Why You Shouldn't Count Out These Notoriously Ugly Trucks

Automotive design history has many highlights, but there have been plenty of notable duds, too, like the before-its-time Pontiac Aztek and the malformed Youabian Puma. Pickup trucks are not exempt from the latter category, although some pickups that might be repulsive at first glance are sleepers in disguise, hiding features that grow on you as you get to know them better.

Some of the trucks on this list are more familiar than others, but none of them will inspire oohs and aahs should you happen upon one in a grocery store parking lot or school pick-up line. But at SlashGear, we pride ourselves on finding hidden gems.  Read on to learn more about a handful of trucks that might inspire groans at first look but have something to offer you under their not-so-attractive surface layers.

The Honda Ridgeline is by no means the ugliest truck on the market — or even the ugliest Ridgeline ever made — but it is wholly unremarkable from a design standpoint. It looks like it was crafted by a committee of design wonks who were tasked with producing the most nondescript design possible, and it's indistinguishable from every truck from the last 8 years or so, save for the giant silver "H" on the grille. 

The Ridgeline is clad in cheap-looking black plastic from tip to tail, and the deep creases on the hood and along the sides make it look like the design team forgot to come back after lunch to finish smoothing out the Ridgeline's look. These aesthetic violations hide what is overall a decent machine underneath. Our Chris Davies reviewed the 2024 Ridgeline Trailsport and found it to be a good compromise between suburban go-getter and off-road fun machine, concluding that it was "a solid, commendable truck." 

Subaru tried to join the American ute craze in 1978 by slapping a pickup bed on the back end of the Leone and calling it the BRAT, or "Bi-drive-Recreational All-terrain Transporter." It was aimed at the Chevy El Camino, which disappeared from the market in 1987 along with the BRAT. The BRAT was sold in Oceania, Latin America, and Europe under an array of alternate badges, although a lack of demand for utes in Japan kept it out of its home market.

The BRAT is one of those vehicles that — like the Aztek — has gained a fan base with age and hindsight. The three four-cylinder engines offered during the BRAT's run maxed out at 1.8 liters and 95 horsepower. That was anemic for a time when displacement and dynamometer numbers still ruled. Now that efficiency is king, the BRAT's advertised fuel economy numbers of 25 miles per gallon in the city and 34 on the highway (which aren't bad by modern standards) look epic for its time. The BRAT is also as cheap to acquire today as it was to operate when new.

[Featured image by Sicnag via Wikimedia Commons|Cropped and scaled|CC-BY SA 2.0]

The '70s were a wild time, and even Cadillac's designers got dragged into the "let's make a ute" muck for a few brief years during this forgettable decade. From 1973 through 1976, GM's luxury division sold the Mirage, a pickup version of the Coupe De Ville built by Traditional Coach Works. The decidedly untraditional design saw a limited run of only about 200 units, and for those of us with functioning eyeballs, that's probably a good thing.

Legendary stuntman Evel Knievel bought the first Mirage. He had a thing for converted Cadillac pickups and owned at least one other similar monstrosity in a bright reddish-orange. If kitsch and owning a rare piece of forgotten history are your thing, you might want to see if you can find one of the few Mirages still circulating.

Toyota can be forgiven for making an ugly truck that functions as well as the Tundra. If you can look past the "just-like-every-other-pickup" outer shell, the Tundra offers as much as 437 horsepower and 583 pound-feet of torque from the iForce Max hybrid powertrain, and a peak towing capacity of 12,000 pounds. There's a 14-inch infotainment screen and 12.3-inch digital dashboard to feed you information from the available trailer backup guidance and other driver assist systems, and some of the Tundra's ten trim packages come with power adjustable seats or off-road ready wheels and suspension components.