The Mercedes A Class: No Class
What’s worse than a car manufacturer who consistently and repeatedly puts out ugly cars, like Renault for instance, is a maker who usually dominates the aesthetic space by creating beauties but suddenly creates a ridiculously pathetic ride. That’s what we’ve got in front of us with the Mercedes A Class.
Sweet ride, eh? NO! Exactly. What a puny and just awkward car. Looks like you can carry it in your pocket. And what about that flat front? It doesn’t even have the definitions, curves, and lines of an actual car. Clearly this is a failed attempt at some type of “super-compact” car. Sure, there is a demand out there for small cars and they are useful in crowded metropolitan areas. But listen up Mercedes, you have a brand and reputation to uphold. If you can’t produce quality to match the rest of your models, then don’t produce anything at all! Don’t just do it because everyone else is. And with the result that’s in front of us it looks like you just so happened to suddenly decide to create a sub-compact and put the thing together from design to production in 24 hours. No second opinion, no reconsideration, no re-evaluation of the design.
What’s with that up-curve on the back door? What’s with that little pathetic window on the side in the back? This thing is just way misshaped and doesn’t have the right proportions. Any eye that’s not blind could see that right away. A mouse or some other type of rodent comes to mind when looking at this. It’s no surprise a lot of people said that the A Class hurt Mercedes prestige and overall image. Not only is this a design failure but because it’s cheaper it gets into the hands of people who should be driving a Kia and not a Mercedes.
From the back it looks like a van. The big surprise though is that it could actually fit in the trunk of an actual van. And check out the width of those wheels. The advantage is that tire replacements should be cheap if you’ve only got like 3 inches of rubber across. Bad part is that I’d be pretty certain the road-gripping is not that great and the ride can’t be all that smooth either. But what’s completely awesome despite all of this? Clearly it’s the cool visor that finishes off the roof in the back above the window. They were well ahead of the times. The most advanced technology in sun protection and shade creation for your riding comfort. Enjoy.
The Extinct Daewoo Matiz
This is the case of one of those ugly babies that only a mother could love. And since a car has no mother, there is thus no one to love the Daewoo Matiz. In fact, its “mother” even disowned it several times. It has lived in more foster homes than the average ghetto thug that is responsible for your local weekend shootings. When you check the Wikipedia page on this ride, you’ll see that it was passed from parent company to parent company. Its misfortune came from day one, when the company that it was designed for, Fiat (in Italy), rejected the design. It then clawed and fought its way into the arms of other makers, but only for a bit at a time. Believe it or not, this car has amazingly made it through so many different caretakers that its design exists as the following models: Chevrolet Matiz, Chevrolet Spark, Chevrolet Joy, Pontiac Matiz G2, Pontiac Matiz, Pontiac G2, Chevrolet Exclusive, FSO Matiz, Chevrolet Taxi 7:24, Chronos UZ, and Daewoo Matiz. Yup, that’s pretty crazy. Agreed. But at least we can learn a valuable life lesson from it - it’s apparently the ugly kid that sleeps around the most.
Why the car is so ugly isn’t very hard to tell. Just looking at the front of it, what’s up with that weirdly disproportional and just “off”/lob-sided slant of the hood? I’m pretty sure that only minivans keep the same diagonal angle from top of windshield to bottom of front bumper. But then they also have that massive size to somehow “make up” for it and at least that’s just the way we’re used to seeing mini-vans. But a small, (very) compact car? It just looks awkward. Then there are those headlights. Clearly the genius designer must have thought to himself that Mercedes has round headlights and Porsche has round headlights - and they’re doing stellar, so it must be that the round headlights are it. They undoubtedly make the whole car. Well, apparently not. For one, you would need to pay attention to the rest of the design, not just the headlights. At the same time, Mercedes has two round “eyes” on each side, and Porsche’s is a bit off-angle so that it’s not flush with the hood. It’s the small details that apparently matter. For this Daewoo hottie the two round headlights just look like they’re trying to imitate a scared facial expression. What could it be scared of, you ask? Well, I think that’s pretty clear as well. Any car within 10 yards of this toy is enough to pose an incredible safety risk, and the little sucker knows it well. So he’s already bracing himself for a head-on collision. In fact, a slightly larger flying insect might put a hefty dent into that chassis. I doubt that it’s solid construction. It targets cheap markets, looks cheap, and definitely can’t have much “thickness” to the exterior sheets, even if they are indeed metal. They should be putting a quarter next to this thing in all pictures for size comparison. It’s so small and stumpy looking that a Prius would eat it for breakfast (if the Prius, or any cars, ate breakfast, that is). The one claim to fame we’ll grant the sizzling Matiz is that it was ahead of its own time by being such a tiny ride even way before the newcomers of the “green” revolution started coming along (which is pretty much just now). And ugly it was, just as hybrids and enviro-amicable cars are today. Take a good look at this one, car manufacturers of today, and consider why Daewoo went bust. Maybe take this as a warning and stop while you’re ahead. Oh shitters - you’re not ahead of anything. Never mind. You’ve got nowhere to go but up from here, so keep on “pioneering” and “inventing” as you do.
