Bear Claw. Mosh pit. Crystal meth. Walter White. All words from the troubled life of the Pontiac that helped kill Pontiac. We are talking about the Aztek, the new millennium crossover that cost its maker General Motors a whole heap of gold in failed sales, untold reputational damage and the resounding application of several nails in the coffin of a brand that had less than a decade to live.
Let’s wallow, just for one indulgent moment, in what was wrong with the Aztek. But only a moment, because to immediately list all its crimes of proportion would derail this piece. So we’ll save some for later. But here’s a starter pack: the wheel arches were too big. The wheels were too small. The wheelbase was too short. The body was too tall. The front arch extensions climbed too high. The rear arch cladding finished too low. The rear side windows sank too deep. The rear door windows came up short. The track was too narrow. The glasshouse was too wide. The rear was too square. The front flaunted too many orifices. And so it went on, endlessly and incredibly. The Aztek’s underside was probably a less visually discordant confection of shapes than the body that rose above it.
All this, from the company that brought you the ’66 GTO, the Firebird coupé and the mid-engined Fiero (well, it was eventually okay), not to mention the glamorous Star Chiefs and Bonnevilles of the 1950s and ’60s. The Aztec was a misshapen, jarringly disjointed, brain-souring vehicle that made a powerful early claim as the ugliest vehicle of the new century.
