Vauxhall beats BMW and MINI in this week's style stakes

UGLY, well-built and not as attractive as this time six or seven years ago.

Anyway enough about me; let's look the new BMW 1-Series, the second generation of BMW's entry-level offering, and the new MINI Coupe, which has finally been unveiled in production form after what feels like an epoch. Given the number of their immediate predecessors you see knocking around it's almost certain they'll sell like hot cakes.


But wait. Is it just me or are neither particularly good looking?

It would be spectacularly stupid to buy a car on looks alone because, like a pretty girl who turns out to be rubbish in bed, there a lots of motors that look great but turn out to be a letdown. Nor should you dismiss something with the looks of bulldog that's swallowed a wasp, because otherwise spectacularly ugly cars like the Alfa SZ wouldn't be acknowledged today as classics.

Even so, I still wonder what the BMW group's stylists were thinking of when they signed off a MINI Cooper wearing a baseball cap instead of a roof and a small hatchback wearing horn-rimmed spectacles. Artworks these new arrivals aren't.

I know beauty's in the eye of the beholder, but most people agree on motoring's mingers and I can't see why - no matter how degrees in Art and Design you've got - someone would deliberately come up with something like the Ssangyong Rodius. There is, in this day an age, no excuse for coming up with an ugly car.

Especially not when you consider what Vauxhall came up with just a few days after the 1-Series was announced. I know that small boys don't dream of owning an Astra when they grow up but the new GTC three-door might help change things; have you seen the styling of this thing? I've no idea whether it's any better to drive than Volkswagen's Scirocco, my favourite of the small coupes, but it is the Siena Miller of three-door hatchbacks and the Veedub isn't. I'm not saying it'll be brilliant, but being a bit of a looker's a good place to start.



So the Astra GTC's a svelte and pleasingly-styled car where two other new arrivals aren't. She is, as some of my mates would say, proper fit.