, the Pontiac Aztek entered popular culture with a starring role in the ground-breaking TV series, Breaking Bad, driven by the show’s main character Walter White (below).
Thanks to its starring role, the Pontiac Aztek gained a new legion of fans. In 2015, respected US industry analyst Edmunds ranked the Aztek sixth among US car buyers aged 18 to 34, a ranking it credited to the ‘Breaking Bad effect’ which had made the awkward and gangly crossover cool.
As for Colby Donaldson, the winner of Survivor’s Reward Challenge and the gleaming yellow Pontiac Aztek that came with his victory?
Donaldson’s victory in the Reward Challenge set the template for almost every other season of the hit show that followed – the Car Curse.
The Survivor Car Curse refers simply to the fact that no contestant who has won a car in the long-running show’s Reward Challenge has gone on to win the game. Donaldson, despite his Aztek-winning efforts, finished runner-up in Survivor: Australian Outback.
The Car Curse played our over 13 seasons of the show, only broken when Dino Paulo took home a Mahindra XUV300 after winning the Reward Challenge, before going on to win the overall season of Survivor South Africa: Return of the Outcasts.
What do you think? Is the Pontiac Aztek the ugliest car in the world? If not, what car gets your vote? Let us know in the comments in the below.
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