DriveTimes Five
Five really weird-looking SsangYongs
The new SsangYong Rexton G4 is, by and large, a handsome large SUV. While it has a few styling hiccups (why are the doorhandles so low?), the overall appearance is generally appealing. The same can be said of the other recent entrants in the SsangYong family, with the latest generation of Korando being a handsome little thing. The Actyon ute also now has a face that won’t haunt your dreams. But it hasn’t always been this way. Far from it. Today we look back affectionately at some of SsangYong’s worst styling offences.
Rodius/Stavic (2004)
You can’t talk about weird-looking SsangYongs without starting at what is quite possibly the worst looking vehicle in recent memory, the enormous and appalling Rodius, or Stavic as it was badged in New Zealand.
Surprisingly, the Stavic was styled by an actual designer. Even more surprisingly, that designer was former head of automotive design at the Royal College of Art in London, Professor Ken Greenley. Apparently Greenley was aiming to ‘‘capture the essence of a luxury yacht’’, but instead captured the essence of a whale jammed in a shipping container.
Korando (1996)
The Korando has had an interesting stylistic voyage through the years. Starting off as a licensed version of the Jeep CJ-5, its current incarnation is that of a handsome conventional small SUV. On the way, however, it made a detour into ‘‘weirdly proportioned and cartoonishly bad Jeep knockoff’’.
And, yes, the hand of Greenley was responsible for this one as well. Based on a shortened version of the Musso platform, the Korando not only looked odd – with its narrow, squeezed face and odd bulges – but, as an added bonus, it was awful to drive.
Musso Sports (2002)
The Musso SUV wasn’t actually a bad looking thing. Apart from the comedy oversized tail-lights and some ill-advised chrome on later facelifts, it was actually rather handsome in an angular, early-90s kind of way.
The problem came a bit later when someone had the bright idea to make a pickup truck version. This basically involved lopping the SUV’s body off just behind the rear door and slapping a tray on the back, creating one of the most badly proportioned pickups ever. If looking like a concrete block balanced on a skateboard wasn’t bad enough, you could actually make the Musso Sports look even worse by adding a canopy.
Kyron (2005)
To be fair to the Kyron, it wasn’t all bad. But the bad bits did undo all the promise the good bits initially set up.
It all started well enough at the front and the bold front wheelarches were actually rather cool, but things quickly fell apart the further back you went, until you finally arrived at that hashed-up rear end. Weird tail-lights were just the final insult: it looked like nobody could figure out where all the lines should go, so they were just left hanging there in a confusing tangle.
Actyon (2005)
The replacement for the not-awful-looking Musso and the truly horrifying Musso Sports upped the weirdness to a magnificent degree. The Actyon (the name is a portmanteau of ‘‘action’’ and ‘‘young’’) was just all kinds of wrong rolled up into one confusing package.
The bizarrely sloping rear of the SUV was strange (although it did predate coupe-style SUVs by the Germans), while the gaping mouth and droopy lights could give children nightmares.
The Actyon Sports ute was a bit better for not having the sloping rear; but not a lot, although the 2012 facelift actually made the pickup a somewhat handsome (although still oddly proportioned) thing.