The 50 Worst Cars Of All Time (bit OT, but brilliant fun)

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/0,28757,1658545,00.html ^ | July 11, 2008 | Apollo 13

[Apollo 13]

Hi everyone - I thought it a good idea to lighten up the mood amidst all the present political brouhaha to present to you a classic article from Time Magazine, concerning er... exotic examples of car types built throughout the 20th century.

[ricks_place]

2003 Hummer H2 hated for being arrogantly huge, overtly militaristic, openly scornful of the common good! Does anyone actually buy this magazine?

[I still care]

Classic liberal reasoning. He spouts all the nonsense about cars being evil, but much of the article contains lines like

“In order to compensate for power-sapping emissions controls required in the U.S., the car’s primary export market, Jaguar discontinued the reliable 4.2-liter six for an anchor-heavy 5.3-liter V12, which was a total bitch to try to keep in tune and made the car nose-heavy besides.”

I’m always amazed how when you point stuff like that out to them, they look at you like you are crazy. It’s like their brains short circuit.

[abb]

What TIME thinks about anything doesn’t count for much anymore...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2043863/posts
In Ad Decline, Sales Fall 8% at Magazines (Time, Newsweek hit hard - Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)

[I still care]

This article is useless. It doesn’t have my first car, the Chrysler Aspen.

I remember being seven months pregnant pushing the car along on the street.

And I thought, until I read a comment on FR once, that I was the only person alive who wouldn’t make a left turn across traffic in it.

[LS]

I had a Vega and it was terrible. The aluminum head warped.

[Apollo 13]

Hmmm... - the consensus seems to veer towards the negative side. I'm sorry, that was not what I had in mind. I still like the article; it might be a cultural difference between Europe and America. I myself like cars. And I'm not even that obsessed about exact emissions and all that jazz. For me it's more the aesthetic thing - how ugly some designs are, and how hilarious others. About the history of the SUV: I recall from my youth, when on vacation in Switzerland, that there were many 4WDs (Cherokee?) around, already in 1974/5. So yes, in terms of history Time's article has it wrong in several places.

[tacticalogic]

Just read the comments on the Renault Dauphine. They got this author rolling on the floor and pissing himself.

I liked their description of the Trabant:

"the Trabant was a hollow lie of a car constructed of recycled worthlessness"

[Niteranger68]

The pictures are interesting, but the writing is 100% pure sewage. This article is just another hit piece on American auto manufacturers. They must not need their advertising dollars.

[vetvetdoug]

I had a 1972 Chevrolet Vega....clearly one of the worst POS a car driver could ever own. OTOH I took the car places one shouldn’t take a car because I didn’t care what happened to it.

[7thson]

I find it amazing that these media whores can take anything and make it political. They take vehicles such as the Explorer, Excursion, and Hummer - calling them bad vehicles - solely because they are the “hated” SUVs. Yet, they don’t mention the Expedition, the Tahoe, the Suburban, or any pick-up truck. These people are schizo!

[naturalized]

Chevrolet Suburban Caryall 1935. Few remember that it was the 1992 Suburban that revolutionized ride and comfort in full-size SUVs.

However, the SUV craze probably dates to the Chevrolet S-10 Blazer, released in 1983. The Bronco II was released in 1984 in response. The Bronco II led directly to the Explorer, in 1991.

IMHO, the coincident releases of the Explorer and Suburban, both of which brought new levels of control and comfort to truck owners, started the SUV “craze.”

[Califreak]

Not so bad-just ugly.

[Non-Sequitur]

Just read the comments on the Renault Dauphine. They got this author rolling on the floor and pissing himself.

You want to laugh yourself sick? Try here and here.

[naturalized]

Yeah, they tend to do that when they don’t have any water. Especially in BMWs, Volkswagens, Toyotas, Hondas, etc.

[dangus]

2004 Volkswagon Beatle. My new wife, a recent convert to right-wing-ism, used to drive one. The engineers thought “outside the box” on everything... meaning you couldn’t find anything. And rather than making things more serviceable, the idea seemed to be to make things impossible to service... such as headlights’ bulbs which took a full fifteen minutes to access.

Yet, at the same time, you could easily access some of the wiring, which ran forward from the rear-engine through the ash tray, (which is in the back seat) so that everytime someone would try to open the ash tray, the headlights would go out...

So now the driver is careening through the dark. Fortunately, the emergency flashers are the one things easy to find on the VW.

[dangus]

Ha! Ugly enough that they blurred it so you can’t see just HOW ugly it is. It looks like a Trabant. And they call it a sports car!

On the other hand, I like the car it’s passing!

[hellbender]

A member of the British gentry might also drive a Rolls Royce Shooting Brake around the estate.

[dfwgator]

"You think you hate it now, just wait until you drive it."

[Hegemony Cricket]

ping

[SES1066]

Fun writing but the author should be named “Snide”ly!