Introduction
Have you ever seen a car with a frontend that just makes you go damn? You know when you’re out driving, and you just see something that looks mean coming up behind you in your rearview mirror.
In this article I will rank the top 5 car brands with the best-looking front ends. Note that I am ranking the brand, not just a single car. Meaning that brands with good looking front ends across their entire lineup will rank hire than brands that maybe have one or two really good-looking cars but a ton of bad looking ones. I also will be focusing on the car brands that you’d see driving around everyday, though I may make a separate video ranking the more exclusive brands.
For example, let’s say we have a brand that has two amazing looking performance models with really mean front ends, but then a plethora of economy cars that look awful. This brand wouldn’t be ranked that high because the majority of cars in their lineup don’t have good looking frontends.
I am making these rankings off the top of my head without doing any research, because I am sure that by doing research I could find a bunch of examples of terrible looking cars in any brand. Here I am going off of what I can remember and know, not going out of my way to identify ugly cars. Of course, now I must make the obligatory opinion statement before the keyboard warriors come for me. So, these rankings are just my personal opinions and are not a fact, feel free to disagree with me in the comments. And without further ado, let’s get into the rankings.
Number 5
We have Nissan to start our list off, and depending on your opinion of Nissan this may either seem like a very strong, or very weak, start. Even if you aren’t a fan of them, you got to admit that Nissan has made some good-looking frontends over the years.
They’ve given us the GTR series, which I regard as some of the best-looking Japanese cars of all time. The R32, R33, R34 and R35 all have great looking front ends, with the R34 and R35 holding a special place in my heart.
Of course we can’t forget about the 370z and new Z, and while they may look a bit funny from the rear, the front does look quite nice. I have always been a fan of the 370z and once I have enough money to buy a daily and weekend car, the 370z seems like a great option.
And finally, we have the Silvia’s, and while I have never really been interested in them, I cannot deny that they look good. I find the S15 to have a particularly good-looking frontend.
All this being said, Nissan isn’t without its faults, they have produced what I think may be one of the worst looking frontends I have ever seen. I’m looking at you, Nissan Juke. I also have never been a fan of the front end of 350z or Fairlady 240z. I know that the Fairlady is a classic, but I really am not a fan of the stock frontend, modified however is quite striking.
I have also never been a fan of their SUV styling, while it has improved with the newer generations, they still aren’t what I’d call attractive. And if we go back a few generations, well let’s just say that I struggle to find anything good to say about them.
So, despite having made some great looking cars, Nissan has also produced many ugly ones, which is why I feel I am forced to place Nissan at the bottom of my top 5. That isn’t to say that Nissan is the worst, although it’s at the bottom it does still appear in my top 5, there are plenty of brands that I’d rank below it (see my honourable mentions section).
Number 4
If you’ve been reading my articles or following me for a good amount of time you’ve likely realized that I am a Honda fan. And perhaps you would’ve expected Honda to have landed higher up on this list than number 4. But I won’t let my love for them bias me, Honda, not unlike Nissan, has had their fair share of both hits and misses when it comes to front ends.
Let’s start with the misses this time. If we roll back a few generations on nearly any of their vehicles, we will arrive at an ugly front end. If we go to the 9th generation civic, we arrive at what I think is an ugly front end, though I do like them modified, in their stock form I’m not a fan. The pre-2016 accords all looked pretty bad to me as well (though they also do look good modified – but really what car doesn’t?).
If we go back a few generations on their SUVs or Ridgeline we also arrive at some ugly front ends. The early CRVs (mid 2000s generations) do look pretty good, but the generations between that and present day are pretty rough. If we go one generation back on the Pilot it essentially becomes an egg. And the previous generation of the Ridgeline looks like something that is still going through puberty.
So after hearing all of these negatives, you probably are wondering why Honda is even on the list, and that is because they had a glow-up. When I look at the current generation vehicles in their line-up, most of them look incredible, they look like they’ve finished going through puberty. The new generation civic looks incredible, and I think the frontend is gorgeous. The new generation CRV, Pilot and Ridgeline are all similar but that’s not a bad thing, they all look very aggressive. The 2016+ generations of the accord all look good from the front in my book.
And if we really push time back, classic Honda’s all look amazing. The S2000 is a work of art and so are the early civics. The 90s NSX is something I consider to be one of the best-looking cars of all time, from any angle – I put it right up there with the R35.
So I feel that Honda is higher than Nissan because they simply have more cars that look good, though they still appear low on the list because their lineup hasn’t always looked this good.
Number 3
Ford being in the number 3 spot and above Honda may surprise some people, but hear me out. I’ll be the first to say that Ford isn’t known for having great looking frontends, in fact I don’t think that they really have any amazing frontends outside of the Ford GT. That being said, they do have very many decent looking frontends, and they have been looking good for a long time.
For example, the F-150s have looked good for nearly my entire lifetime, and the Mustangs have looked good for nearly my parents’ entire lifetime. Their SUVs have never looked bad to me as well, and the Bronco has always looked great in my books. Aside from those three they have had some other good-looking cars as well: the Fusion, Focus hatch and the Taurus don’t look half bad, but they haven’t had the same longevity as the other models in Fords’ lineup.
I’d say that the Focus sedan and early gen Taurus are two of perhaps the worst looking frontends produced by Ford that I can think of off the top of my head. So although they don’t have the showstopping frontends that Honda and Nissan do, they do have an incredible amount of decent looking front ends. As I stated above, some of their models managed to look good throughout their entire history and still do today. This long string of goodlooking frontends is what places Ford above Nissan and Honda, but it doesn’t rise higher than the third spot because none of its frontends are particularly amazing.
Number 2
Many of you were probably wondering when a German brand would appear on this list, and your prayers have been answered, Audi takes the number two spot on my list. When I sit here and think (without doing research), I am hard-pressed to think of an ugly Audi. The only thing that comes to mind are the earlier gen A1s, but while they didn’t look great, I wouldn’t say that they were ugly. I’d say that the early gen Ford Taurus was far worse.
Aside from the A1, I can’t think of any cars in their lineup that are ugly. Everything from the RS series looks great, the same goes for the S series, the A’s look great and in previous years they weren’t awful and the Q lineup in my eyes has always looked decent (getting better each year in fact).
Audi has had one hell of a consistent run when it comes to making goodlooking front ends. Though I see how some could argue that all of their frontends look the same, and to an extent I agree. Audi could take more risks and introduce more variability across their frontends, but this is also what gives them that consistency.
I feel Audi could make their frontends somewhat more aggressive, but that comes at a compromise. Audi’s current conservative styling is what allows their cars to be bought by so many different people with different interests, whereas more aggressive styling perhaps could push away people looking for daily drivers. This is one thing that holds Audi back from taking that number 1 spot.
This may beg the question of what brand is in the number 1 spot, because this level of consistency from Audi is unbeatable. The brand in the number 1 spot essentially matches the consistency of Audi but does so while also having both more variability in their lineup and better-looking front ends than Audi.
Number 1
We’ve finally made it to the number one spot, and the brand with the best-looking frontends is BMW. BMWs are incredible looking cars, and they have a sort of aggressiveness to them that just makes them look mean.
Off the top of my head I can’t think of any ugly BMWs, even their economy and electric models look good to me. Their entire lineup looks good, it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about SUVs or sedans, performance cars or economy cars, they all have goodlooking front ends.
The i8 was far ahead of its time and still looks amazing, the new refresh that the i-series has received also looks quite good. Of course, the competition M cars are works of art, with very few performance lines existing that could compete with them in looks. The M-lite cars are also stunning, the M340i looks surprisingly menacing despite being an M-lite, and the same can be said for nearly any of their sedans. Last but not least, we arrive at the SUVs, they all look quite similar and good from the front. But I must say that the X5 is a real show-stopper, I would go as far as saying that it is one of the best looking SUVs ever.
That being said, the performance cars definitely do look better than their economy cars, but that doesn’t mean the economy cars don’t still look good. When I’ve been out driving, I always notice that the silhouette of BMWs in my rearview mirror look terrifying. The headlights look like eyes staring into your soul, pushing you to move out of the way.
None of the brands on this list can compare to the aggressiveness that a BMW frontend has, the brands that can compete don’t exist on this list because they aren’t cars you could see everyday on the road. For example, a Lamborghini frontend would look scarier than a BMW, but you don’t see Lamborghini’s everyday and they’re in a different class than BMW.
BMW takes the number one spot because they have better looking frontends than every brand on this list, great consistency with good-looking front ends on every model in their lineup and produced goodlooking front ends throughout their entire history.
Honourable Mentions
I am sure after reading through my rankings you all have suggestions for changes to be made. I’m making this section to explain how I arrived at the rankings and some of the decisions I made, though I doubt it’ll address everyone’s concerns.
For the number 5 spot it was a toss-up between Dodge and Nissan, they both have made some stunning cars and some not so stunning ones. However, I felt Nissan was doing a bit better than Dodge, in the sense that Dodge had more ugly cars than Nissan did. Hence why Nissan took the number 5 spot, and Dodge didn’t make the list.
Not including Toyota on the list was a tough choice for me, they could land somewhere between Nissan and Honda. But the reason Toyota didn’t make the list because I find that while they have some decent looking frontends, that’s all they have. None of their frontends are stunning or aggressive, while Honda and Nissan do have some very aggressive looking cars. Toyota also can’t match the consistency of Ford or Audi.
Porsche very nearly took the number 1 spot over BMW, however I changed this at the last minute. The reason being is I felt Porsche didn’t meet my criteria, specifically the one where I said that I would be ranking brands you could see everyday. While Porsche is definitely more common than say Lamborghini, it isn’t more common than BMW or Audi. And when I think about, I quite literally see a car from brands on this list everyday, but I only see a Porsche almost everyday. So because of Porsche not quite meeting that criterion, I chose to exclude it from the list.
Sources: Nissan USA, BMW, HotCars, Nissan Canada, Driver Motorsports, Wikipedia, TractionLife, Reddit, Small Honda, PNGKey, The Daily Drive | Consumer Guide, Audi Cuyahoga Falls, Pinterest, BMW Group PressClub
