Car redesign failures

In December 2011, Kelley Blue Book ran a feature about the best redesigned cars for 2012. The automobiles varied from Mercedes-Benz convertibles to Honda SUV’s to Volkswagen Beetles, and the descriptions were festooned with words like “bolder” and “sexier” and even “grrrr.”

This kind of language is what car companies hope to hear when an automobile is redesigned. They want to hear that old flaws have been addressed and new elements have been introduced that will make it more desirable to the consumer.

Unfortunately, not all redesigns win accolades. In fact, some garner outright hostility for their “improvements.” What follows is a list of redesigned cars, provided by Karl Brauer, CEO and editor-in-chief of TotalCarScore.com, an online review aggregator and information resource for cars currently on the market.

The redesigns on this list not only didn’t improve on the existing models, but may have made buyers wish they could have the old models back, according to TotalCarScore.com. Far from including words like “bold” or “sexy,” the list was dotted with less desirable terms, such as “uninspired” and “thud.”

Read ahead and see which cars made TotalCarScore.com’s list of car redesign failures.

Honda Civic

The 2012 Honda Civic was late reaching the marketplace. Its design team had scrapped plans to make it larger midway through production, and went back to the slender design for which it was known.

According to Brauer, the delay wasn’t worth it. The Civic still offers the same comfortable ride and respectable fuel economy but those attributes are offset by what he calls “uninspired styling and dated equipment,” leading to sales he describes as “lackluster.”