At first glance, this one would seem to be a gimme—the sort of thing that no one in our world could defend as even mildly acceptable. The Violations just keep on coming: instrumentation overkill, hard-plastic seating, steering-wheel weirdness, carbon-fiber “carpet,” polished CO2 bottles, and a nitrous bottle mounted in a car that, in all likelihood, does not even have a nitrous hose running to the engine. It’s just absurd.
But on second thought, I wonder if this car will ever have its day. It strikes me that, in the ’60s, mainstream hot roddders probably took Ed Roth’s creations to be useless, stupid, and as ludicrous as this week’s example of stylistic Violations. Yet today, Roth cars can’t be topped for their retro-kitchy-cool factor. So will there ever be a day when you look back on sport-compact show-car overkill as nostalgic?
Not for me.
