After a significant hiatus, I've decided it's time to revive the Friday Fun Thread featuring automotive miscellany in Top Ten Form. This week's topic struck me out of the blue as I followed one of the cars listed home from work: Top Ten Cars That Should Not Have Been. Now, the cars on this list are not necessarily bad cars - some are quite well-built and long-lasting - just either poor concepts, poor executions, or plain old bad ideas.
So here's the Top Ten Automotive Abominations:
1. Cadillac Cimarron. Far and away the worst. While the Cimarron was hardly the first instance of "badge engineering", it was the first to take a spectacularly crappy car (Chevy Cavalier) and put a top tier name plate on it with only minor improvements over the low end offering. It felt apart quickly, as low end GMs from the time period were wont to do, cheapened the Cadillac name, and paved the way for every manufacturer out there to slap their top tier badge on a POS and jack up the price.
2. VW GTI four door. Uh, no. Look, the GLI with strikingly similar badging and trim was bad enough, but actually slapping the GTI badge on the four door Golf was a travesty, plain and simple. After some 20+ years of the GTI being VW's "pocket rocket", they change it to nothing more than an add-on package for the Golf. Pathetic.
3. Toyota T-100. What a blown opportunity the T-100 was. In the early 1990s, Toyota decided that they wanted to get into the lucrative light truck market. Their small pickup was selling quickly (despite rotting out before it got off the dealer lot in places that have winter), why not take a slice out of the pie belonging to GM and Ford (this was before Dodge re-styled the Ram and wrestled back a piece of the truck pie). What do they roll out? A small, underpowered truck with excruciatingly bland styling that was smaller than the Dodge Dakota but with less power options. FAIL.
4. Mercury Cougar. The last iteration of the Cougar saw it transmogrify from a twin to the Thunderchicken into a two door escort. The same car that once boasted a 429 Cobra Jet now had a 4-banger. Ugh. It was a toss-up between the Cougar and the Capri for which Merc they screwed up the most, but at least the second iteration of the Capri was a drop-top...
5. Plymouth Prowler. Yet again, another car that should have been great, but wasn't. The Prowler suffered from the success of the Viper - Chrysler took the Viper from concept to showroom floor, absolutely wowed the automotive world, then started believing their own press releases. They rolled out the Prowler - with its aggressive styling and retro-hot rod good looks - mated to a vanilla V6 and a dogamatic transmission. Sales more or less defined lackluster and the car died a quick and painful death.
6. Late 1970s/early 1980s GM diesels. Not the trucks, those were/are excellent performers. In the late 1970s, as a response to the gas crisis experienced earlier in the decade, GM decided that diesel engines were the way to go. Now, had they done it right, we might be driving 50 MPG diesel Impalas today - instead, they did it so horrifically wrong that the American public *still*, some 30+ years later, distrusts diesel engines mightily.
7. Honda Ridgeline. Honda does a lot of things very well. They build solid, dependable automobiles, they have a long reputation for quality manufacturing at reasonable prices, and their cars hold their value very well. What Honda does not do, however, is trucks. A six cylinder, front wheel drive "truck" that costs more than most rear-drive V8s? Err, no. Stick to econoboxes.
8. 2002 Ford Thunderbird. Ford Motor Company really ruined this pair - between turning the aforementioned Cougar into a FWD POS and what they did with the 2002 T-Bird, they killed a very successful marque and nearly brought about the death of the "boutique" automobile entirely. Ford killed the Thunderchicken in the late 1990s, with rumors swirling around of a radical restyle that evoked the original '55 Bird. The car they rolled out looked really nice - and they priced it as though it were a restored 1955 T-bird. Sales were disappointing, to say the least...
9. Dodge Rampage. Whose idea was it to slap a pickup body on the friggin' OMNI??? Someone at Chrysler should have been fired - preferably from a cannon - for even suggesting that they put a pickup body on a 96 HP, FWD car. One can only assume they were aiming at the Subaru Brat or the VW Rabbit pickup, neither of which exactly set the small truck world on fire. The only upside to the Rampage is that it would allow one of the coolest conversions ever - take a Rampage body, put the turbocharged Shelby GLHS motor in it with appropriate 5-speed, add the body cladding, and have a Carroll Shelby-inspired pickup...
10. Cadillac Escalade EXT. No. No no no no no. See the Cimarron entry. You do not slap a top tier badge on a low-end marque, you just don't. Especially when the only trucks ever built before in the entire history of your company were used as flower haulers for funeral homes.
So there's my list of bad automotive ideas through the ages. Once again, if your very favoritest car is on this list, it doesn't mean that the car itself is no good - just that the concept behind it wasn't solid IMHO. There are some very well-built cars on this list (and some stinkers); inclusion on the list for the most part indicates a marketing issue, not an engineering one (except for the GM diesels, although I suspect marketing brought that about as well...)
What automotive atrocities did I miss?
That is all.
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23 comments:
Chevy SSR... so much promise, so poorly executed, so much fail.
Mid 80's Buick Century with the base engine--absolutely nothing to distinguish it from a Chevy. Midsize car with an anemic pushrod 4 banger, manual windows, cloth seats, and fake woodgrain.
I suppose it could have been worse, there was a diesel option...
Just as a general atrocity, I'd have to go with the fact that there are so few vehicles with standard transmissions these days...
Also - the PT Cruiser is just a hideous, underpowered vehicle with a turning radius rivaled by only that of the USS Nimitz
Their small pickup was selling quickly (despite rotting out before it got off the dealer lot in places that have winter)
You mean "places that salt the roads", I guess.
Because water sure doesn't make 'em rust, or my '94 that's lived entirely in Oregon would have fallen apart.
As it is, it only has surface rust where the paint's been chipped off by a quarter million miles of road abuse.
Hey! I have a 5 door GTI. I personally think it looks more proportionate, and it is definitely more useful. I deliberately sought one out when buying my GTI. If anything, a 5 door fits the brief better: a sporty yet everyday practical drive.
Also, a GTI has always been a tarted up Golf. That's entirely the point.
BTW, I read that VW sells about as many 5 door GTIs in Euroland as 3 door ones. Last I was there, that seemed to be the case.
How about the Ford Mavrick and all those underpowered tiny cars which Detroit rolled out in a quickie reaction to the 1973 oil embargo. Tiny tinny car matched with a tiny engine which could not punch its way out of the proverbial wet paper bag! And don't even think about getting an adult into the back seat!
Don't be so hard on the 8th gen ('98-'02) Cougar.
It's unrelated to the Escort: It's really a shortened, 2-door Ford Contour.
The Contour is well-noted for decent handling (it's a Ford of Europe design - and it shows in the handling); the Cougar gets this handling, and less weight with only 2 doors. The Duratec V6 is found in many Cougars; at 170HP, it was no slouch for its day. Add go-fast goodies from the Contour SVT catalog to get to 200 HP. Want more? The Ford 3.0 Duratec found in many Taurus and Escape models is a well-understood and largely bolt-in upgrade.
Yes, it was after a much different demographic and previous Cougars. But some young buyers, who might otherwise look at Corollas or Civics, realized neither of those cars had factory V6 power - or the European-market Mondeo aftermarket parts support.
Full disclosure: I have a '95 Contour with V6 - still a daily driver. I'm *still* impressed with its combination of handling, power - and affordability. I suspect the Cougar could have done much better if Mercury really understood how to market it.
How could you overlook....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac_Aztek
The SUV "Designed" by a blind Marketing committee.
You forgot one of the other favorite punching-bag cars of the current century: the Pontiac Aztek. It's a perfect case study in why design by committee based on narrow focus-groups is a really poor idea.
Pontiac Aztec: Made blind pedestrians cry.
The Gremlin: Reduce body weight by cutting off the cars ass. And that rear window ALWAYS leaked.
Chevy SSR: Drum breaks? Really?!?
The Smart Car: You can't take a bumper car out of the carnival, put it on the road with real vehicles and expect happy results.
As for GMs auto diesel: GM dealer in Dad's hometown got very good at replacing diesel engines with gasoline ones. Required replacement of fuel system as well.
Maybe yer all too young to remember the Vega/Astra; I had one in Canada. Probably the only car in Ontario that the motor was worse than the rust-proofing. Four-banger with iron head and aluminum block. Used oil like a ...The Gulf comes to mind, but I won't go there. In fact, it had a cut-off switch for the fuel pump, if the oil level or pressure got too low. It caught me out once. After that, I had a case in the back. It would quit and I'd put oil in it and off we'd go.
It looked pretty good, and had rear drive, but the execution of the design was fail, fail, fail.
BRB
GM's real problem was that the car diesel wasn't a real diesel. It was a 350 ci small block retrofitted to be a diesel. The results were what you'd expect, both in terms of performance and reliability.
The Toyota pickup truck bodies weren't made by Toyota. The trucks were shipped her sans bodies to meet some stupid US tariff rules. I think the bodies were actually supplied by the Gulf Coast importer of Toyotas. Which explains their aversion to salt covered roads. The actual trucks themselves were pretty durable and I still see a good number of them on the roads with all sorts of home made bodies on them.
The T100 was Toyota's first effort at a real pickup truck. Much as their first van effort looked like a mid 1960s Ford Econoline van, the T100 was a not very successful effort, but they learned quite a lot from the experience. The Tundra was the result of that experience.
AMC Pacer and/or Gremlin.
Now there were a couple of real "classics"
Although the Gremlin my dad had, (which was preceeded by a "62 Rambler with the push button tranny and by the "67 Ambassador Matador Station Wagon and then a '69 Javelin), had a 258 inline 6 with a 4 speed. That ugly little beast would get up and go! He followed that with a AMC Hornet. And I had a brief moment where I owned a 74 Javelin.
But the Gremlin and Pacer...Oh my!
But Mark Donohue actually raced the AMX-Javelin.
Lincoln pickup trucks.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/2005_Lincoln_Mark_LT.JPG
Incidentally, sales were so bad, the model was suspended in 2009, but is now being made and sold internationally, but not sold in the U.S.
http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/car/09q3/2010_lincoln_mark_lt-first_drive_review
Hey - don't knock the Smart; it's the safest car in the subcompact class (which includes not just the Smart and Mini, but also the Aveo, Yaris, etc), the cheapest to operate of any non-hybrid engine per the EPA. (38 mpg combined; but it does take premium gas to get that), is electronically governed to 90-odd MPH (and you can get the governor removed with little effort), and is nice and tightly engineered. I've taken mine on road trips to NoVA from NJ, and a friend of mine drove from long island to out near Waterloo, Canada and back.
Would I own one as my only car? Nope. But as my daily commuter (mostly highway with high-speed traffic) it does pretty well. Doesn't belong in the same category as these other cars
ANY GM "X-CAR"!
Let's not leave out the Chevy Avalanche. A vehicle for "rednecks" who just don't want to admit that they are helpless yuppies with too much money. Half of them will then proceed to bottom out the front suspension every winter mounting a plow on their "truck."
Edsel...
You missed some of the worst ones, IMO.
Any Chrysler in the mid-late 70s.
They took a nameplate that marketed thinly disguised race cars and turned them into 4-cyl POSs with a crappy turbo to make up for the lost 200HP.
The whole "Geo" line from GM. I mean, sure the Nova wasn't a monster (except in a couple iterations), but to turn it into a rebadged Toyota? Ugh.
And what could be, arguably, the worst car ever made, the reincarnated Pontial LeMans of the late 80s. It came from the factory with preinstalled oil leak.
I sold cars for a while in the 80s and 90s. I've sold Volvos, Hyndais and, God help me, even Renaults, but I refused to sell the Pontiac Lemans. Seriously, if we had one on the lot I always told the customers to talk to someone else, I refused to sell it.
Mustang II - a rebadged Opel. YICK!!!
The Pacer, hands down. My family used to call it The Guppy Car.
In high school and college I drove two Vega station wagons, great cargo space, and a '79 Olds Delta 88 diesel.
The Delta 88 stranded me in Breezewood, PA, August '85 with a blown injector seal. The "24-hour mechanic" in the truck stop could only change tires on the night shift. I will forever remember the look that the day mechanic gave me after saying he couldn't find me a new injector and I asked him if he'd tried the local John Deere dealer. Same fuel injection system as a 4020 tractor. He had the injector in and I was on my way in an hour and a half.
First pick will always be the Pontiac Aztek, OMG it had to be an 11.5 on the ugliness scale. And the old farts down here in Fla loved em. So I got to see all too many of them. Next to me is the Renault Le Car. Can you say Le POS? Finally how about the early 80s version of the Dodge Challenger? Take a classic name and turn it into a crappy Mitsubishi with a paint job guaranteed to fade in any southern state
I agree with your Cimarron take though I have to give GM credit for a good idea. They felt they were losing the older drivers who were buying small BMWs and Benzes and then just upgrading to bigger ones as their earnings increased. So they went after the people who would buy a 190 Benz or 320i. But of course with typical GM execution they go and rebrand the Cavalier with some leather and wood trim. WTG GM, skimp on the design of a new car and instead create an epic failure.
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