The Frumpiest Car in the World

I just started a new tradition with my brother. Well, it happened once, but I’d like it to happen regularly. On the drive back from our hometown, we took a detour to an car show in a nearby city. Walking the entire length of a convention center is great sibling bonding time.

We hadn’t even walked a third of the loop when I spotted this from all the way across the Cadillac pavilion:

It was the 2013 Buick Encore, Buick’s new compact SUV. The Encore is smaller and cheaper than the popular Buick Enclave (aka “the car that saved Buick). I hadn’t seen it in real life before, so I was excited to get a look. Then I vomited.

This car offended me in so many different ways. I’ll take you through, step by step, revelation by awful revelation.

First, there is the physical shape. At first glance, it looks like a bathtub. On second glance, an upturned toilet bowl is more accurate. That dumb little cowlick in the back looks like the drainage spout.

Second, that damn tear-duct-vent thing under the headlight. Yes, it is a popular trend right now, see the Ford Escape, amongst many, many, many others. The Buick Encore’s is one of the most nauseating, though. Let’s take a close-up look, shall we?

Fake, cheap plastic. Like a bad magic trick, or a terrible pun. But that’s not the only horrendous thing to happen with black plastic on this car.

Third, I present to you the thing that really killed me. You see the back window? You see how there’s a line that cuts through it?

What that line means is that there is a little sliver of “window” to the left of the line that is really a piece of shiny black plastic, and when the liftgate opens, you are left with something like this:

(thanks @johngeedub for the pic)

Isn’t that the worst thing ever?

Now, miraculously, I haven’t actually seen one of these on the road in the half-a-year it has been on sale. Maybe it is only being bought in affluent, coastal neighborhoods, where people would be rich and tasteless enough to buy it. That is a saving grace for us, but other places are not as lucky.

It has a clone! In Europe, this exact car is being sold by the mainstream European brand, Opel!

The practice of selling the same car under two different brands has many different names: “a solid product strategy”, “brand engineering”, and “cheap”, amongst many others. It is one of the cardinal sins of automotive design, and it is the final and biggest thing the new Buick Encore is guilty of.