btw all x/11 were hatchbacks, I dont know if all citation hatchbacks were x/11 tho. I like the look of its sister the pontic pheonix
they did live up to the burning up part of the phoenix legend.
Posted on 09/09/2007 6:36:38 AM PDT by shove_it
... the Model T was a piece of junk, the Yugo of its day...
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
btw all x/11 were hatchbacks, I dont know if all citation hatchbacks were x/11 tho. I like the look of its sister the pontic pheonix
they did live up to the burning up part of the phoenix legend.
Pre-1967 Democrat lead follies like slavery, the Civil War, Bay of Pigs and Vietnam are fair game for today's Democrats.
BTW - The door handles of Hummer H2s, H3s and Cadillac Escalades are plastic
The Fiero is a dream car compared to the “X” cars Citation , Phoenix et al... I clicked through until the author trashed the Chrysler Airflow which was decades ahead of any other car in the 1930’s...
I got a hand-me-down Pinto. It was indestructible by anything other than a collision. That sucker ran even when the dashboard was literally disintegrating and the engine and parts was held together with electrical tape and wire! All my relatives called it the MF- for Millenium Falcon( what a piece of junk). Orange yet, but it got the job done. It was still running fine when I donated it to charity because the dashboard and interior was coming off in chunks!
The car I’ve always wanted is probably on the list too. The AMC Pacer. Don’t know how they were mechanically speaking, but I liked the ‘fishtank’ look of it and the wide base.With all that glass it couldn’t have had a blind spot.
If they remake the Pacer- I’ll get one!
Car Talk?
As an example, they write, about the Jaguar X-type It hardly matters that the X-Type was not that bad a car. Young affluent buyers had the feeling they were somehow being grifted. They were.
Well when you put it on the worst 50 cars of history list, it does, actually matter whether or not it was or was not that bad a car. It is like putting someone on the 50 most violent criminals of history list and then admitting that he never actually committed any crimes.
I own one and it is a great car. No one got grifted by Jaguar. Jaguar did not market it as an XJ8 VDP which is 2.5 times as expensive, as well as being 4 times the volume, and twice the weight, and if folks thought they could buy an XJ8 at a 70% discount, well, they forgot that you get what you pay for.
It is not a luxury car, but a sports sedan, that is extremely well laid out and with some luxury features, and which you purchase because you want something that handles really well, and oh by the way can still carry (some) groceries and take (a couple of) kids to school.
You cannot fault a car for not being what it was never designed to be.
Why is it that folks feel offended when Jag makes a sports car rather than a luxury car. First, the used to - i.e. the XKE, and second, they are not just a luxury marque, but resonably successful formula 1 racers.
Then there is the other crowd that is offended that the British would try to compete with the BMW 3-series. How dare they!? You would think that the automobile critics were a bunch of valley girls scandalized that someone would dare look better than the homecoming queen.
I had a FIAT 124 spider. It was perfectly reliable, easy to keep running, and very well built. By the way, the FIAT 4 cylinder double over head cam engine is regarded as one of the true engineering advances in the world (at its time) and was one of the most solidly built and reliable engines of its era. It was very elegantly designed.
I had the same engine in a Lancia B, electronic ignition, bosch fuel injection. Got 178,000 miles out of it before giving it to someone because I moved across country.
It was a 74(?) with a four banger.
It was kind of an interesting article. It’s really too bad it was written by a leftist ass.
I could be wrong but I do remember I was paid 5.5 hours worth from the Motors Flat rate Book and after about 10 or so I was able to do them in 90 minutes each. thats using the latest Snapon air tools, metric wobble sockets and the special clutch alignment disc because it was the pressure plate that was bolted to the crankshaft and the flywheel was what had to go on after, backwards from what is commonly done. Oh and i remember all those Chevy Citations Hertz sent over to us from their salvage yard, I would make one running car from at least several others and then Hertz was selling these as used rental cars. Course it was later found and in all the news of the controversy of just how “used” they were, I always was told to find the lowest odometer from a pile of instrument clusters and slip it in.
Word of advice, never buy a rental car unless you have ALL of its history, its like buying a taxicab.
No mention of the Chevy Nova with the four-banger (I always assumed that it meant 4 micepower, not four cylinder) and the ever-so-smooth 2-speed(!) tranny? Worst car I ever drove, inherited from my sister because it was too gross even for her. Floored, it might get to 85 MPH downhill, which was terrifying considering that braking was an afterthought and handling non-existent. Most of the ‘worst cars’ others have mentioned had at least one saving grace...but that early Chevy Nova was lacking any positive attributes at all.
They had their issues (a lousy electrical system, for instance), but they had a smooth and quiet ride due in large part to their unibody construction.
A couple years ago I bought a well kept old '87 model with well over 200,000 miles and it runs like new. My wife let somebody borrow it who ran it into a fence and tore up the right rear door and fender. The curse there is these rigs are cheap these days and not worth spending much on repairs (or insuring, for that matter). I could get another door and fender flare at a junkyard cheap enough, but on principle I won't do it and have left that matter between by wife and her friend. Out of vanity I guess, I won't be caught driving a dented up car so I don't use it anymore.
It was government and not industry that put every living soul on the government roads.
_____________
That’s true also in a way. The Federal Highway system was seen as needed for the cold war though, so it was, in a sense, a military system.
The Federal road system is the least of it.
That has the ring of truth.
Quite a story with your Pinto. What year did you get rid of it?
VW Thing.
The interior was pimped out with upholstered panels, nice carpeting and so forth, and everybody thought the suicide doors were cool. Otherwise the car was pretty much a piece of crap and I don't remember keeping it more than a couple months. The least amount of time I kept a car was my fourth car, a '61 Fairlane that that was so bad I got rid of it the same day I bought it.
Since I changed it so many times I got my time down to about 45 minutes on that job.
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