Race cars aren't pretty. Not really, not anymore. Old racers are drop-dead gorgeous, sure, but the modern regulatory environment, coupled with aerodynamic needs, has crimped race cars in the past two decades when it comes to looks. But that's not so with every race car.
Take the Audi R18, for instance. That thing is uglier than sin. Sure, it won a bunch of races, but its styling was the result of a long fall. A fall out of the Ugly Tree, to be exact, and it managed to smash its super-fast face into every single branch on the way down. Some branches it even managed to somehow hit twice, just for fun. It's all blocky eyes and rectangles and wide, squished nose and terribly good efficiency.
And like I said, it won a bunch of races. But it won't win any beauty contests.
That doesn't mean that race cars of the past 20 years had to be ugly. The McLaren F1 GTR, in both short-tail and long-tail configurations, seems to only get better as the years go on. Its face gets fresher with each passing year, like Helen Mirren, or Paul Rudd. Seriously, Paul Rudd, what the hell?
But it's not just GT-class cars that look great. Some Formula One cars, like the McLaren MP4-13, look incredibly clean and simple, like fine Swedish design, compared to the sculpted mutant freaks that were the F1 cars of 2008.
So what do you think is the prettiest race car of the past two decades? Show us in the comments below!
Photo credit: Eddy Clio