Slashdot Mirror
Worst Cars Of All Time Rated
prostoalex writes "Forbes magazine complains that people nowadays do not have a real understanding of how awful a car can truly be. Hence they compiled a list of the worst cars available in the US, or 'lemons' created after World War 2. In the former Eastern Bloc, there are plenty of other choices, including this Ukrainian jewel, as well as many Soviet cars did not make it to the Forbes article."
I never did have to contend with the broken engine block or engine fires or "secret recalls"* which were common with these same cars, I dumped it 2 years after buying it.
* Secret recall: when the customer brings it in for any other service, sneakily check to see if it needs anything on this list fix and take care of it without ever letting them know you did it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
In preparation for the likely slashdotting, here are the current results of the poll. Notice the many non-U.S. built vehicles here (you'd think that at least the poster would RTFA, but apparently not).:
Which of these cars do you consider to be the worst?
1975-1980 AMC Pacer
177 votes (11%)
1970-1974 Chevrolet Vega
203 votes (12%)
1970-1972 Citroen SM
28 votes (2%)
1978-1988 Fiat Strada
24 votes (1%)
1983-1989 Ford Bronco II
36 votes (2%)
1957-1959 Ford Edsel
40 votes (2%)
1971-1980 Ford Pinto
233 votes (14%)
1978 Honda Accord hatchback
56 votes (3%)
1971 Mazda RX-2
9 votes (1%)
1979-1984 Oldsmobile Delta 88
30 votes (2%)
1984 Pontiac Fiero
62 votes (4%)
1956-1968 Renault Dauphine
75 votes (5%)
1957-1962 Sachsenring Trabant P50
90 votes (6%)
1981-1991 Yugo GV
567 votes (35%)
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
Back when my father was alive, he was a doctor. Our policy in our family was to have two cars: one car that was elegant and classy for going to important meetings / etc, and one car that was completely "ghetto" for the purpose of appearing not-so-well off.
The logical choice for car #2 was The Pinto. It was a clunker. It had such a lack of style that it was actually stylish... well... in its own sort of way.
Why would someone want to masquarade as not being well off? Because it's usually not a good idea to driving through Compton in a Lincoln Continental. Even though at the time we were living in Minnesota, this applied but only to a lesser degree.
So tell me... Is a car jacker more likely to jack a pinto, or jack a Lincoln? Hmmm... Blending in is important sometimes.
So yes... the Pinto. One of the worst cars of all time, but still managed to serve its purpose.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
They Are Making Fun Of my dream cars...... :
Mod me down im a newf (wiki)
they never really had problems to really warrant labeling them as 'lemons'
They were just butt ugly.
there are definately other cars out there more fit to recieve "worst car ever"
A SCOda.
The weiner-mobile.
It looks like processed beef, pork, and turkey all mixed together into a round thing.
Q: What's the difference between a sheep and a Holden?
A: You wouldn't want to be seen getting out of a Holden.
If you are at work, beware of porn ads on the link to the worst slav car. FYI.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
Sure, it cost a lot, but it was worth every penny. Just check out the picture.
was recently shown to be a death trap if hit in a head on collision in a recent consumer testing agency video. The frame would buckle and cut the driver in two. This model year Ford quietly redesigned the vehicle.
Did they consider the factor of ugliness? I mean, reliability comes first of course, but aesthetics do play a part. For that matter, does anyone know what the hell is up with the "shoebox on wheels" trend? (honda element, et al.)
What about the K car? Currently Red Green's car of choice for "case mods".
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Too bad it's only the american cars.. Peugot was a *gem*. I also had a few imports which weren't worth anything, and nearly died several times in my trooper II. As of now, I pretty much buy only american, because they have such a bad rep, they *have* to do better :) (however, the UAW is what I have always seen as the culprit behind why us cars aren't seen as the greatest. They can't lose their job, so why should they care)
Plus, I'm too tall for anything anymore.
What about the Trabant? With a plastic body, approx 30Hp in a noisy, dirty 2 stroke engine, what's not to love?
Where's my lobbyist? Right here.
Those wouldn't be exclusive lists...you could have saved the improper usage of "as well as" by the subsequent use of the word "other," but...you didn't. You are aware that the Ukraine was a Soviet republic, right?
This, and the fact that there were non-US cars on the list. Did the submitter bother to read the article?
Soviet Cars were like trucks in shape of a sedan, they were made to work several years without failure, what makes than awful to drive.
Pontiac Aztek!
That car is so bad, it must have been hit twice with the ugly stick.
I nominate this SCO article in Forbes as a contender for worst ever
Help fight continental drift.
You mean all the cars of the last 2-3 decades aren't the "worst" autos of all time? I mean hell they don't last more than 8-12 years or so anymore if that. A nice 1974 Chevy 3/4-ton pickup if kept clean (to mitigate fender rot) will outlast any new GM truck hands down. The old adage "they don't make them like they used to" is sure as hell true in my book.
Figures. I have 3 from that list sitting in my front yard. At least I don't have to mow the grass, just move the cars around once a month.
"Derp de derp."
Thanks, Forbes.
If you like cars, Check out http://cartalk.com/
Cartalk is a *hilarious* and very informational do-it-yourself car-show that broadcasts on some NPR member stations.
Click and Clack are great.
They have all of their past show-recordings in WMA or REAL formats - okay, so that kinda sucks, but otherwise, it's a great show.
I'm surprised nobody mentioned the 2000 Ford Focus. With its constant recalls and general ass-like appearance, I'd be surprised if those cars have any resale value. Just when you think Ford couldn't screw anything up any worse...
I know many people that could care less how good a car looks as long as it gets them where they want to go. Sometimes these cheaper cars are a great value considering how little gas they use.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Where is the Ford Escort? I have personly been in 2 that had the engine catch fire, and have known of two others that caught fire. Meanwhile, the Edsel, quite possibly the ugliest car Ford ever made was a fairly decent car for it's time. As for Pontiac Fiero, I owned one once and had it catch fire while it was parked and being washed in a stall. I had to rewire the /entire/ car. On the other hand it had the best handling of any car I have ever driven.
I was certain my first new car would be on this list. Sure enough... tied for first, the 1971 Chevrolet Vega.
It took only 8 months to burn a valve. I immediately dumped it and bought a used 67' Plymouth Fury III. Now THAT was a great car!
But I guess the land of the lemons has to be the former "German Democratic Republic", with the Wartburg and the Mother Of All Lemons, the Trabant.
Those big cars, big engines, sloppy suspension and those looks, oh my word. Hmm, I must catch myself because I do like plenty of yank sports cars. And obviously the Ford GT36 is probably the finest muscle car in the world.
But SUVs, Hummers and those station wagons with wood panels on the side? Oh God, make it stop.
I wish they'd stop trying to bring Cryslers over to Europe too, it's just embarrassing when they sell 3.
Look, Wayne and Garth still drive around in one, but I don't recall the Red Vines dispenser as being factory equipment. Hrm.
I still see a few AMC Eagles around here - the jacked up 4x4 station wagon model.
Some of these older cars are still running and quite well at that. It's just a pain to find parts that don't come from Pick N' Pull...
...someone steal my red 1988 Firebird Formula 350 twice in five months four years ago after 1) I had replaced the driver door with a maroon one after getting t-boned in a parking lot within days of purchasing it (used), 2) it had unfixed dents on every side, 3) was peeling paint, 4) had it's front bumper cap sticking out about 8 inches after being in an an ice storm wreck, and 5) was parked next to shiny new cars? If any car defined ghetto, this was it. It was easily the worst looking car in my apartment's parking lot, yet the thieves were attracted to it like flies to shit.
not that' a car of 'worst case/design' I've ever ridden in.
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
I've had some limited experience with Soviet cars in their natural habitat. I'd like to nominate one of these cars for the 'worst car ever'. The older models of the Lada Niva. Not a bad car in itself, but as an 'all terrain' vehicle it was a complete joke.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The above is a snippet of a new virus first mentioned on [Snort-sigs] about 2 hours ago.
Inexplicably, some of these relics still manage to survive.
If you think that's amazing, check this out: the Pinto has its own domain name and cult following.
The coolest voice ever.
The Australian Holden Camira (198'ish) has the reputation of being extremely crappy and always breaking down, so they are very cheap to buy (2nd hand of course)
They aren't a bad looking car, and the (few) people who love them say that if you get one from the right 'batch' they are extremely reliable.
It makes me wonder how many of the lemon cars are caused by design faults or just had a lot of manufacturing problems.
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
Dealer:"It can get 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene"
*starts pushing car*
Dealer: "Put it in H!".
This article attests to the (lack of) quality of publications like Forbes, Money, Fortune, etc. Sensationalist articles that are both poorly written and researched.
For more good writing that is often amazingly entertaining articles I suggest The Economist.
She'll go 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene.
Obligitory Simpsons reference.
Um, this is most definitely not a list of US-built lemons. Fiat, Renault and Citroen all make an appearance, as does Mazda.
Soap box(Milnitsa, ) was a very popular car in the Ukraine, as well as in the rest of the former USSR. Same goes for the rest of the former soviet cars. Of-course the popularity was mostly due to the fact that this car was very cheap and much more accessible than other cars, especially by foreign manufacturers (foreign to the soviet population.) So the soviet cars definetly do not belong on the 'lemon' list, simply because they in fact were really popular among the soviet population.
I am originally from the city where this car was manufactured, the most polluted city in Ukraine, btw.
You can't handle the truth.
I'm thinking about buying a Lada Niva. I've been in love with this car for a few years and now I have the chance, but I'm intrigued by the comment in the article mentioning them as bad cars. I have a few friends who have been owners of this car and, althought not the best car around, they seem to perform really well.
...), 4x4, air conditioning and few gadgets.
The new generation of Nivas comes with a motor that is 1700 cc, inyection motor (I really don't know the correct translation of this spec
Is this car really bad? or is it suffering from bad PR?
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
most amercian cars are rubbish, with a few notable exceptions.
I was working as a contractor, one of the permanent hires was new from college, thought he knew everything, took no advice and asked for none, but sure gave it out. I had a 1986 MR2; this was 1988. He came in one day bursting with ego and pride and told me he had bought a Fiero. I looked at him in amazement ... why did you buy that piece of shit? He was startled, said Isn't that what you have?
Idiot had bought the car strictly based on what he thought I had. No research, no test drive, nothing.
My MR2 now has 330,000 miles and runs like a champ, still shifts at redline like it couldn't be happier.
Infuriate left and right
...I remember my dad got one for my mum when her 15 year old fiat finally gave out, he thought it would be a good deal, (i.e. it was cheap).
:o)
:o)
Well, they got it home and found out one of the tires had a slow puncture...so before we could go out in it for a test drive, that had to be fixed. And that was just the start of it.
Over the next 7 years that car had so much money spent on it just to keep it going through Control Technique (the belgian M.O.T.) that the decision was finally made to get my mum a new car. So my parents went to the V.W. garage and she decided to get a polo, at which point they found out that if they took the LADA to the scrapyard they would give them more money for the car than the V.W. dealership would give as a part-ex. Yes, it was worth more as scrap!
Reminds me of all the old lada jokes we used to gall my dad with,
Q)Why do LADA's have heated rear-windscreens?
A)To keep your hands warm whilst you are pushing it.
I also remember the first aid kit that came with the thing had phials of Ether in it...good thing my mom never crashed!
OTOH, that polo has been going for well over 10 years and shows no sign of dieing yet.
Ah, happy days!
I am NaN
Looked cool but only ran for half of the time I had it. It leaked oil like crazy and I could never get it fixed right.
The headlight motors also burned out constantly so I got to the point where I just left them up and didnt replace them.
I also had a few transmission problems including getting stuck in 3rd gear.
Oh yeah I had 10-12 different recalls on it ranging from the engine compartment fire shield, to another problem where the breaks might completely fail.
I hear by 88 (the last year of production) they had worked out most problems though and they still valued to be used as kit cars.
The Sinclair C5, OK not exactly a car but a complete disaster nonetheless, or some of the older Skodas? They produced many jokes at the time.
Why do Skodas have heated rear windows? To keep your hands warm while you push it.
What do you call a Skoda with a twin exhaust? A wheelbarrow.
What do you call a Skoda with a sun roof? A skip.
Crazy Vaclav: She'll go three hundred hectares on a single tank of kerosene! .... Put it in 'H'!
Homer: What country is this car from?
Crazy Vaclav: Ah, it no longer exists, but take her for a test drive and you'll agree -- zagreber dimslotik diev!
Serve Gonk.
I have to give my vote for worst car name of all-time to the Fiat.
"It's a car because we say it's a car."
This space for rent.
I drove a Yugo as a delivery guy out of high school for an auto parts place. The owner had bought a fleet of them becuase they were so cheap. Within 3 months every single one had a major failure ( engine blew, tranny seized ) and he junked the entire lot and bought Ford Escorts.
Yo mama's like a Ford Pinto, she blows after she gets banged in the rear. The FORD Pinto didn't sell very well in Brazil - Pinto is slang for "tiny male genitals". PINTO ACRONYMS: Paid Inspector Nicely To Overlook Put In New Transmission Often Put In Nickel To Operate HOW DO YOU DOUBLE THE VALUE OF A PINTO? Fill it with gas!
They're intentionally built ugly. Echo, Element, the new VW van, you name it, they're made to appeal to people who want a "quirky" vehicle that will "stand out". These people don't want a generic Bronco-shaped SUV or cab-forward sedan that they can't find in a parking lot. Of course, like many trendy "quirky" things (eg Lisa Loeb's glasses, trucker hats), most other people hate them.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Doesn't anybody love/hate the Leyland P76 anymore? The most reviled car in Australian history?
The sight of that Pinto really brought back memories for me. My first car was a Bobcat, which was Mercury's equivalent of the Pinto. It was a glorious green. Fortunately, the Bobcat didn't have the exploding gas tank flaw that the Pinto had, but it didn't stop everyone I knew from making jokes about it everytime I gave them a ride anywhere.
Ahh, and that Fiero. In high school, I thought the Fiero was the coolest car in the world. A friend's sister bought one. I was soooo jealous. I think she sold it within a year.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
I've owned two pintos, and they were both GREAT cars. I would take them over a modern car any-day...
They don't have engines that you can't possibly fix yourself. They don't have plastic bumpers that ensure a 5MPH crash will completely disable your $20,000 car. They don't have high-tech sensors that tell you your car needs servicing, when it's in perfect shape.
I've had old cars, and I still don't know why so many are heralding newer cars. In fact, I don't know why people aren't rioting in the streets to stop cars from becomming more and more like electronic appliances.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
FIAT = Fix it again Tony.
Q:Why didn't the British ever make televisions?
A:Couldn't figure out a way to make em leak oil.
Whoa, what an ugly Transformer would that become!
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
But the real question is whether it is a car at all. In Hungary, if said, say, that you arrived at a party by car, but in fact travelled in a Trabant, your statement would be considered misleading at best. These things were not really considered cars.
The brother of a friend of mine (yes, this is a friend of a friend story) drove his Trabant from Hungary to Amsterdam in the 1970s, where Trabant's hadn't been seen before. Whenever he returned to his parked vehicle, there was always a small crowd around wanting a closer look and asking if he'd built it himself.
There is a joke (told back in the days when they made Trabants) about some Saudi sheik who'd heard about some car built in one of those northern European germanic countries (Trabant was produced in East Germany) that was so special that it took them years to build one for you (in socialist economies it was typical to wait several years between ordering a car or Trabant and it being available for you to pick up). So this sheik thought that he would order one and had one of his secretaries send away for it. Since he'd paid in real money, the vehicle was shipped immediately. It arrived and the sheik was happily puttering around in a local village when he saw a friend of his and shouted out, "Hey, Abdulla! Look I ordered a car that takes years to make from one of those nortern European countries, and they sent me a paper model that actually runs!"
I won't go into what carrying on a converstation was like in one of those things. I would say that it would be like carrying on a conversation on a lawn mower, but the lawn mower probably has a more powerful engine.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
If you like cars, Check out http://slashdot.org
.shtml formats - okay, so that kinda sucks, but otherwise, it's a great site.
Slashdot is a *hilarious* and very informational do-it-yourself web-site that is available on any ISP.
CmdrTaco and Hemos are great.
They have all of their past articles in static
-
(Seriously, did you really think anyone didn't know about Car Talk?!)
sulli
RTFJ.
I'm havent read the whole list yet, but my friend has this Ford Minivan. It started having problems after a few years (consider that he did get it used). It started with the radio breaking, then the heat, then the locks, etc etc. You can't trust it to go anywhere. Systems randomly fail and start working again. Also, when it was getting really dirty and never washed, head scrape of crud so that things that said "Wash me jerk" mysteriously appeared all over it.
http://www.beyourowneviloverlord.tk
http://www.frozenchickenthrowing.tk
http://www.killercamel.tk
"Editor's Note: Forbes.com was unable to obtain permission from Ford to use an image of a Bronco II from the 1983-1989 model years. The Bronco above is a 1980."
This is a bigger screwup than this editor's note leads one to believe. The Bronco and Bronco II are two completely different vehicles. The Bronco was based on theu fullsize Ford F-150 pickup, where the Bronco II was based on the compact Ford Ranger pickup. The Bronco was produced before, during, and after the time the Bronco II was produced. The two-door Bronco II was effectively replaced in the early nineties by the Ford Explorer, while the Bronco continued up until about 1997 when it was replaced by the four-door Expedition.
While the Bronco II was prone to rollover, the regular Bronco never had such issues.
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
The RX-2 is a beloved classic and very desireable today. Really, "bad fuel economy and emissions" -- who cares? They were quick stock, and you could port the 1.1l or 1.3l engine yourself to the point where it would make more power than v8's of the day.
As far as being reliable, they were no worse than any other early 70's car.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
After a bit of a google found a great page on all time stupid cars
Australia has had it's fair share of lemons like the Holden Camira, Leyland P76 (which at the time, both won Car of the Year)
wasn't edsel technically a ford sub-brand, and not a single model? kinda erodes the credibility of the ranker(s).
Probably a quite advanced design in the '50s, however it didn't change much after that. One of the best qualities was that they are easy to fix, so that there was a great return to these cars in the eastern bloc after people realized how expensive it was to fix western cars, compared to the relatively simple Trabis, which are 2 stroke I think, and sound like motor scooter. Great fun to immitate the sound of one of those warming up on a cold morning.
I'm sure there's loads of information on Trabis, just search the web.
The Yugo does not belong in that list. It was a dirt cheap car and when you bought it you were under no illusions that you were getting a quality car. Some people like Mercedes S class cars others prefer Yugos. This is consumer's choice, not bad workmanship.
The Ford Pinto, on the other hand, gave no indication that it was liable to turn into a Fourth of July celebration without previous warning. You bought that car thinking that it shouldn't be particularly better or worse than others manufactured by Ford, and guess what? it was *much* worse. That is the basic definition of a lemon.
From what I hear, the Ford Windstar/Freestar should be there as well.
When I was in Europe, 92-94, the running joke was the Skoda. Yet, in the UK there was an Skoda owners club, that built these cheap cars from Prague into serious rally cars. With little enough down to get a durable car that just needs some love and attention, almost anything is possible. The Chevy Nova taught most of us in Michigan that, back in the 70's
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The funny part is that this particular joke was only used in New Zealand
True story.
Unless I'm mistaken, the picture they put above "Bronco II" is actually a big ol' Bronco I.
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
9 month out of the year, here in the desert, I cross at least 5 cars a day in the 50 miles I cover daily.
In fact, I dare say, 99% of the reason we don't see that as often now as we once did, is simply because of the rise of car clubs like AAA that offer immediate TOWING from anywhere. It's not that they don't break-down, it's just that they're gone in 15 minutes, and they're in a garage, being told they need to spend $5,000 to get a minor problem fixed...
Yea for new cars...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
For one of the older MKI (85-88), expect to pay around $1k for one, unless it's been well taken care of in Cali (ie: no rust, etc..). You will not be disappointed.
We've had nothing but trouble with the one we had. There was something like 9 recalls on the model we had, and countless other problems that Ford claims is "normal for a Focus". One of the service reps at the dealer even had the balls to sit there and laugh at how bad the Focus' brake system is, then try to charge me a few hundred bucks to repair it.
Read my full review of it at http://www.epinions.com/content_120641719940
And more horror stories at http://www.fordfocusbrakeproblems.com
The Edsel 1857-59
The Edsel was the ultimate DOA car, but contrary to common opinion, this was more a function of market segmenting and changing tastes than of purely bad styling. And of course it doesn't help that it was ugly. The vertical front grille of the Edsel looked like a big nose that divided the otherwise relatively conventional front of the car, and the front and back styling made even the 350hp V-8 version look slow. By the time Ford decided to restyle the Edsel in 1959, the car's sales had slid off a cliff and that was the end of Edsel.
1989-91 Chrysler TC Masarati
There were a whopping 52 service bulletins (many requiring recalls) for this bastard-child car born of an unfortunate need by Maserati for ready cash and Chrysler's willingness to turn a LeBaron into a Maserati. Not only was a 3.0-liter V-6 a criminal concept for a supposed Italian exotic (putting out a pathetic 141 horsepower), but so was the American sheetmetal. Then there were the many mechanical nightmares from blown clutches and engines to leaking roofs. This car cost double the sticker on the LeBaron and broke twice as often. After all, it was Italian, right?
1959-1969 Chevy Corvair
Sure, the nifty-looking Corvair had some good points. Like a Porsche 911, its engine was air-cooled, and resided in the back, to provide extra rear-wheel traction. Too bad its flat-six engine biased the weight of the early cars so far aftward that the steering became very light at highway speeds; and it sure didn't help that the gas tank was mounted up front, so if you did wreck--Ka Boom! If only the design had been better executed. Bummer. (Watch out, here come the nasty letters from all those Corvair fans!)
1969-77 Ford Maverick
There were four-door Mavericks and two-doors. There was a Mercury version called the Comet. There were vinyl-topped models, too. What they had in common was that they were built on platform designs heavily prone to rust (this was the early days of unit-body cars) and weak-kneed in-line six engines. But the cars were cheap and therefore, popular, especially in the gas-crisis years. Not that we think the Maverick is necessarily as bad as what came afterward--the abysmal Fox-platform Futura/Fairmont, and the Grenada, which was still based on the Maverick platform, and so carried forward all the bad-handling traits and massive rustability to boot.
1980 Chevy Citation
With a 2.8-liter V-6 and front-wheel drive, this was GM's attempt to take on the likes of Honda and Toyota. GM also shared this so-called X-body setup (of the Citation) with Olds (Omega) Buick (Skylark) and Pontiac (Phoenix). The differences were basically in body style, not fundamental mechanics. Naturally, because the cars looked futuristic and because they got decent mileage, the Citation and its brethren were a huge hit (800,000 Citations sold in 1980). But to meet demand GM let quality slip, so problems like faulty brakes and steering plagued Citations and led to a steep drop in quality--and sales.
1986 Cadillac Eldarado
In a desperate attempt to reach a younger demographic, Cadillac revamped its classic Eldorado to look less like a classic Caddy road yacht and more like a two-door version of the ill-conceived four-door Cadillac Cimarron. Demand for the new Caddy fell (big surprise), and only a year after introduction production sank to just under 18,000 units. Did it matter that you could get a V-8 in the Caddy and not in the other GM look-alikes? Nope. It took another 16 years of awful versions (2002 will be the last year of the Eldo) but the decline all started back in 1986.
1982 Renault Fuego
In the early 1980s American Motors Corporation (before it was absorbed by Chrysler) and French-maker Renault teamed up to make some really awful cars but none as bad as the Fuego. Thankfully, the relationship died out--and today AMC no longer exists and Renault hasn't set foot on American shores since. Th
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
Volkswagen Kombi, we still use it in Brazil, noisy, hard to drive, low fuel efficient
From very personal experience: the Chevy Chevette (pronounced "shove-it").
I had a 1980, purchased used in 1981. In the five years we had it, it had
1 broken spring
1 (or was it 2) dead starters
1 dead alternator, and
2 (TWO) transmission rebuilds, one of which was paid for by a class-action lawsuit.
Designed cheap (not inexpensive), built cheap, disposable.
mark "will *NEVER* buy another GM product
without a *free* 10 year warranty
on *everything*"
Made it to 12 in the list! My mom had one (the Made in Brazil model) in 1963. I still have the owner's manual. It's the most amazingly complete user's manual of anything I've ever seen. It has complete instructions on tearing the (23 HP, 850 cm3) motor apart and putting it back together.
Why is it that computers and other goods get cheaper but car prices continue to rise?
Cheap ass plastic, inferior paint that just barely coats the car.
How come the Japanese cars use better plastic?
Maybe we should export all manufacturing of American cars to India.
Please don't tell me all the R & D justify's the prices.
By the way I drive a Ford Taurus SHO.
The worst cars I've seen in my country are a series of russian cars called Lada. Those are really crappy.
Another crappy car (but not as bad as the Ladas) were some things called Monza, which were sold by Chevrolet/GM. They were always on the shop for repairs.
My heart is pure, but make no mistake, it's pure evil
...the thieves probably figured (somewhat correctly) that since the other cars were nice, new and expensive they would be harder to break into. Your 1998 shitmobile would, however, be easy to break into and simple to hotwire (no immobilisers etc.).
:o)
Now, if you had blended in and had a nice car, there wouldn't have been so much to mark yours out.
If you got it back, they didn't steal it to sell, they stole it to commit a crime in (joyride or as a gettaway vehicle).
As the parent poster said, it's all about blending in!
I am NaN
About 15 years ago my mother bought a Suzuki Swift. It's an el cheapo Japanese car, built for small distances.
:) I was 4 years old when they bought it), including someone who abused it badly.
:)
It has a weak 900cc gas engine. Well. It's 2004 now, the car has done 230000km and hasn't had in it's entire life one single malfunction that is worth mentioning.
It was owned by many people (now I'm driving it
Suzuki really makes great, albeit cheap looking, cars
The article has a banner ad from BMW (at least it does for me at the moment). Interesting sponsor.
Mark
Hey, how can you knock the Vega??? Now here is a car that once you dropped a 350ci motor into it the freaking thing wouldn't quit! Yea it would break rear axles every week if you kept putting your foot down, but what a fun car to drive! Junkyards had parts for these things like you would believe... the yard I frequented had a seperate section just for them. We had a blast putting these things together for the dragstrip. Used stopsign channel for the subframes, and once we found out you could put a Monza (remember the Monza??) rear end into the thing (much stronger than the stock Vega rearend) then all bets were off, it was "foot to the pedal time" ALL the time! Sure my fingers were greasy all summer and I spent more time under the hood/under the car than I did driving/racing it, but WOW, what a summer that was! Wish I still had one...
"Trusting every aspect of our lives to a giant computer was the smartest thing we ever did.." Homer Simpson
It is an incredible combination of fun, practical, reliable, economical. I have traveled across country with room to spare in the trunk; the current 3rd generation model is just as long and heavy and has no trunk. I don't get anywhere near the mileage I should because it is so much fun to take out on the backroads instead of the freeway.
Infuriate left and right
Granted, it's a small cheap car, but it's not too bad. My family is almost exclusively a Ford family. Growing up, we always had one (several different ones I recall from my childhood). The secret with the Escort is you trade it in before its "witching hour" which usually occurs between 50-60k. Though I couldn't drive back then, my parents had fond thoughts about those cars. When it came time for me to get my own car, I got an Escort too. It's eight years old now, and I've always found it to be a trustworthy car with excellent handling. I think the Ford Escort's legacy isn't that bad for what it was supposed to be (small cheap car). Still, I have plans to get rid of mine before that witching hour strikes on it soon. It will be missed though.
How good is their list when they don't have the right pictures?
The Bronco II was a small vehicle, based on the Ranger pickup, which spawned the Explorer. The vehicle they show in the picture is a full size Bronco, based on the F-Series pickup, best known as O.J.'s escape vehicle.
Also, they list both the Fiat Strada and the Yugo GV. The Strada grew out of the Fiat 128, which is what Yugo was basically building under license. So they sort of doubled up on that one.
My 1999 Mercedes ML-320 had 20 warranty repairs in 39 months. Something broke on average every 8.5 weeks, from body noises & rattles, to transmission problems, to the electronics going berzerk. Some of the problems never got fixed because I gave up on them. Granted, the dealership took care of me. But they had to have lost their ledenhosen on the sale.
Followed closely by my 2003 MINI Cooper S. I only got to drive it 11 months out of the 12 I owned it. I spent 27 days in a rental car (and grew to hate Toyota Corollas) waiting for parts from the UK. The dealer was only OK, *and* each visit took a minimum of 5 hours, so I dumped it as soon as possible. Got a call a few months later from the new owner, and the same problem had visited itself on them. Best of luck, guys.
Now I'm in a nice sensible Honda. Not a lot of fun to drive, but at least it knows how to stay out of the service bay.
Chip H.
Hey everyone -- remember the movie Fargo?
The town's "police force" had a fleet of Yugos. Everyone in town seemed to drive a yugo.
Pretty funny stuff -- especially since Danny DeVito was the sheriff and he's about the right size for a yugo.
How on earth could they forget the AMC Gremlin? That's the only car I've ever heard of breaking down on its way home from the dealer. My uncle had one of those bad boys for a while. He called it a motorized rollerskate for a while until he decided he was insulting rollerskates....
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Reference
The second case, the one in Elkhart Indiana, happened less then 5 miles from where I live. That case is the one that made the pinto famous, and is especially bizarre.
In 1978 U.S. Highway 33 between goshen and Elkhart was 3 lanes - one going each direction, and a center lane that was for passing, turning, or whoever wanted to be in it at the time. Head on collisions happened on occasion, and a project was being weighed by the state on whether or not to widen the road. It was being blocked in part by the railroad company that owned the tracks the road follows, and in part by local businessmen who owned the property on the other side.
So along comes this poor girl, who puts the gas cap on loosly after filling up her Pinto's tank. She then gets on to 33... she sees the cap fall off, and decides to stop and get it. On a road with no shoulder, and no where for following traffic to go except into the aforementioned death-trap of a center lane.
And along comes a van. A van driven by a a doped up moron hit the car. The van had a modified front bumper made from heavy wood. And the gas cap still had not been placed back on to the Pinto.
Boom, no more Pinto.
Fast forward to the state prosecutor filing against Ford, and the highway Department quietly expanding the road while the prosecutor had them distracted. (The road is now 5 lanes, two each direction, and a center lane that occasionally sports a head on collision. It also has rest stops every 150 feet, and signs to point them out).
Yes the car had a flaw, but the case that made it famous is suspicious at best. The blame could easily fall on the girl for stopping. It could fall on the doped up driver of the van. It could be blamed on the highway department. The prosecutor managed to blame it on Ford.
So, I was a yuppie scum, enamored with the "driving machine". I secumbed to BMW's advertizing and the image I thought it would bring me. I bought the car, new in '82. The poor thing had a most underpowered inline 4 cylinder engine. It would not climb on route 17 from Santa Clara to Santa Cruz in top gear. It overheated on a long drive down I-5, San Jose to LA. It knocked, even on premium fuel and dieseled when you shut off the ignition. The remediation the dealer applied was to add an extra thick head gasket to reduce the compression, which only made bad performance worse. The "freeze plug" in the engine blew out on a 90 degree day in August in Sunnyvale. The 4-way flasher was designed such that its failure mode was to turn itself on, thus running down the battery. The 4-way flasher failed at least 10 times in the 5 years I had the car, costing me 3 batteries in that time. The dealer kept a box of 4-way flasher switches under the counter at the service desk for "quick service". The recommendation became to stick a toothpick in the switch to keep it off and pull the toothpick out when you needed the flasher.
Needless to say, when BMW suggested I trade in the 320i for another, I declined. I bought an '87 Nissan Maxima that is still in service today. Now, that Nissan has been the Best car I've ever owned.
geo storm??? (.wmv)
this sig was brought to you by the letter
Well, it is a regular sight on Indian roads and even though I hate it, there was hardly anything on the roads then that will withstand the road itself (or the lack of it!)
The car is so bad (my Dad still has one) that I heard when some foreign delegation came to visit they commented that the only thing on that Car which dont make a sound was probably the Horn!
And noise is another staple on Indian roads..we love to use our Horns till someone sticks it up our collective ass!
Rapid Nirvana
Perhaps surprisingly my first car, a 1987 VW Golf (it was 1998 when I got it), did pretty well, for what it was.
It was a hideous white boxy thing (boxy's not my style, really) with barely any heat, and the door handle just snapped off in the winter, but it was great. I learned stick on that and, as I learned by trial and error, I abused the hell out of that car and it still hung in there the whole way.
Great fun to drive, but I guess I'm wasting time reminiscing here.
The Trabant has an interesting place in economic history. Once the Berlin Wall fell, economists could examine the books of the Trabant factory. Of course, manufacturing businesses work by taking raw materials and adding labor to produce a finished product, and if the value of the finished project doesn't exceed costs, they lose money. That's not uncommon, but with the Trabant, the value of the car was *less* than the value of the raw steel, glass, plastic, etc. used to make it, not even counting the labor! I love the irony of East Germany disproving Marx's labor theory of value by producing a "value-subtracted" product ....
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
As the ex-owner of a Chevy Vega, I can say with authority that this list is nowhere near complete. The worst car ever built has to be the Porsche 924.
Lack of power was only one of its negative attributes. The body panels over your legs rusted and let in rain water. The exhaust system would shake itself apart. The headpipe, catalytic converter, and resonator all tore themselves apart from vibration. The cast iron exhaust manifold actually split longitudinally from the shaking. The cooling system was designed with the radiator lower than the engine, so it would constantly develop an air bubble and overheat the engine (and eventually crack the engine block). And oh yeah, the driver's door fell off. Literally!
The nickname I gave my Porsche 924 was "two-dollar whore", and it must have liked the name, because it had me calling it constantly.
As far as the rollover thing is concerned, I am glad I learned about it now. My wife wants me to get her a small Bronco II after she drove (and liked) the Bronco I got (but it was too "big" for her otherwise)...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
A man enters an auto parts store and addresses the mechanic:
"I'd like a pair of windshield wipers for my Yugo."
The mechanic looks at him thoughtfully, then says:
"Sure, sounds like a fair trade..."
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
I was surprised to see the Olds Delta 88 on the list, having never heard anyone b1tch about that particular vehicle. It turns out they just didn't like the 4-6-8 engine or the 5.7l diesel that were available in that car. Similarly, when they moan about the Vega it's because of the aluminum 4 bangers that came in it. Vegas were available with other engines, even small-block V8s. I once owned a Chevy Monza (Vega with different sheetmetal) with a V8 and have many fond memories of it. It *was* a piece of crap, but mostly because of modifications and mistreatment by the previous owner, not because of anything the factory did or didn't do.
-Rich
When Yugo first started to import to the US, I was running an open car carrier, and over the course of a year picked up several hundred Yugos from the port of Houston. Most of them could not go into reverse gear, and the wheelbase was so narrow I had to deck the racks with plywood to prevent them from falling into the middle of the trailer. I couldn't find a picture of one on a carrier, but here are Yugo's on a train car Still a narrow fit, and worse on a car carrier.
Due to not being able to put the car into reverse, I loaded them nose to the front and to unload, I had to tilt the front of each rack up high enough for gravity to take over, put the the car in neutral, and back off the racks. To paraphrase Yakov Smirnov, "what a ride".
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
Any list purporting to be the "Worst Cars of All Time" that doesn't include the 1977 Chevrolet Chevette is missing a major example. My friend's father bought one as a commuter car, and it made it 22,000 miles before the floor rusted out beneath his feet at highway speed! (In Houston, so, no, salted roads were not a factor.) Oh, and Chevrolet said "tough" when he complained since it was out of warranty.
A clever person solves a problem, A wise person avoids it. -Einstein
It was only the most recalled car in the history of the US automobile industry. (Unless the Ford Focus has finally surpassed it)
I'm surprised they didn't mention this. For those who don't know (they weren't exceedingly popular), this was Subaru's answer to the mullet-car craze spurred by the Ford Ranchero, GMC Caballero, and Chevy El Camino. Picture a malformed Justy with a pathetic attempt at a truckbed welded on.
Then there was Dodge's entry, the Rampage, sort of a K-Car for Journey fans. But I think the Brat has even that beat.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
Why does Forbes need Ford's permission to run a picture of the Bronco II?
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Tell my boss about the great European craftsmanship. His E-Class is nearly a lemon. Apparently his problems are very common.
Frankly Europe has little place to brag compared to the Japanese.
The other side is this, most American cars ARE treated as disposable. People with higher incomes tended to take better care of their vehicles. These same people also had different tastes not served by American cars, but that is changing. I have seen some very old American cars with just regular service that are doing just fine. I have also seen some imports from Europe AND Japan that ran as good or bad as any of the worst American cars.
The person owning it has nearly as much to do with the longevity as the people making it. While in the 70s that might not have always been true it nearly is in the last 10.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Another car that did not make it on the list is Fiat 126p. It was made in Poland, based on an Italian design. The car was very noisy. However it was so small that people used joke that the engine noise is not an issue since when one sits in the car your knees block your ears and thus you can't hear it.
A religious war is an adult version of a fight over who has the best imaginary friend
Wheel bearings failed at 12k from NO lubrication at factory; three times to shop and new rack/pinion, alignments before *I* discovered it by racking front wheels; two hour job at home; fixed.
4cyl (iron duke?) ran hot and engine had noticeable wear by 20k; heat broke oil down quickly; needed oil changes at 2kmi mark; lifter noise told when it was ready...
Rubber disintegrated off emergency brake cable; rusted and froze and locked wheel.
Transmission locked; needed teardown.
Car was touted for being "plastic" on the outside so no rust, but... had Accident; they "repaired" it; took months, and the "frame" holding panels was only lightweight painted stamped sheet metal; rusted out FAST, everywhere.
Original Goodyear Eagle GTs SUCKed; too wide, fat, became skis in winter and dangerous, and compound was too hard, greasy, poor for traction.
Highway speeds were taxing on engine; redlined at 68mph IIRC; the engine wore quickly making even that a raucous chore.
Sold at 24k; what a piece of crap, except I kinda liked the speakers in headrest; doh!
Replaced with MR2; the best car I have ever owned.
But you can do soem hella crazy things with em...
http://www.design1systems.com/
the northstar swap is my favorite...there's a guy around here that owns one and damn is that thing fast as hell...
I had a Turismo. Replaced just about everything on it. Yeah, Chrysler put a turbo 4-cyl in some of them which was easy to make fast...but the chassis and brakes were pathetic.
Blar.
In Brazil the Dauphine became known as Leite Gloria (Milk Gloria, a brand of instant powdered milk).
Leite Gloria slogan in Portuguese: "Desmancha sem bater"
rough translation: "Don't need to be beaten to dissolve"
X-Body cars, the Cimmaron by Caddy was by far the worst transgression were notorious at times.
Ford's Tempo & Topaz also developed bad reputations for oil seals.
Chrysler was just plain bad. Having to use the K-platform under about everything they offered. If anything they were the styling idiots of the 80s. Amazing turn around for that car maker. Still love Iaccoca's introduction of the mini-van where the door handle came off in his hand.
The also missed the Renault Alliance and Hyndai (sp?) Excel ? Their first car was atrocious.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
My first car was my grandmother's Morris Marina. It was in many ways, amazingly scary. It had that 1970's Leyland body that would just if you looked at it hard. In England. Moving it up to Manchester from London didn't help that, and half the body was wire mesh and epoxy after a year or more. And the rest was built out of, basically, spare parts from other Leyland vehicles that were around at the time (like the Maxi and the Allegro and the MG)
But what was truly scary was the cartleaf rear suspension. My wonderful example had a blown cylinder - on a 4Cyl 1.7l engine - and would fishtail on a dry road under acceleration.
It had semi-decent reliability and was quite easy (and dirt cheap) to fix. It also had high ground clearance which, combined with its light weight, made it very convenient for use on rough to non-existent roads. Strictly speaking, I should not be talking of these little uglies in the past tense - plenty of them still around.
A brief history of the Zaporozhetz marque can be found here. One of the older Zaporozhetz cars, the ZAZ 965, has a cult following (links here and here).
The czar calls an American, a German and a Russian and tells them to bring their favourite cars to him. So the American brings a Chrysler, the German brings a Mercedes and the Russian brings a Zaporozhets.
The czar tells them: drive through that lake of shit. So the American gets in his chrysler, gets 10 meters out and sinks into the shit lake and drowns. The German drives out, sinks after driving 15 meters. The Russian gets in his car, drives across the whole lake and back.
The czar asks, "How did you manage that?"
The Russian replies "Shit doesn't sink in shit."
------
Sig
"Thank you again for buying a GM truck. We apologize for this recall notice, which affects all 1998 - 2001 models. You are urged to bring your truck to an authorized GM dealer at your earliest convenience, for replacement of the defective keyless entry system components. If this corrective action is not taken, your vehicle will be vulnerable to persons with a high level of technical expertise (GMC assumes no liability for any loss).
"By signing this authorization form, you are also agreeing to grant GMC full, complete and permanent access to your truck for the purposes of confirming the effectiveness of the keyless entry system component replacement and other enhancements which GMC believes are of benefit to the security and usefulness of your truck. GMC reserves the right to access the entire truck at any time (including the truck bed, undercarriage and glove compartment) and is under no obligation to inform the truck owner of the examination at any time. Attempts to prevent, hinder or frustrate GMC from exercising its freely granted rights to inspect or modify any part of your truck, or any attempts to remove enhancements or restore the truck to its previously unenhanced condition, will be subject to possible legal action. GMC is not responsible for any subsequent problems that are caused by future enhancements. All intended use of your GMC truck is subject to these conditions. Failing to sign and return this authorization form can result in your vehicle warranty being declared null and void."
( props to commondreams.org, for inspiration)
<grrr>
How could no one mention the TRABANT? My family owned two of these, it was the only car we could get back home without waiting for a decade for a government permit. It was made of cheap carton, really plastic, had 26 horsepower on 2 cylinders, and it totally sounded like a blender in distress. The gear shifter was made of aluminun which wore off every 10000 miles or so, it was a standard replacement like the oil.
:)
There are many Trabant fans in Europe now, some clubs even, which are preserving this true icon of the communism era. I myself have so many memories of this car, including the ones of being made fun of because my father owned one. But it was cheaper than the russian cars (even that is possible) and many times it was more reliable.
Ah, the Trabi
well yes ... but it was told about Australians ... which is where Holdens were made ...
I can't read the Forbes list as it appears to be slasdotted, but the Subaru Justy should be on it! I would guess it's not. It's generally overlooked and easy to forget. But there's a reason you don't see very many of them on the road.
I bought one because it was compact, fairly cheap, and had "4WD". Unfortunately, it didn't have a transmission - or at least most of the time it didn't. I had the transmission replaced 6 times in the first year, all under warranty, because it needed a new one every 2500 miles. I dumped it on a dealer at a loss before the warranty ran out. The dealer tried to put the blame on me, as if I didn't know how to drive, but his mechanic said they'd had 14 Justys in for new transmissions, some of them multiple times.
Plain and simple, a total piece of garbage.
The same design team must have doen the current crown vic, as Dallas has lost several police officers from rear impact/blow up accidents.
There are a number of recalls... And last I heard Dallas and sereral other cities are suing Ford over this.
If memory serves, I've driven 8 out of the 10. Driven, not owned. (I do admit to owning a Pinto a and an early-'80s Accord long time ago...)
Once had friends who traded a BMW 2002 in for a Pacer. (Yes!). All that glass on top made you feel like you were driving around in an overheated bubble. Their dog liked to chew on the armrests.
Another friend bought a relative of the Fiat Strada, a Fiat 128. Green with a cardboard interior. The gearshift lever came off in her hand one day on the interstate. Later, it caught fire.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
on what you really need Niva for. For offroad work (mountain, snow, abandoned roads, no roads at all) it outperforms everything else, no kidding. So if you just need the work done, it is your car. BUT: It is noisy and there is nothing to work around. It breaks on regular basis and needs a lot of technical skills. It is by no means economic (16l/100km is the best it's score for urban use). It shakes your ass a lot, also no hope for improvement. No, not for a daily use.
>>Notice the many non-U.S. built vehicles here (you'd think that at least the poster would RTFA, but apparently not).:
Original post was correct, these are cars originally AVAILABLE in the US, not made here you stupid fucking ass.
Look Yugos in the States blew chunks, but in general the Zastava was a good car. Another Yugoslav car was the Katra - a Renault 4 - built in Slovenia (Novo Mesto). Now that is a awesome car. You cannot fucking kill them. Not exactly crashworthy but for busting a move in traffic in Zagreb, they are awesome.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
A group of art students created a travelling exhibit called "Yugo Next". Lots of fun pictures available here, here, and here too.
...Nothing interesting here. Just move along...
In fact the suspension was hydraulic/pneumatic, the hydraulic fluid was oil, not water, and the gas for the pneumatic system was nitrogen, not air.
As someone else pointed out, the picture for the Bronco II slide shows a Full-Size Bronco, which was a completely different vehicle than the Bronco II. This would be like showing a Chevy Caprice in the Chevy Vega slide. How difficult would it be to get permission from someone owning a Bronco II to use a picture of it for the article?
Article claims the Edsel didn't sell because it had too many features and was thus too expensive, and also because it was ugly. The Edsel failed because it was a bad car - major quality problems and prone to catching fire.
Furthermore they claim in a stab at the rotary engine that Diesel engines had problems in early life. What on earth are they talking about? The Diesel engine was invented about a century ago. European cab drivers have been using Diesel engines for decades upon decades ... Trucks, and tanks, and construction machinery, and what else uses them.
I could go on, but I won't. This is a very poorly fact-checked article.
--I am Sun Tzu of the Borg. Resistance is feudal.
My dad had a Zaporozhetz (that first Ukrainian car) and my late grandfather had a Volga (one of the Soviet cars) and a Pobeda (another one that's not shown in the page). They all sucked teh big cawk. I remember riding in them when I was little. :(
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
The AMC Pacer is a great car! Is the licorice dispenser standard equipment?
This game features gameplay elements never before seen in any other racing game! You can choose from a list of the worst cars of all time! Just think of all the fun you will have! Watch out! Don't let that Pontiac idle for too long or it might catch on fire! Better watch your back-side in your Pinto, or you might blow up! Is your Citroen SM riding a little low? Better check the suspension for leaks. All of these great features and more! Including a pong graphics engine revitalized from the 1980s with graphics so stunning, you might just soil yourself, and a physics engine written by a a two year old. If it's service recalling, repair making, engine on fire fun that you are looking for, look no further!
SIGFAULT
My dad owns one and considering here in the NL we do not have the proud tradition of getting a third mortage to give your kid a better car then the neighbohr's kid, I'm carless and occasionally forced to drive that... thing. It tops out at about 140 km/h ( normal gasoline engine ) and during sidewinds the damnable thing feels like it's about to topple over. Not only that, at 120 km/h it starts making funny noises and it starts to rattle. The damn thing is so high on it's wheel you have to actually STEP UP INTO THE SEAT, after which my knees are firmly locked between the floor and the steering wheel. ( granted, being 6'5" might have something to do with that ) The gas pedal has two settings: Stall and TOO DAMN MUCH. The gear pedal is calibrated just as nicely. The damnable thing was advertised with ample room for driver and passanger. Even when NOT driving that coffin on wheels I regulary find my kneecaps embedded into my throath. Enough head space though!
The rear seat are too damned small: If I could even get a girl in there without her laughing herself to death at the mere sight of the car, I'd be impossible unless we try something very exotic from the Kama Sutra. The only person with enough space for that lady would be Mr. Jackson, but I digress. And it's small. Not compact, because a compact car is short in length, width and height. This atrocity to engineering is VERY small in width, very small in length and about 5'10 high. If I'd take a piss against it it would most likely fall over. And it is.. neon blue.
I hate that car. I hate that series. And I hate Suzuki from now on. I want a Peugot or Renault or ( if financially capable ) a hummer. ( damn my awkward taste! )
Hate me!
GM eventually used recalls to deal with the major Fiero problems, including fixing the parking brake cables and replacing the exhaust manifold.
After recall fixes, I think Fieros just suffer from typical GM quality; they are no special hazard.
(Owner of three used models.)
I didn't know you read /.!
Seriously though, maybe you should stop getting mad at your cars.....
--
"I'm your firestarter, twisted firestarter...."
I remember the old saying about ladas.
What does a lada driver do for spare parts?
He drive behind another Lada!
It's true.
I had a 1971 Renault 16ts. Excellent car. The "16" was the first ever hatchback. I bought it in 1981 with 75,000 miles on it, sold it two year's later with 95,000 miles. Only thing I had to fix was the brakes. I drove it on winter roads in British Columbia with four people on board several times; sometimes with five people. Everybody was always impressed with it.
That's my 2-bits. dcobbler.
Is forbes falling on hard times or what?
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
My friend had a Vega. We used to asked him how many hamsters were used in the engine.
I got to drive a rental Lada about 14 years ago when I was overseas. It didn't break down, so we were happy.
The AMC Pacer and Gremlin have to be considered. K-cars really sucked. Yugos are in a class by themselves, and we once got five guys in a Honda 600,
But I wouldn't be caught dead in the Slashdot Cruiser!
It is a Rocket Sheep.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
Did you know why they changed the smaller, divided back window on the Beetle into a larger one?
So that it would be easier to see the progress passing it by!
(badabing!)
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, where does the road paved with evil intentions lead to?
Can't believe nobody has mentioned the horroible mid-seventies Ford Mustang II. Truly an awful car at least the 4cyl (yes that's right an a woefully underpowered fourbanger with the Mustang name one it). My mother drove not one but two Chevy Vega's (the first was totalled before she realized what a crap car it was), 1972 model was an undrivable oil burning rust heap by 1977. I had an 1972 AMC Gremlin that I paid $250 dollars for in 1982, and while it was undeniably a rolling piece of poo it had basically no rust and had a 302 V8 engine that was actually possible to service myself. It had it's bad points no doubt but I don't think it really belongs on the worst list
> Some of the East German plastic body cars would probably be worse. By no means. Trabant is the most fail-safe technology I've seen so far (and I've seen a lot, incl. nuclear reactors). Plastic has no corrosion, engine is very, very, very simple (2cyl/2stroke) and there is almost nothing to break - no water pump, no fuel pump, no oil pump, no valves, no distributor cap, no brake servo, no water circuit at all - and it was sold with spare engine wich you could change alone on the road :) (done myself, trice - it was driver's faults, not engine's). I see a lot of them around, some of them a lot older than me, still running happily. I have to add, it was open source (everything publised, a lot of user improvements merged), it starts easily in drastic winters (-32 deg C) when everything else fails, it performs excelent on snow/ice/mud... and there are tousands of jokes about it.
(it has also a looooot of disadvantages, but I still prefer it for urban use)
WARNING: Some people might find the following joke offensive. If you are one of those people, you should stop reading now.
Q: What's the difference between a Mercedes Benz and a Yugo?
A: You couldn't catch Princess Di dead in a Yugo.
Mmmm.. Donuts
A funnier list is the one the CarTalk guys compiled for the millenium. It is no longer on their site, but is mirrored here:
http://www.qis.net/~jimjr/misc160.htm
My favorite quote is about the Yugo: "At least it had heated rear windows -- so your hands would stay warm while you pushed."
Look, after a few hundred thousand miles, the seats get worn out, the glove box won't stay closed, the list just goes on and on, like the car...
Then there's the gas mileage, so bad that when you do eventually have to return to the gas station for more gasoline, there are new owners!
You have to get reacquainted, then ask where the gas pumps are.
They relocated them while you were gone!
Then, you drop dead from shock to see that the $0.49 a gallon gasoline you last put in the car is now $1.79 a gallon!
Such a shame for Volkswagen to have made millions of these unfortunate cars, the car notes paid off decades ago by their owners, now unused to car payments for more than a generation!
Cops have long since stopped giving tickets to owners of these cars, Imagine the embarrassment the Cop feels being laughed at for stopping a Beetle!
One day, when the little car stops running for the last time, no junkyard will have it, all the other cars in there are newer!
oh man, you just reminded me of the ford tempo aka the mercury... what was it... cant remember what the merc version was, but wow. that tempo sucked on so many levels. and it sucked new. there was a recall on teh ignition switch but ford refused to do it and thus it burned up two starters that they refused to pay for. and it was dangerously underpowered. i dont even know how people with autos in those things drove them
use your turn signal! you people act like it's divulging information to the enemy
The Yugo is leading the pack, whereas the Trabant likely should take first prize. These were the ones with bodies made of a shellac/felt composite. They were so bad that at the german reunification East Germans were stopping at the border, leaving the car, and walking into West Germany, considering themselves better off car-less. This car is SO bad, that when the head of Kaman Aerospace tried to add one to his collection, the US government agreed after several rounds but ONLY if he render the car unstartable/undriveable (no great challenge) due to the engine, one that would make a lawnmower cringe in embarassment.
I had a Chevy Vega, and - yes - a Ford Pinto. The Pinto was a stange mix of tepid, wierd and just plain bad design in just about every aspect, the Vega seemed better than it was given credit for - more room than most cars of its ilk, as long as the cylinders surivived you were ahead of the game, and with the optional rear axle, it actually fared rather well in the snows of New England as long as your tires were up to it. Never got stuck in it or my 76 Chevette - which incongrously had 51% of its weight over the rear driving wheels - with studded snows I never failed to get to my job on a mountaintop.
OK - friends of mine actually bought a Yugo JUST to make the move from NY to CA, thinking they'd just abandon the car upon arrival, to find that it lasted them another five years with little or no mechanical trouble - but it rusted out from under them.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Never did figure out why Suburu put a tach in an automatic-shift compact. But it was fun to watch it, even though it sort of encouraged me to go too fast.
The newer Skoda's are quite good (being made by volkswagen and all), but the ladas and skodas from two decades ago were truly terrible cars. Appaling build values, a tendency to go nowhere fast. Sure, some people like them, but they were generally a source of humour for everyone else. Which reminds me...
What do you call a Lada convertible? A skip
Fiero = Mexican's Ferrari.
See Subject.
The Pinto did get a semi-bum rap on the rear-end/gas tank issue. Other cars of the time were even worse, but got no bad press because they were so rare. Check out the rear of the Opel GT:
http://home.att.net/~johncline/opel_gt.htm
Very snazzy-looking car, but look at those tiny rear bumpers and the gas cap right at the edge of the spoiler. You don't want to get rear-ended in one of those.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
There are many fans out there of the Fiero, me included. Check out www . fiero . nl and see what you can do to them! I have a v8 pushing 400 HP and 12" brakes... no problems with it at all. :)
"After losing the two previous vehicles we had been issued, the only car the department was willing to release to us at this point was an unmarked 1987 Yugo, the Yugoslavian import donated to the department as a test vehicle by the government of that country and reflecting the cutting edge of Serbo-Croatian technology."
--Joe Friday, Dragnet
End of line..
I cannot possibly fathom why the MG is not on this list. My parents bought a brand new 1976 MG Midget. The damn thing caught on *fire* on the way home from the dealer. The car was *constantly* not running. When my brother was in college (early 80s), he worked on that car every day and still it barely ran. The damn thing ended up in pieces in their garage. Every single person I've ever spoken to who had one had the same experience. Worst car *ever*.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Spent time as a kid in the back seat with my ear next to the engine. (For anyone who doesn't know - the engine was behind the back seat).
Wonder if thats why I'm missing some frequencies in one ear....
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
During the 1930s (I don't know the exact year)
MB built a swing axle sedan that looked something
like a 1939 Ford 4dr. The problem was is flipped.
Often. One foto I saw said it was " noted for
poor gas milage, the fuel ran out of the tank when it was upside down".
Well, not actually a personal experience; it was an experience that my grandparents had while in Europe. They had rented a Renault of some type (not sure of the model) and were driving in the Alps with it. Specifically, my grandfather was driving down a mountain, and all of a sudden he couldn't modulate the brakes. He also couldn't downshift the car to use engine braking. It turns out that the transmission had literally broken apart and a piece had severed a brake line, meaning that both systems were no longer working. He did manage to slow the car somehow and they finally got down to level ground where he could use the handbrake, but it was such a hair-raising experience that they have sworn never to touch French cars again.
Worst car out there. Had to jump one myself for some poor sap at a Home Depott-- turned out he had two of them. Notorious electrical problems. I see fleets of them in used car lots for ALL car dealer brands...people are dumping these things. Wife's co-worker bought one new and dumped it within a year or so... always in the shop. Also, for driver deaths, they rate at 168 per million accidents. Compare that to a Camry at 40 per million.
My father gave me one after he was done with it. I don't know what I did to wrong him, but any notion I had about filial love went right out the window when he gave me the keys to "The Rolling Turd." (it was a shit-brown color.)
It wouldn't stay in 2nd gear, it couldn't get out of its' own way, you sweltered in the summer unless you had AC (which just robbed more power from the anemic engine) and you sure couldn't go fast enough in the damn thing to even get 2-60 air conditioning out of it. Plus it had a voracious appetite for front tires because it could never stay in alignment.
I had it a year. Then I gave it to a friend of mine. Mercifully, he was killed (got hit by a car) before he ever found out what a lemon the Pacer was, so I can only imagine that he still thought of me as a friend to the end. I'd hate to have that on my conscience.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
My first car was an Alfa Romeo Alfasud. Definitely one of the most dangerous things to drive around in unless you wanted to become a rallye pilot. It used the lock the rear brakes half a second before the ones in front, giving me a couple of near-death experiences. Oh, and the engine would shut off during heavy rain. Then I killed it by running it into the rear of a DAF (car, not truck)...
Most of the cars listed are a quantum leap in safety ahead of early "Cycle cars", 60's & 70's kit car's,steam powered vehicles with tiller steering etc.
Take your pick:
Exploding boilers,
No brakes,
Carbon monoxide poisoning,
Fire etc,
Plate glass windscreens,
Non-collapsing steering wheels.
The list is too long.....
"Just 'cause everythings relative don't mean it's related" T.H.
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
The car had been converted to battery power using a vast number of Li-ion cells in the trunk and, indeed, everywhere else. The trunk had a bank of fans that had to be on when recharging. Someone had added some retro mag-alloy wheels.
The interior was blue rather than red. There was a front bench seat, with the (now redundant) gear shift peeping up through a slot in the cushion. Changing gear must have been a very Freudian experience.
We drove around, gradually getting slower and slower, yet no matter how slow we went, no-one would pass us.
I never had a Hyundai Excel, but a friend did. He had numerous stories about it breaking down and sucking in general. But, my favorite one is the problem with his sun roof.
The car came with a sun roof -- a nice bonus for a car that cheap, right? Well, until one day when he got in the car, rolled down the windows (it was a summer day) and got going. The first time he hit the brakes, he was surprised to find scalding hot water pouring down on his head and body from above.
In addition to being highly annoying, messy, and downright painful, it was quite unexpected and mysterious. How could this be happening? Well, he (and his dad, I guess) eventually figured out that the sun roof was leaking. The hollow cavity of the roof would fill up with water on a rainy day. Then, the car would sit out in the Texas sun -- which can heat the interior of a car to over 140 degrees F (60 C) in less than an hour -- and the car interior and trapped water would heat up. Then, he'd brake for a stop sign or red light or whatever, and the water would rush forward out of the cavity onto his head.
My family were driving across the eastern German border one overcast day, so roads were slippery. The entry to the gate was paved with stone so it was especially slippery.
We were in a Russian made Lada and as we stopped for the gate, a Trabant behind was apparently unable to slow down and slammed into the back of us.
Damage on the Lada amounted to a small 5 inch dent.
The Trabant? The entire front was shattered. The poor woman wasn't able to drive it away.
Don't know how people ever got into those things. As kids, we were able to kick in the sides of an abandoned one with not too much effort.
With out a doubt, the hands down worst car ever is the Conynero. Just listen to its jingle! Can you name the truck with four wheel drive, Smells like a steak, and seats thirty five? Canyonero! Canyonero! Well, it goes real slow with the hammer down It's the country-fried truck endorsed by a clown Canyonero! Canyonero! Hey, hey! Twelve yards long, two lanes wide, Sixty five tons of American pride! Canyonero! Canyonero! Top of the line in utility sports, Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts! Canyonero! Canyonero! She blinds everybody with her super high beams She's a squirrel-squashin', deer-smackin' drivin' machine Canyonero! Canyonero! Canyonero! Whoa, Canyonero! Whoa!
The Pacer did not have a Rotary engine, perhaps they got it confused with the RX-2, which did...
yes
My dad drove me to school in the "Ukrainian jewel" in the eighties and the car was pretty durable. Sure, it looked like a box/joke, but it got the job done. It was particularly good in the harsh days of winter. Just try and drive a toyota in -10 celcius and you'll come to appreciate the little engine that could.
Many fond memories from that era.
Paykans are the most common car in Iran, mostly because until recently they were the only car available at a reasonable price. This car, which is widely derided even in Iran, has a four cylinder engine, runs on leaded gas, and has been produced essentially unchanged since the design (the Chevy Arrow) was bought from GM in 1967. Since Iran imposes a (depending on who you ask) roughly 170% duty on imported cars and has an extremely weak currency, even cheap foreign cars can cost as much as the average Irani will make in several hundred years. Recently, mercifully, other companies (Nissan, Kia) have opened factories in Iran and are producing competition for the umm "venerable" Paykan.
The reason they put the Edsel on the list was that it was a "public relations disaster". The only reason it is so poorly remembered is because Ford tried to create a whole new division around that car.
Frankly, I think Ford, GM, and Chrysler have both historically gone overboard on divisions, especially GM. My biggest criticisms are that I think that Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick and really redundant in the GM line. (Did they get rid of Buick finally?) Really, you either want a chevy, or you want a cadillac. Plus, I think they've let their Cadi division become too "grampa". I think that's why they bought Saab. I *never* wanted a GM car before, but I really like Saabs.
And Ford's Mercury divison is like soo redundant.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
These owners had to suffer for years before they finally got Nissan to buy back their deathmobiles:
l
Nissan van class action settlement.
February 11, 1994
Nissan must buy back all that remain of the 33,000 fire prone mini vans it sold in the U.S. between 1987-1990 after pressure from a safety research firm and the NHTSA. The California class action agreement only gave van owner a $500 credit toward a vehicle brought from a Nissan dealer.
from http://www.crash-worthiness.com/nissan/nissan.htm
There's surprisingly little to be found on the web about this debacle, but I knew I had fading memories of this event tucked away in the back of my mind. Maybe there's a better page of info about this elsewhere.
Certified Microsoft Notworking Specialist
A friend of mine tried to destroy the engine in one by holding first gear with the pedal floored. The sucker wouldn't blow. Actually, he put that car through every kind of hell a teenager with sports car envy can put an econobox through.
I think the Chevettes had uneven rather than uniformly bad quality. I've seen them last for years as daily drivers on their original powertrains. I've also heard of them dying after a few years of driving.
You've got some good cleverness.
You caught me. The truth is that I have four cars, but I don't use them. I just leave them running all day and night with tubes connected from their gas tanks to my local Shell.
. . . "don't piss off the advertisers."
Yes, I think it's pathetic.
I can't speak for the other cars, but my family has always been Citroen enthusiasts. The article states that the SM had a "bizarre air/water suspension was years ahead of its time, it was poorly engineered and designed" which is completely incorrect.
For starters, the suspension system is not water based at all, but a hydraulic system which using an oil-based product (LHM) in conjunction with gas 'spheres'. The suspension system was not new by the time the SM arrived on the market, in fact, it was largely a carryover item from the Citroen DS and by the 70's was largely trouble-free and quite robust.
I also find the claim that "[h]ad you pressed the car to its absolute limits, the SM might have ended up riding on its axles" quite amusing considering the DS -- and thus the SM -- are actually able to be driven with only three wheels thanks to their unique suspension.
If there was one weak spot on the SM, it had nothing to do with its suspension, but rather its engine, sourced from Maserti. The time-chain that came equipped with the SM wear prone to letting go ; a fault easily corrected today.
Anyway, that's my rant for the day -- if I can be bothered I might email forbes.
LW.
soviet cars arent crap. they wiont fail ya.
if its too cold like in siberia u just put a fire under the front of the car and the motor will unfreeze.
but a real shit car was the one from east germany: by saying its made out of some plastic-pappmache glue its enough...
funny as shit, ppl still drive them
A lot of maintenance issue with newer cars comes down to the fact that a normal typical human can not perform routine maintenance anymore. Lifting the hood on a car built in the last 10 years is like looking under the hood of a jet engine. Change the oil? Get real. Everytime you need to do anything, you have to take it to a dealer or expensive mechanic.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
My second car was a Pinto, following on the heels of a totalled Opel GT that lost a major arguement with a white-tail here in the North-East. The Opel was a NICE car, and I've owned some nice trucks, a couple of SUV's and a Buick Park Avenue. But the best car I've ever owned was my Ford Pinto.. We had all kinds of terrible nick-names for the poor thing. We abused it terribly, lots of crazy experiences -like having the deck-lid behind the rear seat blow out at some whatever the things top speed was, causing the interior of the car to fill with sound-proofing insulation and cause us to come to a screeching halt. The "end" finally came when the rear spring mounts rusted out on one side and all of a sudden the rear wheels locked up when the emergency brake cable went taut.... amazingly the cable held until the car came to a stop. I drove the car home VERY slowly -in reverse so that the flexing of the axle wouldn't cause the wheels to lock up. There was 220,000 miles on it... I cut the car up with an axe and slowly loaded the pieces onto the back of a pickup and when all that remained of the car was the belly-pan, drive train and engine, we decided to take it for a spin... Dropped the steering wheel onto it (why bother putting the nut back on when you're only going to take it back off again?) set a seat into it and fired it up. A friend was driving, he slid it into reverse, sped backwards about 20 feet and rammed it into drive intending to "burn out" The body flexed in the middle terribley, making the drivers seat (driver included) to fall over backwards holding the steering wheel (now attached to nothing but his hands) up in the air as the Pinto sped forward..... fortunately my friend found the brake with his foot before impacting. So ya see, gotta disagree, that Pinto might have been the best car I've ever owned......
Mine is an '03 BMW 325i. :P
I always thought it was fascinating that the Yugo got this rap considering the motor was a Fiat. I have an uncle in Italy who works as an engineer and they sell a lot of motors for manufacturers in europe.
Buy a Fiat motor and build around it cheaply.
The Yugo is a Fiat motor.
Of course, the fact that the yugo made a ton of enemies by undercutting the market probably had nothing to do with.
There was a whole Warren Zimmerman led parts boondoggle which Im am sure had nooooothing to do with any pressure made by the large companies which as well as know, neeeeever influence external politics. Seems to me when you have a product which is cheaply made, any kind of delay in parts or even establishing a system is deadly.
As someone who has owned a 65 Beetle and a 74 Westfalia, I can tell you that driving these Volks you 'learn' a lot about mechanics.
These cars always broke down but were cheap to repair and were cheap to buy.
And our local barbecue chicken franchise, pizza franchise and others ALL had fleets of Beetles in the 70's. My father used to drive one and used end up talking his car every second week...\
denny
There are a couple of cars on the list that may deserve to be there but some of the facts have gotten lost in the lawsuits and the press. Edsel has become synonymous with lemon and some of the reasons were detailed. Over time we forget that it was a new line and was sold by dealerships that had been happily selling Packards and Hudsons for years. Those were quality cars that couldn't command the volume of sales to compete. The Edsel was ok but still basically a dressed up Ford and not at all what the newly recruited sales force considered an excellent car. The Olds diesel probably wasn't one of GM's finest efforts but circumstances and overly ambitious PR also share some blame. At about the time it was introduces there was a shortage of diesel fuel and fuel suppliers were literally scraping the bottom of the barrel, or tank, if you prefer, to meet the demand. When that happens you get impurities from the bottom that under normal circumstances would never see the light of day and certainly not the tank of an autombile. The Stanadyne-Roosa Master fuel system tends to be unforgiving of poor fuel, usually costing an entire engine with the failure. Some people got along fine with the GM diesels. They were people accustomed to using diesels and who had a reliable fuel supply to burn in them(farmers, construction firms, etc.) They also knew that in spite of the company claims that the diesel should operate just like a gasser some extra attention was needed if they were to be reliable.
My most vivid Yugo recollection was seeing the transmission on a new one sieze up in the middle of an intersection -- during a test drive. The look on the car salesman's face was priceless... as was the consternation of the guy driving it.
The banner ad on the page was for the BMW X3. You think Mercedes paid for it to be there?
This is not my sandwich.
I guess that having ridden or even owned a Trabant is no longer as exotic (to the average Western reader) as it was in a decade and a half ago, but I still treasure my brief encounter with the "Trabi".
In May 1990, while hitch-hiking from Berlin to Hannover, I got a ride with two scruffy middle-aged guys, who even on first sight I figured to be East Germans.
The led me to their vehicle, which to my delight was a Trabant. I had spent several days in East Berlin and was fascinated by the Trabis, Wartburg 353s, and other cars I had never seen before. I got in the back seat and we put-putted out onto the Autobahn. I immediately noticed two things: the rickety roof seemed to be made of canvas over a steel tube frame, and the column-mounted gear shift was missing. But in its place, fitted onto the stub, was a beer bottle! Talk about ingenuity!
I didn't talk much on the drive, given my minimal German, but I did let the driver know that he could let me off anywhere in the city, perhaps near the train station. The driver must have suddenly realized that he was near the station, but missed the off-ramp. So he slowed down, took a sharp turn, and then proceeded to drive down the on-ramp, with VW Golfs and BMWs coming head-on at 50km/h!!!
We proceeded into town, and as soon as I saw the train station I told the driver to just let me off right there!
If you like anal sex, Check out http://goatse.cx.
.cx AUP - okay, so that kinda sucks, but otherwise, it's a great website.
Goatse is *very good at showing how to have anal sex* and a very informational website that is available on any ISP.
The goatse developers are great.
They have all of their jpegs behind a warning page discussing the
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The actually mentioned the Aztek in one of the briefs about the cars - something along the lines of the Edsel being a equivilent to the Aztek, being constructed OK but utterly lacking in style.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This car does not belong on that list, it is one of the most cutting-edge and damn neat cars offered in the early 70's. Sure there were problems with the 12A rotary engine, but they have been remedied. The engine design is brilliant if anything and the car performs exceptionally well. RX-2's were safe, well designed, and a blast to drive. They are commonly used in vintage racing now and they have a huge following of enthusiasts. This is not some failure in engineering Fiero junk but a truly amazing car.
The trouble, in the USA, was that it's engine could not meet pollution standards without insane ammounts of smog equipment, which made the whole thing complicated, less powerful, and poorer running. Still it is amazing how much power that 1.1L motor puts out.
I'm offended by it appearing on that list. Similarly the Citroen SM does not belong there.
WTF was that? A cross between an Escort and a Mustang with leprosy?
Is GAZ-21 a good car by today's standards ? No. It's an old, old car made in the 60s. But it still was a great car for its time, especially considering the enormous challenge of making any kind of car in the USSR.
>|<*:=
Did anyone else get an ad for the BMW X3 at the top of the page? I did, the result being that the first car I saw in the 'Worst Cars of All Time' article was...the BMW X3.
:-)
BMW can't be happy with that kind of ad placement
(and yes, I've sinced blocked images from that ad server with Mozilla)
If you compare the styling of the Pacer to every other car available in that period I think you can see that it was incredibly innovative.
I think it still looks pretty cool. Of course it was a piece of shit in mechanical terms. But it totally deserves recognition for design innovation.
Here are some folks that appreciate it:
http://www.amcpacer.com/
Has only been in the shop once ever, for scheduled maintenance - it has been flawless ever since I got it (EXCEPT for a cracking windshield problem that I think they will have to address eventually).
Mechanically though it has been great, and I'm just about to pass 30k miles... I've also driven on quite a few rough back roads when going into the mountains.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
After he started Subaru USA (and before he imported the Yugo), Malcolm Bricklin took a stab at building his own car, the Bricklin. The similarities with the DeLorean are somewhat obvious, but run deeper than you might think. The car was only produced for three years (1974-1976, DeLorean was produced from 1981-1983), and Bricklin convinced the New Brunswick government to provide financial backing (much as DeLorean got aid from the British government). Overall, it seems like a kit car, but owners say it holds together fairly well. Probably a tad bit more reliable than the Yugo that would come after, and also better performing (there's a Yugo near my house with a "Pocket Rocket decal on the side. Still haven't figured that one out). At least one of Bricklin's automotive attempts survives today.
BTW, I'm surprised that neither the DeLorean nor the Bricklin was mentioned in the article. Both seem to catch shit hand-in-hand whenever they're mentioned in an auto-industry rag.
I've already posted my Trabant story, so here's a story about East German trucks and buses, such as the IFA W50. Seven years ago, I toured Vietnam by bicycle, following Route 1 from Hanoi to Saigon. Back then, and even now, Vietnam had a lot of East German and Russian vehicles on the road, and the huge, snarling, soot-spewing IFA truck was king of the road. IFA also made buses, and the W50 was the most common, featuring a phony Mercedes-like star emblem.
In addition to the Eastern bloc vehicles, there are a lot of used buses and trucks from Japan.
On my second day on the road, I saw a bus, obviously of Japanese make, with an interesting destination posted: Sannomiya Jinja, written in kanji. I knew that Sannomiya Jinja was a location in Kobe, so I figured that this bus was brought over from Kobe. The next day, I saw another bus, and once again, on the front, it said Sannomiya Jinja. But there was something strange about the kanji characters. It just didn't look like real Japanese. Over the following days, I'd occasionally see buses with Japanese characters on them, some of them authentic-looking, some not. But some of the buses weren't even Japanese - they were East German! What was going on?
I quickly figured out that in Vietnam (as anywhere else), Japanese vehicles have a good reputation, and East German vehicles don't. Even 30-year-old Japanese buses are considered better. So local bus operators will slap Japanese text (or a Japanese make name) onto any old vehicle just to fool customers into thinking that they're riding a safe, reliable Japanese bus instead of an East German rustbucket.
Example. I'll be damned if that's a Nissan Diesel!
Forbes.com a cheap ass place where upper managemnt hasn't a clue but they have 'sufficient' backing to keep it go keep greasing the cheap path. my CTO could beat up your CTO in a shitforbrains contest.
The Crown Vics had a higher than normal tendency to have similar problems with its rear gas tank, at least enough to know it is at least somewhat statistically significant, although I don't know by how much. You'd think Ford would know better because that is asking for massive PR trouble.
A dialogue at Autozone:
Customer: Do you have parts for russian cars?
Salesperson: Ehhh, what do you need?
Customer: a bucket of 5cm nails, please?
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
I can't believe it, my family had TWO different cars on this list, the Olds Delta 88, and the Fiat Strada. /--\ oh man it was a sight.
The Strada we owned for about a month. A new Fiat dealership started up, my dad got involved with their financing company so he got a deal on a Strada. But the car basically fell apart in less than a month. I remember pulling on the door handle, not realizing the door was locked, and I pulled the handle right off the door. The engine started smoking and blew up within a couple of weeks, it had massive transmission problems, my dad took it back to the dealer and told them to shove it.
My mom owned the Olds, it was an aging rustbucket and had continual problems. The muffler rusted through, we took it to a repair shop and they told us it was a good thing we never took a long trip, because the hot manifold was lying too close to the gas tank, it could have blown up at any moment. The car finally died one day while I was driving it, I was backing out of an angle parking spot and the front suspension caved in, leaving the front wheels both pointing inward about 30 degrees, like this:
Yep, both of those cars were pieces of crap.
If not for its wimpiness in mountains, I would have kept that (1995, manual, wagon) Escort until one of us died. As other posters have said, 40mpg highway, dogged (though not rugged) reliability, and in the wagon version would carry an incredible amount of stuff. Since it's a Mazda at heart (I think guts are basically those of a 303, but that's distant memory, so probably wrong), it has Japanese-car goodness. That people think of them as ugly is a convenient plus :) (Not stolen or broken into even when it was frequently parked in Brooklyn in a neighborhood where that was a legitimate worry.)
:) Funny to see what a loyal following the Escort has here, judging from responses to your query!
Aesthetically, I actually like it *as a microwagon.* I don't like the sedan versions -- those are in fact butt ugly. The wagon version, on the other hand, is like an everyday European car. Not fancy, but practical, frugal, and (dare I say it) fun to drive, at least in manual. It's hardly a muscle car, but it's definitely sprightly enough in lower gears.
So there!
timothy
p.s. The new car is one I also consider good looking, but apparently famously ugly by others -- the Subaru outback wagon.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
All these cars are still being driven and maintained in Mexico. Those cars are migrating north with their owners.
For those who haven't had the pleasure, this site (in German) features the sound of a Trabant.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
"The Ford Focus - because every generation needs their Pinto."
"Say it quickly now: 'Foc-Us' - it's what you'll get with Ford."
Ford Pinto (Score:-1, Flamebait)
Oh. My. God. This was the car that had...well, nothing really. The electrical system in particular was a pathetic joke. The Bunny was built in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania until they mercifully shut the plant down in the late 80s. The 1979 Rabbit at one time held, I believe the Consumer Reports title for least reliable car they tracked. Horrible. Just horrible. OK, so you could get a GTi version that was fast. Still a bad car until they turned it into the Jetta, and the Jetta was nothing great in the early years either.
Babar
You should have done a bit of research on this one before you went off, everything I have ever seen stated the cab as being the safest place for the tank in a pickup, but they were moved because of the convenience of that cargo space behind the seat. Think about it for a second, the tank is protected by the body of the cab itself, and by the frame on the underside. If something catastrophic were to happen to the truck to cause a rupture and a fire, since you are sitting in the same cab, I don't think it is going to matter very much...an accident that compromises that fuel tank is surely going to be lethal to the passengers.
The only potential issue with it is gas vapors from a loose fill hose or sending unit, which is a common problem with a lot of passenger cars, including some Hondas that have an access opening to get at the fuel pump under the back seat, late 80's accords are that way.
My family, being poor and all, has never owned a pickup that didn't have a cab tank....and in all that time, over at least a million miles driven between 5 trucks made by ford and chevy in my lifetime (30 years), there has never been a fire, no one gassed by vapors, and only one leak that I know of, and that was caused by a kid (me) climbing up onto the roof of the truck using the gas filler as a step....
What needs to be done, no matter where the gas tanks are located on the car, is there needs to be a standard requiring that they use a fuel cell (like race cars use) in new production vehicles....the Crown Vics should have had that included as part of the police package.....
1. When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.
2. Do not eat iPod shuffle.
Copy and error. Here is the sound of a Trabant
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
If I remember correctly (and my memory is as old as the explosions themselves) only the sedan was susceptible to such detonation, not the hatchbacks.
The Forbes article, of course, pictures a hatchback.
You write your nine symphonies, then you die.
However, the build quality was terrible - the paint doesn't last, and the plastics fall to bits. At one stage, the Australian importer even set up a factory in what was Czechoslovakia to fix them before finally exporting them to their final destination.
Time marches on, and the Niva is now very outdated compared to more modern small 4x4's on the market.
What do you want a 4x4 for? Do you actually want to drive off-road, or do you just like posing? If it's the former, you might check out something like the small Suzuki 4x4's. If you want to pose, there are innumerable small soft-roaders out there.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
She'll go 300 hectares on a single tank of kerosene! Homer: What country is this car from? Car Salesman: Well it no longer exists.
How did this car not make the list???
My '74 Dodge Dart SE may be arcane, but with a 383 stroker, it turns a few heads every now and then. Nothing beats the look of utter shock on peoples' faces when a long, heavy rust bucket like mine dusts a Corvette.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
As to current Peugeots, their petrol engines are notoriously bad, because much of the French new car market buys diesel - it's half the price. They're still better designed and built than any American passenger car I saw when I was over there...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
hey, they weren't so bad... got from point a to point b.. just needed some tinkering all the time. you kinda get used to it. on the good side, they rarely had strange electrical problems like what modern cards suffer from... no brain box :)
:)
i do think the newer ones are ugly though.. hard to believe that still nobody can design a decent looking car in russia.
why would any of these cars be ever available in the U.S.? shit, who knows. for collectors, maybe.
i think it's kind of pointless to even mention them
--- sig moved for great justice.
Unless you're sure never to take your vehicle outside city limits, the Smart's not your thing.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Airconditioning on full, with car running stationary ... leave in the driveway for a while?
Seems like something the average USian would do.
Ok. Seriously. The Caprice was a poorly rated car? Ok, I'll give Forbes the fact that it is perhaps the most boring styling ever place on a set of wheels, but shoot, who has ever heard of a Caprice that didn't last at least 250,000 miles? Those things were the epitomy of reliability. Cheaper cars from the eighties, in general, were not expected to perform well after 120,000 miles. I've never heard of a Caprice that needed any kind of major power train work until after 200,000 miles. That's becoming more common in recent times or in diesels or more expensive cars, but for the price in the late eighties you could not buy a more reliable car.
End of rant. I'll go take my pills now.
Could it be that Forbes finds it more profitable to knock older vehicles than the contemporary death traps that provide it with advertising revenue?
Classic.
One time I was waiting for my car during one of it's many visits to the garage and the little old lady behind the counter asked what car I had. It's a Chevy Sprint I sheepishly said. "Hey Herb is the Chevy Shrimp ready!?" she yelled back into the garage.!
The page I pulled up has an IBM ad, with a grainy picture of "The Linux orphan boy" which has been appearing in their TV advertising lately. here's where the link whent
Does anyone else find those ads profoundly weird?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Driving a Pinto wasn't dangerous... Crashing into the rear of a pinto was dangerous. You'd hit the back of the pinto, the gas tank would drop gas all over, and the pinto would roll forward. The car in back of the pinto would continue to roll and come to a nice stop over a lake of burning gasoline.
hi
The ride and handling calibration (ie shock valving, spring rates and sta bars) on the original MR2 was performed by Roger Becker, from Lotus, but I think that's about all the direct influence we had on it.
I think you may be confusing this with the commonality between the Lotus Esprit, Lotus Excel, and the Toyota Supra - the Lotii used the brakes and so on from the Supra.
However, I could be wrong, I worked there 1987-1990, so I wasn't actually there when they were owned by Toyota.
Surely anything with Lucas electronics in it should be near the top of the list!
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
or at least they used to be. After BMW dumped them, Ford decided to pick up Landrover to go with their Jaguar line. Top 10 Reasons My Land Rover Discovery Sucks
1978-1988 Fiat Strada
Hehe. While I can understand that strada means street in certain European languages, car companies should really be more careful about what they name their cars.
My Bulgarian friend was driving around in New Zealand in a rented Fiat Strada, and what do you know, it broke down on one of the steep up-hills (NZ has lots of those).
She had to wait 4 hours for a mechanic to arrive and to fix it.
BTW, 'strada' is the verb 'to suffer' in Bulgarian. At least she had something to think about for 4 hours.
but if I'm ever in an accident there's a very good change you'll read about it in the obituary.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Was it in Dragnet where Dan Ackroyd drove a Yugo -- the "cutting edge of Serbo-Croatian technology"?
Then there was the classic SNL sketch about the Adobe. It's a car made of clay!
The 19 year old punk across the street has two of them, both have been stripped down to nothing and built back up.
I have to say I'm hellish impressed with the engineering of them, it's the closest the US has ever come to building a Ferarri - certainly not on looks, but in power and handling. Stock they're less than ideal ecpecially with the 4 banger, but the V6's are pretty nice and the 88 suspension or modded earlier suspension is more than capable. The low polar moment of inertian from a true transverse mounted mid engine placment gives lotus like agility. If you drove one you'd understand.
Plus the engine bay is big enough to drop anything in - Quad 4, Northstar V8, Hemi, even a 454 fits with no modification to the engine bay.
The dash is awful; Like most GM interiors it looks like "Star Wars by Mattel" and frankly I've yet to see any GM dash that didn't look retarded.
The problems with the first batch of Fieros were predictable. The first year of any car usually sucks badly.
The car was killed because by 92, according to Pontiac's develoment schedule it would ourperform a Corvette, and that's not allowed.
They go cheap these days. $300 gets you one you can work on and with not much effort have a daily driver. Really good ones barely get 10X that.
IMO they're one of the neatest cars ever to come out of the US.
Need Mercedes parts ?
You might recall the episode of Futurama where Bender gets sent a recall notice relating to his butt, saying that any collision might cause it to explode.
Almost a direct parody of the Ford Pinto problem with explosion from rear end collisions.
I swear, if I see another Slashdot comment with "It will be interesting to see"...
This car is on of the great car of all times. Is it a car you can get in and just dive. No, hell no and fuck no. The cam chains need constant attention. You'd better have access to a good Citroen or avaiation mechanic to keep the complex hydraulics in order. And they rust. Badly.
But, if you expend the effort to keep one in good nick you get a comfortable French car with a killer Italian engine and spaceship looks even 30 years later. They still go for big bucks today.
Citroen hydraulics are well understood, just not by very mant people. Like many rare and low production cars this one takes some effort to keep it going but is, if you're a car freak, very much worth it.
The lack of the pre 92 Ford Explod^Hrer on this list with its unfixable front end and flimsy head/gasket problems demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt the writer doesn't have a clue about cars. The SM has no inherent desugn faults, the Explod^Hrer had several. Sheer, dangerous JUNK.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I saw a book ten years or so ago with the title of "Worst Lemons of all time" or some such. Most cars listed by Forbes were in this book, but for one... This car inspired the bumper sticker that read "All components falling off of this car are of the highest British craftsmanship. It faced stiff competition for the #1 spot, beating out the Pinto. The Pinto was a close second, for it literally Napalmed you to death (if you were lucky). No, this car left you alive to suffer the draining of your fat wallet and self-esteem. What car? The 1976 Jaguar XJ-6. I knew people who owned one. It literally spent more time in the shop than on the road. Something about British build quality and Lucas Electrical innards.
...princess Di was a publicity hungry media whore, who when it was in her best interests actively courted the media and papparazo but then complained about them when they outlived their usefullness.
My friend's father is an insurance salesman and noted to us that the Focus has had more recalls than any other car.
-Valiss
The proof that yugo is not bad:
Yugo running high 14s.
Yugo & wood-gas!!! (there are lots of pictures in article).
Text-copy of second article:
Yugo runs by wood-gas
Mr. Anton Peterka along with his team, made his '85 Yugo 45, using wood and coal for fuel. It's not a new technology, 125 years old. The process is based on incomplete combustion of wood: due to lack of air, gases are created: carbon monoxide, the main fuels, hydrogen and methane. That mixture of gases is as flammable as gasoline fumes. To get the car moving, it is necessary to "fill it up with wood". The whole mechanism is made of steel plate and it weighs 60 kg. The part in which the wood burns consists of two cylinders. The wood is put in the inner part which is connected to the pipe through which the gas comes to the filters. In the middle part of the cylinder is an opening through which the fire is lit with a torch. Vacuum must be established in the system and therefore the openings for putting in wood and taking out ash are closed with milk can lids (they found a new use here due to their adhesiveness). In the filters, gas is purified (dust and other impurities are removed) and cooled from 250-300oC to 25-30oC (it comes in the engine at that temperature, cool gas is easier to mix with air). Yugo is the most appropriate to make that transformation, because it has a lot of free space around the engine to host the ventilator which is powered by the car battery and sucks out the gas from the firebox. When the mixture of gases becomes flammable, which can be easily checked with a cigarette lighter, the ventilator is turned off and put in the part where the gas mixture mixes with air in a 1:1 ratio and like the gasoline fumes from the carburetor, which is removed, starts the engine. The gas is not pressurized since the whole process is taking part in a vacuum environment. The only alteration is the gas mixer which is put instead of the carburetor. Gasoline engines work on a compression ratio 8-10, diesel engines on 17-22 and this gas on 12-13. Gas mixture has about 2590 kJ power, while gasoline gas mixture has 3344 kJ and therefore the engine powered by wood isn't so powerful and instead of 45 HP, decreased to 27-28 HP. The highest speed that can be achieved by that type of an engine is about 85 km/h, because of the less power and the increased weight and air resistance (aerodynamics is disturbed by the external firebox). It takes about 15-20 min to start the car because the wood needs to be decomposed. Capacity of the firebox is 35 kg of wood or coal , which is enough to do 150 km. If the car is left running in place for less than an hour, it is no use turning down the engine - it is left working in neutral. The really fascinating thing is the fuel consumption and the price difference between these two types of fuel. Instead of 1 litre of gasoline, 2.5 kg of wood is spent. 20 kg of wood are consumed after 100 km which means that driving "on wood" is up to 10 times cheaper than the conventional driving using gasoline. And that is not the only advantage of this kind of driving - exhaust fumes from wood have a lot less harmful components: the environment is being less polluted. All the functions of the car are the same except as far as the carburettor is concerned. On the roof, you can see filters for gas, avoiding dust, tar, ash and water to enter the carburettor, and also cooling the gas. He worked with his son Igor, who is a mechanical engineer. Belgrade, Serbia
Q: What is the purpose of the resistors on the rear windscreen of a Yugo?? A: So your hands wont be cold when you push it... Q: What is a Yugo on a mountain??? A: A mirracle !!
Roses are red, violets are blue, most poems rhyme, but this one doesn't...
You're right! I recently sold my 1985 MR2 to a good friend of mine for $1600 (along with a spare low mileage engine I found for $350 from a Japanese engine import shop). I had just replaced the shocks, bushings, lower control arms, and basically most of the other stuff that wears out after nearly 20 years... I had to sell it because i was getting a new car, but I still miss it quite a bit. Note, that stuff didn't "need" to be replaced, but I wanted to keep the handling tight.
That car was rock solid. I think of all the car companies Toyota is near the top in terms of reliability. My new car is a Nissan, but they seem to be fairly well to do as well.
The Skoda brand has gone skyrocket once Volkswagen bought it. Built with Western technology and Eastern salaries has really improved the quality while keeping the price low. Modern Skodas, like Octavia, Fabia and Felicia, are very decent cars.
...well, the Trabant was mensioned in the article...even is in the poll on the page
"1957-1962 Sachsenring Trabant P50"
Imagine that.
I sing the doggie electric!
Bet, you haven't heard of this one: :))) ;))))))
:)))
The material of which Trabants are made of contains cotton and other organic stuff. And organic stuff is good when we talk about food, right? Well some owners found that out in the hard way, as their cars were eaten in thier backyards by piggies
Definetly not a car for a country life!
There are even songs written about it
And how would you feel if you were driving BMW, and you got outraced by an Trabant? Seen it wiyh my own eyes, an ordinary awfull looking trabant powered by an Renault 5GTurbo engine!
And Yugo is yet another story. As I live in the country it was (and unfortunelly is) made, I see quite a lot of theese. And you can buy new carburetor for the price of music CD. The bad thing is you probably need a collection to satisfy your needs
Cheers!
HILL
hill@galeb.etf.bg.ac.yu
Of course, they probably cut the article off at the number of column inches they'd planned in the print issue, so maybe they thought of more. These might have included:
The old (1970's) Audi 100. Those things would break in places that most cars don't even have places.
The Subaru 360. Sort of made sense with the tax laws and lack of space in Japan, but a disaster in the US.
The Dodge Aspen/Plymouth Volare.
The Chevette. Even GM mechanics referred to it as the "Shove-it".
All the full-size cars GM built in the 70's and 80's with Turbo 200 transmissions and selectively shipped to dealers in the Midwest where they presumably wouldn't have to climb any hills.
The Austin America.
The Suzuki Kamikaze...er, Samurai.
yeah... i saw later, when i wrote the comment the site was slashdotted :)
How do you double the sale's price of a lada?
Fill it with gas!
They were sold in the UK for a few years, until the loophole in the pollution laws that had let them be imported was closed, and we bought one second hand (my parents refused to spend more than a couple of hundred quid on a "new" car so we always drove old bangers). A nasty tan brown it was. We called it "Miss Piggy" and even put its name on the doors.
The car was, well, different. It ran not on ordinary petrol but on two-stroke fuel, and you had to pour some two-stroke oil into the fuel tank when you filled it up and then you had to bounce the car up and down on its suspension to mix the fuel and oil - great fun for us kids! (I swear I'm not making this up). Back then there were still a lot of petrol stations in the UK that weren't self-service, and more than once we got refused service because the staff refused to believe the thing took two-stroke fuel and didn't want to take responsibility for wrecking the engine.
When my dad bought it, it needed a replacement rear light cluster, so my dad fitted one and took it out for a spin on the Kingston bypass that evening. Looking in his rear view mirror he could see a bright glow and was pleased that the new lights were working so well. Then another motorist flagged him down and pointed out that there were flames coming out of the exhaust. Some oil that hadn't mixed properly had accumulated in the exhaust and caught fire. Not the last time that happened...
Here. The Austin Allegro Vanden Plas is truly appalling. Every couple of years you still see one on the roads in the UK.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
The Yugo was a wonderful car. If you wrecked one (by, say, driving over a manhole cover at four miles per hour), simply peel back the shrink wrap and pull the next one out of the three-pack. Ready to go!
By comparison I have a picture of a London bus in a newspaper that drove off an overpass and landed on its nose (standing vertically), which just cracked a headlight and bruised the driver. You guys really shouldn't put your fuel tanks in the bumpers!
Just because Ralph Nader falsified, ( yes, he was convicted of falsifying the data ) the Corvair is a great car. I've owned two of them and both have out lasted my Nissan's and Toyota's by far.
The only reason Trabant isn't winning the vote by far is that it was so bad, most people have never heard of it.
They actually imported those things to Iceland from East-Germany!
Sindri Traustason.
Did the US never get to enjoy the Reliant Robin?
What do you think the Bronco II was?
hehe.
It may get worse than that:
Friend of mine drives around with another friend. He had to stop at an intersection, his friend behind just did not. So they made a crash with a Lada Samara (small 2-door hatchback) in front and a Ford Escort from behind. Guess what? The Lada was not even dented, the Ford was totally ruined in the front, engine damaged - not recoverable.
Lesson learned: Lada may be low tech, but it's durable like the proverbial panzer. Oh and it heats up in less than 5 minutes in even the coldest (-20C) winter we'd ever experienced.
Citroen SM one of the worst cars of all time? This is truly ignorant writer! Even the most simple facts, like the years of manufacturing, are wrong!
."
... Uganda's Idi Amin (who had two)."
"In 1970, Citroen launched two new models - the SM and what was probably the most technically dense car within its market sector, the GS which beat the SM to the Car Of The Year Award that year."
"While the GS was a technological tour de force since it introduced self levelling suspension and powered disc brakes to the mainstream, the SM was Citroen's long awaited flagship, intended for a wealthy, discerning elite."
"The SM was the product of over half a decade of development work and its technical solutions to the problems of powerful front wheel drive cars included DIRAVI - DIRection A Rappel AsserVI or VARIPOWER as it is known in Anglophone markets. This was a fully powered steering system which provided maximum power at low speeds with the power being reduced as velocity increased. This was coupled withpowered centering and only two turns from lock to lock. Centre point steering (where the pivot point passes through the centre of the tyre tread contact point was possible thanks to the front brakes being mounted inboard on either side of the differential. "
"Hydropneumatic, self levelling suspension was carried over from the DS although the mounting points for the suspension arms were in front of the wheels rather than behind them as in the DS."
"The SM , despite being longer than the DS, was a 2 + 2 Grand Tourer."
"The body was styled by Robert Opron who was also responsible for the GS and CX
"The glass front housed no less than six headlamps, all of which were connected to the suspension to maintain a constant beam height whether accelerating or braking while the inner pair were connected to the steering. American customers had to put up with four round lamps with no glass nacelle."
"The SM is undoubtedly a complicated car and over the years there have been a number of myths regarding the cars propensity to catch fire or generally explode. These may we assure you are not true. A well-maintained SM is still a practical luxury motorway cruiser and a definite head-turner. A good SM can be bought for about the same money as a new family car (approx. 10,000) although one should be prepared for somewhat higher running costs."
"Opening the bonnet of an SM has been known to drive a grown man to tears; there's just so much of it! But it isn't quite as bad as it looks. The Maserati engine is reliable if it has been regularly and properly serviced, you should always check for a history of bills on any car you look at. Don't be put off by hisses and clicks from the hydropneumatics but the engine itself should not make any noises."
Source: http://www.semantics.uk.com/
I've owned cars of several makes over the years, from Porsche to Ferrari, from Pontiac to VW. Currently I have four Citroens, one of them being a 1972 SM. Like any car over 30 years old, it needs maintenance, but with proper care it is definitely the best car ever made, perhaps the only car that even comes to close is the Citroen DS that preceeded SM.
"You're in Good Company!
Famous and infamous SM owners include U2's Adam Clayton, Six Million Dollar Man Lee Majors, Battlestar Galactica/Bonanza's Lorne Green, the author Graham Greene, Russia's Leonid Brezhnev, Ethiopia's Hailie Salasie, footballer Johan Cruijff and
ps. excuse my english. I'm not a native speaker!
Has to be the Edsel. For those of you too young to remember, this thing had a vulva-like appendage on the front of the grill.
There was talk about re-calling it, putting some hair around the grill and calling it the "Ethel".
Don't get to thinking that just because Honda makes a car, it's beyond reproach where mechanical failures are concerned. The S is one of Honda's more "tempermental" products of late.
...And for the unbeliever: Go to a used car lot, look under the driver side, compare this with the passenger side.
Not that I experienced even half of these problems, but the ones I did (the 2nd gear thing, window switch, and the rear end 'click,' the first hint of diff failure) made me wake up and realize that there are no golden brands where cars are concerned.
Generally very reliable engines, the stuff that I saw as being a problem on them in commercial service (where problems crop up a lot faster) were suspension, and steering part related. The tripple wishbone in the accord is very problematic from a durability standpoint on the rough roads we have here. It's not at all unusual to see major suspension work ($2000+) on them at 70K in my area. The floor construction is also very disappointing if you ever carry anything heavy in them. It gets it's strength from it's shape, but it bends when you put a heavy load in it. (Set 3-4 60LB paper boxes in the back of one and look underneath.) Do this enough and that material looses it's integrity and you will find yourself suddenly needed an alignment as your car has bent itself out of shape. It's not even a lot of weight that causes the flexing, this is the weight of one slightly heavy person.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
So they crippled the car with mediocre performance by allowing only mediocre parts like those from the Chevette.
Now there was a car that truly deserves to be on the list of the worst cars ever, even more so than the Fiero and Pinto. Absolutely awful ride. GM had soo many cars during that era that should make this list! The Chevette being one of the biggest offenders.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
Say what you will about Trabant (and I've read a lot of nonsense here and elsewhere about it) - I owned two of them in the '70s and I can tell you that was far and away the most economical car I have or will ever come across.
At 40 mpg the fuel consumption was quite good. Its main secret was its simplicity. The list of components found in ordinary cars which the Trabant did not have is longer than the list of those it did have. Like: poppet valves, camshaft, timing belt, HT distributor, water pump, oil pump, fuel pump, servo steering, ditto brakes, any form of electronics, etc. etc.. There were only two leaf springs for four wheels. Oh yes, and sound proofing was practically non-existant!
So essentially there was no maintenance because there was nothing to maintain. The few parts that were there were good enough. The only parts I ever replaced in 50.000 kms were the ignition coils. The Duroplast body panels were much more dent-resistant than present-day sardine tins. Unfortunately the steel body was just as rust-prone as that of contemporary competitors. However crash tests carried out after the Wall fell proved that the shell was actually much stronger than most people thought.
Anyway both my Trabants eventually succumbed to big-end seizure, probably because I ignored the advice in the owners manual to refrain from cruising at full throttle (70 mph). I didn't bother to replace the crankshafts but I could have - one man could extract the engine without a hoist.
The description by Forbes is basically vague hearsay. Judging a car by the sound of its name is stupid. Their assessment of the durability of Duroplast is plain wrong. Borgward was a West German make. For 8 years my family car was a Wartburg. Bigger and faster but same KISS philosophy as the Trabant, second most economical car. With a name like Forbes, some magazines on the net just seem to shout "junk"!
My uncle owned a Wartburg 353 back in the GDR. It was a brand new red thing and one of the better cars you could get then. ;) ) and vanished, being relieved not to bother some insurance. ;)!
My family was separated after WW2 so a sister of my grandma lived in West Germany, while we lived in East Germany. She was permitted to visit her sister on birthdays. But after the years she couldn't manage to get there by train. So my uncle was permitted to drive her to West Germany with is car - that was absolutely exceptional!
So he drove on the western Autobahn when a Mercedes Benz crashed slightly into his car. The owner was hysterical as he thought he crashed an Oldtimer. He gave my uncle some big bucks (with valuta you could buy half the town in the GDR
My uncle never got the grinning out of his face
Matz
Behind a Ford Pinto and in front of an Audi 5000S!
So that's what pontiac had in mind when they designed the Aztek.
The RX2 was a revolution in automotive history regardless of the problems it was/still is a quick car that revolutionised the small car market despite all of the problems with it.
power + small car = performance
Coming from mid-Europe, I had I chance to familiarize myself with all kinds of cars from both East and West. By far the most honest criteria would be price/performance ratio, considering the expectations! Yugos from Serbia are probably an all-time favorite no matter how you bend the criteria. There are also very useful production anecdotes available (which may be of use to those how favor outsorcing to 3rd world $5/hr typists, point being "nobody can pay me poorly enough to match the lousy work I do...") Leaving that aside, two points have to be made: - many east-european cars were not as disastrous as the "non-aligned" Yugo and their performance was well within the expectations, knowing their pros and cons, and of course considering the price. Lada Niva is a good example of a simple work mule, easily repairable and robust that will do well. Skoda Favorit, was somewhat different: a great story of improvement. On the other hand, there were always Fiats (and many more brands, already listed) that were below any reasonable expectations (see the anectode in the beginning of the Michael Moore's Stupid White Men about the brand new VW Beetle or the (Microsoft-related?) stories on BMW's first iDrives in the 7 series). These days, with customer care programs and selling/marketing tools in place, you have to be especially careful about cars that are advertised as having character and image, which is often a substitute for lack of performance - small Peugeots and Renaults being the big spenders, the way I see it. The German auto club (ADAC) statistics seem to be a pretty good source for car reliability. We may have a new star on the horizon of the worst cars ever, and (my bet) it will be a Renault, with ("closed source") allmighty electronics done the French own way breaking down cars to a halt on every corner.
The problems with emissions were understated - at the time of the RX-2, nobody really gave a shit about emissions except some nuts in california. What did the RX-2 in was low-end performance. Rotaries stink for torque in the sub 5k rpm range. Mazda finally introduced turbo on the RX-6 and more popularly on the RX-7. Poor sales killed the 7 in the 90's, but Mazda kept doing research and we have the RX-8 which is a damn fine engine, and clean to boot. The problem is the stigma of needing turbo is hurting sales, and Mazda is still waiting to introduce a RX-8 Twin Turbo.till this summer.
I was driving on the highway (early 90's) and there was a Fiero ahead of me. Sudeenly a piston went flying straight up through the trunk (rear engine) and blew the engine lid open. The car coasted over off the road and was belching smoke. That was a mix of funny and scary. I wonder where that piston landed?
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
"Unsafe at any speed"
Ralph Nader.
I think they left one out.
Though, my brother restores them, we think they got a bad rap. For their time they were very advanced... rear engine, air cooled, and way fast with a turbo charged 6(spyder). Like a VW beetle on steroids.
we have driven them at 100+ MPH on a track, and they seemed as safe or safer than other cars of the period.
Very few of the cars on this list have had a book devoted to their horrible safety, wrong or right.
What a horrible oversight by forbes.
L8,
AC
I can't believe this car didn't make the list. My 1989 had over 500 TSBs, including a design flaw which caused two major engine fires. Many of these cars also had the infamous faulty ignition cylinders. Then there's the infamous transmission. In 1991, the Ford Taurus with the 3.8L V-6 had the most complaints filed with the NHTSA than any other car. Even SHO owners were not immune to poorly designed suspensions and fuel systems, though that engine and transmission were quite reliable considering it's high performance level - but then it was made by Yamaha. Even as late as 2000, there were problems - one friend of mine had to have the entire main wiring harness replaced after a series of malfunctions revealed the car was one of thousands that were miswired.
I remember when Ford used to claim "Quality is Job #1". Good thing they dropped that slogan. I will never never never buy a Ford car, nor any of these jived-up yuppied trucks they sell. Give me a good ol' bare bones Chevy F-1/2/350 anyday.
a broken headbolt at 30,025 miles, 25 over warranty
Eh? :-)
And you never thought to detach the speedo cable and attach it to an electric drill on reverse?
Bloody geeks these days
(At the very least you could have drove in reverse or got a backwards tow to get it back to 29,999.9)
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
OTOH, it might be that they didn't want to do photos by themselves and couldn't get permission to use one of Fords. In that case it's simply lazy journalism. Google images has thousands of latter-day Broncos, and securing permission for one of them wouldn't have been that hard.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Hey, I had a 1984 Delta 88 Royal Brougham Coupe as my frist car. I have no idea how it made the list. I couldn't kill the thing. I blew up a few tranny's but it was my own fault. I used to take the thing sideways around every corner, do smoke shows and brake stands everywhere. I used to even pull ghostbusters. I took it off road a few times and buried the tires in the sand at the beach once when messing around. I was coming home one night and floored it around a corner to do my normal slide show and took it right into a wall. The wall was made out of wood and fell apart while my Delta did not have a scratch on it. Even towards the last few days when I was getting rid of it and put nothing but octane boost in the car, opened up the carbs and took of the filter it wouldn't die. It ran like a beast.
SuDZ
Never! Even if I had $1,000,000.
Some things are so snazzy they never go out of style! Like tail fins... And bubble domes... And shag carpeting...
-- Homer, designing a car, "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?"
See (and buy) the Homer car here.
Considering there are millions of "Panther" chassis vehicles out there, the Crown Vic is no less safe than any other vehicle. Let me ask you this, in which other car could I take a 70MPH rear impact from a pickup truck, and most likely survive? None. What other rear wheel drive vehicle is an option for Law enforcement? Same number.
Now ask yourself, did the Crown Vic kill anyone, or did some other driver not paying attention to driving who rear ends a parked police cruiser kill them?
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
All that needs to be said: www.chevettes.com!
If you have to drop a new engine into a car and add a frigg'n different rear end to it to make it a decent car then it wasn't that good in the first place. I seriously doubt too many people are up to rebuilding a car.
Hehe, it's nice to finally have a good picture of the thing. Trabants rock!
I sing the doggie electric!
Hear, hear. The RX-2 is an awesome car to do a restore job on. Such power from a tiny engine. Here is just one of many pics of them. Just check out any Australian Fast 4's and Rotaries magazine.
I, unfortunately, had to drive one for a few years...
I don't know the model name/designation, but it had two doord, a hatchback, & was automatic...
Crappy mileage, stank (were they SUPPOSED to smell like microwaved road-kill? Three different mechanic shoppes couldn't find the cause!), and looked like the POS it was...
A friend bought me a "Go ahead, hit me! Of COURSE I'm suicidal, I'm driving a PINTO aren't I?!" bumper sticker which we mounted dead-center of the hatchback door...
Couldn't get it to go over 65 without it shaking like an Epiletic having a Grande Mal...
Accelleration? Maybe downhill, with a tailwind, and strapped to a JATO unit...
AM only radio that only picked up two stations, neither of them in English...
Dashboard interior lights never illuminated the guages enough to read them properly - had to use a flashlight. Someone suggested putting one of those goose-necked "map lights" in the cigarette lighter socket & aiming it at the cluster, but the damned socket only provided power when it FELT like it... Two mechanics were unable to find the short or determine why it would cut out, and three replacements didn't fix the issue...
Cop once pulled me over & issued a speeding ticket. Wrote me up for doing 95 in a 65 zone. I took a picture of the Pinto where I had parked it in the Courthouse car-park, and asked the Judge "Is THIS a vehicle that can do 95 in anything other than *FREE FALL*?" Case Dismissed.
Damned POS... Wasn't worth the gas I paid to keep it moving.
(GRRrrrr...)
I agree :-)
Co-operation beats competition
I disagree. Goatse is not "very good at showing how to have anal sex." All the site gives you are pictures of Slot A and Part B, and the viewer is left to their own imagination as to what to do with them!
Ford's answer to the Chevy Nova
Pintos were closer to Chevette in size. Ford's Maverick was roughly Nova-sized.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
I lived in Moscow for 6 months and I've lived in Kazakhstan for the past year. I'll share a few thoughts and experiences on Russian cars:
...and my favorite:
- Ladas basically don't work after they leave the factory in Russia. Even the dealer recommends you take the car directly to a garage to have it fixed after you buy it. Lada set up a second assembly line to fix cars that they intend to export.
- A company in Russia produced an armored Lada for a while. No changes in engine (tiny 4 cly), suspension or anything like that, they just added about 1500 pounds of armor. Can you say "Getaway?".
- Some of my friends here in Kazakhstan drive Ladas. What they usually say is "It is Russian car. After three years, it will have to be replaced."
- We always start our meetings here with a "Safety Moment" - someone tells about an incident or a potentially unsafe situation that they have observed. At a recent meeting, a person described how he had mistakenly driven his Ford pickup into a puddle, and was surprised to find out that it was so deep that the water almost came in his windows. There was general nodding and agreement about how that was an unsafe situation, and how people shouldn't do that sort of thing.
After a pause, one person said, "Would you please drive my Niva into that puddle?".
Andy
"You can't have everything. Where would you keep it?" -- Steven Wright
I dunno about the Aztek itself, but I drive its corporate cousin (the Chevy Venture), and my friend Rob drives the Aztek's nicer-looking fraternal twin (the Buick Rendezvous - the minivan for people who don't want to admit they have a minivan). We both like 'em just fine. I saw the Aztek at an auto show when it was first being introduced, and after clambering around in it a little, I was pretty interested. But my wife hated the looks, and I was a little put off by the relative lack of power and the (initial) non-availability of AWD.
So i wound up getting an Olds Bravada instead, only to swap it out for the Venture when the kid needs overwhelmed the Olds. The GM minivan platform that they base the Aztek, Rendezvous, and the minivan triplets on isn't a bad platform at all, it's just that the Aztek has the "love it or hate it" looks.
As for some of the other cars in this discussion, back in the early '80s when I was in high school, I dated a girl who had a Corvair. Nice car, even though Ralph Nader made his bones on it. My friend Pam had a 4-door Chevette that had trouble getting uphill when fully loaded with passengers, and I had two friends with VW bugs. One of them actually had one with an automatic transmission. I think there may have been about six of them made, total. I drove my Dad's Olds '88, which was a pretty good car. We had the one with the V-6, not the crappy diesel.
One time some of my friends and I decided to make the guy with the automatic Bug think his car had been stolen. So we picked it up and carried it away. It was easier than jimmying the lock.
When he found it, though, he figured out that I'd been the ringleader for that stunt and got me back by doing donuts on my lawn. My folks were not happy. But the car was so light, he couldn't do too much damage.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hey, this guy estimates 75MPH top speed.
http://www.austinev.org/evalbum/264.html
This is in line with what I reported.
ESAD
Car and Driver said 105MPH top speed, which sounds right.
I was never to achieve over 100MPH when new, and as I said before, you could not stand the noise and how hard it was working at just above highway speeds.
See post in parent.