Ssangyong...well, if you're in the US, you have probably never heard of Ssangyong. Yes, that second S is supposed to be there. Ssang means twin or double, and Yong means dragon. Twin dragons.

If you HAVE heard of Ssangyong, you probably only heard about it when you downloaded the last Top Gear episode of 2005. And if that's the case, you only know Ssangyong for one thing: Making ugly cars.

Now, I disagree on some of them being out and out hideous. (The Musso is a decent looking SUV, IMO; and the Kyron, while it won't win any beauty contests, isn't so bad compared to a lot of things out there.) But damn if they aren't still just excellent at making awful-looking cars. In the history of auto manufacturing, perhaps the only major marques to ever come close to the level of ugly that Ssangyong has acheived with the well-known Rodius, and the lesser known (because it is new) Actyon would be Pontiac with the Aztek, Subaru with the B9 Tribeca, and Citroen, with almost every car they made in the ealy 90s.

Anyhow, all Korean carmakers had some sort of technological alliance going at some point. Hyundai was in bed with Mitsubishi. Kia with Ford and Mazda. Daewoo with GM and Suzuki. Samsung with Renault and Nissan. And Ssangyong with...Mercedes Benz?

Yes. Now don't get me wrong. Mercedes can't claim any credit for the automotive abortions you're about to see. But they did supply Ssangyong with engines for the Musso, and with a whole car in the form of the Chairman (well, Ssangyong rebodied the E-class, just like Chrysler did for the 300C and Dodge for the Magnum.)

Ssangyong Motor Company was founded in 1954 as Hadonghwan Motors to make Jeeps for the US Army (there used to be a lot of companies that made copies of the Jeep, and those who kept doing it evolved the shape into other things. The Korando is at least in some sense a Jeep descendant.) In 1988 it was acquired by Ssangyong Group and the name was changed to Ssangyong Motor Company. In 1997 Daewoo took control of the company, which led to many Ssangyongs being badged as Daewoos (the Daewoo Istana, and the Daewoo Musso being the notable examples)

When Daewoo began having financial difficulties in 2000, it sold it's controlling stake. In 2004, SAIC (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, not the US defense contractor), bought 49 percent of the company. It has been healthy enough as of late to release several new models including the:

Honestly, what else does this thing make you think of?

This is without any doubt the homliest small SUV on the market. Seriously. Top Gear slammed the Kyron and the Rodius but missed this? It even gives the departed Pontiac Aztek a run for it's money.

This is a new model. What's distressing is how quickly these things are filling up Korean streets.

From some angles, it looks vagely like an updated steroidal mutant version of the Daewoo Lemans. Kind of like how the Aztek look like someone had welded two CRXs together.

This is really one of those rare vehicles where it has no good angle. No matter what vantage point you look at it from, it is ugly.

Moreover, you can't even look at any PEICE of it and escape it. At every level, this is a hidous car. Cover up all of the car but a tiny little section, as long as it's big enough to contain some kind of curve or crease. Try it. The side-view mirrors look like shit, for fuck's sake. Even the WHEELS look fundamentally wrong.

I recall a Warhammer 40,000 story, one of the Eisenhorn books, IIRC, where there was an alien race that created spaces which were extra-dimensional in which everything just looked fundamentally wrong to human eyes. The only quantifiable problem identified was that angles do not add up to 360 degrees in these spaces. The soldiers who fought in these places suffered disorientation and discomfort, as they were constantly assailed with visual contradictions.

This car was built by those aliens.

Ssangyong makes busses, too. I can't recall ever riding in one that I know of.

The Korando is one of Ssangyong's oldest models. Ssangyong was one of several companies in Korea (at least including Asia, possibly others) who were at some point making either jeeps or jeep-like vehicles for the US and/or ROK military. The Korando is an evolution of those jeeps.



Obviously, Ssangyong went their own way with it. Now it's not an UGLY vehicle, really. And it may or may not be a capable off-roader. But there is an air of poseurmobile about it. You might be able to tell what the big cue to that is.

See that brush guard? Plastic. Cheap, fragile plastic. You see 'em broken all the time.

They didn't always look like this.

This pic starts a progression of festoonery.

A little less subtle...



There we go. I think we've officially gone too far now.

I don't think I've seen one with every possible add-on yet. Oh my...I just now noticed it. Is that a US license plate above his windshield? Why?

Now this looks like it might belong to a serious off-roader. And it might. I don't know. But consider that the source of that mud might lie on the paved roads. Korea uses dirt on icy roads rather than salt or sand. A good practice, I think, but good god is there a lot of road grime. I once road my bike about 3 hours in the rain on paved roads and came back caked in mud.

The Jeep legacy is even more apparant in the previous generation. This has perhaps a bit broader appeal than the late-model Korando. It looks a bit ...well older than it is. The trim pieces just have kind of a 50s Landrover-ish look to them I think.

Well, considering what else Ssangyong is making these days, perhaps the enduring popularity of the old Korandos isn't surprising. You can see that things started going fundamentally wrong when they started deviating from what better minds had given them.



That's not some racist anti-Korean comment. That's the fucking fact. (And besides, Hyundai are not churning out shit)

Lookee here. Again we have the new Korando for comparison. The malproportioned monstrosity. All stickered up, too.



Lets see...how many of these stickers actually apply to anything in this car. I think we can rule out Honda at the very least.

Now this is interesting...It's a long wheelbase first generation Korando.

Neat.

I'm not sure, I think the Korando Family might be related to the Hyundai Galloper/Mitsubishi Pajero. But I'm really not sure.

It looks different enough to be a distinct vehicle.



Regardless, size and shape wise, I think it's clear we're looking at the predecessor to the Musso.

The Musso is a ...unique looking SUV which doesn't reach the levels of ugly that recent Ssangyongs have, but does sort of forbode them. It was introduced in 1994, and had little cosmetic change since then.



It is not at all uncommon to see it used as a work vehicle, by police and fire departments, or in this case, by the US Air Force.

It's also not uncommon to see it getting...accessorized with things of varying appropriateness. Notice that round thing? That's a BMW logo. To my knowledge there is not a single BMW part in the Musso.

This, however, while an affectation, is not a totally inappropriate one. See, the Musso, at least most of them, was powered by a 2.9 liter diesel engine from Mercedes. The Mercedes logo is not uncommon on Mussos in Korea.

Jeep doesn't always mean the company. Regardless, something it also doesn't mean is anything like what the Musso is.

This thing just strikes me as weird is all.

In retrospect, it's not that bad.

More festoonery. He's got aftermarket stuff on the roof, and both bumpers. Hey, at least he's got a disposable second bumper if he dings something.

On a worksite.

Yellow Musso.



Musso sniper.

Ssangyong Musso: 1994 - 2005.

The Rexton was Ssangyong's mid-size SUV from 2001 to 2005. It seems to be succeeded by the Kyron.

It's one of Ssangyong's better-looking vehicles, I think, if a little indistintive.

They also got the 2.9 liter diesel. However, I've never seen one with a Mercedes badge. I'm guessing this is just because unlike the Musso, which has that nice flat space on the front grille, for the big round Ssangyong logo, the Rexton has none.

According to Top Gear's Korean language edition, the Ssangyong Rodius was recently voted Ugliest Car in Britain.

Honestly, this doesn't surprise me a bit.

When I look at the Rodius (AKA, the Hideous), only one thing comes to mind.

Fat woman in a bikini. Tell me you don't see it. Tell me it isn't haunting you right now.



What disturbs me is that the lesson of the Aztek isn't sinking in. Pontiac has been called by GM insiders a "damaged brand" because of it. Subaru would have lost a lot of respect for their B9 if it didn't coincide with the best looking Legacy yet.

Do Koreans just not have enough taste to realize there's something wrong here? Why is Ssangyong still in business after a half-decade of shit like this?

Oh and hey, someone managed to make the Rodius, the ugliest car in the world, even uglier.



A fucking BANK managed to do that, actually. (And it's a good bank, too!)



Shinhan Unheng, BTW.

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