Posted on 06/13/2012 9:59:05 AM PDT by doug from upland
My first car was a 74 Pinto Wagon. Drove it over 200k before it died. One of the most reliable cars I ever had.
I would replace the 1974 Mustang with any year Chevy Chevett.
I owned both and the Chevett was the worst by far. It was like a Yugo only worse. I went through starters, alternators and breaks like there was no tomorrow. My girl friend (now my wife) had one too and she had just as many problems with hers. They were rolling death traps.
My 1974 Mustang had T-tops and a hatch back. It was 6 cylinder and ran great. Sure the body style wasn’t worthy of the Mustang name but it was a good car dependability wise.
Neah. The Smart has a normal wheelbase, two doors, a little room in the back and isn’t nearly as cute...
Mustang II - I had one trying to keep up with me on the highway. (Somewhere out west, in the 80’s) As we passed 100 MPH, the Mustang II started to lose ability to stay in his lane. At 105, he gave up and dropped back. They had the power (302 V8) to go fast, but not the suspension.
The Trabant kind of looks like the 62 Austin A40 I had in England, but that was a great car!
My ex’s Vega didn’t last long enought to rust, she drove a Cimarron and didn’t like it, thankfully. She said it was nothing like my Cadillacs, so she got a Buick Century which was another GM loser.
Indeed. Where is the Renault 14?
It is still entirely a crumple zone.
Waiting for my father in law to discover that fact in his.
A fraternity brother of mine owned a Vega that simply drank oil.
I distinctly remember being in the car once when, in frustration, he drove into a service station and sarcastically told the attendant "fill up the oil and check the gas."
The poor old Vega died of sabotage from the workers. I know one owner had the engine torn down and found several oil passages not drilled out. The engine just fried it’s self within a few thousand miles.
Worst car I ever owned was a 1975 Fiat 128. Oh, dear Lord!
On the way home from the dealer all the fuses blew. I didn’t hold on to very long.
Wife had a two tone brown ‘81 Caddy Seville like this one. It was a tank, with the big 4-6-8 engine system, which had been unplugged.
A bit of transmission trouble saw the car back at the dealer’s, where the mechanic hooked up the 4-6-8 system.
Driving at 60 on the freeway, the car shifted into 4 and immediately lost power. Wife pushed the gas pedal down and all eight pistons reported for duty with a huge bang and a cloud of smoke. She thought the motor had blown up...
The last car my father owned was a little Yugo. He loved it.
My brother had a Buick Century station wagon.
Somehow the thing literally farted all of the oil out on the highway and slammed to a stop.
No problem he thought, he had a spare engine!
He goes and gets somebody to tow it back, where he finds out: Hey, the seals are still intact. What the heck is going on here?!
He throws a bunch of oil into it and starts it up.
It ran fine after that until he sold it.
Never did find out what it did or how it did it.
The Corvair was a fine little car and no more dangerous than a VW Bug.
I had a brand new 1973 Vega GT in college and liked it a lot. It was comfortable and a lot of fun to drive. My roommate had a 1972 Pinto that was also pretty nice. We lived in a trailer 3 miles out of town and used to race back after class. The Vega had more power but there weren’t that many straightaways. Usually whoever was first stayed in the lead.
On another note, as a teenager, I had a girlfriend who had a 1967 Corvair convertible. She loved it and we had a lot of fun in it. Never spun it as far as I know.
Hey, thanks for posting this. I loved it.
As for the article itself, I have a couple of bones to pick with the author...
“The Ion ... was the second-worst car of the millennium and was so bad it killed Saturn.”
I don’t think so. Saturn had a GREAT new re-designed lineup of vehicles the last two or three years it was alive, and would have done very well. I drive a 2008 Sky Redline roadster - GREAT CAR.
We all know who killed Saturn, and half the people in the country were stupid enough to vote for him. Saturn was murdered because it was not a union shop.
He killed Pontiac, too, not the Aztec. Pontiac survived many years after the introduction of that beast. The Solstice, G6 and G8 were good cars, and would have paved the way back.
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?
More and more automakers are going to this type of setup. Much easier to make left/right hand drive cars with this configuration. you can blame those that drive on the wrong side of the road for this.
Quote: “What? No Omni, Gremlin or Pacer?”
How dare you insult the great Dodge Omni, my high school car!! Do you have any idea how hard I worked to scrape the rust off and how much duct tape I used to tape aluminum pans over the rusted out parts of the floor boards?
The door handles kept malfunctioning and they work to open the doors. I always had one functioning door, usually in the back seat. I would crawl into the back of the car to get out, looking pretty silly, or I would exit the car ala Bo and Luke Duke, which the chicks dug (ok, not really). Anwywho, one cold day I arrived at high school to find that all the doors had malfunctioned. No problem, I thought, I will just roll down the window and hop out. Buuuut, the windows were all frozen shut. I sat in the car for twenty minutes trying to roll down the window in futility. Finally, I gave up and tried to figure out if I should honk the horn to get someone to let me out (occasionally the outside handles would work if the inside ones did not). This approach, unfortunately, would leave me facing endless embarassment all day in school as everyone was inside school and me honking would make me look like a maniac. Option B was driving home and getting my Mom to let me out, drive me to school and write me a sick note to cover for being late as I was sure as to why I was late (this was before the days of cell phones). I went with the Mom and home option only to find nobody was home. It came to me at that moment that perhaps it was time for a new car.
Almost bought a Gremlin; got a Javlin which turned out to be a lemon. In the process of retoring a 1966 Marlin.
We liked the AMC dealer in Moorhead, Minnesota!!
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