Unsuccessful facelifts

[egg]

Simca 1500 - delicate 60's styling

Simca 1501 - not ugly, but just not as well resolved. Probably a better car, but also a bit bigger so proportions weaker.

 

[egg]

I never liked the Nova facelift.

[DavieW]

Any Honda Civic since the cute little original has been worse than its predecessor. 

[ETCHY]

Jaguar XJS

I hated it when they re-did the back end & rear quarter, the original looked far cooler IMO.

The later bumpers were also too heavy looking.

 

[Carl1981]

One of the worst face lifts of all time…

becomes this…

ruined the front end and the rounded bumpers don’t go with the rest of the car which is really  ‘80’s styling. Worse still the facelift did nothing to improve the aging design of the actual car,  making the whole exercise pointless. The car really needed to be replaced by 1995 when the 100 launched.

I say these terrible things as both a metro fan and a Rover fan! 

 

[MiniMinorMk3]

On 29/06/2024 at 15:05, lesapandre said:

They did - late 60's vetoed on cost.

Roy Haynes designed this hip little facelift. What a great car it wd have been - a supermini before the Metro.

Product planning was another BLMC fail. No hatch 'till Metro - meanwhile Ford, Fiat and Renault etc cleaned up.

Stokes dropped all the badge- engineering names - but imagine that little hatch as a proper Vanden Plas or Riley.

But Leyland Innocenti came up with these in 1974, 3 years before Ford and their little hatchback. It came with economy 998cc or slightly less slow 1275cc engines.

[MiniMinorMk3]

 

[MiniMinorMk3]

[MiniMinorMk3]

[lesapandre]

18 minutes ago, MiniMinorMk3 said:

But Leyland Innocenti came up with these in 1974, 3 years before Ford and their little hatchback. It came with economy 998cc or slightly less slow 1275cc engines.

Vetoed I believe by BL management on the cost of producing the shells and interior space. 

The thing about the Roy Haynes hatchback is that it was ready as early as 1969 and would have gone with the Clubman nose.

I suppose by that point Metro, or it's first iterations were under consideration though that took a long long time. The whole story here:

https://www.aronline.co.uk/cars/austin/metro/lc8-development-story/

There were a number of iterations and wrong turnings.

The Mini was just so underdeveloped. Ford introduced 3 iterations of the Cortina in the time it took BLMC to make a few small changes to the Mini.

All a bit sad.

[MiniMinorMk3]

This was done in '68 by Issigonis, the 9X

A later version

[Metal Guru]

16 hours ago, DavieW said:

Any Honda Civic since the cute little original has been worse than its predecessor. 

I love the last two type Rs with mental spoilers.

[MiniMinorMk3]

[MiniMinorMk3]

[MiniMinorMk3]

[cort16]

On 26/06/2024 at 18:48, Rod/b said:

 

When ever I think of badly facelifted cars this is always what I think of. The original coupe is a fantastic looking car it's amazing the managed to fuck it up so badly with such a minimal set of changes. 

[martc]

17 hours ago, MiniMinorMk3 said:

But the 'middle' facelift was quite successful - the rectangular headlamps being far more in keeping with the boxy body work than the round ones -

[quicksilver]

2 hours ago, martc said:

But the 'middle' facelift was quite successful - the rectangular headlamps being far more in keeping with the boxy body work than the round ones -

The chrome grille is not really a facelift as it was available at the same time as this one. It was used on the SLX models to tell the world you were one of those lucky people who could afford a posh Lada.

[BL Bloke]

On 26/06/2024 at 18:36, Carl1981 said:

Citroen Saxo too…

 

I always wanted a mk1 when they were current, when I could finally afford a newer car they were onto the mk2, so I bought a 106 instead.

The Saxo did get a minor update to the grille before it got the full facelift.

DSCF0640 by timothy jones, on Flickr

[MiniMinorMk3]

[MiniMinorMk3]

The 1300 X1/9 looked so much better than...

than the big bumpered 1500 version

[lesapandre]

BINI gets the ugly treatment...

Still following the BMC design language though....😂

[caffeine]

Ah, the humble Vauxhall Vectra - doesn't get much love, perhaps unsurprisingly.

Dull and prosaic, sure but for what it’s worth I always thought the Mark 2 a fairly neat looking thing, dare I say, almost handsome, in a sort of unassuming and unpretentious way.




That is, until this happened:






Which is to say, Vauxhall decided it needed to look like the newer Astra of the time, this seems to perfectly convey what I said in the other thread about grafting styling cues from newer models onto body shapes that don’t suit them at all, and why the ‘corporate face’ approach often doesn’t work.

The drastic front end re-design just looks wrong and doesn’t ‘gel’ with the rest of the car and as a consequence looks like a ‘cut ’n shut’ that used the front end of a different model, which I suppose isn’t really that far off the truth.

Unloved as the Vectra may be, nonetheless, I think it deserved better than this...

[ETCHY]

How about a modern one.
Kia Picanto, it's just been facelifted from this 

To this. I mean wtaf were they thinking !!!??

[Cheezey]

5 hours ago, caffeine said:

Ah, the humble Vauxhall Vectra - doesn't get much love, perhaps unsurprisingly.

Dull and prosaic, sure but for what it’s worth I always thought the Mark 2 a fairly neat looking thing, dare I say, almost handsome, in a sort of unassuming and unpretentious way.




That is, until this happened:






Which is to say, Vauxhall decided it needed to look like the newer Astra of the time, this seems to perfectly convey what I said in the other thread about grafting styling cues from newer models onto body shapes that don’t suit them at all, and why the ‘corporate face’ approach often doesn’t work.

The drastic front end re-design just looks wrong and doesn’t ‘gel’ with the rest of the car and as a consequence looks like a ‘cut ’n shut’ that used the front end of a different model, which I suppose isn’t really that far off the truth.

Unloved as the Vectra may be, nonetheless, I think it deserved better than this...

I’m the other way round on the Vectra C. I was actually thinking about posting it in the Successful facelifts thread. I don’t care for the pre facelift Vectra C but a facelift SRi I think will be the next mk3 Cavalier in terms of collectability. 

[Muniphobia]

Looking at the facelift in a rear view mirror on the motorway I found it impossible to tell it from an Astra.

[matt79]

The E type went from this -

To this-

 

The rear is even worse, from this -

 

To this -

[HMC]

^ +1 especially if the 2+2 is considered part of the facelift- which pushed the proportions a little bit too far

[quicksilver]

17 hours ago, caffeine said:

Ah, the humble Vauxhall Vectra - doesn't get much love, perhaps unsurprisingly.

Dull and prosaic, sure but for what it’s worth I always thought the Mark 2 a fairly neat looking thing, dare I say, almost handsome, in a sort of unassuming and unpretentious way.




That is, until this happened:






Which is to say, Vauxhall decided it needed to look like the newer Astra of the time, this seems to perfectly convey what I said in the other thread about grafting styling cues from newer models onto body shapes that don’t suit them at all, and why the ‘corporate face’ approach often doesn’t work.

The drastic front end re-design just looks wrong and doesn’t ‘gel’ with the rest of the car and as a consequence looks like a ‘cut ’n shut’ that used the front end of a different model, which I suppose isn’t really that far off the truth.

Unloved as the Vectra may be, nonetheless, I think it deserved better than this...

I actually think the facelifted front by itself is nicer than the original, though I agree it needed an arse-lift to go with it as the curved front doesn't fit with the angular rear; soften the angles at the back and it would look much more cohesive.

I wonder why Vauxhall chose beautiful* Milton Keynes city centre as the location for that first photo. It's neither exotic nor very attractive unless you're into eighties brutalist architecture, which I suspect the average Vectra driver is not.

[Mrcento]

11 hours ago, Cheezey said:

I’m the other way round on the Vectra C. I was actually thinking about posting it in the Successful facelifts thread. I don’t care for the pre facelift Vectra C but a facelift SRi I think will be the next mk3 Cavalier in terms of collectability. 

I was actually going to put it in successful facelifts last night as well 😂

To me, the original is just a bit too drab. I see what they were going for, solid, blocky, germanic at the point the likes of BMW and Audi were really starting to eat into their fleet sales and the response was to try to push it a touch closer to upmarket than the B was, whilst basically trying to do what VW had done for years, keeping it fairly plain and it wouldn't age quickly etc, but it was just too 'generic'. The one thing pre and post facelift do share is both look significantly better in sportier trims with the blacked out headlights. Pre facelift SRi almost pulled it off, but it just has too much dowdiness going on.  But i think the 'sporty' spec headlights make SUCH a difference on both versions, i'd probably have the pre facelift SRi over a post facelift non SRi, despite much preferring the facelifted look in general

The facelift at least gave it a friendlier face, and in sportier trims, SRi, VXR etc, the wide, slightly catty eyes looked fairly aggressive rather than friendly.