Europe’s Ugliest Car
The unfortunate thing about Slovenia is that all public transportation goes through Ljubljana. We tried to figure out how to take a bus or train from Ljubljana, to Lake Bled, to Bovec in the Julian Alps, to Piran on the coast. We realized it couldn’t be done: all busses travel through Ljubljana, which would have required a lot of time backtracking. So we rented a car for the Ljubljana to Bled to Bovec leg, returned the car to Ljubljana, and took a bus to Piran. The car we rented was, um, interesting. We used a local company, which got us perks like a free GPS and Cockta (a strange tasting Slovenian cola), but also got us the smallest, cheapest car he had: a 2003 Fiat Multipla. European automakers should stick to what they know best, and that is not SUVs. We rented a rather strange looking SUV type thing when a group of us went to Normandy, but the Multipla really took the cake. It was bulbous and boxy at the same time, and had this strange shelf looking thing on the outside with teeny buggy lights. The guy at the rental car company kept telling us it was a six seater (as if this was a plus, being that there was only two of us), but we didn’t know what he meant until we saw the upright seat in the middle between the driver and front passenger. The Multipla was so ugly, even the Europeans were making fun of it. When it was parked in Bled, we saw a group of people pointing at it and peering in the windows, laughing. I wanted to yell out, really, we didn’t choose this car, it is just a rental!
Alas, as aesthetically challenged as it was, the Multipla performed fine, chugging up and around the fifty hairpin turns in the Vrsic mountain pass through the Julian Alps.
It looks a little like Otis. Buggy eyes, round but also square and so ugly it is actually a little cute.
Ha!