Photo: Leasing Options
You know, considering how long the history of the automobile is, and the thousands of car models produced over more than a century, it’s surprising how few ugly machines were made.
For me, the undisputed king of that very short list is the Fiat Multipla. Born at the end of the 1990s in the stables of what was once a great Italian company, this thing tried something no other mass-produced car had tried before it: seat three people up front, the driver and two passengers.
The idea was for the Bravo-derived Multipla to fight the MPVs that started popping up from rival companies back then by offering an extra seat where no one had thought to place one. On paper, that must have seemed like a great idea, but in reality it was a fiasco, because it led to a very weird and unfriendly exterior design.
In the 13 years (1998-2011) or so it was on the market in Europe, the model managed to sell close to 280,000 units. This too looks good on paper for untrained eyes, but for Fiat it was not nearly as close as what it expected.
Presently, Fiat is a shadow of its former self, pushed to the bottom of the importance list by the many brands of the Stellantis behemoth. That means a revival of a nameplate so controversial is very unlikely even today (or is it?), in a time when we see lots of defunct models come back to life.
From time to time though, these machines do get new digital iterations, and the Multipla is no exception. Most recently, it did so courtesy of British Leasing Options, which released a batch of ten AI-generated renderings based on gone vehicles.
There’s only one image of the Multipla provided, and not very revealing when it comes to the number of seats inside, but judging by the exterior dimensions, our guess is this is a traditional take on a car, with room for just the driver and passenger.
Design-wise, it doesn’t look half bad, and appears pretty much like all other small city cars presently being sold.
The idea was for the Bravo-derived Multipla to fight the MPVs that started popping up from rival companies back then by offering an extra seat where no one had thought to place one. On paper, that must have seemed like a great idea, but in reality it was a fiasco, because it led to a very weird and unfriendly exterior design.
In the 13 years (1998-2011) or so it was on the market in Europe, the model managed to sell close to 280,000 units. This too looks good on paper for untrained eyes, but for Fiat it was not nearly as close as what it expected.
Presently, Fiat is a shadow of its former self, pushed to the bottom of the importance list by the many brands of the Stellantis behemoth. That means a revival of a nameplate so controversial is very unlikely even today (or is it?), in a time when we see lots of defunct models come back to life.
From time to time though, these machines do get new digital iterations, and the Multipla is no exception. Most recently, it did so courtesy of British Leasing Options, which released a batch of ten AI-generated renderings based on gone vehicles.
There’s only one image of the Multipla provided, and not very revealing when it comes to the number of seats inside, but judging by the exterior dimensions, our guess is this is a traditional take on a car, with room for just the driver and passenger.
Design-wise, it doesn’t look half bad, and appears pretty much like all other small city cars presently being sold.
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