There's one slight problem with doing the "Bad cars of the 1970s" - after 1975, they were all bad...
So we'll showcase the ugly cars of the 1970s, which is a difficult list to assemble. No, it's not that all the cars of the 1970s were that good; rather the converse - so many cars of the 1970s were just that ugly...
1. 1975 AMC Pacer - Just look at that... that... thing. A car so hideous that it rends the very fabric of space and time, sowing discontent and malaise wherever it appears. Oh, wait, that's Time Bandits. Well the Pacer is ugly enough to warp time, I think we can all agree on that.
2. 1976 Chevrolet Chevette (1977 shown) - let's see... ugly headlight assembly borrowed from the Pacer? Check. Odd, "melted" looking rear hatchback? Check. Crappy whitewalls and economy hubcaps? Check. This is one 'Vette you don't want Prince to sing about...
3. AMC Gremlin - why on earth American Motor Corporation thought naming a car after the small mythical creatures thought to plague early aircraft was a good idea is anyone's guess. Designing it to look like a door wedge didn't help, either... Interesting side note: the Gremlin was introduced on April Fool's Day 1970.
4. Ford Pinto - hmm... sense a trend here? Yes, American "compact" cars of the 1970s really were this bad. Acres of rear glass = ugly in any incarnation. SRSLY. Throw in the propensity of the car to explode if rear-ended wrong, this is the very automotive definition of Made Of Fail...5. 1974 Dodge Dart - well, to start with, the Dodge Dart was driven by Al Bundy. The Dart looked like a parody of the Chargers and Super Bees of the late 1960s, a down-sized poser whose looks didn't translate into the smaller vehicle. The slanted back window seemed too dramatic; the front end decidedly bland; the styling a cheap copy of much better automobiles...
6. 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass - How could I not include the car that was the inspiration for the 6000 SUX in Robocop? Or the police car driven by Buford T. Justice in Smokey & the Bandit (okay, that was a Pontiac LeMans, but it's the same platform). In any case, it's a bloated, ugly, rolling turd that had no business wearing the Cutlass designation...
7. Ford Granada - Growing up I had a couple of friends who owned Granadas. One friend hated his Granada so much that he refused to do any work to it - none. He didn't even change the oil, in hopes that the car would die and he could justify buying another car.
It ran for two and a half years, the last six months of which it possessed no discernable engine oil or transmission fluid.
It was, quite simply, too ugly to die.
8. 1978 Chyrsler Cordoba - never mind Ricardo Montaban praising its "rich Corinthian leather", the over/under square headlights alone automatically guarantee this car a spot on the ugly list. It had hood lines that are WAY too busy, a grotesquely ostentatious hood ornament, and the single worst aesthetic pairing yet - T-tops with a vinyl quarter roof. I'll wait while everyone goes into the rest room to be sick...
9. Chevy Luv pick-up - this would have been at or near the top of the Bad list had I drawn one up. The Luv was a re-badged Isuzu introduced in 1972 as a stopgap measure during the first gas shortage. Market analysts are still trying to decide what motivated General Motors to thrust this small block of crap with a bowtie on the American public. Even more puzzlingly, the GM/Isuzu tie remains to this day, only with Isuzu trucks being re-badged Chevy S-10s...
10. 1974 Ford Econoline van - this has got to win some sort of award for ugliest front end evah. The "hood" is laughable; the grill itself is unremarkable but manages to wrap around the front end for no good reason; the side windows are small and don't open; in short, it's an ugly box.
Okay. That's enough ugly for one day. Unless, of course, y'all can come up with something ugly(ier) that I might have overlooked (or that my brain forced out of my subconscious out of self-defense...)
That is all.
16 comments:
I can trump that Granada - check out the Lincoln Versailles.
It was a Granada with a Lincoln trunk lid. A truly horrible combination.
Jay,
Two things . . . I drove (sometimes pushed !!) a '74 gremlin while I was in high school. Horrible piece of drek it was. My gas gauge was a pad of paper and a small pencil. Note the mileage on the odometer, drive 200 miles, fill up. Repeat.
My other fav of ugly cars for this time period is the 1973/74 VW Thing, aka the Trekker. There's one I see every summer in Westford, faded orange with a black canvas top. That one's decent looking but damn the thing is ugly, ugly, ugly. So ugly I want one !!!
- Brad
I've owned a Granada. They were truly rolling balls of suck.
OTOH, my '73 Dart 340 Sport would humble most big-block B-bodies without braking a sweat. The 340 wedge backed by a TorqueFlite 727 was as bad a smallblock as anything that didn't say "327c.i.d. Fuel-Injected" or "Boss 351" on the air cleaner...
That van was just....bad. It should have been number one on your list. All of the others weren't nearly as horrible, at least from my POV (of course, that may be because I was born in the mid-80's and never had to "experience" the other ones).
my 3rd grade teacher had a lime green Pinto - and even us kids laughed at him behind his back.
That van looks familiar ... wait a minute, did Ford really try to rip off the VW Vanagon?
I don't mind the Econoline.
And the VW Thing that Brad mentions gets a pass because it's a military design.
I also don't see the problem with the Dart.
You're slipping a bit, Jay.
Two words.
Chevy. Vega.
My best friend's parents had a Vega. Never did anything to it but change the oil, and they got 100k miles from it.
They also had a Volkswagen Thing and a Citroen Palas. It was an ugly car trifecta!
I am sadly fond of ugly '70s cars. Ah, the nostalgia for a decade I was not a part of! (Born in '79.)
Once upon a time my father and several of his friends got drunk, broke out the acetylene torches, and cut the roof off a 4-door Granada. Wonderful until it rained, or you tried to open both doors on the same side at once (the entire side of the car would bow out). We all took it to several local informal car shows, and you'd be amazed how many people we were able to convince it was factory-issue, in spite of the obvious lack of any sort of top.
When I was a kid, we had a Pinto and a Dart. Friend A's family had a Gremlin, Friend B's a Pacer and a Chevette. My grandparents had the Cutlass, and buddy "C" later owned a Cordoba (the infamous 4-bbl Cordo-Beast).
That's overload. And in retrospect, I'm amazed I made it out of the 70s intact.
Sigi,
Yes, the VW Thing (type 181) did derive from the type 162. To my eye, The Thing is still butt-ugly.
Sabra, Is that your given name or by chance were you born in Israel?
Brad, that is indeed my given name. I am an Episcopalian born & reared in Texas. Sabra is an old family name that predates the current incarnation of Israel (I don't believe the term 'sabra' was in use commonly before then). Apparently, the name is also British; the princess St George rescued from the dragon was in some accounts named Sabra. I've no idea if that's where my family got ahold of it or not.
To get back OT, my mother owned a Pinto station wagon, but that was before my time and I don't think was one of the explody ones. In fact, if memory serves, she liked 'em so much she owned two.
There was also a guy in the car show circuit locally about a decade ago who had a blue Pinto wagon he'd turned into one hell of a hot rod. Can't for the life of me recall what engine he put in it, but he ran high-grade racing fuel, and she sure sounded purty when she started up.
I completely disagree with the Cordoba statement. The square lights weren't as desirable but I owned a 78 and the girls loved it. I had comments from people everytime I went somewhere. It is a beautiful car and if you take the lean burn of its faster then any chevy or ford at the time.
I once saw a car that looked like a Gremlin but had a round, bubble window on both rear sides. Anyone know what it was? It was UGLY.
Pacer.
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