Going into the 2019 Geneva Motor Show, a lot of anticipation was building over a truly bizarre turn of events: two different companies were both trying to launch separate new car reveals wearing the same badge from a long-dead automobile manufacturer, Hispano-Suiza.

That marque represented the height of luxury motoring in the 1920s and ’30s, and was often spoken of in the same breath as Rolls-Royce and Bugatti.

(It turned to aircraft engines during the Second World War, and technically went belly-up in 1968.)

Hispano Suiza – the name is Spanish for “Spanish-Swiss,” its founders’ countries of origin – benefited from a lasting matchless reputation, which makes it no surprise more than one person got the idea to stick that badging onto a modern-day supercar.

The Hispano Suiza Muagari HS1 GTC Hispano Suiza Automobilmanufaktur

The Hispano Suiza Muagari HS1 GTC Hispano Suiza Automobilmanufaktur

The Hispano Suiza Muagari HS1 GTC Hispano Suiza Automobilmanufaktur

The Hispano Suiza Muagari HS1 GTC Hispano Suiza Automobilmanufaktur

The Hispano Suiza Muagari HS1 GTC Hispano Suiza Automobilmanufaktur

The Hispano Suiza Muagari HS1 GTC Hispano Suiza Automobilmanufaktur

The Hispano Suiza Muagari HS1 GTC Hispano Suiza Automobilmanufaktur

Hispano Suiza Maguari HS1 GTC

In the Swiss corner, we have Erwin Leo Himmel, an Austrian car designer who says he bought the rights to the name in 2010.

His Switzerland-based company’s Maguari HS1 GTC is to be based on an Audi R8; powered by a twin-turbo V10 shuttling 1,085 hp through a seven-speed auto to the rear wheels; and shrouded in off-the-wall carbon-fibre bodywork.

He says it’ll nail the zero-to-100 km/h in 2.8 seconds and top out at 380 km/h. After a failed start for the model between 2009 and 2011, Himmel says he wants to build 300 examples of this production version.

The Hispano Suiza Carmen Hispano Suiza

The Hispano Suiza Carmen Hispano Suiza

The Hispano Suiza Carmen Hispano Suiza

The Hispano Suiza Carmen Hispano Suiza

The Hispano Suiza Carmen Cyril Zingaro , Associated Press

The Hispano Suiza Carmen Hispano Suiza

The Hispano Suiza Carmen Hispano Suiza

The Hispano Suiza Carmen Hispano Suiza

Hispano Suiza Carmen

In the Spanish corner, we have Miguel Suqué Mateu, great-grandson of the original automaker’s founder, who wants to build a car much more focused on luxury and grand touring than on speed.

His Carmen nevertheless boasts a set of electric motors totalling 1,000 hp and capable of similar performance numbers to the Maguari. Its carbon-fibre body was inspired by the one-off 1938 Hispano-Suiza H6C Dubonnet Xenia.

Mateu wants to build just 19 cars between now and 2021, at a price of $2.2 million each.

Which is worse?

Here’s the situation: setting aside the corporate conflict and the fact the hyphen’s been dropped from the name, both cars arguably look sort of awful.

No offense, but if we had to assume, the stylists behind the Maguari must have had a lot of Grand Theft Auto screencaps pinned to their inspiration boards. It manages to somehow look both wildly distinct from any fashionable performance car on the market today; and very much like a generic video game supercar.

The grille openings front and rear are so exaggerated, the creases and tops of the fender lines so sharp, that you’d be forgiven for thinking the design statement was “make the car as bonkers as possible.”

While there are some fantastic parts to it – we have to admit the rear window louvered is pulled off very nicely – other details just drag it further toward a sort of garish opulence. The flying stork sculpture floating in the middle of the grille, for example, is meant to echo the original Hispano-Suiza’s hood ornaments, but comes off as tacky.

The Carmen, on the other hand, does an inimitable job of imitating the H6C Dubonnet Xenia. However, the problem is neither the old car or the new one is particularly pretty. (And, yes, that’s coming from someone who’s a fan of pre-war cars.)

To its credit, the Carmen has a lot of angles where it looks absolutely stunning. It has a few others, though, where the styling looks convoluted and just plain wrong.

As with the Maguari, some details are so right, like the retro take on the spun wheel covers and the boattail effect toward the rear; while others are head-shake-inducing, like that stork (again!) floating in the taillights, and the too-thick chrome surround on the grille.

My personal take is that it’s an overall handsome design with a handful of flaws, but another Driving.ca editor likened it to a VW Beetle kit car and said it “might be the worst car ever made,” a title I think may belong to the Maguari. (He argued, of course, that that car looked “pretty cool.”)

So help us settle the debate: which of these two Hispano Suiza revivals looks worse?