What's The Ugliest BMW Ever Made?

Image: BMW

We all have opinions about BMW’s design, and of course BMW has opinions about our opinions. From the website that asked you What’s The Ugliest Ferrari Ever Made and What’s The Ugliest Porsche Ever Made comes what I believe will be the final act in this trilogy. It’s time to decide the ugliest BMW ever made.

The BMW Isetta Is the Cutest Clown Car Ever

You could say we’re spoiled for choice here. There are more than a few current Bimmers that probably deserve this title, but I don’t want to beeline to the low-hanging fruit. Having given the question more than 30 seconds thought, I nominate the first-generation X4, a car I’m not sure I’ve ever seen in person.

That’s fortunate though, because it wouldn’t be a good time. The X4 was every bad BMW design tendency over the last decade-plus rolled into one. It was tall, narrow and short with a dumb, impractical roofline. It had too many mouths. It was too intense with the stubby face and oversized eyes. Just looking at it now I feel like it just will not shut up, even though it cannot speak. I’m not sure how to put that any more clearly.

Now, the current one isn’t a looker either, but it’s visually a little leaner and wider and not just an egg with vents, which I appreciate. Ultimately, that’s saying a lot, because much like another contemptible BMW of recent memory, the 5 Series GT, the X4 design team was faced with an impossible brief.

I know it’s no easy task to style an inelegant mash of every body style in one, so my blame rests with the folks at BMW who have the power to say “no” and repeatedly refuse to. There are currently 15 cars in BMW’s North American lineup if you fold the EVs into their model families and break the 2 Series into two completely different entities, because they are. That’s too many by a third at least. Makes you wonder what kinds of monstrosities BMW has rejected.

That’s my two cents. Now I hand it over to you, dear commenters, to name the most unsightly product bearing that familiar roundel. There are no wrong answers, unless you hate on the Z8.