Nine ugliest cars to race at Le Mans

Nissan GT-R LM Nismo

Yes, all you internet fan boys can pipe down. The incredibly long of front, incredibly short of talent Nissan GT-R LM was not a pretty thing. Kinda cool? Yeah probably, and that goes for a lot of this list, but it’s objectively ugly.

The decision to put the horse back in front of the cart meant the driver sat over the rear axle, perched behind a lot of car. And since it’s a closed cockpit machine that meant a very strange balance to it all. Almost like it could fall over backwards standing still.

It was also, rubbish. The Nissan GT-R LM Nismo only raced once, at Le Mans in 2015, where two cars failed to finish and a third was so far behind the leader it wasn’t classified, despite running at the end. No matter how many ways Nissan tried to use to frame it as a success, it was a failure. By the end of the year it was canned and would never, ever, be seen racing again.

Cadillac Le Monstre

In 1950 Cadillac prepared a pair of cars for Le Mans. Both were Type 61s, but while one looked very much like a Type 61 – think generic 1950s American barge – the other... did not. In fact, so different was the second car that French race officials insisted on stripping it down to make sure that there really was a Type 61 chassis underneath.

Quite simply it was a rebodied Type 61 attempting to have a go at creating the ultimate streamlined car of its era. It was long, and slim, with almost no accounting for the driver other than a small aero screen. As a result it was meant to slice down the long Mulsanne straight faster than pretty much anything else.

But, its aerodynamic advantages were for nought. The car – nicknamed Le Monstre by locals – finished 11^th, one place behind the standard bodied Type 61, after becoming stuck in a sandbank, a position from which driver Briggs Cunningham had to extricate the car... by hand.

Porsche 917/20 Pink Pig

Yes, let your hate flow through you, it just feeds us.

We’ve said before the Porsche 917/20 is an ugly car. And here we are, saying it again, and there you all are, getting angry at us like it doesn’t spur us on to do it all over again.

Just for the record, in its livery, the 917/20 looks great. The pink cuts of pork colour scheme that was added makes this particular Porker look awesome. But without it, the 917/20 is a bit of – and I make no apologies for this pun – a pig. And if the tale is to believed that’s why it got its awesome clothes. Martini was to sponsor the car but recoiled in horror at seeing the completed machine and refused to allow its colours to be used.

Audi R18 gen 1

The R18 is a bloody awesome machine and toward the end it became one of the most complicated cars the racing world has ever seen. But the very first one, well it was just a bit lardy. When it came out it also split opinion. The Peugeot it raced against was sleek and slender, but the R18 looked massive.

The fact that the aero fins, mandated for safety, were first introduced with the R18 didn’t help, but the R18’s proportions were off in other ways too. At the time LMP1 cars were starting to use rear tyres at the front for better grip, so the front arches are very, very fat. Then, to reduce downforce, rear wings were mandated to be slimmer than the width of the car, making the R18 look even lardier.

I think the R18 still looks great, but if I have to be objective, I can see where people were coming from – just like you should with the 917 Pink Pig – and despite its success, generation one R18 is a bit odd.

Aston Martin AMR-ONE

If you take the Audi R18 and you slice the lid off it and stick your fingers in its nostrils, you’ll get the Aston Martin AMR-ONE. And if you remove all but six of the laps that the R18 ever raced at Le Mans, then you get the amount of laps the Aston Martin AMR-One managed. Yes, six.

It didn’t help that the AMR-ONE followed the Lola-built Aston Martin AMR1-2, a stunning machine that took the lines of a Lola sportscar and added some Aston Martin styling and a screaming V12. In its place the AMR-ONE brought slab sides and a self-combusting straight-six engine.

With a high nose, flat sides that looked like they had never seen any aerodynamic engineering, and some weird tusks, the AMR-ONE was just a bit weird. And the fact that neither car passed onto its sixth racing lap... ever, doesn’t help. Henri Pescarolo eventually bought one of the AMR-ONEs to build his own prototype with, the slightly less ugly Pescarolo 03... and that was terrible too.

Piper GTR

The Piper GTR makes it in on a technicality. Yes it never managed to race at the Le Mans 24 Hours because it was decided it wasn’t legal, but it has raced at the Le Mans Classic since then, so we’re counting it.

With a fibreglass tub and a 1.3-litre Lotus engine the Piper GTR was meant to be a tiny little racer that sliced through the air like neither the car or the air were there. So aerodynamically led was it that it even had an aerofoil at the front tested at a university – almost unheard of in 1969.

At Le Mans, it suffered a few problems, including the rear deck flying off, overheating and one of the drivers not managing to record a qualifying time, and it was banned. And we’re sad that such an innovative thing wasn’t allowed to race. But at the end of the day it looks like a two pronged fork and its never good when you can compare the looks of a car to cutlery.

Frazer Nash Le Mans Replica

Now, the word “replica” here, means something very different to that car your mate has that he says is a Ferrari 355 but is suspiciously the same length as that MX-5 he “used” to own. Here, the Le Mans Replica was the full name of the car sold by Frazer Nash.

Unlike many on this list the Le Mans Replica was a brilliant thing, successful all over the world of motorsport and raced by some top-level drivers. But all that success cannot stop the fact that it looks like a two-metre-long bee that’s just suffered a nasty shock.

The wheels stick out all over the place, the headlights are tiny little things plonked on the side and the driver is sort of sat in the middle of a long tube.

Cooper T33

It’s hard to work out the weirdest thing about the Cooper T33. It could be that the lights are right at the bottom of the bodywork making the front look strangely melted. Or it could be that the driver seems to be sat in the car to its left. Or the very prominent steel wheel hubs.

All together it just looks slightly unsettling. There’s something just not right about the addition of that offset seating position to the incredibly long nose and the low lights. It looks uncomfortable. And the air intake makes it look a little bit sad too.

But its owners weren’t sad and aren’t today. In its day the T33 took 10 race wins and 21 podium finishes in 57 races, and today it has been at the forefront, and won, races at the Goodwood Revival. Just not exactly in beautiful style.

Morgan Aero 8 GT(N)

The Morgan Aero 8 always looked a bit... well you wouldn’t say it to its face. The headlights, all pointing inwards, they seemed to need medical attention. Or at least be told that if it didn’t stop pulling that face when the wind changed it would stick that way.

So then Morgan made a racing version of it, which raced at Le Mans in 2002 and 2004, and it turned out that if you stick a big wing on the back, some heavy duty sideskirts and lower it... it still looked weird. Especially in the vivid yellow and black livery it wore down the Mulsanne.

It didn’t do that well either. In 2002 it qualified 46^th (of 50) and didn’t finish. Two years later it was 48^th – dead last – and didn’t complete enough laps to be classified.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.