A lot of people think this is the ugliest car Volvo has ever built – the 262 C. This was the fancy schmancy special edition exclusive extra expensive coupe version of the boxy 240 series. So what do you do when you want to make a coupe and you can’t afford to design a new body? Get the angle grinders out and chop the roof. This car was not pretty to begin with, but with a shrunken head? A bright red example was Volvo CEO at the time Pehr G. Gyllenhammar’s personal car for a time. We suppose all Volvo directors got one, how could they get rid of them otherwise?

We’re grateful to Carl Johan Rehbinder for collecting the information and pictures of some of the above butt ugly cars. His own site has lots more. We just thought these were the pick of the litter.

When Volvo first tried to expand into Europe, they wanted to get their hands on some production capacity inside the then fledgling European Common Market. The answer was to buy a Dutch car manufacturer called DAF (van Doorns Automobil Fabrieken). Among the piles of trash Volvo had to clean up in the factory was DAF’s plans for their next offering to the car hungry public. It became the Volvo 343. It got a Gremlin-like exterior and inherited DAF’s Variomatic transmission, some sort of rubber band thingy that allowed the car to go as fast backwards as it went forwards. The shift was really simple with only three positions – forward, neutral, and reverse – which made it rather popular with people who couldn’t afford an electrically powered wheel chair.

Before we saw the Ssang Yong Rodius this fine example of auto design gone terribly wrong was on top of our list of the ugliest cars of all time. The Pontiac Aztec looks like no other car. Thank heaven for that; imagine the street scenery if all cars looked like this. Whatever posessed the design team to come up with it, must be a matter for an excorcism. Or a drug test. Whoever said okay and put it into production should be shot. And then buried in one of them. Preferably the yellow peril above in an effort to get at least one these horrors off the face of the earth.

Every now and then you come across a car of such monumental ugliness it actually takes your breath away. This is such a car. The Ssang Yong Rodius MPV. We have not a clue as to it’s technical features; it may be a real gem for all we know, but all that is overshadowed by it’s pure ugliness. This is the sort of vehicle we would not want to be found dead in. Or, if someone would find us in one; we’d be forced to commit suicide.

The Independent reports that Britain will begin tracking and recording the movements of every vehicle on the road system. Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years. Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years. Via Boing Boing.