(first posted 5/22/2013) Around the turn of the century, the popularity of truck-based SUVs as family cars hit its zenith, and automakers looked for new teats to milk on their seemingly infinite cash cow. CUVs, the apparent next hot thing, were just taking off. Enter General Motors with a brilliant new idea how to jump on the bandwagon.
Toyota had brought the concept of a “Crossover Utility Vehicle” to the market a few years earlier, first with the compact RAV4, and later with the Lexus RX 300 (CC here). Both of these cute-utes were based on car platforms and raised up to near-SUV ride height. Their advantages included improved fuel economy (vs. SUVs), “command of the road” visibility, and perhaps most importantly–at least in the minds of consumers–the image of an active lifestyle.
So let’s take a moment and try to get into the minds of GM product planners and relive how today’s subject car came to be:
“Our research shows that younger people are flocking to SUVs. Our findings also discovered that people buying SUVs rarely take them off-road. We need to find a good compromise. What do we have in the corporate parts bin?”
“Well, how about the U-Van?”
“That’s it! We’ll jack one up, give it some flashy styling and they won’t know what hit ’em! The profit margins will be huge!”
“Great! Now which division gets it?”
“Um, give it to Pontiac; they can handle it. After all, they are The Excitement Division.”
“Okay, but we need to spread out the costs, so we need another version.”
“Well, that Lexus RX thingy looks promising, so let’s go upscale. How about, oh, I don’t know, give one to Buick!”
“Perfect!”
A concept version of the Aztek was shown in 1999, and was quite well received. Then again, it’s known that car show enthusiasm doesn’t necessarily translate to sales success.
Sadly, something was lost in translation on the way to production, and we ended up with the “rolling dumpster” you see here. Once you got past its…um, styling, and rather unrefined 3.4-liter V6, the Aztek actually had a lot going for it. The minivan chassis it sat on allowed for rather spacious passenger and cargo room.
Innovative features included a center console that doubled as a pull-out cooler. There was also an optional, up-level stereo system that included rear-cargo area controls for tailgating parties. There was also the optional Versatrak all-wheel-drive-system.
An interesting available feature was the available tent that fit over the Aztek’s back, turning it into an instant camper.
GM had high hopes for the Aztek, and had projected sales of around 75,000 per year; well, let’s just say that didn’t happen. In its best year, 2002, Aztek sales topped out at 27,793, many of which were to fleets.
So what was the problem? Well, for one, there was the styling. If GM had taken a bit more time to sweat out the visual details and work on the proportioning, the Aztek probably would have done better in the marketplace. The second problem was the pricing: The Gen-X target market Pontiac wanted to attract simply found it too expensive.
By 2002, GM realized it had the makings of a flop on its hands and started making changes. First, they dropped the pricey GT model; next was changing most of the grey plastic cladding to body color. Although that helped things visually, the damage had been done.
Model year 2002 also saw the introduction of the Buick Rendezvous, a slightly longer version of the Aztek with arguably better styling and a nicer interior that featured an optional third row. Though the two did not share any sheet metal, their tall and ungainly proportions made it all too obvious that they were related.
The Rendezvous went on to achieve modest success for Buick, and it would survive until the Enclave came along to replace it in 2007. The poor Aztek, meanwhile, quietly faded from the scene after 2005; its swan song was a Rally Edition that came along around 2003 and basically offered a more-monotone exterior and some minor trim upgrades.
Despite its rejection in the marketplace, the Aztek has since built up quite a cult following, with various owner clubs around the U.S. Sometimes, people just like to be different.
Today’s feature Aztek was a great find for your humble author. I found both it and the Rendezvous at my local Ford dealer, just down the street (and on the same day) from where I shot the Plymouth Acclaim. I have been wanting to do a CC on the Aztek for some time, but I wanted to find the right one.
I can identify this one as a 2001 model by its first-year-only Citrus Green exterior. It’s so ugly that I love it! In fact, IF I was to have an Aztek, this one is equipped exactly the way I’d want one, with the leather interior and even in the right color. I guess if you’re going to go ugly, you should go all the way!
At least time has, in a way, vindicated the Aztek’s product planners.
Look at today’s BMW X6, and the 5-Series (and now 3-Series) ‘Gran Turismo’–slightly jacked-up, hideously bloated hatchbacks that are less spacious than their wagon-y forebears. Dunno if they’re selling, but the U-van-based Aztek did it first!
I’ve never driven one of these, but I did sample a Buick Rendevous once. It drove fine–if your last car was a LeSabre or Century, you wouldn’t complain.
My primary memory of the Aztek was that I was in my late teens when it debuted–and looking at it, I started to understand for the first time what magazine reviewers meant when they talked about styling being ‘juvenile’.
Bought an Aztec in 2003. A fun car to own. The vehicle consistently received good reviews on the interior features from owners. My daughter drives it now. I bought the yellow as a safety feature for Atlanta traffic.
When I was test driving the Pontiac Vibe I purchased in 2005, the relatively new salesman confessed that during his training, they were told if a customer showed even a mild interest in one of the Azteks on the lot, they were to do everything in their power to not let them get away.
Cue the Walter White references.
After the clue conversation writing comments now seems anticlimactic.
Maybe there should be a ban on comments other than the Clue guess?
Breaking Bad references are inevitable, but those who remember Dark Angel, the sci-fi show that catapulted Jessica Alba to stardom, may recall that one of the main characters also drove an Aztek. Sorry, Pontiac, the product placement next to an ultra-hottie didn’t help.
Never driven, or even ridden in one, so no idea what it’s like as a car, but as an object, well, it’s basically all the design elements, intentions and pretentions of a running shoe. I don’t like most running shoes, so I shouldn’t like this, but somehow it’s so homely it’s cool, and I actually prefer the styling to the more conventional (and wishy-washy) Rendezvous. Seems like some sort of perfect embodiment of a uniquely American idiom of sports-driven anti-style.
One other thing I’ve noticed: unlike most other GM vehicles of the era, these seem to hold up really well with age, visually if not necessarily mechanically. All that cladding doesn’t rust, I guess…
The cladding doesnt rust, but the sheet metal under it does. In fact the cladding makes it worse.
What a let down for a once proud name,John de Lorean must be turning in his grave.Did this dud contribute to Pontiac’s demise?I don’t know but I don’t think it helped them at all
Actually I think the idea of the Aztek was a step in the right direction but had some faults that made it a bridge too far. Pontiac’s demise was a long time coming and Aztek probably only played a small part in it. The bigger issue was that Pontiac had two big glory times in the 60s and in the 80s when performance and excitement was the name of the game. When Pontiac drifted from that they lose as we found out in the late 70s and early 80s and in the recent years. That’s what killed Pontiac it no longer had a purpose, like Oldsmobile and Plymouth and Mercury.
http://geetotiger.com/Killed.htm
Pea metallic…
You think you hate it now, just wait until you drive it…
Put some 35″ tires on it and it might be pretty bad ass.
Pea Metallic, a color only the most eccentric car guys on CC, Junqueboi and myself, could love.
Its a line from National Lampoons Vacation, when Clark is taking to the saleman about the Queen Family Truckster
Wasn’t that the one where the Griswold Family drove a “woody” pea metallic MoPar or FoMoCo wagon with a ton of stuff on top?
Yep. It was an uglified 1979-83 Ford Country Squire.
Here’s a non-modified CS from approximately the same vintage.
Not attractive. I never liked the charcoal gray plastic cladding that was so in vogue for a time. The ugliest ones were (to me) the ones in safety yellow with the gray/black cladding. I will confess, however, that the car has sort of grown on me in the last dozen years, in the same way as the 62 Dodge Dart or the Pacer has. I think it’s the “nostrils” in the hood. It just looks like the front of a car stacked on top of another front of the car.
Every decade has its dog. Edsel, 62 Dart (or maybe the Marlin), Pacer, and so on. This is the poster child for ugly cars of the 2000s, and as such, it will be famous forever.
Looks-wise, I would prefer one of these to the Rondezvous. The Aztec at least says something. The Buick’s success was due (at least in my experience) to its third row of seats. By the time it came out, there was getting to be a backlash against minivans. The Rondezvous with its 3 rows hit an open niche, particularly among American cars. It was a nice combo of size, luxury and price for families who didn’t want a minivan or an SUV.
Looks-wise, I would prefer one of these to the Rondezvous. The Aztec at least says something.
Agreed. While the Aztek had some issues with its front end styling, cladding and proportions, the Rendezvous was a pathetic and utterly tasteless attempt at a CUV. I really loathed that car, way beyond what it deserved from a functionality POV. But it was just so embarrassing. Let’s put it this way, it’s the car I’d most hate to have to be seen driving.
Now I’m looking forward to the Rendezvous “Deadly Sin” article…
I really hope there isn’t a deadly sin article on the Redezvous…then the anti-GM bias will really show through. The Rendezvous was a sales success for Buick, selling in numbers pretty close to the mensioned Element, FJ Cruiser and Scion XB
Actually the Rendezvous sold the best out of all of them although the Buick and the xB were pretty close. Although technically a crossover, the Buick was targeted completely differently so I would expect too much cross shopping between it and the other mentioned. I do not even think there was cross shopping between the Aztek and the Buick. The Rendezvous was a needed success for Buick although I dislike both vehicles (I do not really do SUVs) I agree it was overly cladded.
A vehicle doesn’t need to be sales flop to warrant “Deadly Sin” status.
The Rendezvous was simply not very attractive, and it wasn’t nearly as refined as the competing Lexus was that was supposedly targeted by GM. It was a badly compromised vehicle from day one.
The new Enclave is a MUCH better vehicle. It is fully competitive with class rivals and helped restore some badly needly luster to the Buick name.
The definition of “Deadly Sin” seems to be just loose enough to cover dumping on GM cars that someone here doesn’t like. Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I suppose someone will always come up with a reason in their mind to label it a deadly sin….If we can’t go by sales success then we just make up an excuse to call it that?
How come we don’t have articles about Ford’s Deadly Sin…or Mazda’s Deadly Sin?
This place is fun, but sometimes…
I believe that the Mustang II Cobra warranted a “Deadly Sin” article. And Paul hasn’t hesitated to express his disdain for the full-size and intermediate Fords of the 1970s.
I’ve tried to explain the DS label quite a few times, but here’s the long version: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/automotive-histories/on-the-purpose-and-nature-of-gms-deadly-sins/
The short version: GM did die, as a result of its management decisions. The DS series is a chronology of those. They’re all cars that materially contributed to GM’s death.
Which doesn’t mean that each of them were necessarily bad cars. But the decisions that brought them into being did affect GM negatively, if not the owner of the car. That’s the key distinction.
I didn’t call the Rendezvous a DS, because it doesn’t fully qualify, although that’s debatable. There’s not doubt that even though it sold reasonably well, that it also hurt GM’s image outside of hard-core GM buyers. It didn’t do much to improve GM’s image. It was not a truly competitive vehicle in its class, unlike the Enclave that succeeded it.
You can tell that even GM felt that way, since they chose not to use the Rendezvous name for the Enclave. That’s a pretty solid tip off that a GM car wasn’t considered successful, when they change the name on its successor; right? Why else?
Well yeah duh, the Rendezvous was less refined than a Lexus, it also was way way less than a Lexus.
Yes the Enclave was much better, but the Rendezvous was a start, from there Buick grew in that category, the first T100 wasn’t a hit, but Toyota came back at it again and again too.
Bob Lutz himself said that Buick was supposed to target Lexus (and that made sense, given the brand’s position within GM and historic market position).
Ultimately, Buick wasn’t going to successfully compete with Lexus by building vehicles that weren’t nearly as good, but were considerably cheaper.
Add me to the list of people who thought the Rendezvous was even worse. The Aztek was stupid and ugly, but at least it wasn’t pretentious.
Buick pushed the Rendezvous as a serious RX300 alternative. What a joke. I’ve ridden in these. Ugh. Buicks have gotten better since then, but they’re going to continue to be not taken seriously by luxury buyers because of the frumpy styling and trashy interiors of cars like this and last LeSabre.
The Aztek was so bad that it’s actually memorable. Nobody remembers the Rendezvous.
I think the Enclave is worse than either. At least the other two had an amount of room within consistent with the size of their footprint, both physical and optical.
I’m also not a fan of the Enclave or the Lambda platform in general. Mushy generic styling with huge wheels (and expensive tires). An overpriced minivan without the interior space.
I’m with you. The Aztec, for better or worse, was its own car. The Rendezvous, though much less um, distinctive, looked like a cheap knock-off of the RX. During my brief car sales career, I did drive (and try to sell) a white 2006 Rendezvous. It was a comfortable, roomy CUV, but didn’t really seem special, like Buicks used to be. My aunt’s ’86 Park Avenue felt like a luxury car, this half-car half-van didn’t.
And I’d rather have a mint ’96 Roadmaster Estate Wagon than either a Rendezvous or even a brand-new Enclave, though the Enclave is pretty nice looking.
Throughout its history, one of the things GM managed to avoid (with great success) was an automotive flop due solely to its styling. Even the worst cars (Vega, Citation, Cimarron) weren’t ‘polarizing’ in their appearance. GM’s business model seemed to be “Do anything, just make sure it doesn’t look like hell” and there was never anything in the same “I can’t look at it because it hurts my eyes!” league as the Edsel, Airflow, 1962 Dodge, or most AMC cars of the seventies. Until the Aztek.
What’s sad is it didn’t have to be. As stated, the Aztek concept wasn’t half bad. You can’t tell from the photos but the size of the concept looks like it’s not much larger than the Dodge Caliber. And look at how much better the ‘swoopy’ front end looks than the production version.
When GM bumped the Aztek up to use the existing minivan chassis (to make more money, of course), they really screwed the pooch. Suddenly, the hip Aztek concept became a really, really ugly, expensive minivan with no third row seating. Sales were so bad it’s generally accepted that this one single mistake was so huge that it brought down a whole GM division.
It is interesting to compare this car to the Honda Element that came out right after the Aztec. The Element was also afflicted with the awful plastic, applied even less artfully. The difference was that the Element never tried to be stylish. The Element was simply an ugly, utilitarian box. Most would not like it (it was never a big seller), but some would see past to the inner beauty. The Aztec tried the classic GM approach by going jazzy. But on this one, they were way off. The difference was that Honda knew that the Element was ugly, and was fine with it. GM thought that the Aztec was stylish (in an out-front sort of way). GM was wrong.
I have often wondered what would have happened if Honda had stretched the Element a bit to get a 3rd row inside. I think they would have sold quite a few as a budget alternative to the Odyssey. It would have probably hurt the Rondezvous.
I have never understood the rationale for the Honda Element nor the Toyota FJ. Neither seem to have a real place for those respective marques. Aside from being of dubious styling they don’t seem to make sense with the people that Honda and Toyota attract.
Craig, while the current North American market for both marques might seem at odds with these products, rest assured there’s much history behind them.
For the Element, look up the 1972-1974 Honda Life Step Van, and for the FJ Cruiser, the 1955-1980 Land Cruisers certainly represent some worthy inspiration!
Well, the Element’s problem was not that it didn’t have a purpose or even that it didn’t fit into the Honda lineup, but that it didn’t appeal to the market Honda expected. Honda pitched the Element at the “youth market,” but the box’s big appeal was to older people and empty-nesters who liked the idea of a vehicle that could haul a bunch of home improvement stuff and the like while still being semi-reasonable to drive and park and returning 20+ mpg. Its biggest shortcoming other than the looks is that it’s noisy on the highway — the open interior defines the term “boom box.”
I really didn’t like the Element for its first few years on the market. Late in 2005 I worked for a business that had a number of Element-driving customers. They treated it like a traditional SUV. Those things came in absolutely covered in mud, inside and out. If they weren’t used for hard-core off-roading, they were used for hauling dirty things and people to places that involved traversing dirt. I came to respect them, particularly the ones with the manual shifters poking out of the dashboards. It seems unlikely that the majority of the ones I saw were driven by empty nesters. I went from gawking at their hideousness to coming fairly close to buying one. All that stopped me was a planned 3,000 mile trip, and the notion that highway fuel economy would be the same as city. I might have been wrong, since our AWD 2012 CR-V returns 29 mpg cruising at 80 mph.
I’d have bought a stretched Element. I always liked the wide-open box interior and the easy-to-clean floor. I just thought it was a little too small.
I might have bought one instead of my Fit except for the way the back seat was configured – it split in half to fold up sideways, and therefore there was no middle seatbelt. A no-go for a family of 5 who might (occasionally) need to all ride in it at the same time. A 3rd row would have made it perfect.
it could have had a third row and the V6… I was hoping for that in the 2gen that never happened. Never understood not giving it a bigger engine.
In terms of image–I’m no fashion expert, but it always seemed to me that the Element was going for anti-cool, like a VW bus. So was the FJ, to some extent.
The Aztek’s marketing seemed to communicate that GM though it was *actually* cool–check out those eyeball vents and spoilers!–and as a result, it was something more like tragic.
The Element also felt like a really innovative package, with more interior space in in a relatively small footprint. It also drove like an Accord wearing a hat. If the Aztek drove anything like the Rendezvous (which I have to assume it did, given the platform relation), then it would have felt more like a ‘sportback’ minivan.
I think you are absolutely right and personally I loved the Element. I’d even go as far as saying it was the last new truly great Honda – and I’m absolutely batshit crazy for most everything they did from their very first car up until the late 90s. I actually wasn’t aware that they weren’t a strong seller… I still see them all over the place. They’re very popular in NYC as “work trucks”.
The only thing I find to be something of a letdown about them is that the powerplant wasn’t very exciting or interesting. Also, the fact that Honda offered their notoriously wimpy AWD system on them makes me think of how much cooler the Element would have been as a Subaru with a boxer four… but I suppose that’s not really what they were about anyway. Like all great Hondas, it was uncompromising in it’s own unique way.
If the Aztek had a Honda badge on it , it would’ve sold millions. Consequently-if the Element had a GM nameplate on it, it would’ve been dead within 4 years. Both were ugly designs and both also were a prime example of how the perception of he nameplate dictates how it succeeds (or fails) in the marketplace.
Maybe the Prius IMO is as ugly as the Aztek yet because people have swallowed the cool-aid about hybrids and Toyota’s the ugliness is part of the charm. I went into the Att store a few months ago when I happened to be at the mall to pay my phone bill and the clerk ( it was slow so he wanted something to do) asked me what kind of phone I had. I said Blackberry he said how old I said 9700 it’s about three years old. He said you should be due for an upgrade and we have deals. I said when does the Q10 come out, he said about a month or so after the z10, I said ok I will come back then and look. He said well I can just about give you an older model iPhone or a good deal on a new one if you don’t want to wait. I said no I want my keyboard. He said well iPhone is the new standard now. I said well maybe for the millions of people where it’s more of a toy yes, but I am in the group the Blackberry was invented for people that use it primarily for business and aside for talking use it mostly for email and text and like the keyboard. We proceeded to chant for a few more minutes during which I gave him some sound advice in product sales that Number 1 rule ascertain the customers needs first then what they like and dislike then go from there.
So yes I suppose the Aztek failed partly because what it was was not what people expected in a Pontiac which was probably true. People love to criticize WalMart for everything under the sun (some true some not) yet it’s always hard to find a line you don’t have to wait 30 minutes in. Funky is not GM Ford Chrysler mainstream stylish is so I suppose that was Aztek’s real sin.
The 2001 Prius looked great to me when it came out (same time as Aztek and PT). After the bigger and better-looking 2004 Prius had been out for awhile, that ’01 started looking odd to me too. The current model looks downright sharp, especially in red. It’s a solid shape, with a neat character crease from taillight unbroken all the way around and back to taillight.
‘To each their own’ is true for sure, but there’s more to it than that. Like cars, music can be intensely personal and we can have strong emotional reactions to it. New music has always sounded horrible to a lot of people at first. Even Bach sounds dissonant after nothing but Gregorian chants. Rock and roll really was noise to people at first, now those same songs are comforting oldies. Sometimes it stays horrible and dies (like Aztek). When it turns out to be a real step forward, people grow into it. Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” incited a riot in 1913, but Disney used it in “Fantasia” 25 years later.
What’s the Prius’ styling problem to some people? The sharp break between hood and windshield is evolving away, and so is the grille. Headlights are streaking back towards side windows that are streaking forwards. Not just on the Prius, look at Ford’s Fiesta and the Honda Fit. These are big jolts to a lot of eyes.
The Aztek’s worst offense is its scrambled face. GM took the parking lights and slots we’re used to seeing in the car’s chin and moved them into its forehead. Look at the Aztek and imagine a plain hood without slots and lights.
PS: I’ve been enjoying the Prius Kool-Aid twice a day since Sept., 2000, plus a bunch of 800 mile/day road trips, almost 200K miles between the two I’ve owned. It’s delicious and nutritious and a big money-saver too. It’s the future.
I don’t agree at all on the “Prius Kool-Aid”, but I’m with you 100000% on the Blackberry. The last two times I’ve purchased a new one at the AT&T store I got beaten over the head with “Bro u don’t want dat, dat phone is gawbage – u need ta get da iPhones 5 or da Samsung Galaxy, dats da hot shit now. Nobody stay wif dat Blackberry man, dat shit played out – ANGRY BIRDS HOMIE, THEY AINT EVEN GOT DAT SHIT ON A BLACKBURRY!!”
And I had to explain, repeatedly, that 99% of what I use the phone for is work, and unless those other phones are BES compatible they’re useless to me… and beyond that, I actually like the Blackberry much better, hate typing on a touchscreen and if not for requiring it for my job I probably wouldn’t even have the damn thing because it’s more of an annoyance than anything else most of the time. Plus, see this thing I’m pointing at? I want that. Please STFU and swipe my credit card. Why are you trying so hard? The god damn iPhone/Galaxy costs THE SAME EXACT PRICE!
I mean seriously, what the fuck? Same thing happens if I ever make the mistake of going into a Best Buy. Is there some kind of outreach program that places kids with ADHD/learning disabilities in jobs where khaki pants are considered a uniform?
I believe that sales of the Honda Crosstour (and even worse sales of the Acura ZDX) put a big hole in that theory.
The Element at least was a coherent design – it looked like a miniature Brinks truck or bread delivery van. Later models without the plastic cladding aren’t bad looking.
The Aztec was simply a stylistic mess. Not only are the details ugly, but the proportions are completely “off.”
After I had posted last evening (Eastern time) my wife and I went out to dinner. In the parking lot I saw a late model Element.
While I would agree that the Aztek could have been styled better (to say the least) the Element is only a slightly better dog’s breakfast in terms of design.
The miniature Brinks truck is probably a good way to describe the overall design, but like the Aztek, it looks like the folks working on the front half of the car and the folks working on the back half of the car weren’t speaking to one another. The roof arc is a whole other feature that’s odd, especially with the door frames that have a straight edge at the top.
The side styling brings the roof, front and rear fascias together in a way that doesn’t look as disjointed as the Aztek. The panels on the front and rear quarters of the early versions are almost shocking. The later versions smooth that out considerably. Of course, in order to do that, it’s rather plain. The tailights, that jut out of the back quarter panels and the inset headlights, again, on the earlier models, just have an unfinished look. Blocky and chunky, the car looks like a very young child’s toy truck.
Rather uncharacteristic for a Honda, I’ll grant you that.
That is pretty much what I said about GM’s “plastic” minivans (Lumina APV, Transport, etc) Interesting how in the end the more “upright” minivans ended up looking very similar to GM’s earlier offerings.
Had an early Transport in the family, other than it’s appetite for front pads and rotors we were very happy with it. Since it was garaged the black portion of the roof never got “sun burned” and faded. I wished it had had a 3800 in it, but we purchased too soon for that option.
While the Element and Juke are good comparisons of vehicles with outré styling, in terms of marketing, it’s worth noting that the Chrysler PT Cruiser came out at the exact same time as the Aztek. It, too, was one of the first ‘crossovers’ but, unlike the Aztek, was a major hit.
The interesting thing about the Aztek and PTC was how the companies that made them so badly flubbed what their own marketing told them about the vehicles. Whereas GM grossly overestimated how many Azteks they would be able to sell and had to dramatically scale back production, Chrysler had the exact opposite problem in that their production capacity wasn’t high enough. While Azteks languished on lots for months (years?), Chrysler dealers had to wait months to get any PT Cruisers, all of which would sell within days of being received.
I wouldn’t call the PT Cruiser a crossover anymore than I would call a Fit one.
I would consider a PT Cruiser more of a retro-styled compact (maybe subcompact) sedan. I like the styling and always enjoy looking at the variations that people have created with them. Their biggest flaw was the Neon underpinnings which (not bad for Neon) made the car uninspiring. I realize that Chrysler at the time didn’t have much to work with but maybe dropping it on the Cloud car platform with a V6 option would have been better.
I didn’t realize that the Fit’s rear seats were removable (like the PT Cruiser and Aztek). I thought they just folded flat like the rest of the cars in its class.
Nor would I, but Chrysler was able to offer a rare panel van variant and have it counted as a truck for their CAFE score.
I briefly owned a PT Cruiser last year. Chrysler had the EPA classify it as a truck to help their CAFE numbers, but it was 100% a car. Trust me.
The rear seats are not removable in a CRV, RAV 4, Escape, or even a 4Runner or Explorer from that era. Does that make them cars?
I have to disagree that the Aztec was GM’s first flop due solely to styling. The late-70s Buick and Oldmobile mid-size sedans with the angle/fastback “Salon” look, and, particularly, the 1980 Cadillac Seville and its ridiculous trunk-lid, weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms by the public.
Ah yes, the Rallye edition with the spoiler on top of the tailgate. The first major change upon Bob Lutz’ arrival. Funny how he never mentions his influence on the Aztek.
Of course, Mark Reuss has a soft spot for the Aztek, since he was in charge of an effort to stuff a V8 into it.
Career maker all around.
Mark Reuss for CEO in 2014!
Reuss was also the vehicle line executive for the Rendezvous, or “Ren-dez-vouse”, as some salesmen at the dealership pronounced it when it first came out.
GMC should have got this “vehicle”, they are the truck & SUV division, right?
If I remember the story correctly, your chronology is a little off. They showed off the concept before they figured out how they’d actually build one. So the minivan as a basis for a CUV decision came later.
The concept (which had better proportions and a front-end more like today’s Nissan Juke than the production Aztek) was a hit, so they sought a platform to build it on. This was never going to be a volume model, so they had to keep engineering and production costs down. That’s how it ended up on the U Platform. Unfortunately, the hard points of that platform made it impossible to preserve anything resembling the proportions of the concept vehicle.
Which makes the Aztek worse than an ugly duckling: It was a missed opportunity. In hindsight, they probably wished they killed the program instead of morphing it into an ugly minivan. Then again, no Aztek, no Rendezvous, and Buick dealers are probably very happy they had the Rendezvous during those dark years.
I have heard or read that they realized they had a turkey on their hands during development but had to stick to “the system” and hit all the milestones etc.
I guess I’m a mother. I’ve always liked them. Then again, I also like the Edsel, some of the more ‘original’ British designs of the 50’s and 60’s, and just about anything the French have put out (with the possible exception of Peugeot – too boring).
It makes me wonder just how badly this car would have been panned if it had come out with the BMW roundel or the Mercedes three pointed star on the hood. Yes, BMW did copy it (almost), got brickbats, and is still selling it, anyway.
Put this one in the “gotta hammer GM for something, here’s an easy one” category.
Do you love Citröens, Syke?
Adore them. That’s my idea of a normal car.
You rock, Syke!
+1 great cars.
My wife really wanted one of these when they came out – I think mostly for the optional tent. Luckily we couldn’t afford one and bought used Ford Mustang GT instead.
I’ve found that as I get older, some cars I previously hated the looks of, kinda grew on me.
Cars like the Edsel, early Falcons, and the Valiant for example.
But the Aztec?
Immortality isn’t going to help with this one.
I’m only 13 and I LOVE the 1st-gen Valiant/Lancer (design and drivetrain-wise).
Co-worker had one of these once as a rental and 2 things stuck out: the spartan interior and a fairly stiff ride. But, it was very roomy.
I was living in China in ’01 and was trying to help my mom make a car buying decision from afar. She was strongly considering the Aztek and I had to do everything in my power to dissuade her. She ended up with a Venture, the Aztek’s staid father. In hindsight, the Venture was more practical and inoffensive, but it sure was boring. They both would have had the intake manifold gasket issues and terrible depreciation, so maybe she should have gone with the one that was polarizing? I can’t imagine dealers weren’t piling cash on the hood to get rid of them, and if you actually liked it… seems like a win-win.
The Rendezvous, on the other hand, was purchased or leased by just about every member of my extended family. The driveway at my Grandpa’s house circa 2002-20010 had at least four or five in it on any given holiday get together. My wife’s family was the same, except that they bought instead of leased, so there are STILL four or five floating around. They love those damn things.
Love that!
My grandmother owns one, it is from the last year of production, it is metallic silver with a grey leather interior. It has almost every option save the Verstrac system and except for a few minor trips to the dealer has been very reliable for her, although she likely doesn’t drive more than about 50 miles total in any given week. She is 78 years old and I do wonder if it will be her last car.
She bought it because the higher seating made it easier for her to get in and out than the 92 Skylark she was trading in and as a GM widow she got a screaming deal.
Grandma is gone now but one of my youngest cousins is driving the Aztek. It is doing well taking her to college. That cousin was the one who got to clean out the Aztek after Grandma passed. She found a remarkable number of rosaries scattered throughout the interior.
It a way , the Aztek is the mirror image of the Vega. The Vega Looked great , but was terribly engineerd. Decades later GM shows us how much they haven’t learned by launching the Aztek. Decent enough mechanicals , but a exterior design that went way beyond bizarre. Who wanted a minivan with a slanted hatchback? All that plastic cladding, who thought that was stylish? It took ugly to a whole new level not even Subaru could have immagined.
It’s so ugly that it somehow appeals to my feelings of pity.
I never thought these were horrible looking – just weird looking.
I think the side cladding is what makes them look “off”
When that side cladding is gone – I think they look pretty good:
I happen to like yellow as a color my Camaro is yellow with black stripes and my Cadillac is yellow (pale) so this makes the Aztek look a lot better. Some cars take to mono chroming better than others. Maybe some different wheels and people probably wouldn’t event know what the vehicle was…
It’s so ugly, it almost looks rabid. Somebody should have recognized Pontiac’s obvious cry for help on this one.
Up to the Aztek, I thought the Pacer was probably the worst-looking car the U.S. had spit out in recent decades. But, there’s no contest here. It’s almost offensive to look at.
Always appreciated the concept as a whole, particularly the “camper” aspect, and that is was relatively small. I good concept for a small young family. The execution on the other hand was unfortunately, dismal.
The only saving grace to the Aztek/Rendezvous is access under the hood is much better than the Venture/Montana/Silhouette.
Although the Aztec looks much improved without the plastic cladding, it still manages to look Pontiac chintzy.
I will still consider one of these for personal ownership . . . . . . . if . . . . . . . . . I can still get the tent option. One of my loves is AMA Superbike, and I’d love to have something like this that can be camped out of at the track, in the infield. I’ve talked to Aztek owners who use them like this, and the car is very good for this function. And I certainly don’t need a full-blown RV, as my usual method of going to a race is to strap camping equipment to the bags of my Triumph Trident.
Actually, with one of these, I’d probably be making just about every car event at VIR along with the east of the Mississippi AMA Superbike events.. This would be enough for me to do Austin for Formula 1 and MotoGP.
The joke about the Aztek’s tent was they needed to make one for the front of the car, as well as the rear…
The cars and their tents are still available. Make sure you get the AIR MATTRESS that goes with the camping package. Depending upon other options in the ‘Tek, you’re really going to want the air mattress. And, aftermarket ones don’t fit as well. We had the tent on our Rally but tried to go with the Walmart air mattress. It was not a good solution.
And if you had the rear air compressor, you could inflate the mattress right in the rear of the car, see there were some neat ideas, but the looks….sheesh….
We had our Azteks when our kids were in soccer. Guess who was the most popular dad with all of the other coaches when it came time to air up the soccer balls at the fields?
Gawd thats awful to look at not as stupidly ugly as a BMW X6 but its getting there the SUV CUV craze has produced some really bad vehicles the Ford Exploder being the worst to arrive here in terms of drivability and durability. We have lots of twisting roads and wallowing Exploders and their kin are highly unsuited to spirited driving in town suvs are a menace blocking traffic views from other motorists as their drivers attempt to weave them thru the streets these junkheaps hold trucks up both in town and on the highway, These POS are responsible for the nanny like stability programmes that polute the driving experience in modern cars, I mean the stupidity of taking the best cornering hatchback of all time and putting a people mover on top of it by Citroen ie The Xsara Piccasso yes it handles well, but without the people mover part nailed to the top its a brilliant drivers machine, winner of many WRC championships in hatch form.
Voilà. Suddenly the Aztek doesn’t look so bad.
Actually, the Aztek’s starting to look pretty good…
Pretty good indeed…
I always thought that was the concept that led to the Enclave, which is worse than the Aztek in my opinion.
This looks more radical then butt-ugly , just my opinion
There is some Buick Signia in the Rendezvous, BTW this thing still exists, last time I heard it was sitting in a parking lot in Warren MI out in the open getting rained on.
These were ugly for their time. But when compared to today’s mismatched blobs and angles, they don’t look bad at all. Certainly better looking than a Cube, Element, Ridgeline, Juke, etc. In my opinion anyway.
The people I know who owned these liked them. They were actually more practical and capable than say a CRV or RAV4. I think the biggest issue was that they looked too much like a minivan. The CRV and RAV4 still looked like (little) SUVs. It was all too obvious this was in no way a truck. Today that doesn’t seem to matter, but back then it did.
The Aztek’s biggest styling problem IMHO is its slab-sided appearance. Some curvature or character lines to the sides would have helped immensely, and would have better suited the front and rear treatments. Today’s automotive stylists do a better job at disguising the inherently box-like CUV profile.
BTW, does the featured Aztec have new bumpers, or is that plastic more resilient to fading than the side cladding?
The side cladding on that first year Aztek fades from a little to rather badly. I don’t know if it’s a supplier issue or a care issue or a combination of both. I’ve seen 2001 Azteks here in the Grand Rapids area with dark gray cladding (like new) to some that are almost white.
I think the decision to paint the cladding was one of the best ones ever. But I still want a green one like the photo car.
I come not to bury the U-body, but to (mildly) praise it…
For all their faults, the vehicles built on this platform were moderately fun to drive, and they handled better in real-world driving than comparable Chrysler minivans. I sold a few ’97 Ventures thanks to their road manners. The U-platform could have been more successful, but in typical GM fashion it was let down by blatant cost-cutting and generally poor quality.
A friend of mine would still love to have an Aztek, and I briefly considered a Rendezvous back in 2006 when I found myself in urgent need of an automatic-transmission vehicle (there was a LOT of money on the hood.) I never really minded the styling of either, though the Buick is particularly unsuccessful in hiding its minivan roots.
The Aztec is where I lost any admiration for concept cars at auto shows. This was the worst transition from concept to production I ever witnessed. I was 10 when the first Aztek concept came out(the yellow one), and I liked it a lot. A fact that my Dad has, to this day, never let me live down because he only remembers the hideous production version lol
I know some compromises had to be made to fit the U platform but there’s barely a single detail that was actually carried over. The shape of the Concept really wasn’t all that different, they simply omitted every good detail, added a ton of cladding and put on tiny tires/wheels.
I went to school with the son of a local Pontiac dealer, and I remember him going on and on about how cool the Aztek was going to be and how his dad was going to get him one (I was in high school when these came out).
I think he might have gotten picked up at school in a demo Aztek a couple of times, but it then quickly disappeared. I don’t remember what he actually ended up driving, but it was decidedly not an Aztek.
Had to drive a drunk woman home one night in her white Aztek. It wasnt bad, the rest of the night was alot better though.
Did you use the tent?
Wasn’t highly optioned but the fold down seat came in handy.
To be honest, I fail to see the difference between this car and anything else that Pontiac was selling at the time. Lots of wierd angles, curves and plastic body cladding. Pretty much the opposite of what I like in a car’s design. But really, a Grand Am was no better. I can’t think of too many good looking cars put out by the Pontiac division from the 1990’s on, frankly.
But on the up side, I would have no problem owning one of these as a secondary vehicle for picking up stuff at Home Depot. In fact, I kind of like it’s uniqueness in that regard. Is it my cup of tea, certainly not, but I don’t need to love it’s looks for that job.
Lambaste the Aztec all you want ye reprobates.
However… repeatedly over the years I have noticed that Aztecs appear to be well taken care of in regards to visual aspects such as washing and waxing and if body damage had occurred the damage had been repaired.
Compared to similarly-aged vehicles the Aztecs seem to be much more appreciated than the typical conveyance of that age.
Coincidentally, came across the other ‘ugliest car ever’ today. Didn’t get a shot of the front, but that’s probably for the best – might be kids around
Ha, the Fiat Multipla! I have seen a couple of those, can’t blame the Fiat designers for trying to do ‘something’ in styling a box.
Unlike most folks here, I leased two Azteks, a 2001 1SA (the highest trim level next to the GT 1SA) and a 2004 Rally (1SB). They were typical GM cars of the day. We went to the local car show in 2001 ostensibly to look at a replacement for our Dodge Dakota. I had a GMC Jimmy in mind, my wife had another idea.
I really did question her sensibility at the time, I thought the car odd proportioned and ungainly. Of course, GM made a huge mistake upon release of the car, all but the highest trim levels came with 15″ wheels. They were too small for the height of the body and made the car seem tippy, when it really wasn’t. One of the first fixes for 2002 was to make 16″ and 17″ wheels more widely available on the car, and to tone down the side cladding, along with adding a little spoiler on the hatchback.
The Aztek was a shorty U-van, like the original T-115 Chrysler minivan, it packed a lot of utility inside. Of course, with the hatchback that sloped the way it did, there was less utility than a regular minivan. This is what (oddly) appealed to my wife so much, it did NOT look like a minivan.
The positive attributes of the Aztek: Good interior capacity, with a rather nicely done interior. A nice size, you could park it anywhere in town and even with the Chinese assembled 3.4 V6, it got good gas mileage. The negatives: typical GM schizophrenia when it came to sourcing parts, i.e., bad wheel bearings, intake gaskets, etc. Our 2001 also had a bad body control module (BCM), which manifested itself in all kinds of weird behavior. Our then-Pontiac dealer took good care of us, keeping the car until parts came in (apparently the BCM was a common issue) and giving us as an long term rental a 2001 Grand Am GT with the HO motor. (I had lots of fun with THAT car). Other than the BCM, an AC condensor that took a rock in the wrong place and a sensor that controlled the rear air suspension, all covered under warranty, the 2001 was a rather trouble free example of early 2000’s GM engineering done right. Considering all that could have gone wrong.
The 2004 was another story, however. Everything that the 2001 delighted me with (with regard to overall trouble free operation), the 2004 Rally did the opposite. It had wheel bearing issues, gasket issues, AC condenser issues, the air suspension sensor went bad, in the second year the sunroof started leaking and the worst issue was the torque converter self destructing in my driveway. I had been wary of all of the stuff on these cars, so I’d purchased a GMPP (GM Protection Plan) extended warranty. Initially, I thought I’d wasted my money, but by the time I gave this car back to GM at the end of the lease, I’m reasonably sure GMPP lost money on this one.
I’d had a bad Pontiac before, my 1983 Trans Am was far less than reliable, but I was in my early 20’s when I owned the car; if I couldn’t smoke the tires on my daily commute to work, I thought the car was worthless. I believe I may bear some of the responsibility for the car, but clearly there were other issues with the car that abuse would not engender. The Rally, as much as my wife loved it, had to go back to GM. In it’s place we got a gray Malibu Maxx, with as few options as possible.
I loved that car. My wife hated it.
To this day, I entertain thoughts of getting another one. Nothing had quite the same packaging as the Aztek. It was easy to live with day to day and a competent long distance driver (we took ours from Grand Rapids, MI to Houston, TX). I could put most anything I wanted to into it. Now, here in the rust belt, the ones I see for sale are all pretty worn out and not worthy of the effort to get to work right. I think I will save my money for a Theta (Equinox or Torrent) instead.
A note of clarification: the Rally model was inspired by the Aztek Rallys, which were grassroots meetings of Aztek owners in the early 2000’s. Unlike the Saturn Homecomings, they (originally) were not sponsored by GM, it was a bunch of Aztekers just hanging out. GM got wind of all this and was “inspired” to release the Rally model. It had a body colored grille, the 17″ wheels from the Bonneville SSEi, the lower control arms and bushings from the Grand Prix GT, polished front disc brake calipers, Goodyear Fortera tires (which were really good in snow!) and the special Fusion Orange paint as the signature color of the car. It came in all of the normal option packages the rest of the Azteks came with.
The Rally DID have a more buttoned down ride than our 2001 with the standard 15″ wheels. It seemed to steer and stop better, although that may be due to the taller/wider Forteras, even though those were/are SUV tires. If we’d kept our Rally, I wanted to lower the suspension and put on more car-oriented performance tires to see what else I could shake out of the U-body.
In my MM garage I have a pedestal for this car: the Aztek from Hell. A Corvette powered Aztek with a race chassis and street legal headlights… What could be better?
FWIW, the Equinox was the car that got the Chinese assembled 3.4 engine.
Yep, you’re right about that. I’d confused the Torrent and Aztek in my mind. The LA1 was built in Tonawanda, NY, IIRC.
But it seems I’m not… Arrgh!
For some odd reason, I decided to revisit this post and make an update. In May of 2013 I purchased my third Pontiac Aztek, a 2004 Rally in Liquid Silver. A FWD model with almost all of the toys except AWD and the rear air suspension.
Tom Wolfe wrote: “you can’t go home again”. But with this Aztek, I’m in the neighborhood, at least.
Eight months into the new relationship with this car and so far, so good. With the passenger car type of tire (Goodyear Viva2s) on the vehicle (instead of the SUV oriented Forteras that came with these cars originally) it handles surprisingly good and has done well in our snowy winter.
Just in case you missed my October post, here’s another picture of the car after we brought it home in May 2013.
I absolutely want an Aztek! I almost bought one last year. Found a 01 GT sitting on used car lot. Low miles too. And showroom fresh. I know that’s hard to believe. So I did tons of research. Something I would do if I saw a muscle car or some other motorized rariety. What I found made me want this particular Aztek even more. First off it was the torch red and not dark red. The body clading made it stand out with a bright color. Plus it was the AWD GT. Complete with the for 01 only leather 4 bucket seat interior. Which was part of an option package that included dual zone HVAC and HUD. In fact the only option it was missing was the long roof console with rear seat radio controls and headphones. Only because it had the sunroof which eliminated that feature. Going by the MSRP quoted(maybe misquoted?) on the interweb this had to have stickered past $30K. And it had the tent and air mattress still in the original boxes. Now I’m thinking some dealer ordered this for their personal car or somebody won the lottery and just checked off everything on the order form. And at $7K for something 11 years old and just a little over 80K miles I thought it was a steal. The owner of the car lot thought so too. But he was holding it for his brother so twice a day I would drive on my way to and from work to see it patiently sitting there. Than one day it was gone. It reappeared after about 3 months still in the same condition I last saw it in. It was for sale but I had bought another car so I couldn’t justify another purchase unless I managed to win the lottery. But when I was researching the Aztek I found lots of weird things that didn’t jive. First off any production or sales figures you see are inaccurate. I know because I have access to a GM database and I was checking those figures based on actual VINs I ran across. I found Aztek #1 for sale in TX. I know the VINs of the first and last Azteks(Rendezvous too) built based on the fact that they were built in sequence.This was for all five years of production. Sorry I don’t have the actual numbers handy but believe me I did the number crunching. By the time I get around to posting them here this CC will be old news. What ever you read here or anywhere in the interweb is opinion and speculation. I’ve never read anything that amounts to the truth based on the research I have done. Now that’s one big conspiracy theory. Maybe the real conspiracy theory should be why GM lied and why they took the path they did.
IMO I think a lot of people bought these cars because of the price. Take my almost Aztek for example. It was rather luxurious on the inside. Oh don’t give me crap about a plasticky interior either! The leather seats were way much better than that weird cloth offered on the base models. I’d almost bet that any one who bought one thought the same way. Kind of like comparing the same year of Bonneville. The LE or SSE with the cloth seats and column shift was just a dumpy car compared to a SSEI with leather buckets. I’ve driven(hard for that matter) a few Azteks when they were new. Ms. Louie wanted one back when they were new. The AWD models handled so much better than the FWD one. You know 4 wheel ABS disc brakes were standard on the AWD along with independent rear suspension. I wouldn’t hesitate to enter one in an autocross. That’s how good I think they handle. Throw in all of the weird options like dual sound systems and HUD and you have a pretty fun car. Even with the tent and air mattress. I wonder what would have happen if Pontiac made a 2nd generation Aztek. Buick got the 255HP 3.6 DOHC V-6 in 06. A little horsepower would have made the Aztek a real contender reguardless of the styling. You know what’s really funny while I’m reading the comments on this feature? How everyone is parrotting the statements of that this car is a mini-van. True it was built using some of the floor pan and drivetrain of the U-Van. But it has more in common with a W-Body. I know I’ve said this a few times here on this site but the U-Van is just a wagon version of the W-Body. There is really nothing in common with the U-Van when talking about the AWD Aztek except the 3.4 V-6. The AWD U-Van didn’t come into existence until the 06 model year so you could say the AWD U-van was just a stretched Aztek. Kind of like argueing about what came first. The chicken or the egg. BTW your feature car appears to be the weiner FWD version with drum brakes and a solid rear axle.
I’d be interested in seeing what you found in regards to the production numbers, just because what you shared sounds interesting to me.
In regards to the AWD, when I worked at a Chevrolet/Olds dealer in early 2001 we had AWD Ventures and Silhouttes in stock that had the Versatrack option.
There’s an older couple on my parent’s block in suburban San Diego with TWO Azteks. I think they keep them parked in the driveway to aggravate their neighbors. They also painted their house bright yellow.
Tell you my tale of woe, I sold these when they first came out, I made people sign contracts and pay interest for one of “these”. This and the Ren-dez-vouse, where the last new cars launched when I sold GM cars, the end of a not so glorious 5 year career of a debaucherous college student car salesman life.
We knew these were coming down the pike, we had already seen them in Pontiac dealer magazine and we even started to get brochures for them, I went to the “ride & drive” for these, hosted by none other than ,wait for it…..MotorWeeks own Craig Singhaus, please, please, hold your applause.
Whats the saying? success has many fathers but failure is always a bastard?
Well the Aztek was a full on product planning, lifestyle marketing focus group gang bang, as I sat there staring at that yellow wedge of cheese with gray mold on the bottom Aztek that was on stage, no amount of cool lifestyle marketing facts, removable coolers or available tents could convince me that Pontiac was not in trouble, this was not the Orbit Orange GTO with Warren Oats that tore ass all over the country in Two-Lane Backtop, Warren Oats wouldn’t be seen near this thing. This wasn’t Smokey and the Bandit or Knight Rider, this was bad. I mean you know you got problems when even the concept car is kinda ehhhhhhh……odd…and the concept car is supposed to be the Playboy centerfold of your design concept, it doesn’t have to deal with any of the realities of you know, the real world.
It’s not that the idea of the Aztek was bad, in fact, there are millions of Aztek type offspring roaming the roads right now, one might even be in your driveway. The formula is pretty solid, especially in SUV loving America, take the things people like about the SUV, the higher seating position, large and easily accessible cargo area and rugged looks, and put them on a cheaper, easy to build car based platform, bam, the cross-over creeps out of the marketing ooze. I always though the Aztek would have probably worked better as a GMC, the strange angular looks could have been played off as industrial avant-garde, the bright green the Aztek offered could even be related to the bright green used on GM’s Terex trucks.
I recall reading an article with an exec from Pontiac where he stated that Pontiac management wanted a RWD Jimmy based Aztek type car, but the U-van was what they got, then not to mention, GM cheaped out and told them they couldn’t modify most of the “hard points” like the cowl height, resulting in even odder proportions than the concept car.
I am at least proud to say that I sold Pontiacs in what possibly was their last moment in the sun, 1997 to 2000, the WS6 Firebirds were formidable, the SSE Bonneville was very cool with its 16 way seats, and the new supercharged Grand Prix GTP.
Talk about a car that got looks, though I couldn’t tell if they were laughing with me or at me, I took the first one we received at the dealership for a test drive though the parking lot of the Costco next door, I couldn’t have gotten more stares if I would have been driving a flying DeLorean, though I could see in peoples faces that the looks weren’t admiration, but more a look of horror.
Oh, and the icing on the cake, next year…we lost the Firebird.
I had to laugh about the comment about the flying DeLorean. We got one of the first Azteks in our area. I can remember folks just staring at the car as we drove down the street.
I don’t think we could have gotten more looks if I’d been driving a Ferrari mated to a monster truck chassis with a naked woman on the hood!
I have to say, it was quite uncomfortable. Until more Azteks showed up. Then we were just one of the (small) crowd.
By the way, having been a car sales person myself, I’m a little envious of the lineup you had to work with. I was stuck with early 90’s Toyotas, mostly. By the mid to late 90’s, I would have loved to worked at a Pontiac store. But, by 2005, I was glad I didn’t.
It was kind of the last little good time before the fall, even the Sunfire GT was pretty cool.
I think they’re terrific. If AMC were still around it would have made them first.
I am tempted to buy one just to piss people off. Hell. I’ve owned cars that pissed me off (Taurus) but didn’t bother anyone else. May as well make it a clean sweep. All you need is a giant hand shooting the bird sticking off the hood.
I doubt being seen driving an Aztek would elicit hatred as much as wonderment and/or pity.
I’ve said this before, I rather enjoy driving my plastic cladded 95 Sunfire GT because I know it pisses off a certain segment of the motorhead population.
There’s that real contrarian part of me that wants to buy all of the plastic cladded Pontiacs I can find just so I have a steady supply for the next few years…
I’m with you geozinger…
I think it is the typical situation that it just became popular to knock Pontiacs when the reality was all the companies were doing the same thing (and some still are) at the same time.
I have to laugh when I hear someone complain about the interior of say, a 2000-2005 Bonneville and how platicy it is…
Much like Paul’s question on the other post…have they ever been in one and driven it?
The materials in my Bonneville are of very high quality, all soft touch and have held up to look brand new. I would say that the dash and door panels are just as good or better than anything Toyota or Honda had at the time
Its just a popular thing to bitch about body cladding and interior materials…
A couple of additional things…
I personally have never driven one of these, but I have been behind the wheel of a number of U-vans and W-cars. They all have their charms. If given the chance to go for a ride in one I would like to just so I could say I did.
One other thing, and I can’t believe I forgot to include this…The show “Survivor” promoted the Aztek heavily, and even gave one to the winner along with the million dollars. I think they had some of the contestants spend the night in one and then sit there and extol the virtues of it.
Hi my name is Imperialman67 and I was a Aztek owner.
Yes it was a beautiful metallic gray 2001GT Versatrack.
A Gm factory demo vehicle bought from the local Chev-Pontiac dealer with just 5000 miles on it.
it was loaded with I believe every option available except for the sun roof.
It was also the first new GM vehicle I had ever purchased (insert laugh track).
I could actually get writers cramp trying to describe my love hate relationship with my Aztek.
Was it a versatile, comfortable, good MPG, fantastic road trip car that was loved by my family?
Absolutely, My kids will still talk about what a great Pioneer stereo it had, and how they wish our current car had a lock in cooler and heads up display.
Did I get 100,000 miles out of my Aztek?
I sure did ,but my god it wasn’t easy.
I don’t think I have ever owned a more troublesome vehicle in my life.
I won’t bore you with the laundry list of issues , but they were numerous, never ending ,and not inexpensive nitpicking problems. One of the more humorous problems was when my Aztek left me stranded at the drive up window of the local bank because it refused to shift out of park. BCM acting up if memory serves me correct.
Though my family doesn’t have the same fondness for our current car a Kia Rondo, I have to say that my pocketbook sure does.
I don’t know, I kind of like the Aztek. They’re so nerdy and overdone that they’re almost accidentally cool.
My first impression of these were: my God, they stole the ’72-72 GTO front Ram Air Hood!. My second impression was that the proportions just were visually wrong. It seemed especially top heavy as to compared to where the chassis was. I had to imagine this vehicle was interesting to drive in heavy cross winds. But having said that, I really like it and has grown on me over the years.
I’ve no doubt in my mind that this vehicle will be a future classic and collectable. Maybe.
“I’ve no doubt in my mind that this vehicle will be a future classic and collectable. Maybe.”
I have always told my daughter that some day she will tell her children that she drove
an Aztek
Spotted this this morning a later model Aztek in a purply color, interestingly the color actually subdued many of the glaring styling features making the car somewhat unrecognizable.
CC effect is alive and well in Indiana, too. Yesterday, I walked out of a bank to see a bright red early Aztec with the glorious gray cladding.
As I understand it, the Aztek was being planned just after Dodge introduced their “big truck” styled Ram pickup. The sales for the pickup doubled overnight. Dodge said that the design would either make people love it or make people hate it. No one would be lukewarm about the new design. Pontiac took those words to heart with the Aztek. It would be very polarizing. The problem, was that it did not make people either love it or hate it. It just made people hate it. There are tales of Pontiac salesmen crying when they first saw the Aztek. In a Car and Driver road test of the Aztek, the driver was gassing up the vehicle. A woman was looking at the Aztek, when he was finished with the refueling, the woman approached him and asked “you get paid to drive that, don’t you?”
As far as the PT Cruiser not being a truck, in 2005 I bought the cheapest PT that the dealer had, except it was automatic and had AC. I used it for a service truck for six years. With the rear seats removed, it would carry a 60 inch plasma or LCD television. I much preferred to drive the PT rather than the Ford F350 diesel with fourteen foot box body, unless I just needed the room for more than one television. Eight years later, I still drive the PT. It is dull as hell, but it has been very reliable. I changed my attitude about Chrysler’s reputed poor reliability.
Lexus copied the Aztek exterior styling by its L-Finesse when the current generation RX350 came out in 2010 – my dad scored one of these and it looks more like an Aztek Elephant.
I once had a ride in the Buick, and was dismayed at the poor workmanship and raw metal showing around seats and interior panels. Forget Lexus, the Rendezvous wasn’t up to normal BUICK standards. The demise of the Firebirds, the Aztek, the dilution of the Grand Prix, and the alphabet soup names (G-6,etc) all contributed to the end of Pontiac. How sad.
The Aztec had to wait 12 or 13 years to become the second ugliest car. Nissan Juke now can claim top honours.
I still drive a 2001 Aztek GT that I brought new. Mine is a dark metallic blue and the color works well with the grey panels and black trim, but it was brought for the utility of the design more than the appearance. I never thought it was particularly good looking, but mine never seemed that ugly either (though I do understand people’s reaction to some of the Aztek color schemes). I still occasionally have someone ask me what it is and compliment it’s looks.
I have been unhappy at times with the mechanical problems over the years and did have to pay big time about 7 years ago to get the nefarious head gasket problem fixed. But it is still running strong and gets good mileage and has good acceleration. However, due to the mechanical problems I’ve had (and the deterioration of General Motors as a viable company) I would never by a GM vehicle again.
It provides comfortable seating for 4 full-sized adults for even long trips, and I have had 5 adults in the car for short trips and everybody said they were comfortable. Yet, the car is very maneuverable in tight parking lots and parks easily in the “small car” spaces when needed. The rear seats are easy to pull out and you can easily carry large bulky items. And, of course, it came with the air mattress and tent and you can comfortably sleep in the back. You don’t need to set up the tent thingy for enough room to sleep, it just provides more “camping space”.
Mine is just FWD, but it came with this automatic “traction” function in the transaxle. When either of the front wheels “slip” the transaxle locks into posi-traction with both wheels always driven (it automatically drops back to normal mode when the traction causes wheel drag in turns). Most of the car’s weight is on the front tires and, as a result, the car is excellent on ice and snow. Even on glazed ice, providing you go easy on the gas pedal and maintain a sensible slow speed, you can just “drive” the car. Up hills, around corners, there is no trouble getting around even in snow a little deeper than the bottom of the car. As long as you stay on paved roads, there is no need for AWD, and this is NOT an off-road vehicle even with the AWD.
GM had used the nostrils in the hood idea in their early 60s Chevy pickups.
I purchased a black Aztek rally edition year model 2005 purely by accident. Came back after few years of working overseas and needed an inexpensive set of wheels right away. The seller was being deployed overseas and he needed to sell right away. I paid him the asking price, he gave me back few hundred dollars. Didn’t even bargain.
I didn’t care much for the look but I was in no position to be picky while settling in. 3 years into owning this car. I can say it has grown on me. My kids call it “Black Thunder”. It has +150k miles on it. I drive LA to Sacramento almost every week and it is very comfortable for long rides. I had two kids, 3 bikes, boogie boards plus all our luggage for a two week trip inside with some room left.
The bad so far, power steering pump and instrument cluster. I replaced the first and use my phone as GPS/speedometer.
Still looking for something as comfortable to ride (sitting up upright with your legs in comfortable position). So far a Tacoma and a jeep were not close. I also need something with that much cargo space.
Pontiac was producing some pretty awful looking plastic junk in the ’80s and ’90s. The Fiero and Aztek serve as poster children as to what really went wrong to the once proud division. GM in general was riding on a set of rails that were so grossly misaligned that it reflected it in everything they built back in those nasty old days of plastic cladded crap. The G8 was a minor bright spot for Pontiac, but it was too late for the scarred division to stand out with a sense of pride. The Aztek will forever remain as Pontiac’s greatest design disaster ever.
My uncle gave me his ’03 Aztek since he got a stroke and couldn’t drive no more. It had like 40,000 miles when I got it but the air conditioner didn’t work and power steering leaked from the rack. I also had to replace the water pump but didn’t fix the ac or the ps leak would cost big bucks to fix. My plans were to make my Aztek into a kick ass entertanement center. I built a 35,000 watt sound system with a 23 inch sub woofer that costed me twice what the Aztek was worth! The cheeap plastic crap GM uses rattles so badly even the crap sheet medal buckled when I played my music. Aztek was a tin can junk. I sold the crap aztek to a salvage yard for 500 bucks the timing belt broke and no powersteering all that with less than 100 K! JUNK! I ended up taken out my sound system and got a Scion Xb that is nice to put it in. Scion is high quality and dosent rattle when I turn up the bass.
So that was YOU next to me at the light last night?
Ive still yet to see an Aztec in the metal nobody yet seems to have imported one, but like other ugly cars it will become cool one day.
As someone who is habitually a car nerd, I fortunately never knew of the existence of this abomination until I discovered Walter White.
In hindsight, the Aztek is actually pretty tasteful and restrained by modern standards…
The Aztek and Rendevous were attempts by GM to recoup their mini van investment. The dustbusters flopped and GM spent a Billion on it. GM spent the next decade trying to recoup that loss.
The Aztek looks like crap because GM put it on the dustbuster body after showing the Aztek as a show car that WASN’T on the dustbuster body.
GM needed for a return on that Billion.
As for the Element (and the Nissan Cube), old people like Hondas. The only buyers attracted to these cars were oldsters.
I lived in Michigan when GM shamelessly released these mini-garbage-truck-lookin’ turds. They quickly resorted to all but forcing GM employees to drive them, in a pathetic effort to create the illusion of market acceptance.
I guess they have something of a cult following now; why, veritable tens of people think it’s cool to have the kind of car that was used in “Breaking Bad”.
Right, here we go again: will someone please fish the longer of my two comments out of the trash?
Better looking everyday now compared to the horrors shown at the Kia and Toyota dealers. Beginning to look almost elegant and classy.
I have a friend who bought a Rendezvous, and one day we were going someplace in it and he saw an Aztek and said, “Jeezus, who would buy something like that?”. I said, “Apparently, you!”. He argued and argued it wasn’t anything like the Aztek, and it was a Buick. I said, “Like the Pontiac T-1000 you had years ago wasn’t a Chevette?” He had made fun of some girl driving a Chevette years ago, and I looked at him like he was insane. He just was floored when I pointed out his T1000 was almost exactly the same car. At least he never had a Cadillac Cimmaron. My neighbor bought one, totally clueless as to what it was, a Cavalier with a fancy interior. He seems to be “platform blind” on cars. He had no idea that a Dodge Charger and Challenger, and Chrysler 300 are basically the same car. We were in my ’10 Challenger soon after I bought it, and he said, “I like this car a lot more than your Charger!”. I said, “Yeah, it looks a lot better anyway, but it’s still the same car mechanically”. I had to show him the video of the assembly line to convince him I was correct on that. Pretty much the same interior and drivetrain should have been a clue, but he doesn’t seem to be able to see it. He’s kind of faceblind too, seeing people and claiming they look like some celebrity and as someone who never forgets a face, it amused me greatly when he claimed some girl on a commercial looked like Marissa Tomei. “You must be on drugs if you think that!”. It kind of goes along with his “platform blindness” I guess. He comes up with “looks just like…” every so often and I have to wonder if something is wrong with his vision. And then there are the countless times people have walked up to him who obviously know him and me and he has no idea who they are. We had his daughter with him and were in Costco and this woman, who I recognized instantly, ran up to him and said, “Hi Bill!” and hugged him and said, “This must be your daughter!” to him. He had no clue who she was. He played along and then after she left, his daughter says to me, “So who was she?”. I looked at Bill and said, “She was almost your mom!” Bill says, “WTF are you talking about?” I said, “That was Laynie, Bill, you know, you went out with her for a whole year about 30 years ago?”. He vehemently denied it was her, and then said something that made me and the daughter crack up. “How did she know she was my kid and not yours?”. Me and his daughter looked at each other and cracked up. We couldn’t believe he was serious. His kids look and even the daughter talks just like him, so much they are called “clones”. He said he didn’t think they looked like him at all, which is crazy. When we got back to his house, I asked him if he had his high school yearbooks and we looked up Laynie. The daughter says, “Yeah, she still looks the same!”. He looked at her picture for a few minutes and insisted she looks totally different now. Older, sure, but no much different at all. His wife came in and the daughter says, “Dad’s ex girlfriend showed up at Costco and he didn’t know who she was!”. She looked at the pic and said, “Oh, that’s Laynie, one of the ones before me!”. Then she rattled off the names of all of them, in order, she knew 3 of them, she went to school with them. Bill insists to this day that it wasn’t Laynie at Costco and the whole thing is some sort of practical joke his wife, daughter, and I cooked up to screw with his head. His 35th high school reunion is next month, and I told his wife to take video of him talking to Laynie when they go to watch the wheels spin in his head when he sees her name tag. He probably won’t recognize 90% of the people there.
That was a funny story. I bet most of us have had a friend like that.
Hey, TheMann, where’s my $3.12? X^)
You can’t re-write history , this thing was a monumental flop. Breaking Bad , made it some what “hip”, but it’s so ugly from every angle that it instantly became Pontiac’s Edsel. The concept front looks a whole lot better and probably would have done better.
Is this the reason that Pontiac had to go? Sad ending to a brand that broke all the rules in the 1960’s and gave us so many historic , now classic cars.