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50 Worst Cars of All Time

405 messages,  Last post on Apr 05, 2010 at 1:57 PM

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#1 of 405 50 Worst Cars of All Time by Mr_Shiftright HOST

Nov 13, 2008 (10:12 am)

Okay, here's a great way to spend lots of your time, rather than wasting it on family or work--have a look at the "Worst Cars of All Time" according to Time Magazine:
 
50 Worst Cars Ever
 
You can skip the early cars if you want by clicking on the various "eras" up above the article. I mostly explored the 60s thru 90s.
 
I have to say that there wasn't one car on their list that I would adamantly defend at the price of my credentials. I mean, there were a couple where I would "quibble" or would say something like "yes awful but historically worthy" but generally whoever wrote the article was pretty astute, IMHO.

#2 of 405 Re: 50 Worst Cars of All Time [Mr_Shiftright] by andre1969

Nov 13, 2008 (10:44 am)

Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Nov 13, 2008 10:12 am)
Off the top of my head, about the only car on there I'd defend would be the '71 Imperial. The writer was whining about a stupid-huge 440 V-8. But c'mon, when you're moving roughly 5,000 lb of car, would you want anything LESS?!
 
Now Chrysler was starting to cheap out with these cars. For 1969-73, they basically took the Newport/New Yorker body and slapped an extra 3 inches of wheelbase on. All of that was ahead of the firewall, giving the car a longer hood and fenders, but no more interior room. But that's really no different than say, a Cadillac Deville versus a Buick Electra or Olds 98. Longer car, but no bigger inside, all of the extra wheelbase in some useless area.
 
By that time though, big Mopars in general were starting to get sort of a generic look about them. You could get hidden headlights on the New Yorker, and I think they were standard on the 300. They may have been an option on the Windsor as well. You could also get them on the Plymouths, and Dodges some years. So all those clean, hidden-headlight front-ends did start looking alike, and the sides of the cars were sort of featureless. It really was getting hard to tell them apart. Even if they actually shared very little sheetmetal, the differences just weren't enough to notice.
 
Still, it's not a car I'm going to defend to the death or anything. And I'm not gonna lose any sleep over the fact that it made some hack's top 50 worst cars list.
 
I'm actually surprised the 1976 Volare and Aspen didn't make the list. They were a good idea, but the quality was horrible for the first year and a half. They were generally regarded as inferior to the Dart/Valiant that they replaced, but that's pretty much how the 70's worked with domestic cars...the new ones usually sucked worse than the ones they replaced!
 
Ditto the 1980 GM X-cars. They were a good idea at the time, just executed poorly. And by the time the quality was improved, it was too late.
 
I think I might quibble with the Cadillac V-8-6-4 from 1981. It was temperamental, but supposedly all you had to do was pull a wire or two and make it run on all 8 cylinders all the time, and it was a decent engine. If you want to pick on Cadillacs from that era, go for something with the little aluminum 4.1 V-8, or anything with a Diesel!
 
One question about the Chrysler/DeSoto Airflow...weren't those just body-on-frame cars with radical bodies? The article's description of "aerodynamic singlet-style fuselage, steel-spaceframe construction" makes them sound unitized. Did these things really have a habit of, literally, dropping the engine?

#3 of 405 Re: 50 Worst Cars of All Time [Mr_Shiftright] by fintail

Nov 13, 2008 (10:48 am)

Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Nov 13, 2008 10:12 am)
The SUV criticism there was pretty amusing.
I suppose a case can be made for all of his picks too, even though historical significance can forgive some faults.
 
A good quote from the H2 blurb: "It all contributed to GM's emerging image as the Dick Cheney of car companies." ....indeed

#4 of 405 Re: 50 Worst Cars of All Time [andre1969] by Mr_Shiftright HOST

Nov 13, 2008 (10:53 am)

Replying to: andre1969 (Nov 13, 2008 10:44 am)
If you view a '71 Imperial in real life, it is rather absurd--it is so huge, and yet has so much wasted space. It's a poster child for everything bad in automotive design. You know how it is, there is big, then there is bigger and then suddenly you cross a little line and go into parody. The Imperial just pushed the "full-size" envelope too far.
 
Maybe the writer had the benefit of hindsight, since these clumbersome Chrysler cars were the cause of their near-demise a few years later.

#5 of 405 Re: 50 Worst Cars of All Time [Mr_Shiftright] by andre1969

Nov 13, 2008 (11:18 am)

Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Nov 13, 2008 10:53 am)
If you view a '71 Imperial in real life, it is rather absurd--it is so huge, and yet has so much wasted space. It's a poster child for everything bad in automotive design. You know how it is, there is big, then there is bigger and then suddenly you cross a little line and go into parody. The Imperial just pushed the "full-size" envelope too far.
 
But is a '71 Imperial any worse than its peers of the time? For example, a 1971 Lincoln or Cadillac? If nothing else, I think the Imperials were rather tastefully styled, although I'll agree that good style and good design don't always go hand-in-hand.
 
Maybe the writer had the benefit of hindsight, since these clumbersome Chrysler cars were the cause of their near-demise a few years later.
 
Actually, when that style came out for 1969, the Imperial was pretty popular. But Chrysler always did have trouble making the Imperial stand out from lesser Chryslers. And sharing the same bodies as they did in 1969-73 certainly didn't help. Other than the 3" longer wheelbase and hood, I don't think the car really gave you anything that you couldn't get on a New Yorker. It would get even worse for 1974, when the cars not only shared the same bodies, but the same wheelbase. The only difference by this time was that Imperials had hidden headlights and New Yorkers didn't. No longer was size used to differentiate the cars. The Imperial went away after 1975, but for '76-78 was replaced by the New Yorker Brougham, a car that was practically identical.
 
If anything, it was probably the fuel crisis that killed the first Imperial. 1974 was a horrible time to introduce an all-new full-sized car...especially one that looked more massive than the one it replaced, even if it really wasn't. All big cars did bad in 1974, and it was only inevitable that the weakest would get culled first.
 
FWIW, I was actually shocked when I found out how big a '69-73 Imperial really is. Something like 230-233", depending on the year (although most of that extra length was because of those big black rubber blocks they put on the cars...something that makes the cars longer, without making them LOOK longer. I mean, a car that's 230" of all car is going to look bigger than a car that gets puffed up to 230" by way of protruding bumpers or tacked-on bumper guards. I always thought the Imperial did a good job of hiding its size. Maybe the coupes are a bit extreme, because of the smallish passenger cabin and correspondingly longer rear deck, but I thought the sedans looked great.

#6 of 405 Re: 50 Worst Cars of All Time [Mr_Shiftright] by texases

Nov 13, 2008 (12:54 pm)

Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Nov 13, 2008 10:12 am)
Did I miss the Vega? Gotta be worse than many on the list...

#7 of 405 Chrysler/DeSoto Airflow by hpmctorque

Nov 13, 2008 (1:52 pm)

I don't think these deserve to be on this list while the Vega should have definitely been on it.

#8 of 405 Re: Chrysler/DeSoto Airflow [hpmctorque] by Mr_Shiftright HOST

Nov 13, 2008 (2:03 pm)

Replying to: hpmctorque (Nov 13, 2008 1:52 pm)
The author seems to be leaning toward the cars' effect on automotive history. In that sense the Vega was rather meaningless, while the Airflow practically sunk Chrysler, And of course, the Corvair changed the entire process of government intervention into car safety. Our first true postwar "death trap"----AWWWWWWW
 
As for the Model T, it did linger on way too long and gave Chevrolet the edge it needed to dominate Ford for most of the time after all (with some exceptions).
 
So maybe history's his angle, I dunno.
 
But then, why is the Yugo on there? Well, it did start a whole decade of Yugo jokes--maybe that's it!

#9 of 405 Re: Chrysler/DeSoto Airflow [Mr_Shiftright] by texases

Nov 13, 2008 (2:16 pm)

Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Nov 13, 2008 2:03 pm)
"The author seems to be leaning toward the cars' effect on automotive history. In that sense the Vega was rather meaningless"
 
OK (maybe) - but why the Chevette instead of the Vega? I'd claim the Vega did way more to convince folks that GM could not build a quality compact car, and that ToyHonDatsun were more deserving of their hard-earned $$$.

#10 of 405 Re: Chrysler/DeSoto Airflow [texases] by Mr_Shiftright HOST

Nov 13, 2008 (2:21 pm)

Replying to: texases (Nov 13, 2008 2:16 pm)
The Chevette was really the most dismal, cheap, nasty little thing you could imagine. I mean, you hopped out of that into a Japanese car while comparative shopping and it was....well....shocking...appalling....
 
At least a Vega, when new, gave you a nice ride, rather attractive looks, and the promise of something better. The Chevette was enough to make you take anti-depressants after your first test drive.

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