Curbside Musings: 2005 Pontiac Aztek – A Misunderstanding?

I have read opinions about social media (including on social media), including from individuals whose ideas I generally value, about how horrible it is.  While there have been some downsides that were unexpected dating back to the time I had first created such an account twenty-plus years ago (remember MySpace and Friendster?), my experiences with social media have been largely positive and life-affirming.  Our views of many things are filtered through how we manage our own expectations.  I’m not a braggart by nature and I like myself, so I’ve learned not to be triggered by the not-always-accurate portrayals of others’ seemingly perfect lives.  I try to keep it real.  I’ve said it recently, and I’ll say it again: comparison is the killer of joy.

Social media for me has been one channel through which I’ve been able not only to reconnect with key people from throughout my past, but also to better understand myself, my life’s journey thus far, and the human condition through the shared reality of reliving memories and making new ones with others through those platforms.  Even from back when I had been seeing a therapist, my doctor had told me how apparent it was that I had used social media as an effective tool in my own healing.

Doing so also facilitated being able to make peace with who I had been at various points in my life, and to give myself grace for getting through bad situations with only the tools I had at the time.  I’ve also been able to make amends with various individuals who I had come to realize had been on the receiving end of ways in which I had learned to act out as I faced my own challenges both internally and at home.  To experience the forgiveness of such individuals has been both humbling and a huge blessing, and has made me realize the importance of extending the same to others in my past.

Our minds tend to filter out many of the truly ugly details of our histories.  While I do believe in the release of forgiving others, I also recognize the importance of remembering and internalizing lessons learned so as not to be an active participant in repeating unwanted situations.  In adulthood, when remembering certain events I had once thought of as deeply traumatic for a significant amount of time, some of them honestly don’t seem that bad – at least compared with other challenges that would later surface as my grown-up life became more complex.

Looking at the Aztek, I asked myself if it really as bad at the time of its introduction as I had remembered it.  Twenty years removed from when our featured Pontiac was new, it is truly difficult to recall the exact way I had felt about its styling, especially at first.  The Aztek still regularly lands on many “ugliest” lists from various car sites and magazines I come across.  When I had found this example last month, two ideas kept coming back to me.  The first was that its looks, while not beautiful by any stretch (Bill Mitchell would have been horrified), don’t seem that offensive.  The other was that the Aztek seemed to embody the idea of an automotive scapegoat, which was an image I don’t think it was ever able to shake.

I don’t have any strong recollection of having paid any special attention to the Aztek concept vehicle before having seen the production example.  My initial adverse reaction to the styling of the first-year 2001 model hadn’t been tainted in my mind by any disappointment of the look being lost in translation.  When I had finally seen pictures of the original concept, however, I could understand how Pontiac and SUV fans might have felt let down.  One of the specific styling elements that didn’t work for me was the appearance of relatively little ground clearance for this type of vehicle, which visually tied it much too closely for comfort to the minivans which shared its corporate U-body platform.

The other major offense was the lower edge of the rear quarter window, which seemed to lack horizontal continuity with that of the passenger door windows.  It looked as if the rear of the car had melted, giving the Aztek that “garbage truck” look to which I had read that more than a few had compared it.  The nose looked unusually aggressive for the time, but that wasn’t problematic for me.  This was a Pontiac, a make known through much of its history for in-your-face styling themes.

Within the context of today’s aesthetic extremes (BMW buck-teeth and Tesla Cybertruck, I’m looking at you), had I been too hard on the Aztek’s appearance?  Had I been a bandwagon-jumper who might just as easily have just gone along with seemingly everyone else if they had said they liked it?  (Many didn’t, which I do remember clearly.)

It’s like the Aztek had become the Glitter (Mariah Carey movie reference, there) of the automotive world immediately after its introduction, with about the same amount of build-up.  The irony is that Glitter (the soundtrack, not the movie), which was also released in the early Aughts, had come back in recent years for another, much different, positive critical appraisal decades after its release.  (On the Glitter soundtrack, I had always secretly enjoyed it, years before the #JusticeForGlitter hashtags had surfaced.)

As for the vehicle itself, it didn’t seem great at any one thing.  It wasn’t a true off-roader, though it had decent AWD capability if equipped with Versatrak (this one’s a front-drive model, per a license plate search), which made it a good vehicle in inclement weather.  The Aztek wasn’t really sporty, which was Pontiac’s traditional calling card.  It handled well and also included a standard anti-lock braking system.  It did have some cool tech features that were very much of its time, like a storage box between the front seats that could be used for compact discs or a beverage cooler, a built-in “tailgate tray” in the rear, and washable seat covers to keep things fresh inside for the physically active crowd it courted.  I still own and play CDs, so I would have been on board with these things, even if my tailgating days are over.

It seems that once the “ugly” stigma had been attached to it, there was nothing Pontiac could do with the Aztek to reverse that.  A mild refresh for 2002 brought a monochromatic paint scheme and smoother exterior cladding among some of its styling tweaks, all of which served to make the Aztek’s overall appearance smoother and more palatable.  Sales remained far below expectations, with a total of just under 120,000 over its entire run and averaging about 24,000 units per year through the end in 2005.  Peak sales came with the 2002 refresh, with almost 27,800 units sold.  When the related, more conventionally-styled Buick Rendezvous arrived for model year 2002, it immediately outsold the Aztek, racking up sales of almost 286,500 by calendar year 2005, more than double the Pontiac’s number despite the latter’s one year head-start.

I recently became reacquainted with a former schoolmate and neighborhood guy I had once been afraid of.  He’s doing well and I’m genuinely glad to be back in touch.  Thinking back to my experience of having feared him, I’m starting to question the narrative I had long held in my mind about him.  He had never physically harmed me when we were kids, nor do I remember him ever having used epithets at me.  Was it that I had felt intimidated by his apparent confidence and show of hyper-masculinity?  These things, by themselves, aren’t bad.  Without gaslighting myself, I feel like I can safely say that my fear of him probably had less to do with him and more to do with the context of everything else that was going on in my life at the time.  His and my interactions simply hadn’t ever been that bad.

Looking at these pictures of this Fusion Orange Metallic Aztek and how relatively normal it looks in 2025, I feel like I owe Pontiac an apology.  They had attempted something different in a package that perhaps had looked too aggressive for its time.  It’s true that it wasn’t executed perfectly, and its styling still isn’t exactly for me, but I’d probably rather have one of these today in good condition than another vehicle from its era with more anodyne, generic looks.  There’s probably a bit of nostalgia that’s coloring my view as I write this.  Maybe I should put on some Glitter (the soundtrack, not the movie).

Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, May 11, 2025.