A WACKY website dedicated to Britain's ugliest cars has earned a Worcestershire designer a leading internet award.

Phil Stokes set up www.ugly cars.co.uk as a bit of fun six years ago after finding he often disagreed with car shows - such as Top Gear - on what made a well-designed vehicle.

The site, a public forum to ridicule the worst-looking vehicles, has become so popular it was named one of the 10 best websites of 2004 by search engine Yahoo!

It also won the year's Weird and Wonderful website award for Mr Stokes and co-founder Mike Smith.

Since then, an amazing 87,000 people a day have been logging on to check out the nation's ugliest cars. It averaged around 1,500 visitors before the award.

"The site is only there for fun and there was no serious intention at all, so any recognition is absolutely great," said Mr Stokes, of Hardwicke Close, St John's.

"We used to watch motoring programmes where they described certain old cars as "beautiful" and we both thought "no, they really are horrible".

"There was nothing like the site around at the time. And of course, it's always satisfying when something you have done has been recognised."

Many of the cars on the site have been spotted and photographed in Worcester, although anyone can post their opinions and pictures of the car industry's manufacturing disasters.

"One teacher, from Monmouth, even gave his pupils cameras to snap any ugly cars while they were out on a field trip," said 39-year-old Mr Stokes, who is a web designer for Just Systems Ltd, in Malvern Hills Science Park.

Industry professionals judged the awards and criteria for the winners included the "wow factor" and creativity, whether the site is fully functional and how easy it is to use.

The public can now vote for their favourite out of the top 10 websites of 2004 by logging on to http://yahoo.co.uk/finds oftheyear2004