The nine ugliest F1 cars ever made

Caterham CT05

There is one person on the internet who will disagree with us here, but they are biased. The CT05 is so appallingly ugly that it has no real redeeming features and quite easily made our list of the ugliest race cars of all time a little while back.

Pretty much every F1 car in 2014 had a nose only a particularly short-sighted mother could love, which is why there’s more than one of them in this list. But the Caterham takes the biscuit for just not apparently bothering to try and make any effort. Sure, eventually they painted its massive nose black to try and hide it a little, but there was no denying it had a sex toy on its face. Later in the season the team fully redesigned the CT05, but too late, all we’ll ever remember is this one.

March 711

One of the most damning things you can say about the March 711 is that it was produced in the same era as the quite frankly stunning Lotus 72. Where Colin Chapman went all monocoque, sculpted the tiny radiators into the world’s first sidepods and swathed the 72 in a stunning wedge... Frank Costin doesn’t really seem to have bothered designing most of the 711.

OK, there’s good theory to the car and it did work, but the fact that the front wing could quite easily have been nicked from Newquay beach and was then mounted on a small pillar over the nose isn’t even the worse looking thing about the 711. The sidepods were rudimentary to say the least, and at times were just not there, the engine was completely exposed, and the main body was just a bit of a blob. The 711 never won a race, but Ronnie Petersen’s four second place finishes propelled him to runner-up spot in 1971 behind Jackie Stewart – with half the great Scot’s points.

Force India VJM07

Another car of the 2014 vintage of F1. The year that it all went so very wrong it would just be better for us to strike the whole year from the record books. It was the first year of the hybrid V6 engines, and they hadn’t split the wastegate from the exhaust yet, so the cars were barely audible over any circuit PA system. Then just to make matters worse, well, just look at them. A brave new era...

To pick the second worst of the season behind the Caterham CT05 is difficult. It could easily have been the frankly heinous Toro Rosso STR9, but we felt that was just about edged out in the ugly race by Force India’s diabolical effort. The VJM07’s proboscis was positioned between the mounts for the front wing. Those mounts were pretty long, and if you looked at them from the side they resembled the famous “walrus” Williams FW26. But where the FW26 at least had normal proportions and, you know, didn’t have an intimate object stuck to its face, it had the odd redeeming feature. F1 cars in 2014 were still stuck with silly high thin rear wings and massive wide front ones so they looked ugly enough to begin with, then 2014 just went all silly

Williams FW26

Showcasing that cars can be both ostensibly ugly by all rules of design, and at the same time quite cool, the FW26’s inclusion could be controversial. But it’s our list, so put your objections in the comments.

About 80 per cent of the FW26 is fine. From the front wheels back it’s just a mid-2000s Formula 1 car, a few aerodynamic aids creeping in, but mostly quite pleasing to the eye. At the front though, rather than taking inspiration from the fast swimming creatures of the deep like the Ferrari Sharknose, Patrick Head and designer Gavin Fisher appear to have copied nature’s most blubbery mass – the walrus. The FW26 was presented with a widening nose that was flanked by a pair of brilliant white tusks, acting as the front wing mounts. The front wing also had a slightly curious wiggly pattern to its design too, which didn’t help matters.

Later in the season there was a more conventional version, and that brought Juan Pablo Montoya’s final Williams F1 win. But the walrus nose never won, in fact only two podiums came with the bigger face – its predecessor had produced 12.

Ensign N179

Another car we have carried over from our ugliest cars of all-time list. The problem with the Ensign N179 is staring you right in the face as soon as you see it. We’re not talking about the later, redesigned one that looks a little more conventional – it’s still no looker. No, this is the original one. The one with the cheese grater.

While this is almost certainly not how it came about, it does feel like Technical Director John Baldwin and Chief Designer Shahab Ahmed just plain forgot to give the N179 a radiator when they designed it. Then, in desperation, slapped it on the front of the car. We’re sure it worked very well for outright cooling ability. But it was probably also a great target for stones and can’t have been particularly aerodynamic. Like trying to force a paving slab through the air. Safe to say it was not a good concept for an F1 car either. The N179 has a best finish of 13^th, which was also its only finish, and one of only four times it managed to even qualify.

Ligier JS5

This is a slightly difficult one for me. The Ligier JS11 is one of my favourite-looking racing cars of all time. But there’s no chance of redemption by relation, the JS5 is unremittingly hideous.

Unlike many in this list, that opinion doesn’t change whether you look at the earlier version or the later redesign. The original Ligier JS5 looked, quite frankly, like a tea pot. The high-airbox period of F1 design brought some truly brilliant looking things – Shadow DN7 anyone? – but sadly Guy Ligier’s first F1 car was not one of them. The main body was low and a little too wide to be pretty, except when you looked at it head on, when it suddenly looked too thin. But then there was a massive great tea cosy plonked on top. It looked like it was about to topple forward and kill driver Jacques Lafitte.

It was later redesigned. There was a change to the regulations and, we think, some plain common sense, and the tea pot was popped back in the cupboard. Sadly this just exposed how ugly the car was anyway, and the new airbox, looking like a cartoon sad face, wasn’t much better to gaze upon.

Ferrari F310

Michael Schumacher’s switch to Ferrari transformed the team. It drove the change from being mired in the midfield, completely lost in its own issues, to six-time consecutive championship winners. But, the transformation didn’t happen immediately. In fact the first car that the great German drove was... a little unconventional.

The rules for 1996 changed, bringing in much more protection for the drivers heads. Most teams discovered a loophole that allowed them to minimize the giant sideboards that now needed to adorn the cockpit. Ferrari did not. Meaning the 310 had an extremely weird cockpit. It also had strange sidepods that looked like hoover attachments and a low nose which was out of step with *checks notes* every other car on the grid.

Later in the season the F310 had a redesign, giving it the more de rigeur high nose. Unfortunately that made it worse. The new nose looked like the prow of a particularly ungainly ship and was attached to the front wing buy what could only be described as stalks.

Renault R29

It’s hard to describe how bad the Renault R29 looks other than just calling it a bit fat. The 2009 regulation change was supposed to make F1 cars more elegant, to remove the proliferation of aerodynamic aids that had become to festoon the cars. Indeed they did remove pretty much all of those accoutrement, but they also made a few of the... a bit lardy.

The R29 was the worst of them all. It had large sidepods that looked less like they were sculped for the car more melted onto it. And then a nose that was probably hewn from stone rather than formed from carbon-fibre. Overall it was hideous and Renault knew it. Almost immediately the, originally white, underside of the nose turned black to try and hide the sheer bulk. Unfortunately the whole mess of a car could not be redeemed by some black paint, and the whole effect was just worsened by a livery that looked like the inside of a Creme Egg.

Brabham BT34

Ron Tauranac is a key figure in the history of F1. With his impetus Brabham became of the greatest teams in Formula 1 history and his partnership with Jack Brabham helped to make the great Aussie the only man ever to win an F1 title in a car bearing his own name.

The Brabham BT34 however, was not a high point. It came just after Brabham had decided to sell up and hand the whole team over the Tauranac. Hiring Graham Hill could have brought a great short-term future should the car design that followed have been right. It wasn’t.

The BT34 looked a bit like a toothless walrus, with two strange scoops on either side of its adjustable front wing. That wing sat high up off the ground, not exactly helping matters. Behind that it looked like a rather basic F2 car, and when it had its airbox added, that looked more like a periscope. The BT34 had a best result of fifth among a list of retirements and non-points finishes.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.