OT: 50 worst cars of all time!

[twistedcrankcammer]

The Pinto made it, but the Vega didn't??? Somebody really doesn't know their cars. Show me a vega with an orriginal unwarped head except fot the Cosworth Vega??

The Gremlin and the Pacer are givens, but what about the king of rust Matador?? Talk about a turd!!

Where is the Yugo?? or any early Subaru, also a rust King!!

Where is the late 1970s Turbo Turd version of the trans am?? Another one of the worst engines GM ever made!!

Any early XKE Jaguair is a maintenance nightmair, yeah they look cool, althought the nose on a 12 cylinder is way to long, but they wont run unless constantly worked on.

How about the 273 cubic inch Baracuda, not the Cuda', but the earlier Baracuda, both hideously ugly and absolutely no power.

just some obvious oversights... Roger

[JJkizak]

My big old buddy had a Yugo. Much breaky-poo and no parts. It also leaned alot when the driver got into the car.

JJK

[Arkytype]

I hear that all Yugos came with an electric rear window defroster to keep your hands warm when pushing it in the winter.

Lee

[garymd]

Best worst car I ever owned. This picture was taken around 1978.

[WMcD]

Everything I know about cars I learned between 1977 and 1981 when I owned a 67 Triumph Spitfire. I loved driving it when it ran but I don't think it went more than a week in the 4 years I owned it without SOMETHING breaking. There were just too many problems to list.

I kept a hammer in the trunk to tap on the starter. It usually took about 15 minutes to find the right spot but some mornings I just gave up.

The linkage from the gas pedal to the carbs was another fine example of brilliant British design. Often you would see me driving down the road pulling on a piece of string coming from under the hood to give it gas.

I finally had to get rid of it when the floor boards rusted to the point I could see the road beneath my feet. It was only a matter of time before I would have to pull a Fred Flintstone. I loved that car!

I really like these comments. A buddy in college ("Kirwan") bought an old Spitfire (maybe '64), maybe for $300. We were all poor as church mice. He turned to me for aid in fixing it up. The generator didn't work so he followed me from eastern Long Island where he purchased it to the Bronx, stopping every couple of miles to charge up the battery. He almost got creamed in the Bruckner Traffic Circle when it konked out.

Back at the dorm . . . we all stood around wondering what all the mechanisms actually did. We were smart but didn't know automobiles. I discovered that one of the brushes on the generator was hung up. Taking it apart was a big adventure. Some cleaning solved that.

There was also the issue that one carb wasn't working. The car sounded like a lawnmower and had similar power. The piston in the carb was hung up because someone had dinged the housing and the piston was jammed. Thanks, now I understand . . . the owner had a hammer to hit the starter, and missed.

I eventually took the sub assembly of the carb to a bathroom and slathered the parts with toothpaste and worked them to grind down the interference. And then added oil to the carb damper. Wow, now it was hitting on all four cylinders.

Kirwan eventually applied Krylon to the exterior and it became sort of presentable -- from a far distance.

A few years later it broke down on the Westside Highway. Kirwan walked away to find a telephone. In a few minutes a huge American sedan plowed in to it and it folded at the scuttle (the very weak area under the seats). The rearmost portion of the passenger compartment was at the steering wheel and any occupant would have been crushed. It was folded up such that neither the front wheels nor the rear wheels were on the ground.

The Triumphs might have good for English weather, when English weather is dry. But the salt on the roads in NYC was well beyound the design. The Lucas "Prince of Darkness" electrical system didn't help.

Wm McD

i c

[garymd]

Great post Gil! I paid $600 for mine in '77 but sunk a nice chunk of change into it over the years..

The engine was 1147cc's (smaller than a Harley 1200) but had stock 411 rear and twin SU carbs that took light-weight oil (never upgraded to the webbers) and it took off like a bat out of he!! I'd get to 60 pretty quickly then it would begin to shake badly at 65. I once drove it to Georgia to visit my mother and it took me 2 days to recover from the 12 hours of vibrating! No muffler, just a resonator about the size of a coke can. I used to try and sneak home by shutting off the engine at the top of the street and coasting but my folks could hear it almost a mile away and would always tell me the next morning exactly what time I got home. Oh yeah, no key. It started with a toggle switch on the dash.

My buddy and I painted it in my parents garage. The car turned out beautifully. We just forgot to cover the rest of the garage and everything (I mean EVERYTING) in it turned blue. My folks were NOT happy campers!

I loved that POS!!

[ace168516]

We had a neighbor with an Amphicar. Coolest thing on wheels, land or sea.

My parents live up on a lake and one of the residents has 3 of them. One of them is quite rare from what I recall. I have seen them "driving" on the lake and they always take them out to watch fireworks on the 4th...it is wierd sitting in a boat and driving up next to a car in the water with the headlights splashing in the water.

[WMcD]

Thanks Gary. There are so many good car stories.

Most of them are our first cars and the many adventures of youth.

- - -

Going back to the original article. It is probably only saying that they were not good consumer cars in those time periods. The consumer needed a mid line Chevy or Ford or Mopar.

The failures, failed for various reasons. Some styling, some mechanics, or just being the concept cars brought to a market which didn't appreciate them as much as the designers.

--- -

One of the worst cars of all time should have been the VW Beetle. It was an 1930s design, cramped interior, your face was in the windshield, underpowered, the heater was worthless. How does this work?

Smile.

Wm McD

.

[germerikan]

One of the worst cars of all time should have been the VW Beetle. It was an 1930s design, cramped interior, your face was in the windshield, underpowered, the heater was worthless. How does this work?

Smile.

Wm McD

.

The Beetle was an every mans car. Everyone could afford one, easy to maintain. They basicaly brought cars into the market where only Mercedes Benz, Auto Union and BMW were the leaders.

[Bill H.]

wm,

VW before 1966 with the 6 volt system.............Yeah . After 1966 they were reliable, easy to work on and 30 mpg up hill , down hill. Yes they were not fancy , but very frugal.......................maybe its old age.................but I liked them.

[JJkizak]

My uncle had a beetle and there were rare times it would not start and had to be pushed started. I traced it to the spark plugs being gapped to .065". During certain pressure/humidity combinations of weather those plugs would not fire. Regapped them to .035" and then no problems.

JJK

[Colin]

For me, it was a Mercury Topaz, what a piece of s**t! Everything went wrong on it all the time.

[Groomlakearea51]

1964 Corvair? I know it contributed to the stress levels that resulted in the premature passing of many otherwise healthy owners.....

[BigStewMan]

for me....1975 Fiat X19 oooh wait a nightmare!

[CECAA850]

I was a service writer at a dealership when our owner thought that obtaining a Yugo franchise was a good idea. I think they were a rebadged Fiat. I'll never forget the owners who would pull up on the service drive and honk at us to come outside and wait on them. They weren't rude, the Yugo's had plastic window cranks and inside door handles. Someone had to let them out as the plastic was cheap and easy to break and they'd be stuck in the car or have to crawl out the passenger side. Another "issue" they had was with the ft windshields. The front seats pivited forward to let people in the back seat. The pivot point was at the front of the seat at the floor so the entire seat lifted up. If you put the passenger sun visor down and swung the seat up, the top of the seat would strike the visor/mirror assembly and break the windshield. We had one Yugo with a popping in the floor pan (brand new vehicle). The unibody was cracked from one side to the other and would pop as you drove it around. Yugo bought it back and sent a factory rep to our dealership with a hand held gas concrete saw and cut the car in half on our lot to destroy it. I've got a bunch more...................................................

[Fish]

Great thread D,very interesting.I had a piecer,1978 Ford Futura,maybe the car was ok but the color was like something in a babies diaper.

[BigStewMan]

come to think about it, as much as i hated that Fiat, i think i had my funnest drive in it. one cold winter night (well cold by california standards) i was driving from los angeles to san francisco. i turned on the heater and put on my parka--took the top off and had a fun drive.

[Marvel]

The piston in the carb was hung up because someone had dinged the housing and the piston was jammed. Thanks, now I understand . . . the owner had a hammer to hit the starter, and missed.

I laughed out loud at that comment. If I hadn't read the others, I wouldn't have understood... [:#]

I have a '79 sitting in my carport. I have two transmissions, one with the overdrive. The body is in great shape, but the floor pans are rusted through. If anybody wants it.........

There is someone in town who has one they leave parked at their business... same color. I am tempted to get mine down there some night and swap them...

My first car was a '56 English Ford (Prefect -- makes me appreciate Douglas Adams) It was a four door, tiny four cylinder with a three speed transmission. It might do 55 downhill with a tailwind, but it ran great. It was sooooo much fun to drive and saw me through high school. It only cost my dad $50, and even though we had to replace a blown piston, it was worth it.

Bruce

[jheis]

Like Gary, I learned most of my mechanical skills from a 1959 Triumph TR3. Bought the car in '73 for $400. To be fair, the car probably had 300,000 miles on it when I got it.

As a starving student, I had no choice but to learn how to work on it myself. Took a couple of JC autoshop classes. Fortunately, a TR3 is a pretty, stone simple, mechanically stout piece of kit.

Over the years, it got "driveway" engine & transmission rebuilds and a "garage" paint job.

Drove the car for 7 years and sold it for $4,500. Last summer I finally sold off the last of the Triumph "spares" I had accumulated over the years - brought a fair chuck of change!

By the way, the Isetta (along with the later, more "car like," 700 series) saved BMW from insolvency and allowed them to claw their way back to viability in the years following WWII. Without the Isetta there would be no BMW car company today.

James

[greg928gts]

My buddy and I painted it in my parents garage. The car turned out beautifully. We just forgot to cover the rest of the garage and everything (I mean EVERYTING) in it turned blue. My folks were NOT happy campers!

LOL. The home we lived in while I was a teenager had a yellow garage - INSIDE! 79 VW Rabbit.

Greg