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
Buddy of mine had one of those used 3 years ago. I never believed him about the Desert only setting till he showed me.
Or if one happens to appreciate interesting, utilitarian design.
Of course, you aren't seriously implying that anyone who likes a CAR is somehow a Nazi sympathizer. Because that would be insane.
Renault Dauphine...LOL. I completely forgot that one. I remember that car in about 1964. It was owned by the Dad of one of my close friends. He was a professor at Cornell University (natch). Even at age 13 I thought it was really weird.
Had one of those 1980 chevettes as my first car also. Was a scrawny teenager but was still able to lift up the back end by myself enough to slide it sideways.
read later
Found an interesting video of what happens when the Citroen drives behind a 747 jet engine. Doesn't fare too well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSxMOzBsOeQ&NR
Worth looking at for sheer humor. I wonder what "crikey" means?
My scary car (besides the Fiat 600 and Fiat 124 I owned...:^) was the Lotus Elan.. just like Emma Peel had in the Avengers.
Fiberglass shell, no real chassis (just a "backbone"), a hell of a power to weight ratio, and foam filled fiberglass bumbers!!
Fun to drive, but scary... you looked sideways at the axles of busses.
http://www.neilslade.com/gifs/lotusemma.jpg
The Escort was a fine economy car and if you took care of it it lasted forever. I owned an 86 Escort GT and also a 94 Escort GT because the extra horsepower made it quick enough to make it bearable and it still got 38 mpg. I bought the 86 from the original owner when it had 140,000 miles on it and I sold it in 1996 with 355,000 miles on the ticker. I bought the 94 with 180,000 miles on it but I sold it right away because I HATED the motorized seat belts.
The body looks stout enough; needs bumpers though.
TT
I use to love to do the Bond reverse to forward 180 spin around trick in a Pinto. Loads of fun, even though the engine sounded like a barrel of tortured squirrels when you stomped on the accelerator and yet achieved next to no acceleration.
My sister and I were listening to a news story about the exploding gas tank while driving it to Rent-A-Heap Cheap in hopes of selling it. Just then we were rear ended by a truck. While unhurt, time froze as we turned to each other waiting for the inevitable fiery boom.
Loved a cartoon of that era that showed a pair of B-52 pilots on their bomb run with the "big one" in the bomb bay. The very upset pilot is telling his copilot "This is too horrible, we just can't do it." The final frame shows the bomb bay loaded with a Pinto ready to drop...
I had a 72 Subaru 4WD Wagon. 2nd car, after a Datsun B110 2dr coupe. Back in my roller-skate phase...
Bump
I'd rather read this thread than a North Korean thread
Mine was a beauty. I bought my Spitfire right off the showroom floor... a '73 Spitfire with real wire wheels - candy apple red. Cost was $100 less than a VW Bug. Had a five gallon gas tank and we once had 3 adults and 5 children onboard while attending Sunday school and church services at the CBC Chapel in Gulfport, Mississippi.
Never could get the hang of the split electric shift.
Thank G-d, no.
Actually, there's one (halfway) pictured in post 3, on the right side.
It's the "GT" version, which featured 3 seats. That's two in the front, and two halves in the rear. < }B^)
Is the little girl putting flowers in the "trunk" to take to their own funeral?
That is one beautiful picture. It has a power and grace that comes through the monitor.
My older brother (the one on my FR home page) won the use of a GTO for the summer of his senior year in 1965. It was black and it was a beauty. He raced it everywhere (street racing; there was a perfect quarter-mile spot on one of the not-so-used freeways near where we lived). He also met his future wife at the drawing when he won the car.
It was killer hard to take the car back to the dealer in September. The car was rather throaty sounding when he handed over the keys.
OMGosh that is AWFUL!
But it made me laugh out loud -- which is okay cuz you lived through it.
The right wheel breaking off the axle -- I can't imagine the shock. Or the humiliation.
Love the part about the mechanics narrowing their eyes.
Very interesting. That car is definitely one of the coolest and most memorable movie cars. I'll never forget the opening scene in Mad Max (or was it the Road Warrior? Anyway, the second film...) where Max comes to a stop with the rear tires turning in reverse. I don't know why, but it's the coolest thing.
As a sidenote, I read recently that there's a new genre of car restoration which, rather than emphasizing factory fresh rehabilitions of old cars -- with perfect paint and perfect chrome and all that, detailed with a Q-tip -- instead seeks to create a more broken in and roadworn appearance, kind of like the way they do with the broken-in jeans these days. The idea is to get just the perfect amount of apparent wear and tear on the vehicle, mainly on the body and upholstry, but have the mechanicals be in good shape. Some of their creations are really appealing. The Mad Max car is the perfect example: a lot of its coolness is in its raggedyness.
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