Posted on 10/08/2006 5:20:54 PM PDT by GretchenM
We asked Tom and Ray to give us their Top 10 scariest cars. They came through and were even kind enough to tell us for whom exactly the cars are scary.
Scary for: Bystanders and other drivers
Looks like an early Ford Mustang, right? It is, on the outside anyway. The inside, however, is all Ford Falcon, a pedestrian vehicle if ever there was one. So what, you say? Well, drop a Boss V-8 into a Ford Falcon and what do you get? An overpowered car that doesn't have the shocks, brakes or structural rigidity to turn or stop well. In other words ... look out!
Scary for: Bystanders and other drivers
Garish? Sure, but that's not our complaint. This was the height of muscle-cardom. This was when American car manufacturers figured out how to make humongous, powerful engines. Sadly, they hadn't yet figured out how to do handling, so you had an overpowered rear-wheel-drive car with no weight in the rear end. As a result, when there was half a drop of rain on the ground this thing spun around like Dizzy Dan from the Battling Tops. Anything but perfect weather, and it was totally uncontrollable.
Scary for: Firefighters and plastic surgeons
What could possibly be scarier than a car endorsed by both the Shriners' Burn Ward Fundraising Division and the League of Asbestos-Clothing Manufacturers? These cars had an unfortunate tendency to explode when hit from behind, since that's where the gas tank was located. Ford did eventually fix the problem, but the damage was done, so to speak. Being anywhere near a Pinto still gives us visions of Robert Duvall calling in airstrikes in "Apocalypse Now."
Scary for: Drivers
Here's a scary idea: Design a car so the occupants' legs are the very first line of defense in a frontal crash. Then add poor stability. Shaped like a pizza box standing on end, the Microbus blew around on the highway like Calista Flockhart in a wind tunnel. Drivers never had time to worry about these issues, though; they were too busy trying to keep themselves warm in the chilly Bus.
Scary for: Onlookers
Just take a gander at this. No wonder they named it the Thing; it was styled by the same guy who invented the cookie sheet. Thankfully, they rusted quickly enough that few remain to invoke PTSD for former owners.
Scary for: Mechanics
The Monza was designed as an economy car, so it was built to have a four-cylinder engine. Unfortunately, when sales slowed down, some geniuses at Chevy decided that what the Monza needed was a V-8, so they shoehorned one in there. The result? Half the spark plugs are almost impossible to reach; to get at them you need rappelling equipment and an air chisel. Whenever one of these beauties reared its ugly grille in front of the garage, every mechanic with more than six weeks' experience would go running for the men's room and lock the door.
Scary for: Drivers
Rolling over is fine if you've got personal knowledge of Knuckles Goldberg's wrongdoings and you're heading into the witness protection program. Rolling over at 70 miles per hour on asphalt, when you're swerving to avoid an errant chipmunk? Not so good. These cars were cheap, so they were purchased mostly by young drivers — the people most likely to end up hanging from the seat belt with four wheels in the air. Scarier still, the Samurai wasn't that much worse than other SUVs of the era.
Scary for: Drivers
Take a good look at this car. Kind of small, wouldn't you say? Now imagine yourself in a Festiva surrounded by amphetamine-snacking tractor-trailer drivers. Going 75 miles per hour. At night. In the rain. Scared yet? We sure are. We once got in trouble for saying this car came right from the factory with a funeral wreath on the grille.
Scary for: Society, the environment and therapists
When you stop to think about what kind of person would buy a Hummer, you begin to worry about the future of our country. This is a person who feels so inadequate inside that he has to drive around pretending the 82nd Airborne will be backing him up in his next argument over a parking space. On the environmental side, the Hummer burns through resources like there's no tomorrow. And if enough idiots keep driving them, there won't be.
Scary for: Onlookers
Well, now we know where the designers of the Volkswagen Thing went to work after VW canned their sorry butts. Take a good look at this vehicle — it's a tribute to the art of unfortunate compromises. Someone at GM said "take a minivan, whack off a few corners and make something we can call a utility vehicle." The car itself was not bad — rather utilitarian, actually — but it pinned the needle on the visual pollution scale.
Posted on 10/2/06
The only cool thing that Maxwell Smart ever owned!
Har! This was pretty funny until I got to the Hummer comments and realized that the authors were just a couple of liberal simpletons. I think the Hummer is scary for onlookers for the same reason the 1974 Volkwagen Thing is scary.
You gotta love a car whose repair kids include change for a pay phone, as well as towels to wipe down the interior during a rain storm.
I did love that car. the B had the sweetest handling. I used to run it at the track for the fun of it. I dont think I ever broke any records but I had fun out there all by myself.
The only thing scary about a Shelby Cobra is the unremitting lust to drive one that consumed me for 40 years.
That was one of the main reasons my dad loved his VW Bus (this "Micro" thing has to go, btw, we always referred to it simply as the "Bus" or the "Volkwagen Bus"). In those days, there weren't a lot of cars that had that high perch. It was great to see above all the low cars ahead of you, gave you a real feeling of command of the road.
Butt-ugly scary.
Scary to your bank account. Shoddily built by drunken East Germans. Replacement parts so pricey you'd think they were all gold-plated.
Deathtrap scary.
"Why were American cars so crappy in the Seventies"
1. We still were in the era of people wanting a new car every 2 years, and thinking that 80,000 miles was a long lifespan for a car.
2. Emissions standards as well as crash standards were new, meaning that Detroit (and the rest, for that matter) were struggling to find solutions to those problems. Anyone else remember the Mopar big blocks of rubber that appeared in '73 for "crash protection"?
3. The 55 mph speed limit. This is the big one. Detroit stopped making cars for "turnpike" speeds and made them for 55 mph. The foriegn stuff was still built for higher speeds, and the difference was dramatic.
4. Oil shortages in '73 and '78. Detroit, then as now, makes a ton of money selling gas guzzlers that people really want. However, when the price of gas goes nuts, we all run to the small fuel-efficient stuff that people buy in places with permanant high fuel prices. Detroit built some great stuff in the late 1970's, but most people didn't want a V-8 RWD car (I had a few of those and they were bulletproof!).
On the "Cool Mechanical Stuff" scale of 1 to 10, a Hummer (the real one, the H1, not the wussified H2) is about a 14!
Inboard disc brakes, planetary reduction gears in the hubs, being able to change the air pressure in the tires from inside the vehicle. My only problem with the things is that as big as they are on the outside, they're really not very big on the inside. And the fact that they've got a top speed of 86MPH (due to the afore-mentioned reduction gear). Oh, and the fact that they cost nearly twice what I paid for my house.
Mark
I know. I was bitten by the Snake in 1998, and that's what made me want to build one.
I saw an Aztek for the first time at the S.F. Auto Show. Usually, I try to chat up the cute spokesmodels giving info about the car. After getting a look at the Aztek, I couldn't manage any niceties -- I just said to her, "That thing is hideous! Whose stupid idea was this?"
My hotrod isn't on there - 1967 Dodge Coronet 440. The ultimate sleeper sled.
302? Feh!
All AMC V8's were based on the same motor.
A 401 from a late AMX will drop right in.
That is one beautiful car. Are they handbuilt?
As a teenager, I drove a '91 Pinto as a parts-getter for my GTO. Both motor mounts were broken. It leaked oil onto the exhaust manifold, and made a nice smokescreen during left turns. A tin can and bailing wire held the exhaust pipe together.
A quart of oil every couple of days is all it demanded. After the Goat was finished, I drove it to the junkyard.
ROTFLOL! Great thread!
No list is complete without my first car, a 1979 Audi 5000. Scary because the right front wheel completely BROKE OFF the axle while I was driving on a winding country road.
It featured the always-popular 5-cylinder, sideways-mounted engine. Mechanics would narrow their eyes in hatred at me. The battery was located under the rear passenger seat. The air-conditioning, power windows and cruise control all died in a one-week span. It was perhaps the worst car ever designed and made, and you will never, ever see one on the road today.
The first-generation model 5000 was made from 1978 to '81, before Audi got their act together. I don't believe a single early model made it alive to the 90's, much less today. A quick Internet search just now for any for sale turned up just one in Oregon, "for parts only". Price: $200. Way overpriced.
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