The 50 Worst Cars of All Time

time.com ^ | Dan Neil,

[shove_it]

... the Model T was a piece of junk, the Yugo of its day...

[MarkL]

Any car with the word “Fiat” on it.

Fiat's got this new car where somebody really screwed up... They accidentally left two wheels off the damn thing... Well, maybe they were just trying to cut costs!

Mark

[MarkL]

The author’s bio is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Neil

I found no automotive knowledge there.

You certainly won't find a trace of it in this article either... Then again, you won't find any signs of intelligent life in anything he writes either, or in Time Magazine, for that matter.

Mark

[Right Wing Assault]

The Model T was SO bad, people bought 15 million of them.

[Fresh Wind]

You might want to try running Windows 95 for the same kind of time consuming fun. Anyone still using it?

I have an ancient laptop with Win95 on it. I only use it to talk to the computer in my car. It takes forever to boot up, partly because the backup battery is dead and I can't figure out how to open the case without destroying it. Only paid a few dollars for it though.

[Blue Highway]

Thyat 318 could be turned into a 340 or 360 though with a little work.

[Robert A Cook PE]

That change does improve the looks quite a bit.

[ChildOfThe60s]

Yeah, well as the proud owner (read victim) of a 1964 Triumph Spitfire let me weigh in on the car that ruined my senior year in HS.
Why is electricity so hard for British automobile manufacturers to understand? Lucas: the Prince of Darkness

[Southack]

The article is unreadable polemic written by mental midgets.

[BraveMan]

forget the article. let's weigh in.

I did enjoy the author's ability to turn a phrase, if not his ability to properly assess a vehicle's worth.

IMHO, this list is fatally flawed because it did not include this car, the 1980 AMC Eagle two-door sedan.



With it's high center of gravity, truckish steering and suspension coupled with cabin noise approaching end-of-runway levels, this car put excitement back into driving in a very negative way. Having the privilege of maintaining one for several years, it taught me the benefits of buying oil-dri in bulk.

Even the most horrible cars ever made usually had one virtue. The virtue of the 1980 AMC Eagle was its ability to venture forth in conditions no reasonably sane person would consider.

[KeyLargo]

[MarkL]

Just wait until you get to the Hummer:

It was/is arrogantly huge, overtly militaristic, openly scornful of the common good....It all contributed to GM's emerging image as the Dick Cheney of car companies.

My only complaint wit hthe Hummer (I mean the real one, not the girly "H2," or G-d forbit, the sissified H3!) is that you can't get one with the machine gun or grenade launcher mounted on the roof as an option from the dealer. :-(

While they're NOT particularly practical (as big as they are, they have very little interior space), their design is really cool. I've long thought that functionality and design are very important parts of beauty, when it comes to an inanimate object.

Mark

[ChildOfThe60s]

I had a 1961 Fiat 600D. Very primitive but cheap to own and easy to work on. Got me through 2 years of college, although something of a PITA at times. I still have fond memories of it.

[Sgt_Schultze]

Well, by hypothesizing that the Model T’s popularizing the auto has been destructive, TIME is as much as admitting that Guttenberg’s innovation of movable type has popularized the field of mass printing. The printing industry is one of the world’s largest polluters, from pulp manufacturing to printing and disposal of chemicals to the final disposal of the product into the world’s landfills. So by TIME’s reasoning, the printing press is quite possiblly the worst invention of all time.

[Ektelon]

No bias here, eh?

1995 Ford Explorer
How could the best-selling passenger vehicle in America 14 years running, the mother of all mom-mobiles, the beloved suburban schlepper of millions, wind up on this list? Forget about the whole Firestone tire controversy. In its very success, the Ford Explorer is responsible for setting this country on the spiral of vehicular obesity that we are still contending with today.....

1986 Lamborghini LM002
This V12-powered super dune buggy gets on the list — well, my list anyway — purely because of its appalling clientele. The “Rambo Lambo” was the civilian version of a military vehicle that Lamborghini sold to those beacons of democracy, Saudi Arabia and Libya, among others. The luxurious LM002 appealed to spoiled young Saudi sheiks wanting to cross the sand to survey their oil field holdings. Uday Hussein, son of Saddam, had one, which the U.S. military cheerfully blew up in 2004 during a “test” to simulate the effects of a car bomb. The LM002 is the forerunner of another large and unnecessary SUV that signals pure contempt for one’s fellow man, the Hummer H2. Read on.

2003 Hummer H2
One struggles to think of a worse vehicle at a worse time. Introduced shortly after 9/11 — an event whose causes were tangled in America’s unquenchable thirst for oil — the Hummer H2 sent all the wrong signals. It was/is arrogantly huge, overtly militaristic, openly scornful of the common good. As a vehicle choice, the H2 was a spiteful reactionary riposte to notions that, you know, maybe we all shouldn’t be driving tanks that get 10 miles per gallon. Not surprisingly, the green-niks struck back. A Hummer dealership was torched in Southern California. The H2 was also a PR catastrophe for GM, who happened to be repossessing and crushing the few EV1 electric cars at the time. It all contributed to GM’s emerging image as the Dick Cheney of car companies.

[IrishCatholic]

The AMC Hornet. Light in the back end and would spin out on a banana peel.

[OC_Steve]

My only complaint with the Hummer (I mean the real one, not the girly "H2," or G-d forbit, the sissified H3!) is that you can't get one with the machine gun or grenade launcher mounted on the roof as an option from the dealer. :-(

I want one with lasers (holding my hands in the air making the quotation sign - ala Dr. Evil).

[Larry Lucido]

Any car with the word “Fiat” on it.

Tony disagrees. :-)

[L98Fiero]

“As if driving in the snow with no wipers was supposed to be safe.”

I completely rebuilt the suspension and steering on my Fiero but prior to that wondered how people drove them in snow. Did they actually turn when you turned the wheel or did they still go straight? ;-P

Of course, when I got mine, it had 200K on it. Handles like it’s on rails now.

[The Forgotten Man]

A buddy and I on a business trip in the mid 80’s rented a Fiero. We were in Little Rock driving through the higher elevations in the general area. It had an automatic transmission. It was amazing how fast we could go in first gear without shifting to second. RPMs off the chart and the stench of oil became quite prevalent before letting the speed drop below 45mph. Amazing, we were able to get it back to the rental agengy. He kind of had this thing for not believing those that conducted tests on the performance of the auto. He also likes to reach excessive speed to determine hard braking efficiency, and that was generally done while approaching a curb....

Never heard anything from the rental outfit, guess they were able to dsend it out again....

[Mygirlsmom]

Any car with the word “Fiat” on it.

You got that right! And while we were dating, MGD owned THREE of them - and I still married the guy (it was a good call - he was a real diamond in the rough)

We got stuck so many times....he actually kept extra clutch cables with him at all times - got it down to about a 10 min. job after a while.