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Classic Cars 50 Worst Cars of All Time
298 messages, Last post on May 11, 2009 at 1:53 PM
You are in the Classic Cars Forum. Your Host is mr_shiftright
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"Being bad AND ugly is something special." I believe the issue here is which was worse, the Trabant, Chevette or Vega. I put the Chevette at the top of the heap (pun intended) of this lowly group of three. I'm neutral on its styling, because in my opinion the Chevette's styling was about on a par with the Trabi's. The Vega was the styling and handling winner. I drove a '73 with the optional handling package, or whatever they called the option that upgraded the suspension and included a tach, and it handled well. In fact, the Vega with this option package may have been the best handling small car of its day. The interior was also competitive, and a cut above the other two cars mentioned here. Also, especially with the optional engine upgrade and the optional four-speed manual, the Vega was the quickest of the three cars in this comparison. Unfortunately, these attributes were trumped by the lousy engine and - let's not forget - the inferior resistance to rust. For Vegas residing in the Rustbelt (an appropriate term when discussing the Vega), it was a race as to whether the body would outlast the engine. When the body won that race, it generally wasn't by much. That's because the Vegas with rust perforations in the body were still driveable whereas the ones with bad engines weren't. Well, okay, some wheezed along, belching smoke, but not for too long. By contrast, it usually took the rust damage longer to reach the terminal stage. Was the Vega the worst ruster of the period? Probably not. The iconic Datsun 510 was at least as bad, and probably a little worse. Just ask the man who owned one in Chicago - me. A close relative owned the Vega that I alluded to above, so I could compare these two. The often praised 510 also had some serious cold weather driveability issues until the engine warmed up. I only mention this because, while the 510 was undoubtedly a better car than the Vega in moderate climates, it was little better overall than the Vega if you lived in the Northern states. After all, a rust heap is a rust heap, even if it performs like a Ferrari. I won't waste your time or mine arguing whether the Vega was less bad than the Trabi, or visa-versa. |
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| is that even in the final year, 1977, they still managed to sell about 100,000 of them. And two of its offshoots, the Monza and Sunbird, proved to be fairly popular. | |
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...that might even be worth saving is the Cosworth. I remember when my Grandmom traded her excellent black 1964 Chevrolet Biscayne sedan for a new 1973 Vega. Even to an 8 year-old's eyes I could tell this car was junk. It was this ugly yellow mustard color. It smelled funny for a new car, was filled with ill-fitting hard plastic, the headliner was this perforated cardboard stuff and was warped. Even the dome light looked cheap compared to the one in the '64 Biscayne. The car was buzzy and rattly. The engine sounded like a lawnmower. There was barely enough room in the back seat for my 6 year-old brother and me. I recall many times sitting in the backseat with my brother while the Vega's hood was raised as Grandmom was explaining to the mechanic some malady the car was suffering during her frequent visits to the Chevrolet dealer. It was easily the worst car I remember. |
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Well, by its final year, or by ~1975, they had fixed the rust and the engine overheating problems, so by then the Vega was less bad than before. If the '71-'73 or '74 had been equal to the '75-'77, the Vega wouldn't have been the poster child of what was wrong with GM. I'm not suggesting that the '75-'77 Vegas were good cars, but they were acceptable for their time and their market niche. The Pontiac Astre, which was a rebadged Vega with the Iron Duke 4 in place of the Vega's aluminum engine, was somewhat better than the Vega, because of its engine. The bad news is that the Iron Duke, especially in those days, was really agricultural, in terms of NVH.
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Replying to: hpmctorque (Dec 04, 2008 6:43 am) As far as the question above about whether it was arrogance or incompetence, I don't think we can measure GM's arrogance or incompetence properly today without the perspective of the early '70s. That was a brief moment in time of great prosperity that is rarely experienced in any country. It was the time of the "Great Society," when jobs went wanting, employers couldn't hire enough grads. The thought was that things were becoming disposable, easy for the average person to just replace. I think I read something to that effect by Ed Cole at the time. Unfortunately, Ed actually produced such a displosable product, the Vega.
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There's certainly a lot of truth in what you said, jj2me, but I'd say that what you described was more true from '66-mid '73 than after. In Fall '73 we had the oil embargo, which precipitated the worst post-WWII recession until the current one, possibly. The same can be said of the stock market. Except for brief recoveries, the '69-'74 market, and especially much of '73 and most of '74, was pretty aweful. Only time will tell whether the current recession will be comparable to the '73-'74 one, not quite as bad, or worse. The financial markets are suggesting that this one will be worse than the earlier '70s one. The residential real estate market is certainly much worse than any preceding one since the '30s. But to your point, yes, most car buyers purchased new cars with the idea that they'd keep them for two-four years in the '70s. The notion of driving a car beyond 100,000 was unusual back then. A few people tried to coax 100,000 miles out of their cars, but not much more. Even the "good" cars only lasted two-three times as long as a Vega. |
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Replying to: jj2me (Dec 04, 2008 7:28 am) I think it's not just whether a car is bad or not, but rather the public humiliation it endures, that sticks in our mind. I think the Chevette was a worse car than the Vega, but the Vega was touted as being the "import fighter to push the foreign car off our beaches" or some such nonsense. The Chevette was just carelessly thrown into the mix with no fanfare. It died quietly off stage in other words.
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Dec 04, 2008 8:09 am) Didn't VW at least take that into consideration when designing the Bug? Basically making the engine a disposable part? Every 60,000 miles, just take out the three bolts, let it drop, and throw another in?
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Replying to: andre1969 (Dec 04, 2008 8:18 am) 60K if you were lucky. And going up a long mountain pass on a hot day---you were dead meat. We used to call Route 80 going to Winnemucca Nevada as "The VW Bermuda Triangle". |
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (Dec 04, 2008 8:31 am) The previous generations of 50's and 60's GM cars had been beautiful and reliable. So, going into the 70's we had expectations of GM to give us good, even great cars. Everybody who bought a VW knew exactly what he was getting into. Small, noisy, cold, breaks a lot but you could fix it for $100. The Japanese were giving you much the same but not so cold, or quite so noisy, and with nicer interiors. But again - you knew when you bought it. Nobody was expecting GM levels of comfort or quality from them. And the fact is, almost nobody really wanted to be reduced to buying those cars . We all still wanted our Pontiac LeMans or Buicks that went with the good life of the 60's. However, we understood that the economy was tanking and gas was outrageous. Somehow, we all expected GM to give us a small car that was as good as a miniature '67 Chevelle. Reliable (comparatively) fast, quiet.... Life was going to go on as before, albeit on a smaller scale. So, when the Vega came out, we had expectations. And, looking at the car, it looked like those expectations had been well met. Good looking, specially designed engine.... cool! America was going to be just fine, and nobody had to suffer driving a Beetle with cold feet and the radio blasting to hear it over the engine - unless he really wanted to, and most people didn't. Instead millions of us bought Vegas. And we all felt betrayed. (See Lemko's grandma story above). She fits this example perfectly, I think. The Vega was the first time that Lucy/GM pulled the football away. Broken promises, broken dreams. The Chevette, at least, made it obvious what you were getting into. It was a cockroach of a car, but you knew that when you looked at it, and although awful cars, at least they were cockroach-tough. I think they were the start of the saying that "GM cars run bad longer than most cars run at all".  P.S. - Just for the record, since I'm probably viewed as a GM basher here, Acura did pretty much the same thing to me with Integras. I had an 86, and 88, a 93, and then a 97. The 97 was the frog-eyed roundy generation. I hated that car, mostly because the previous two generations had been so good. Acura cheaped out on me. Dumped it after a year. Still won't go in an Acura dealership, even though the new Acuras seem like great cars. But.... I had expectations of what an Acura should be based on the previous cars, and that one let me down. Fool me once....
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