How Can Aston Make Such Wack Concepts, When Fiat's Are This Cool?

Concept cars are the only things that ever made motor shows interesting. You get some complete belters from companies you’ve never heard of, and you get some heinous monsters from the big brands. Most companies have built one or two shockers, but some folks always seem to pull it out of the bag – and it’s not who you’d expect.

Take the maker of the best-looking cars in recent times: Aston Martin. Ask them to design a concept and you’ll open up a whole design shop of horrors. Check out the rump end of the hideous AMV10 concept for starters...

It looks like it’s been sat on and then stretched. It’s bulbous in areas even J-Lo wouldn’t be proud of, and to top it off, those stupidly small wheels look like a complete after thought. Complete fail, Aston.

But it gets worse. Feast your eyes on this SUV concept from 2009. I don’t know what the hell the designers were trying to achieve with it, but it’s ugly. Really, really ugly. No surprise then that it hasn’t been built. Let’s just hope things stay that way.

Thing is, Aston has a bit of form with this sort of thing. If you’re not sitting down you might want to before you look at this bad boy.

What’s almost as confusing as its looks is the Bulldog moniker Aston chose for this thing. Bulldogs are stocky, rounded little porkers, but this little nasty looks more like Victoria Beckham's body image template.

Strangely it falls to Fiat to show Aston the way forwards. Concepts should always be mad because at least then ugliness doesn’t matter so much, but Fiat’s concepts always seem to look pretty damn cool.

Let’s start with the Fiat Concept Car (FCC) II. Part moon buggy, part Hot Wheels, this is exactly the sort of thing you’d love to own… but not really. It’s a perfect concept, sitting there all bonkers and green.

But, I hear you say, you need something a little more rugged for the Benghazi rush hour. No problem, Fiat has that sorted too with the Hummer-esque Oltre concept. This isn’t the sort of thing that will easily fit into a space at Aldi, but it is the sort of thing you can mount a 50-calibre machine gun to. Splendid.

Even third-party design studies work with Fiats. Get a load of the Fiat 500 Coupe from design house Zagato; the people that even made a gorgeous Aston Martin concept.

Its lines are so sweet, especially at the back. Had it been built and ended up mingling with regular cars, it’d be like giving Eva Mendes a wildcard entry to Miss Scunthorpe.

So Fiat, I salute you and your concept genius. But Aston, see me after class.