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
everyone knows that the smoke is what makes the parts work and when the smoke leaks out the part is no good any more. lucas came up with the brilliant service idea of replacing the smoke rather than the part.
Lots of people over the years have touted their radio program, "Car Talk," as being very fun to listen to as well as offering great advice. Even women friends of mine listen to it and love it.
marker
Not only that, but they started putting 4-cylinder engines in their small chassis (which were already POS's) and even their mid-sized ones.
Of course, Detroit never figured out how to make a 4-cyl that wasn't a POS, especially when trying to power a midsize around. (I should add that Detroit's European subs understood 4-cyls a little better.)
Yeah, that's what I thought, too. =)
I liked my Vega, it kept me from getting stale in diy auto mechanics.
I had a '72 Gremlin with a modified 304; combined with the light weight it was very quick and left many surprised people behind it.
Oh goodness, what an embarrassing problem! The chicks don't dig reverse dieseling.
When I hear stories like this, it makes me think that we're living in a golden age, car wise, at least as far as dependendability goes and in terms of just basic engineering competence. No car that you could go out and buy these days would have a crazy problem like dieseling in reverse for ten minutes.
I had an MG Midget at 16. I got lots of smiling officers' hand motions to slow down, NEVER got pulled over.
I had one of those while in school. Trust me on this. The flowers are for the two gerbils in the rear compartment.
Good one.
I too learned to operate a vehicle in a '61' Beetle. My father "forced" me to learn to drive a stick shift - I understood why in later years.
My first time behind the wheel scared Dad more than it did me.
Also - a few years later, a girl I dated had a VW station wagon which had a cylinder head that loosened itself about every third day. I suppose my reason for being there was to crawl underneath with a wrench to cinch things back down until the next time.
In the early 70's there was a VW Thing in the Seattle area with the vanity license plate "ROMMEL"!
My next car was a first-year TR7 -- California model! This is when I learned that you needed to own two cars if one of them was British made. (You needed the other car for guarenteed transportation!)
ping
You're right, it did. ewwwww Very bug-eyed car. How safe is THAT? ewww!
I had same problem, I would park on hill so water drained back out thru heater vents
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.
That's funny. Only because this can and did happen in the Los Angeles area. Which is why when I bought a car I insisted it had to be able to outrun tractor-trailers if needed. Found out Pontiac Fieros can go about 90 mph with no problem thanks to one tractor-trailer.
It's the 1984 model that had the infamous blow-up-due-to-lack-of-oil problem.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.