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Classic Cars 50 Worst Cars of All Time
298 messages, Last post on May 11, 2009 at 1:53 PM
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Replying to: fintail (Nov 19, 2008 12:58 pm) My friend ultimately settled for a '91 or '92 Corolla. Hyundai really has come a long way. |
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| Back in the 80s my folks bought one of those K-Car-based New Yorkers with the "full Florida" treatment "(1/2 vinyl roof, opera lamps, fake continental spare etc. It struck me as an econobox masquerading as a limo. It would definitely make my list of 50 Worst Cars. | |
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1957 Nash Metropolitan (this was one of the cars of my childhood). Would routinely get stuck in second gear. Top speed of maybe 50 mph on a good day. Not a good car to have in Southern California desert roads where everyone drove 80 mph. We used to drive on the shoulder of the road as a matter of routine. Chevy Chevette. A friend of mine had one; it could barely make it up a hill without a running start. the 1980 or '81 Ford Escort. Same problem. 1979 Ford Fiesta. Had to replace the water pump almost every year. Strangely I see lots of these in Europe; they must be made better there. The Pontiac Aztek could be the ugliest car ever made. |
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Replying to: andre1969 (Nov 19, 2008 11:40 am) |
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Merkur XR4Ti Ask anyone who owned one.
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| An old friend of mine had a poopy brown Pontiac Phoenix (X-car) in the early 90s....there were some hills it simply couldn't tackle. Another friend had a Bronco II at the same time, in high school...on one steep local hill he actually had to give up and back down it. Yet my less than muscle car of an old fintail can pull it without a problem. | |
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Replying to: samdog (Nov 19, 2008 6:28 pm) That's one of the reasons I get a bit nervous about all these European transplants Ford is bring over. GM Opel or Ford of Europe, they don't have a good track record holding up in America. Hopefully things have changed. |
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This wasn't the Pontiac intermediate, but, rather, the Opel-designed 4 cylinder Pontiac-badged small car, built by Daewoo. It served as a replacement for the Chevette based T-1000, if I remember correctly. Anyhow, although I never had the misfortune of owning one, fortunately, I understand that this car was a pretty bad car, at least in terms of reliability. The fact that I still see one on the road now and then, though, and as recently as last month - which is pretty unbelievable to me - suggests that it may not be bad enough to be one of the 50 worst. Maybe it's just the 51st worst car of all time. I'm sure some of you remember these rather awful cars. It was yet another failed attempt by GM to compete with the Japanese. The Opel (Kadette) on which the LeMans was based would have had to be a much better car than its Daewoo built counterpart, in terms of build quality, at least. Come to think of it, I think the Chevette and T-1000 were based on the Opel Kadette too. It's a good thing that GM didn't come out with Oldsmobile, Buick, and, heaven forbid, Cadillac versions of this Daewoo subcompact. Can you imagine the ad copy, "And now for you happy Cimarron owners who would prefer something even smaller, for your urban driving needs, Cadillac is proud to introduce the all new Cadilette. Now available at your local Cadillac dealer, at prices starting at $9,995...*or just $10,495 for the Premium, leather edition." |
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Replying to: hpmctorque (Nov 19, 2008 8:03 pm) The headlight switch knob came off in my hand when I turned them on the first time. Another demonstration of GM's death-wish, to my mind. They weren't satisfied with killing Cadillac - no! They had to start killing off the great names from their past too. Of course they weren't the only ones. When I get to Hell, I'm going to ask to vist the circle where they keep the guy who OK'd the "Mustang (sic) II. The cruelest thing about that abomination was that it really wasn't any smaller than the original 65 Mustang. It just did everything worse. Now, back to the Daewoo LeMans. My local mechanic of choice one time showed me a De Mans that had hit one of those reflectors that they put along the interstate. You know, the little reflectors that they put up on metal stop-sign posts? It darn near totaled that little Daewoo. He was horrified by the lousy sheet metal in that thing. That fact that one still exists is merely an example of the law of big numbers. One in a million survives the rust, one in a million doesn't blow up, one in a million doesn't hit anything.. Sometimes all those one in a million odds come together in the same car. Somewhere there is a museum quality Yugo, is it not so? 
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Replying to: lokki (Nov 20, 2008 7:51 am) I was at a car show in Cincinnati when they first displayed that thing. Get this - they had a whole display bragging about how it was close to the size of the original T-Bird! What a bunch of IDIOTS. Nobody's mentioned the Ford EXP - at least they didn't ruin another great old name with that rolling disaster, a car about which Iacocca said "the young folks will just eat this up." Oops!  
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