Worst car ever in the snow.
Posted on 06/13/2012 9:59:05 AM PDT by doug from upland
The Reliant Robin and the Alfasud didn’t make the list?
Isn’t it interesting how American cars totally dominate the list of the worst? If any country should KNOW what works, and what doesn’t; shouldn’t the largest car companies in the world have a good grasp on this? It’s quite apparent that Detroit just doesn’t care - unload crap on the American consumer, weasel out of new car warranties after taking taxpayer bail-outs - no thought to the damage they have done to their reputation. Short-sighted business practices.
My last American car was the Chevy Monza. I made the mistake of buying this when I was in college. I babied that car, because I was poor; yet 2 engines, 2 transmissions, and re-hanging the doors 4x still wasn’t enough ... and I finally abandoned it when I left college with 85,000 miles on it.
Since then, I’ve had Toyota’s and Honda’s and have never had a single problem. My Lexus had 312K before I traded it in, my ‘93 Toyota pickup has 317K and is still going, and I drive a Tacoma with 117K - still runs like new.
And, one doesn’t have to review the Cars issue of Consumer Reports to see that American cars remain inferior to the Japanese cars. When one typically takes a loan out for 4-5 yrs to buy a car; it’s not outrageous to expect that car to last well beyond the last car payment.
I will likely buy several more cars before I die; and I can promise you that not one will ever be American. My wife knows that the quickest way to get a divorce will be to bring an American car home. It’s personal. When I could least afford it, American car manufacturers gave it to me, and now I’ll enjoy my revenge for the remainder of my life. I don’t care what the cost is ... I will never buy another American car.
What’s really entertaining about those Smart Cars is to watch obese people drive them. Yes, they do fit into them. How? A very large shoehorn, maybe?
I remember when I saw my first Cadillac Cimarron. I thought some one with a great sense of humor had put a Cadillac emblem on a Chevy. ...And they had!
MFLR
Oh come on, Doug. 50 yrs ago I owned what was not only the worst, but the most dangerous car ever made, the Chevy Corvair...........and it’s nowhere on your list.
I think it was the government that made Chevy pull it from the market........although they didn’t do a buy back.
I had(emphsis HAD) one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Fairmont and it SUCKED like a (weak) vacuum cleaner! Feces like this (and the Pinto) ALMOST sank FoMoCo!
It was better looking than nearly all of it's competition:
Ford Pinto, AMC Pacer & Gremlin, Pontiac...
The Mercury Capris was as good looking and it had the much better Ford 4 cyl.
and they all rusted badly.
Best car I ever owned was a 1972 Chevy Vega. Drove back and froth from WI to San Francisco 4 times with no problems. I suppose if you park your Vega in salt water up to the floorboards, it would rust through over time...
Worst car for me was a 1974 AMC Matador...
Worst car ever in the snow.
It could also be argued that for decades, the American Car industry was the boldest in throwing out new concepts to be accepted or rejected by the consumer. For every one of the failures noted above, there have been a number of eminently practical or downright impressive models.
I had my older Saturn in for some maintenance so I wandered around the dealer floor and sat in the Ion. Who the F thought that it would be a good idea to have the instrument panel at the dead center of the dashboard. All the interesting traffic is either in front of me or to my left, so you make me look down and to the right to tell how fast I'm going?
I couldn't get out of that car fast enough. I didn't even try a test drive. Yuck!
And as for a Vega, even nearly forty years later I can get an uncle to start cursing just by saying the word "Vega" to him.
The 1971 Pinto was actually a decent little car. It came out before that terrible design flaw that caused some gas tanks to explode on rear impact.
My Dad bought one new and put nearly 170K miles on it before selling it in 1982.
When I was very young, my family had an Isetta. My sister and I rode on the back shelf when we went into town. My Dad used to pull the engine out and work on it on the kitchen table.
I don’t think it was such a bad car...
There are many other cars which could have taken the place of Saturns on this list. I know two young people who drive old, OLD Saturns and still going strong. I personally witnessed a car smash into the side door of a Saturn and when the tow truck driver came to dislodge the other vehicle from the Saturn, THERE WAS NO DAMAGE DONE TO THE SATURN. Even the tow truck driver rechecked the Saturn because he couldn’t believe he couldn’t find a scratch on the car.
I’ve been in Yugos and they’re much better than the Moskvitch from the same period - those are death traps.
Toyota Echo also has the speedometer in the center of the dash. Guess it makes for easy changeovers to right-hand drive; just angle the instruments the other way. (FTR: got a 2001, still driving it with over 240K miles.)
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