Rearview

A PLAGUE of vileness has visited itself upon our green and pleasant land, the likes of which we’ve not seen since the SUV invasion of the early noughties. I speak, of course, of the cult of the “crossover”.

These hideous machines are everywhere, clogging up our streets and making the eyes bleed of anyone with the tiniest smidgen of aesthetic sensibility.

Admittedly, crossovers make a certain amount of sense. They offer motorists the high driving position of an SUV without the stigma of actually driving one, and the space of a people carrier without telling the world you’ve lost the will to live.

But do they really have to be so ugly? Whatever happened to sleek and stylish?

Take the Nissan Qashqai, or “cash cow” as dealers call them. Bulging in all the wrong places like fat lady wrestlers, they still manage to be one of Ireland’s best selling cars.

Then there’s the Kia Soul, a lunchbox on wheels, and the Skoda Yeti, which was evidently designed by a chimpanzee deep in the depths of a bad acid trip. Even BMW, long a bastion of great design, has succumbed to this madness, churning out the laughable X1 and the Mini Countryman, which spent a year up the ugly tree stuffing itself with cream buns before falling out and snapping every branch on the way down.

But none of them come close to the depths of design depravity that is the Nissan Juke. While it’s supposed to be funky, edgy and aggressive, it’s ended up being a horribly deformed, bulbous mess of a thing straight out of a Salvador Dalí painting.

And here’s the tragedy. Despite being as sexy as shaved warthogs, Jukes are flying out of showrooms, snapped up by deluded punters desperate to show the world how cool they are and failing miserably.

I fear for humanity. I really do.