226 replies to this topic

[Dan333SP]

I was looking through some test photos for the test photo thread, and I got to thinking that the 1983 cars for the most part were abominably ugly. The ban on full underbody aero meant that teams chopped their sidepods to bits. Some cars (Brabham, Lotus) managed to make it work, but the majority of the grid was a disaster.

 

I know 2014 was pretty bad as well with the phallic nose extensions. Some other contenders: 2012 with the stepped nose, 1998 when they went narrow track and grooves, 2009 when they abandoned complex aero appendages (but some probably feel this was an improvement), the 1995/96 cars with the ungainly high cockpit sides, ect.

 

What say the forum? Was 1983 the worse rule change for aesthetics?

 

 

 

 

Or...

 

 

Interesting to note that in each of these seasons, the best looking/most cohesive car (Brabham and Merc) won the world title.

 

[stewie]

The 2012-14 cars were certainly ungainly in the nose dept and made the cars/sport a bit of a joke.

[akshay380]

Except in 2012,the masters of foot in mouth, McLaren!.

[superden]

1983 was fine, they looked brutal.

The ugliest cars, for me, were 2008 spec. All those aero appendages, high noses, wheel covers ... they just looked like a ****ing rancid mess.

Edited by superden, 05 October 2015 - 10:18.

[Marklar]

Last year

[Brazzers]

2009-2017

[johnmhinds]

Still can't believe we went through a whole season of this:

[Dan333SP]

Rose-tinted glasses in full force!

 

 

Is worse than

 

 

Just IMO.

[Jon83]

The 2014 noses were an absolute horror show. I didn't think the 2012 cars could be beaten in the ugly stakes, but 2014 delivered in spectacular fashion.

[Marklar]

2012 was saved for me by McLaren.

[TheRacingElf]

I can mostly appreciate the older cars, yes some were ugly but mostly that was because they just didn't understand aerodynamics that well yet. Before 2009 I never really thought "Wow that's an ugly car!", I knew all the aero appendages and little winglets were there for a reason and found them pretty cool to be honest. After the 2009 rule changes however it went downhill, the constant tweaking of the rules and the rules getting tighter and tighter every year caused the cars to look awkward. You can really see designers would have produced a totally different car if the rule book wasn't so tight.

[superden]

Rose-tinted glasses in full force!



Is worse than



Just IMO.

No ... I prefer the '83 cars. It's not me remembering them fondly through age and has nothing to do with 'rose tinted glasses' either, I'm looking at them side by side now and making an objective assessment based on their appearance.

Compared to a '08 spec car, the '83 cars look like fine art. The current cars are an improvement on '08 it's true, but it's like deciding if you'd prefer a punch in the face or a kick in the balls.

Edited by superden, 05 October 2015 - 10:28.

[Lennat]

The 2012 cars looked quite ugly. I saw a 2008 Mclaren a couple of weeks ago in London, and was blown away by it. Kinda "busy" looking, but still purposeful in its own way. It looked mean, fast and brutal.

[Kulturen]

I've never understood and will never understand people who liked all the ridiculous winglets. At the height of that era, cars looked like they had 10 mirros attached in random places.

[oetzi]

The shark fin cars were genuine abominations.



Anyone who thinks they look good will receive a free Labrador by return post.

[Gilles4Ever]

Any set of rules that produced this was damn near perfect

 

[Marklar]

The shark fin cars were genuine abominations.
Anyone who thinks they look good will receive a free Labrador by return post.

Damn the f duct!

[Dan333SP]

The shark fin cars were genuine abominations.



Anyone who thinks they look good will receive a free Labrador by return post.

 

I'll take the dog. I liked them, because with the F-duct the sharkfin served a clever purpose. Hate them on WEC cars, though.

[oetzi]

Damn the f duct!

Keep your biases out of this. No technology in any cause should hurt the eyes like that.

[Anja]

I really can't stand the awkwardly high airboxes on mid-70s cars, but was there any specific ruleset to them? There was a lot of weird design in those years anyway. Apart from this, sharkfins were really awful - just one part made the cars look so much heavier and bulkier.

Edited by Anja, 05 October 2015 - 10:45.

[thegamer23]

 

 

 

 

Case closed! 

[oetzi]

I'll take the dog. I liked them, because with the F-duct the sharkfin served a clever purpose. Hate them on WEC cars, though.

There you go

[king_crud]

1983 may not have looked great damn there were some interesting designs, and the cars looked very different. Unfortunately that freedom has been curtailed these days so the cars look generally the same.

[Dan333SP]

I will grant that 1983 had variety. The Mclaren was clearly not an ungainly design-

 

[Kristian]

Haha its been a while since I saw the phalli of 2014, and they look hilarious now. 

[oetzi]

I will grant that 1983 had variety. The Mclaren was clearly not an ungainly design-

It was about the dullest on the grid, though. There were some truly unique looking cars in '83

Like



And



And



And



And



I liked them, anyway

Edited by oetzi, 05 October 2015 - 11:07.

[Gilles4Ever]

For me 2008 was the ugliest

 

[GSiebert]

2009-2017

This.

 

There was ugly cars in any set of rules and I see them as exceptions, but since they reduced the rear wings width and increased the front wings', they're all ugly to me.

[Marklar]

For me 2008 was the ugliest
 

It wasnt even the worst BMW

[ViMaMo]

1983 was not bad at all.

 

The recent years have been terrible. Not to be fantruming , the ugly noses by far the worst, next is the rear wing. The rear win doesn't look that bad, but I see pics from 2008 or earlier, the rear wings were nice. 

Edited by ViMaMo, 05 October 2015 - 11:09.

[chunder27]

Ugliness is totally dependent on the person.

 

For me I loved the cars of the mid 80's as they were trying to overcome bruet force with early ways of working out aero and car design.  They were brute force cars that son develoepd into beautiful machines like the FW11 Wiliams and latter Ferrari F187's and the like.

 

For me a lot of the modern cars with theri stupid front wings, daft box rear wings, pathetic 6 or 7 tier winglets are an embarassing showcase to the extravagance of our sport monetarily.

 

The same was still true in the 80's but when I tell you one of my favourite ever cars is the Spirit Honda or the 1983 Toleman, you will understand that the ugliness of most is the beauty in engineering terms of mine!  Give me Group B, top fuel dragsters, tractor pulling over Ferrari's, 250 GTO's etc.

 

One thing I will say is that I thnk the modern WEC cras are going this way a little they are rather brutish and not hugely aesthetic in terms of looks and that is a good thing in my eyes.

 

But F1 for me was at its best looking wise in the early 90's

[Marklar]

Remember this piece of art in 2008, the following year it won the championship....

Edited by Marklar, 05 October 2015 - 11:09.

[oetzi]

Ugliness is totally dependent on the person.

Not completely - some things are absolutely ugly, and liking them signifies deliberate contrariness or some form of physical or mental debility

[oetzi]

Remember this piece of art in 2008, the following year it won the championship....

Not until they'd tidied that mess up

[ViMaMo]

Ugliness is totally dependent on the person.

 

Sure, everybody will not like everything. That being said, one can't say the nose on this is beautiful .....  compared to 

[blackhand2010]

Not cars so much, but tyres.

The grooved tyres were horrible to begin with, but then they started painting the grooves to denote compound...

F1 - The pinnacle of technical motorsport excellence. With added paint...

[TecnoRacing]

Modern era far is the worst...there are some absolutely beatiful indivdual elements no doubt, but the cars are - by the rules - just ill-proportioned.

 

Nothing to do with rose tinted glasses...Some of late era ground effects car, with the more rounded noses and cockpit pushed far forward were pretty nasty, clunky looking machines. 1983 was glorious return to aesthetcic form imo...some great, simple, missle like designs like the BT52 shown above...

[dweller23]

2008 produced horribly looking cars, I liked the simplification that begun in 2009. Throughout the years, there were parts that were hideous (like 1984 double rear wings, which were also used in 1994 I believe), but no season had cars looking as bad as 2008. All the winglets, introduction of shark fins, all of it was ugly.

[ViMaMo]

 

 

Case closed! 

 

I almost threw up ....

[Brackets]

Rose-tinted glasses in full force!



Is worse than



Just IMO.

Most certainly not.

The Bennetton is engineering in motion.

The McLaren looks like something from a computer that has been heating it's cooling lake.

[P123]

It wasnt even the worst BMW

Wash those eyes out! The Walrus Williams was a great looking car. If you are going to have an unorthodox nose then better that than what the rules gave us in 2012- 2014.

[Nonesuch]

The current dimensions of the tiny and high rear-wings and low and wide front-wing make this post-2008 era a prime candidate.

 

Add in the removal of the bodywork in front of the rear-tyres and you get unbalanced messes like this:

 

 

 

There were plenty of abominations before, of course, but this is made worse by being on purpose.

Edited by Nonesuch, 05 October 2015 - 11:31.

[Marklar]

Wash those eyes out! The Walrus Williams was a great looking car. If you are going to have an unorthodox nose then better that than what the rules gave us in 2012- 2014.

Ive celebrated when they finally got a rid of it. Ugly AND slow

Edited by Marklar, 05 October 2015 - 11:33.

[noikeee]

I don't mind the 83 cars and I don't mind the 2005-2008 winglets car (except for the truly ridiculous ones like Honda's dumbo wings). All of those certainly weren't "beautiful", but looked purposefully aggressive.

 

Dick noses and stepped noses take the piss though, specially since they were so widespread through the grid and completely a direct result of the regulations rather than experimentation with silly things (like, say, the 1970s comically tall airbox Ligiers). Combine that with the fairly stupid proportions of current cars (2009 certainly introduced sleeker cars but the proportions have never looked right since), and you've got 2 great contenders for the worse ever set of regs regarding looks, surely.

[ViMaMo]

 

     Super looking car. 

[Dan333SP]

The current dimensions of the tiny and high rear-wings and low and wide front-wing make this post-2008 era a prime candidate.

 

Add in the removal of the bodywork in front of the rear-tyres and you get unbalanced messes like this:

 

 

 

There were plenty of abominations before, of course, but this is made worse by being on purpose.

 

Eye of the beholder and such. I love that Ferrari, even if the rear wing would look better if it were wider.

 

I get that a lot of the distaste for modern cars is because rules manipulation forced them to run with the phallic noses and strange proportions, but I still think looking at some of the '83 cars in a vacuum without the context of rules shows them to be uglier than most of these modern machines.

[Kobasmashi]

There were some right ugly ducklings in the mid 70s. Also 2009's proportions were all wrong, the cars look better since the wheelbase was lengthened from 2010 and since the front wings have been slightly narrowed.

[GrumpyYoungMan]

No ... I prefer the '83 cars. It's not me remembering them fondly through age and has nothing to do with 'rose tinted glasses' either, I'm looking at them side by side now and making an objective assessment based on their appearance.

Compared to a '08 spec car, the '83 cars look like fine art. The current cars are an improvement on '08 it's true, but it's like deciding if you'd prefer a punch in the face or a kick in the balls.

+1

[maverick69]

2014 all day long. "Bob's Knob" will continue to be a laughing stock for many years to come.

 

As an aside: I really like the 1983 cars. They had a "Can-Am" vibe going on..... aggressive and innovative...... unlike sticking a big black (or blue) cock on the front of your car.

[johnmhinds]

Eh, i'm sure if they opened up the rules we'd get more stuff like this.