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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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Replying to: lemko (May 01, 2009 6:20 am)
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Replying to: corvette (May 01, 2009 6:49 am) The Catera however, seems to be not much more than a huge bundle of trouble for its owners. While here at Edmunds we only get a small slice of life in a Catera, the stories posted by owners are pretty horrifying. Makes you stand up and take notice. Could be another Cimarron in the making here. Fiats....oh Fiats. A flawed marque to be sure but you can't argue with success. They have become a powerhouse in Europe, a place where competition is certainly formidable. Right now, they are suffering a bit, but I think this is an economic problem not a mechanical one.
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Replying to: Mr_Shiftright (May 01, 2009 7:38 am) One thing I've often wondered about some European cars sold here in the US, such as Fiat, Renault, and Peugeot...were they really that bad, or was it more a matter of mechanics over here not knowing how to work on them, plus limited dealer networks and parts availability? I used to think the Peugeot 505 was a neat looking car, but I've heard horror stories about them. There was this woman at work back in the 1990's who once owned one. She had such bad luck with it that she had a T-shirt that had a picture of a 505 on it, and a bunch of disparaging remarks about the car below the picture. I guess it must have left quite an impression on her!
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Replying to: andre1969 (May 01, 2009 7:51 am) Also some of these cars were not build specifically for USA driving conditions. There are very few parts of France that get up over 100 degrees, and very few parts of Italy that go below 0 Farenheit. Do old Volvos always start in winter? You bet they do. Look where they came from. Also, some of these "second tier" European makes are a devil to work on. The book flat rate to replace a water pump on a little Fiat X1/9 is 7.7 hours!! Rear power window on some Ferrari 2+2s? 12 hours!!! |
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I had just returned from living in Japna when the Diahatsu Charade hit the states and so I followed their story with interest. Diahatsu is a well known company in Japan and a fair sized player in the crowded small car market there. They're also 51% owned by Toyota. Here's their website (English). http://www.daihatsu.com/ The Charade was a classic case of a foreign company having a poor understanding of the market. The Charade was a "upper line" small car, with a nice interior, good accessories, etc. The Japanese kept hearing about how Americans wanted small cars. Well, we did, but to Americans "small car" also means "cheap car" and Diahatsu's were comparatively expensive. Combine a wierd unknown name, and a "high" price and you can expect sales to be slow. I also suspect that they got a double whammy from Hyundai's entry into the market in the mid 80's - Whammy A being how cheap the Excel was, and Whammy B being all the quality problems with the Excels made people very leery of buying a car from a company that they'd never heard of. People in Japan liked them, and the few people I knew in the states who had them didn't seem to have a lot of trouble with them.... |
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Replying to: hpmctorque (May 01, 2009 6:37 am) Well given that GM never did know what its divisions stood for, I'm not sure I agree. I mean, the sports car (Corvette) is at the low end division (Chevy), the rebadged Cobalt (G3) is at the excitement division (Pontiac), a rebadged SUV is at the "born from jets" division (Saab), and a family crossover (Acadia) is at the "professional vehicles" (GMC) division! |
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Why was the Corvette ever in the Chevy line up? Even (especially?) in the early 50's I'd think it should have been an.... uhm, Oldsmobile?  But not a Chevy!
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Replying to: lokki (May 01, 2009 9:21 am) That's a good question. FWIW, the base price of a 1953 Corvette was $3495. An AM radio was about $150 and a heater was around $91, and all 300 '53 Corvettes had these options installed. So all of a sudden we're looking at $3736. In comparison, a 1953 Cadillac Series 62 coupe could be had for as little as $3571, and even the convertible only started at $4144! Back in 1953 though, the divisions were playing around with various halo cars meant to draw in showroom traffic. Olds had the Fiesta, Buick had the Skylark, and Cadillac had the Eldorado. So maybe in that vein, the Corvette for Chevrolet made sense? I don't think Pontiac had a "halo car" in 1953, although there were prototypes based on the Corvette. For 1954, the price of the Corvette was dropped to $2700, but that was still a lot of money in those days for a Chevy. In later years, the price did seem a bit more reasonable. The 1957, for example, base priced at $3176. I think the base price of my '57 DeSoto Firedome was around $3085, although as equipped it stickered for more like $3800. That same year, my grandparents bought a well decked-out '57 Ford Fairlane 500 4-door hardtop for $3500. And FWIW, I read that the typical '58 Impala convertible, a car with a $2841 base price, left the assembly line optioned up to around $4,000. So while the Corvette never became a cheap car, it did become more attainable. For awhile, at least. |
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Replying to: lokki (May 01, 2009 9:21 am) it probably went to Chevrolet because they had an engine and transmission for it and the "young blood" to build it. |
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I just looked up the specs for a 1972 Corvette, and it was $5296 for the convertible, $5533 for the coupe (Odd that the coupe was cheaper?). Anyway, that same year, my grandparents' '72 Impala was around $5,000. So even here, the Corvette seemed like it was reachable for those who really wanted it. However, at that base price you just got a 200 hp 350. If you wanted the 255 hp version, you paid like $485 more for it. Oddly though, the 270 hp 454 was only around $290! A/c was an option, at around $464. Power brakes and power steering were also optional. I guess the 1970's was when the price started jacking back up, though. The base price of a 1979 Corvette was around $10,200. Suddenly we're talking entry-level Cadillac/Lincoln territory, or well into New Yorker, Electra/98 territory. |
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