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Old 12-05-2012, 01:16 PM
 
Location: Parts Unknown, Northern California
48,564 posts, read 24,020,108 times
Reputation: 21237

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An argument could be advanced that this belongs in the Automotive forum, but I've never been very interested in cars and don't speak the language in which they usually converse over there. This is the worst cars in history, so, why not the History forum.

That settled, or at least asserted, I came across this compilation of the ten worst cars of all time.
10 Worst Cars of All Time - TheStreet

According to these folks, the worst are..

10) 1979 Oldsmobile Diesel
9) 1957 Trabant (The finest in East German engineering...I recall the joke..."How do you double the value of a Trabant?"...answer....."Fill it with gas."
8) 1982 Cadillac Cimarron
7) 1958 Edsel
6) 2003 Saturn Ion
5) 1971 Chevy Vega
4) 1987 Yugo
3) 1955 BMW Isetta
2) 1974 Ford Mustang
1) 2001 Pontiac Aztek

What caught my attention with this particular list was that author lists the 1971 Chevy Vega as the worst he has ever personally driven, and ranks it 5th as the worst of all time.

That car is also easily the worst I ever drove. My experience with came in the summer of 1972 when my parents were living in Vero Beach, Florida. They were friends with their next door neighbors who had bought a Vega for their daughter's 16th birthday and were planning on surprising her with it. The car had been purchased in Miami and I was asked if I would pick it up and drive it the 120 miles to Vero Beach for them.

I said okay and lived to regret it. The first thing that I noticed was the car's extraordinarily bad handling, for such a small, lightweight car, it was like steering the Statue of Liberty up the street, the wheel requiring a powerful two handed tug to turn, so severe that you had to really anticipate your turns and get started on them well in advance of normal driving.

Then there was the acceleration. If you were stopped at a light, when it turned green you'd give the Vega some gas...and nothing much happened. The car started shaking, but it was making no forward progress. So you give it more gas and it finally starts inching its way forward, but no faster than if it was being pushed by hand. So you mash down on the gas pedal, the Vega starts shaking violently now, as though it is internally hemorrhaging, it starts creeping forward some more....and then suddenly the gears catch and you'd go thundering across the line, all fish tailing and out of control. After a few blocks of this I noticed that everyone was giving me a wide berth, clearly the Vega was being driven by some insane person. It was like a car that went from 0 to 50 in ten seconds, but all in the last two of those seconds.

On the turnpike it had great difficulty reaching and maintaining the 65 mph speed limit, if you eased your foot off the pedal just a little, the car would suddenly seem to lose all power, your speed would drop alarmingly and you'd be sweating as the car behind you tried to brake before smashing into your rear.

I managed to reach my destination safely and didn't say anything about how crappy the car was to anyone, not wanting to ruin the moment. I heard that the family had to junk the car after about three months and get their daughter a new one.

I was a bit surprised that the list did not include the famous Flaming Ford Pinto or that AMC Pacer roundmobile job from the '70's. It is comforting to note that nothing since 2003 has made the list.

The 1971 Chevy Vega....real beauty as well, wasn't it?

Last edited by Grandstander; 12-05-2012 at 02:06 PM..
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Old 12-05-2012, 02:12 PM
 
Location: Victoria TX
42,579 posts, read 86,722,923 times
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One of them will have to come off the list shortly, to make room for the 2011 Chevrolet Aveo, a dead cinch to make it least into the top five.

I had a 1960 Renault Dauphine. I doubt if it was better than a Trabant, and I've actually ridden in Trabants.
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Old 12-05-2012, 02:34 PM
 
Location: Warren County, NJ
708 posts, read 1,055,450 times
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I had an '05 Saturn Ion,bought it new,and it was pretty bad.The car had a pass key system and often it wouldn't recognize the key.Happened at a gas station once,took ten minutes to finally start.The hood release latch would come off in your hand.God forbid you had to slam on you brakes,you did a 360in the road.I've had lots of cars and have never done so much spinning.It was bad in the snow.I disliked this car so much I traded it in on an '03 Dodge Stratus.That car was like a Rolls-Royce compared to the Saturn.
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Old 12-05-2012, 02:39 PM
 
Location: SW OK (AZ Native)
24,218 posts, read 13,071,220 times
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It's my understanding the the Vegas even rusted on the showroom floors. The engine was a nightmare.

After reading the article, it seems the Mustang II was put on the list because of its concept and not its execution. As a car it was quite good, as a Mustang, or what the Mustang was supposed to be, not so much. It was hardly the Mustang of old, which may be why it's on the list, but it was the right vehicle at the right time. When everyone else was making 12 MPG V-8s, the Mustang II with its 2.3L 4 or 2.8L V-6 got 30 MPG, at the same time that gas prices doubled as a result of the oil embargo of 1973/1974. It was NOT overpowered, for sure. I had a 1974 Mustang II with the 2.8 V-6, a manual 4 speed with a cable clutch (no hydraulics), MANUAL rack and pinion steering, MANUAL brakes... no power anything. Even the sunroof was a crank-handle affair. Handling was its strong suit, not speed, and drag racers today scour the junk yards for Pinto and Mustang II steering boxes.

The V-6 was nice, but those solid lifters... valve lash needed adjustment every 3000 miles, not hard to do, but time-consuming. And the sound of a 2800 or its predecessor, the 2600 in the old Mercury Capri, can only be described as "clackety".

1974 was the last year of regular gas Mustang IIs and after that fixing them became more difficult with the addition of smog devices. Mine had only two hoses out of the manifold, PCV and vacuum advance.

I'd substitute the Mustang II with the Ford EXP...

In retrospect, I would definitely add the 1976 Chevy Chevette to the list. Underpowered, ugly, unreliable. An American Yugo.

Last edited by SluggoF16; 12-05-2012 at 03:37 PM.. Reason: Updated after reading the article noted by the OP.
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Old 12-05-2012, 03:23 PM
 
Location: NW Indiana
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How about the AMC Gremlin? It was a waste of metal.

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Old 12-05-2012, 03:29 PM
 
46,861 posts, read 25,814,930 times
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That list seems a bit apples-and-oranges, doesn't it?

The Isetta and Trabant were undoubtedly cr.ppy, but both were built under constraints that simply ruled out the possibility of making a good product. If your design has to be based on a motorcycle engine because, or if you're forced to use Duroplast for bodywork, you can't build an objectively good car. The best you can hope for is "OK under the circumstances". I might add that the Trabant's primitive design added to its utility - East Germans were deprived of much, but they weren't dumb, and a design that could be kept running with ingenuity, pieces of string and second-hand chewing gum had its advantages.

The Edsel, on the other hand, was a flagship model by a manufacturer who could afford lavish R&D and market research. As a failure, it is much more interesting.

Last edited by Dane_in_LA; 12-05-2012 at 04:14 PM..
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Old 12-05-2012, 03:48 PM
 
Location: Warren County, NJ
708 posts, read 1,055,450 times
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I read in a book about bad cars that the Edsel was a styling failure,and all the hype and build up around its launch added to the level of failure.It was as mechanically able as any other Ford of its time.Same book said about the Yugo " it wasn't a problem of defects plaguing the car as the car itself being a totality of defective engineering."
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Old 12-05-2012, 10:54 PM
 
Location: Beavercreek, OH
2,194 posts, read 3,835,332 times
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Hi all--

I wrote about the Vega at length on my blog a while back, and at greater length about some of the truly terrible cars Detroit has cranked out over the years.

full link

Quote:
There is an apocryphal tale that you will often hear if you’re around my father or his immediate friends. Once upon a time, the friend owned a Chevy Vega. He never had to change the oil, because the car burned a quart of oil every 100 miles. He had to keep a case of oil in the trunk at all times, regardless of where he went. He could sit in the car and literally hear the car rusting away around him. And when he finally got it up to 60,000 miles and was coming up to a red light, the brake pedal literally broke off and he rear-ended the car in front of him.

Luckily for him, the car in front wasn’t a Ford Pinto. Or they would have both exploded and my ears would have never been graced with the Vega horror story a hundred times over.


...


The Chevy Citation in the early 1980’s was notorious for its faulty brakes. The Oldsmobile diesels would reach about 90 horsepower before shattering into pieces. Cadillac’s 8-6-4 engine was a disaster. The Ford Taurus was associated with an unusual nickname – the transmission from hell – because they went out every 30,000 miles or so. Early 2000’s Ford Explorers had the same transmission problems as the Taurus. The 2.7 liter V6 engine used in the ~2004 Dodge Intrepid is notorious for collecting oil sludge in the bottom before failing prematurely. More recently, the Chevy Cavalier and Ford Focus are well-known for their electronics woes, especially the dashboard and power windows. The Chevy Sonic (brand new for 2012) is beset by transmission and electronics recalls.


I distinctly remember, back in 2008, renting a brand-new Buick Lucerne with my father to take on a road trip to Myrtle Beach. It only had about 25 miles on the odometer, which leads me to think we were the first people to rent that car. We got about a mile down the road, and I promise you I merely pressed the radio control knob and my finger went straight through.
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Old 12-06-2012, 12:35 AM
 
28,107 posts, read 63,495,557 times
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A friends father had a local delivery business with a fleet of Vegas... they were little wagons with no rear glass side windows... looked like a little panel trucks and were quite rare... they had 12 of them.

As bad as the Vega was regarded and I drove one for awhile... their fleet was very reliable with all reaching at least 100,000 miles on original drive trains.

My friend did the maintenance and his dad was a stickler... coolant flushes, oil changes, trans flushes, on regular schedules. They averaged about a 600 miles a week, every week.

I've driven 6 of the 10 on the list and none ever let me down...
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Old 12-06-2012, 10:17 AM
 
Location: Victoria TX
42,579 posts, read 86,722,923 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hensleya1 View Post
Hi all--

I wrote about the Vega at length on my blog a while back,

"And when he finally got it up to 60,000 miles . . ."
Sixty thousand? In the 1950s, very few cars made it to 60K. My brand new '60 Renault Dauphine was in the 20s, when I abandoned it by the curb at the finance company, where I still owed a few payments. Michelin even made special tires for them, which wore out after less than 20K. Dauphines came with a crank, that could be used to start the engine by hand, which I actually had to use several times. It took four teenagers to lift the car into a tight parking spot.
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