None can deny that the Japanese have manufactured some questionable car designs throughout the years. In fact, there are so many ugly JDM cars that this list still leaves out a few cases, but we’d like to believe we included the most unattractive designs to date. Here are 14 of the most ugly Japanese cars ever designed! Enjoy!
Being placed on the 14th spot on this list, the Suzuki X90 certainly is not the ugliest car we’ve walked upon, but once you give it a good glance, you’ll start noticing the weird shapes and body proportions.
Just by looking at the size of this thing, you’d figure this would be a small Kei car which would somewhat justify the design, but it is not. The body proportions are extremely awkward and the rear is just abysmal. Certainly not a car I’d like to be parked on my driveway.
You’d figure it would be hard to design a truck that would actually turn out bad. All trucks basically share the same appearance except for some minor details like bumpers and lights. It’s actually quite impressive how Toyota managed to come up with this monstrosity.
The front of this truck is not that bad, but the rear definitely makes up for it with its extremely hideous rear lights. It’s like they designed a wide body kit and then placed the rear lights on top of the extended part.
Most people have probably been faced with this abnormality at some point. The design of the Juke is everywhere, it seems like they were designing three cars at once with five different designers. The chassis of the Juke is not great, but for a family car, it could definitely be worse. But it’s this horrendous light design that completely turns the Juke into one of the ugliest Japanese cars to ever be manufactured.
Some people say that it kind of resembles a happy bee or something of that nature. But to us, it looks more like some creature in miserable pain. And to think they made a Nismo version of this family car just boggles our mind.
If you’re looking for a box on four wheels, then the Nissan Cube is the car for you. If you only see the Cube from the front, you might not be so offended. But once you start seeing it from the side, you’ll start to question the design. And once you’ve arrived at the rear you’ll likely already turned around in disgrace.
The design of the Nissan Cube is what you and I painted when we were five years old. A square with four wheels. I am sure I’ve got a painted picture somewhere with this exact design.
Izuzu makes a lot of great trucks, crossovers, and SUVs – but let’s be honest, their strong side is not their design department, and that is certainly reflected in the Isuzu Vehicross.
It’s hard to say exactly where they went wrong, but it just looks so wrong. The front has this very slim grill with a headlight design that somewhat resembles the one of the Nissan Juke. And from there on, the rest of the car just kind of…grows. If I had to explain the design of the Isuzu Vehicross with just one letter from my keyboard, it would be ‘<’.
The first sports coupé on this list, and an expensive one too, this model has been seen listed for over $100,000.
The Nissan Autech Zagato Stelvio certainly has a unique design, likely not seen in a car ever before. But that alone doesn’t make it “good-looking”.
The first thing one likely wonders is, where the hell are the rear-view mirrors, and what are those big humps on the hood? The hood is not some vents for air to flow through, they are actually housing the rear-view mirrors. And they are squeezed in there quite far too, so they are likely not very useful.
The wheels are basically completely covered and it seems like the designers were going for some next-level aerodynamics with the Zagato Stelvio but at the cost of beauty.
A modern van, and a Lexus at that. The Lexus LM Minivan must have the largest grill in the entire world. The grill itself looks almost larger than the windscreen, and Minivans don’t have small windscreens. I mean, at this rate, the grill is likely to continue over to the side of the car, that would be a sight to be seen.
Just stare at it for a few seconds, it gets really ridiculous after a while. What went wrong? What happened to the reasonably sized grills of the 90s? I’ve never met one person who finds these types of grills attractive to any extent.
Another horrendous Toyota design. The Japanese seem to have this obsession with combining two moderate-looking designs and making them into one. Just like with the first-generation Toyota Mirai. It almost seems like a Toyota Pris and Subaru SVX were morphed into one design.
Do you see the resemblance?
Not a lot has to be said about this one.
I get it, making an extremely small vehicle good-looking might not be the easiest of tasks, but let’s be fair, they could have made it a little bit better looking. I can’t think of anyone voluntarily entering this car.
Sure, it might have its uses, and it may be quite quirky and fun, but it is one ugly car.
A favorite, the Mitsubishi I-Miev is not only the slowest, and lowest-range electric car in America, but it is also the worst-selling, and likely the ugliest electric vehicle on sale.
It seems almost as if the design was inspired by a honey bee with its cute little face and rear-view mirrors for antennas, and that’s not a good thing per se. Supposedly, the only good thing is that it’s relatively cheap to lease. So if you’re looking to lease a cheap electric car with no interest in design, quality, and range then the Mitsubishi i-Miev might just be the car for you!
This car has to be the equivalent of those super tiny clown cars in cartoons where 20 clowns fit into one vehicle.
The S-Cargo’s design was inspired by the Citroen 2CV, but unlike the 2CV, the S-Cargo’s proportions are completely off. The front is extremely tiny, and then comes this enormous and bulbous windscreen and roof lining. The side profile is not any better, it looks like they had a piece of cardboard and just cut out a door. There are no designing lines, just a flat metal sheet.
You can tell they tried to do some fancy design cue with the A-pillar, but it just looks so understated and weird.
If Nissan followed the same concept as they did with the Nissan Cube, then this car should be named Nissan Circle or something in that direction.
The Mitsuoka Orochi is not known for a lot of things. In fact, it is not really particularly good at anything. But it is famous for one thing, and that is because of its extremely ugly design nature.
This car has a lot of lines, unfortunately, none of them are very good, in fact, most of them are horrendous. You can tell the designers aimed for a fancy-looking aerodynamic supercar look, but somewhere along the lines, it went horribly wrong.
This car just looks like a kid with a little too much money went on a spending spree to create the most unattractive kit car ever.
You might be familiar with Volkswagens Beach Buggy, but I am positive you’ve never heard of Honda’s equivalent, the Honda Vamos.
This might just be the most unorthodox-looking vehicle on this list. It kind of looks like they started creating a regular vehicle, and once they finished with the bottom part just slapped on a windscreen and called it a day.
Unsurprisingly, the Honda Vamos didn’t really sell that well, and only a handful was ever manufactured. It is claimed that the lack of a 4WD system is what made it fail, but by looking at it I’d like to say there was one more reason.
The Mitsuoka the Le Seyde appears to resemble Cruella De Vil’s transport in the 101 Dalmatians and looks as if it were produced a long time ago, perhaps during the 1930s or 1940s. But this monstrosity was first manufactured in the 1990s all the way through 2006, how they even got to sell one unit is beyond me.
There is just so much going on, and nothing makes sense. The funny thing is that it looks like it would have a large V8 in it, and although the first versions came with a V8 from a Mustang, the later versions got the 2.0L 4-cylinder SR20 engine used in the Nissan Silvia.
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