Cars can be objects of great beauty — and also stunningly ugly. Exterior design gets plenty of attention, but which cars have the ugliest interiors?
What’s the most important thing you might look for when buying a new car? Reliability, horsepower, or maybe the exterior design? Maybe it speaks to your heart most of all? While these are all pretty important qualities, there’s one aspect that doesn’t really seem to get talked about quite as much, and that is the vehicle’s interior.
Sure, the interior has to be good from a functional standpoint, but it’s also rather important that it looks nice. You won’t exactly pet your dashboard or door panels while driving, but a well-designed interior with attention to detail is nice to have.
Some automakers pay more attention to the interior than others, but for some, the interior is just a complete afterthought. Usually, a poor interior comes down to quality, but a lot of times, it can be a bit of an ergonomic nightmare as well. Overall, these interiors are pretty depressing places to be.Ford Taurus (Third Generation)
One of the most fascinating cars in American car history, Ford discontinued the Taurus after over 30 years in 2019. Of all the generations of Taurus, the third generation, available throughout the late 90s and early 2000s, is the most controversial.
That’s due to two main reasons: the strange rounded exterior design and the puzzling decision to continue the rounded design motif on the inside. The main theme of this Taurus was clearly rounded shapes, which is why Ford’s interior designers thought it would be a good idea to house most of the interior controls in an oval-shaped panel in the center.
I’m not exactly sure who signed off on this, but it’s weird. It’s a bit like those old Nokia phones that tried their best to reinvent the traditional phone keypad layout and failed miserably. Everything from the stereo to the climate controls is mashed together in one giant oval, and it doesn’t look good. As you might imagine, being a late ’90s Ford product, the quality of the materials wasn’t much up to snuff, either.Jeep Grand Cherokee (WK)
Introduced at the 2004 New York Auto Show, the WK Grand Cherokee was the first generation to offer the SRT8 model, which is a pretty cool SUV in and of itself. The regular Grand Cherokee was a bit of a different story, though. It did have some good qualities, but it faced a lot of criticism about the interior. One look at it is enough to see why.
Despite billing itself as a luxury SUV, the interior of the WK Grand Cherokee is anything but opulent. Somebody told Jeep that a navigation system and power seats and pedals were enough to be considered luxurious. Nobody told the interior designers that horribly cheap plastic and hideous fake wood trim don’t exactly help its case. As well as being cheap and plasticky on the inside, some of the WK Grand Cherokees have common problems, and they’re worth keeping an eye on.
To add insult to injury, there’s lots of unused space, and you simply get the sense that the designers weren’t exactly trying hard enough. It’s a very different story now, but back in the day of the WK Grand Cherokee, Jeep still hadn’t figured out the whole luxury thing. Being a Jeep, it’s not exactly going to age well, either, from a functional standpoint.Hummer H2
If you grew up in the early 2000s, your memories of the Hummer H2 are either thanks to rap music videos, various celebrities like LeBron James buying them and modifying them to silly degrees, or because it was one of the three luxury SUVs in 2004’s Need for Speed Underground 2.
