Popular Mechanics recently released a list of 10 cars that they felt damaged GM's reputation. It's hard to argue about most of their choices, but since we've already established ourselves as a vanguard of poor taste and questionable automotive judgment, I felt it was important that we briefly review our feelings on some of these cars and remind everyone that, yet again, we have no taste or shame.
... except it's actually a Ford Probe. Yes, really--take a look. If you take a minute to really look, you can see it in the proportions and the wheels. The interior picture is a dead giveaway.
I don't often say this about kit cars, but this actually looks really good--there's something about the flowing rear that really works. For the sake of the proud driver, I hope it's a Probe Turbo--I can imagine Audi purists tarring and feathering those responsible for this sacrilege.
--Chris H.
We spend a lot of time here at Car Lust blogging about unsung heroes--cars that for whatever reason never received the recognition they deserved. The Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera is not one of those cars. It received all the recognition it deserved--absolutely none.
With its reputation already listing after the torpedo hits of the 1970s, General Motors did the best it could to scuttle the remnants of its good name with a series of relentlessly mediocre sedans through the 1980s and early 1990s. The Cutlass Ciera was one of those sedans, joined in abject mediocrity by its A-body cousins, the Buick Century and Chevrolet Celebrity. Strangely, the A-body Pontiac 6000 STE escaped the curse--despite its mechanical similarities, it was a surprisingly effective sports sedan by the standards of the time.
The Cutlass Ciera and its fellow A-bodies weren't terrible in the same way as Cookie the Dog's Owner's Chevy Monza Wagon. They didn't tend to grenade, or rust away rapidly. They sold well and typically gave their owners many years of grudging, unenthusiastic service. Even now, more than a decade after the last of these cars went out of production, you can see Cieras and their brethren cruising around with scabrous paint and drooping headliners.
Speaking of Mitsubishi Lancers, I would be remiss if I didn't point Car Lust readers to this epic thread at LancerRegister.com.
It starts off a bit slow, but quickly picks up steam, as a well-meaning "tuner" wreaks havoc on an poor, innocent second-gen Mitsubishi Eclipse with a misused file, some dodgy welding, some badly cut diamond plate, and gallons upon gallons of non-strategically applied metallic blue paint. I'm mechanically inept, but when I saw the pictures of the guy filing grooves into the head even I knew something was horribly awry. It just goes downhill from there. Keep a special eye out for the lunched turbocharger and potentially fatal clutch and flywheel modifications.
The video below catches the poor, cringing Eclipse putting on a very expensive fireworks show.
Like any train wreck, this is engrossing stuff, and it has captured the imagination of car lovers everywhere--the thread has more than a million page views and 46 pages of posts as I write this. Thanks for the heads-up go to reader Caddy Jeff, who submitted the Fedora Award winner in the $25,000 Challenge.
--Chris H.
One of the great things about the Car Lust blog is the comments we get from our readers.
My recent "Car Disgust" posting on the Stutz "revival" cars of the 1970s drew some interesting comments from reader Jim Milliken. Several of Jim's photos were used to illustrate my original article.
Jim and I had a very pleasant conversation in the comments thread which continued by e-mail. While we disagree on the merits of the Stutz, we both agree that they are fascinating vehicles.
By the way, Jim isn't just a Stutz fan. He owns five revival-era Stutzes--just like Elvis! (I've linked to photos of his cars in the text below the fold.) Between the Stutz cars he owns and the others he has encountered in his travels, he may well have seen more Stutzes in more places than anyone else now living.
I thought our readers would enjoy learning a little more about these interesting vehicles from someone who knows them well.
Full disclosure here--I don't like the Ford Tempo, or its Mercury Topaz twin. Based on some of the other awful cars I like, including its Fairmont predecessor, I really should like the Tempo. I keep moaning on about how depressing it is that Detroit can't make a simple, inexpensive, reliable small car, but yet I don't give the Tempo--a car that filled that niche from 1984 to 1994--any of the respect it deserves. Mea culpa, Tempo lovers. Mea maxima culpa.
The Ford Tempo was a first-car staple in my generation--Tempos were ubiquitous in high-school parking lots back in my day, and two of my friends had Tempos as their first cars. Cookie the Dog's Owner already wrote two excellent posts on the phenomenon of first cars (Challenge, Results), and one of the most agreed-upon points was the fact that kids will love their first car regardless of what it is. I was one of the commenters agreeing fervently with that point, and yet the Tempo makes me question that assertion.
Can there be a more conflicted feeling than having a Tempo as your first car? On the one hand, you're excited that you own your first car; you want to race around in it, customize it, show it off to your friends, and take advantage of your new mobility. On the other hand, well, it's a Tempo. Small, ugly, and relentlessly slow, the Tempo married an agricultural driving experience with a lack of pretension and luxury that bordered on the Amish.
In the mid-'70s, I had a job during Christmas break working in a coin shop. One of my employers, whose name was Don, was very much into leisure suits, fancy watches, and gold jewelry. One afternoon, Don casually mentioned that he's thinking of buying a car. "A Stutz. You probably never heard of 'em."
"A Stutz Bearcat? I know what that is. They're beautiful old cars."
"It's not an antique," he corrected. "These cars are brand new. They only make 25 or 50 a year. Here, let me show you."
He handed me a glossy full-color brochure depicting the vehicle in high-class settings: ambling down a pastoral back road, parked at a country club, in the driveway of a mansion. The male model in the photos was a youngish hipster in a leisure suit, sporting a fancy watch and a lot of gold--could've been Don's twin brother. (Whoever designed the brochure sure knew his target audience!) The "Stutz" in the pictures, though, was no Bearcat.
Bearcats were all business, no nonsense sports cars. This was the exact opposite: all nonsense, no business even pretending to be a sports car. It had typical mid-70s "personal luxury car" lines, accented with fake side-pipes and an extra helping of maximum-strength Elvis-grade kitsch. It looked like a mutant Oldsmobile Cutlass customized by Liberace.
I was stunned. How could the storied Stutz name have become attached to this ... this ... THING?
When I first drove the Kia Spectra, I hated it. Hated it. At the time I was getting new test cars every week to evaluate, and most of the cars were expensive, flashy, powerful, luxurious, and alluring. The Spectra had none of these qualities. After the intoxication of sophisticated iron, the gawky four-door Spectra was a huge let-down--like drinking brackish water after developing a taste for fine Chardonnay. Even my wife's aunt, not exactly an automotive snob, said about the Spectra, "But it's a piece of crap!"
At the time I agreed. My tester was a gawky and awkward four-door sedan, not the subtly attractive five-door hatch/wagon, and the interior was nice but spartan. I had just turned in a Mini Cooper S Convertible that seduced me with its eagerness to run; the Spectra, on the other hand, kept me at arm's length with a truly heinous clutch with an absurdly high release point.
Once I dislike a car, I rarely change my mind; if novelty doesn't make a car interesting, familiarity rarely does. Strangely enough, the Spectra was the exception to that rule. After a few days, I had cleared my palatte from the Mini, adjusted to the odd clutch, and accepted the Spectra for what it was.
Today's Car Lust is the direct result of a little Internet link free-word association. It all started when I was reading Slashdot, where I found out that cows tend to point due north. At the bottom of this already strange article was a link to the Telegraph's special on the 100 ugliest cars of all time, which I felt preternaturally compelled to visit. Then, at No. 71, I saw this:
71 - Lightburn Zeta Sedan
Australian washing machine (and cement mixer) manufacturer turns its hand to cars. Fails.
No picture, no further explanation--just those two sentences. Just like that, I knew I absolutely had to look into this.
Chris Hafner: The Volkswagen Vanagon Westfalia doesn't have much to offer the enthusiast. Even the normal Vanagon was a slow, lumbering, ponderous, wheezing vehicle; only comparison to the original VW bus--a legend of slow motoring--would make the Vanagon look fast or agile. The Westfalia camper package, with added weight and higher center of gravity thanks to its tiny kitchen applicances and a pop-up sleeper tent roof, was even less athletic. The best thing that could be said about a Vanagon Westfalia on a twisty mountain road was that it was slightly racier than an RV.
What the Vanagon Westfalia offered was a dream. Like a turtle that moved slowly but carried its shelter on its back, the Westfalia's self-contained habitat offered the driver some real options. Heading down to the supermarket to grab some groceries? Fine, but if you feel like continuing your trip to, say, the Rocky Mountains, you've got a built-in camping spot. Why drop the kids off at school when you could just keep rolling up to the Yukon Territory to do a little fishing and hiking with the family?
If you've been reading this blog for any amount of time--in which case, my most profound apologies--you'd think the Chevy LUV would be a natural for Car Lust. Consider the following:
The LUV is the exception to all of those rules. I should like the LUV, and I'm powerless to tell you why I don't. My only guess--and admittedly I'm being incredibly inconsistent here--is that the LUV wasn't good. For one thing, compact pickups of the time only barely qualified as transportation. The early 1970s compact pickups lasted forever but were hampered by their incredibly tiny size and complete lack of grunt. Most of them made do with much, much less than 100 horsepower--the LUV only got up to 80 horsepower late in its production run--and four-wheel-drive was not as typical then as it is for today's compact pickups.
At the end of the 1977 model year, GM discontinued the Chevrolet Vega. For 1978, the General would depend on the Vega-derived Monza to occupy the "compact" spot in the Chevy lineup. Needing a station wagon version to have a complete line, GM fitted leftover Vega wagon bodies with the "Monza S" front clip to produce the Monza Wagon.
I had one, and it was the worst car anyone in my family ever owned.
My father acquired it in 1980 from someone who worked at the Lordstown Assembly plant where it was built. The day Dad brought it home, we found an ice scraper in the glove box, an artifact of the previous owner. It was red, with a GM Assembly Division logo, and had a mysterious inscription: "GM LORDSTOWN MANAGEMENT TEAM - LET'S GET 150!"
It looked harmless enough. As late-1970s domestic cars go, the Monza Wagon was actually rather attractive.
A
little over a month ago, I submitted the fourth-generation Chevrolet
Malibu (or Chevrolet Classic, if you prefer) as a potential Car
Disgust. The post was an emotional, incoherent rant detailing all of
the abuses that my significant other and I had experienced at the hands
of the very car shown to the right. Thankfully, Chris never published
my screed, which has given me time to hone my incoherent rant into what
I hope will be an incisive, invective-filled diatribe worthy of being
published as a true Car Disgust.
Once upon a time--in 1997, to be exact--this ubiquitous mascot of rental fleets around the country was the Motor Trend Car Of The Year. Its competition, at least in the domestic space, was fairly lax. The Ford Taurus of the time was becoming increasingly infamous for eating transmissions like most people eat Nilla wafers, and the first generation LH-based Dodge Intrepid was overdue for a refresh, preferably one that involved a change in Chrysler's increasingly notorious paint chemistry of the era.
All you really need to know about the Ford Aspire is that the Enterprise Rent-a-Car branch at which my wife worked years ago--an establishment not exactly filled with sleek and exotic machinery--held the Aspire in such ignominious regard that the staff broke the name into two sylables and added an extra "s" to the name. Yes, because the car drove like, well, butt. Even so, the car's nickname was nowhere near as obscene as the car itself.
I've spent a lot of time talking up small, cheap, light hatchbacks, but one must draw the line somewhere. You know it's bad when the Aspire was nowhere near as sleek or exotic as its fierce mid-1990s competitor, the Geo Metro. Try to wrap your mind around that for a moment.
Before I really get into today's post, I want to revisit the definition of Car Disgust and explain anew why these cars are worthy of my disgust. It's not because they're all awful cars, although many are. It's because, generally speaking, they're awful and boring. If given the choice between a solid car that's unbelievably boring, and a car whose very incompetence makes it interesting, I'll take the latter every time. It doesn't make any sense, but that's my particular cross to bear.
Take the Toyota Camry, for instance. Any way you slice it, every version of the Toyota Camry is an incredibly smart buy. It's about the right size for most families, it drives pretty well, it's not too slow, it's not too fast, and the design doesn't have enough character to be ugly or even controversial. Marry that with Toyota's legendary monotonous reliability, and the Camry really makes sense for anybody looking for solid transportation. It has virtually no weaknesses.
By request, and based on the comments threads from a few recent posts, here's what could be the biggest challenge of them all--what is the most boring car ever made?
This is tricky; much trickier than identifying the worst car ever made. "Worst" "ugliest" and "slowest" are all strong flavors; perhaps even stronger than "best," "most beautiful," and "fastest." Boring implies a complete lack of flavor, but it's hard to identify. By definition, you're having to find something remarkably unremarkeable.
Submitted by Nathan of Brainfertilizer Fame
Back in January 2005, to celebrate an upcoming promotion at work (about five months early, as it turns out), I wanted to replace my 1990 Toyota Corolla with a nicer vehicle. Unfortunately, at heart I am a skinflint. I love Hondas and like Toyotas, but the $18k starting price for an Accord made me choke, and a Camry was out of the question. I knew I could get a Civic or Corolla for about $14k, but that would still be a base model with few options. I checked out a Ford Focus but was unimpressed with its small size, road noise, and bumpy ride.
The salesman asked, "Have you thought about a Suzuki?" I sneered at first, but he seemed insistent, so I shrugged and agreed to do a test drive in a 2005 Suzuki Forenza. It was very nice, and cost just over $14k. It seemed fairly peppy, but not enough to satisfy me. I tested a standard-transmission Forenza and it had more of the driving feel I wanted, but the fuel efficiency on an automatic was 21/28, and the efficiency on a standard was ... 21/28. I couldn't understand it then, and I don't understand it now.
Yes, I'm going to deride that holiest of holies, the Lamborghini Countach. This is the "Car Disgust" bookend to my earlier Countach Car Lust. It's important to note that this dishonor is focused squarely on the 25th Anniversary Edition Countach. Placing it next to cars like the Yugo GVX and Suzuki X-90 in Car Disgust might be considered tantamount to heresy, but I think it's appropriate.
In the Countach Car Lust, I pointed out just how breathtaking the original Countach was, with its spectacularly wedgy body, its bellowing V-12, and sheer presence that electrified the world. This was all still true during the 5000S Quattrovalve's reign in the mid-1980s, but by the end of the decade the Countach's basic flaws were becoming more and more obvious. Just before its replacement with the curvaceous Diablo, the Countach was as outdated as a hugely exotic car can be--cramped, hot, awful visibility, and with a poor driving experience in most situations. It was still fast, but cars as useful and ordinary as the Porsche 911 Turbo and Chevrolet Corvette were nipping at its heels.
Continue reading "Car Disgust--Lamborghini Countach 25th Anniversary" »
The idea behind the Ford EXP was a good one, especially for the fuel-crunched but performance-starved automotive world of the early 1980s. The basic concept was similar to that used by the later Pontiac Fiero and Toyota MR2: You start with the foundation of an existing small car, strip out the rear seats to save weight, add on some performance upgrades, tighten up the handling, and give the package a longer, lower, and tantalizingly sleek body. Given the fact that the EXP would beat both the Fiero and MR2 to the market, and that Ford was gathering itself for a strong performance and styling push for the rest of the decade, the idea sounded like a slam dunk.
When the EXP debuted in 1982, it was clear that the slam dunk clanged hard off the back rim.
Special for today, a Car Disgust twin pack!
When I posted the Yugo GVX Car Disgust a few months ago, a co-worker told me that all the commentary was unnecessary--that simply running the photo would convey all of the horror and derision necessary.
So, it's in that spirit that I present the Suzuki X-90. Gaze at the photos--nothing else needs to be said.
--Chris H.
It has been a while since I've done a Car Disgust post, so if you're confused, read this.
I'm on record as being a huge fan of exotic hardware, and all-wheel drive and turbochargers are among my favorite pieces of automotive gingerbread. Combine that with my fondness for Mitsubishis, especially the sporty ones, and the Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4--pumped up with its AWD, twin turbos, and four-wheel steering--should be a no-brainer for me.
But, no. I just can't stand the 3000GT. While it was extremely quick, it was also extremely ugly and--a cardinal sin for a sports car--so heavy that it offered a relatively ponderous driving experience.
It's hard to be a fan of the AMC Gremlin. Not only was it an awful car, but it was so famous for being awful that even when you think you've found another beleaguered Gremlin addict, they invariably turn the knife by smirking, winking, and saying, "Sure, I think the Gremlin is awesome!"
You know a car is terrible when the only people to profess to like it are really only claiming it to enhance their own ironic slumming hipness. I can't really judge them; I've hidden behind the faux-irony defense many times when my buddies start to sneer at my ridiculously poor taste in cars.
I really do like the Gremlin, though--and to examine why is to delve into my bad-car pathology.
The Volvo 240DL pictured here was a loyal partner for nearly a decade--a period of time in which the Volvo covered more than 200,000 miles, took part in two cross-continental moves, transported us and our friends to countless enjoyable endeavors, and generally became an omnipresent part of our lives. It was my wife's first car, and endured as our primary vehicle even as more modern replacements came and went.
With more than 350,000 miles on it when we sold it, our 240 lived up to the line's reputation for ground-breaking durability. The build quality was high, the construction was tank-like, and it took every beating we handed out.
So, given all that, I'm a little ashamed that I never really warmed up to the Volvo and wasn't all that sorry when we eventually sold it. I can't avoid the feeling that I've failed some fundamental personality test. So, if I could just vent a bit ...
It all started simply enough. A couple of years ago, a co-worker of mine casually mentioned that he had a 1973 Plymouth Valiant just sitting in his backyard that he would be willing to let me have for free. To my ears, that pitch was as seductive and destructive as the Sirens were to Jason's Argonauts.
Of course, at the time my wife and I had an infant to care for, we weren't particularly well-off, and we already owned two cars. On the list of things our family needed, a '73 Valiant ranked somewhere between flesh-eating bacteria and and an infestation of locusts.
Also, this example wasn't exactly perfect. My co-worker had mentioned that the Valiant tended to stall if the driver was overly gentle with the throttle; that exhaust poured into the passenger compartment, likely due to a cracked manifold; and that thanks to a breakdown in the weather sealing, there was likely to be moisture in the car. It had been sitting in his lawn for some time, and was a a faded, dingy, somewhat mossy shade of brown.
I've already put on record what I think of the Saturn SL2, but since it fits the Our Cars theme, I'm going to include two photos of our Saturn which sum up our entire experience with that car. And, to give me some text to flow around the photos, I'll reprint the most pertinent section:
In our first weekend of ownership, the Saturn sprang a coolant leak that left the car smelling vaguely of antifreeze for the rest of our time together. After the leak and a near-overheat situation, there emerged a curious squawk from the engine that sounded like a leaky hose or a bad seal. The shop, of course, couldn't find a problem.
It's been a while since I've run a Car Disgust, so before I kick this off I think it's appropriate to revisit what Car Disgust all about. I explain it all here, but the key point for today is the cars I feature in Car Lust are not necessarily better vehicles than those I feature in Car Disgust. A quick glance at yesterday's Car Lust (the AMC Eagle) and today's Car Disgust (the Honda Ridgeline) should thoroughly dispel that idea.
Car Lust/Car Disgust is all based on emotion and whether I'd rather sing praises or throw produce. And often, I like to sing praises about bad cars and throw produce at good cars. Got it? Good. Let's get on with today's feature.
---
Far be it from me to criticize anything Honda does. Seemingly everything Honda touches becomes a huge sales success, revolutionizes its market segment, and offers a superior driving experience. However, the Ridgeline, Honda's first entry into the pickup segment, confuses me greatly. I had one as a test vehicle when it debuted and came away from the experience mystified at how pointless it is. It offers not-quite car comfort, with not-quite pickup utility, and winds up being less useful than either.
At the very least, this feature should dispel any remaining thoughts that I'm on Honda's payroll.
Inappropriately Named Chrysler Products week lurches to a close ...
On the roster of Inappropriately Named Chrysler Products, the Dodge Dynasty/Chrysler Imperial is perhaps the most decorated member. Managing at once to be both offensive to the eyes and boring--a remarkable combination, since most ugly cars find a way to be endearing--the Dynasty/Imperial is a worst-of-all-worlds nightmare, an automotive Frankenstein that isn't even scary enough to be interesting.
Using Chrysler K-car econobox mechanicals originating in the early 1980s, wrapping them in overwrought 1970s personal luxury cliches inside and out (witness the vinyl roof, useless upright hidden headlights, and tufted faux-leather pillowed seats), and trying to pass off the results as a 1990s luxury sedan, the Dynasty/Imperial is remarkable mostly for the cynicism with which it was made.
Inappropriately Named Chrysler Products week continues ...
RAMPAGE!
It's the kind of word designed to be written in all-caps, possibly in red, with a bold typeface, certainly underlined, and ideally with more than one exclamation point. Spoken, it deserves to be either screamed or growled--again, ideally, it would be both, with the same kind of manic intensity normally reserved for the bellowing in monster truck commercials.
In short, rampage is an intense word, summoning up images of violence, uncontrollable power run amok, and hopeless desperation among its victims. Envision Godzilla rampaging through Tokyo, or the Incredible Hulk turning green and beginning his angst-ridden rampage through the U.S. military.
Inappropriately Named Chrysler Products week continues ...
When you hear the word "avenger," what image comes to mind? Perhaps a steely-eyed, flint-jawed vigilante whose outrage at misplaced justice is as blunt and forceful as his calloused fists? Somebody perhaps like the dark, moody Batman or Charles Bronson in the Death Wish movies? That's my image--somebody fierce, powerful, and with such a powerful sense of moral rectitude that they are sometimes willing to do terrible things to make things right for others.
So, with all that in mind, I'd like to point out the hilariously mis-named Dodge Avenger. The Avenger has the kick-butt name and some quasi-Dodge Stealth styling in its favor, but underneath the skin it's all cringing mid-1990s four- and six-cylinder Dodge milquetoast mediocrity. Fundamentally, it's a Chrysler Sebring with a macho complex and a fake tan. If you consider, as I do, the Sebring the Britney Spears of cars (pretty but vapid) the Avenger is the Kevin Federline.
In any event, the milquetoast reality of the Avenger does not match the take-no-prisoners retribution promised by the name. If the Avenger was to swoop in to restore automotive justice, it would be greeted with cackling laughter and, moments later, would be leaving the scene of the crime in tears with its underwear pulled over its head.
--Chris H.
This week I'm going to run a daily series highlighting Inappropriately Named Chrysler Products (INCP)--a rather narrow category, perhaps, but one that offers up a surprising number of candidates.
Take today's example, for instance. I have nothing against the Dodge Sprinter commercial delivery van--in fact, I would have nominated it as a Car Lust at some point on its own merits.
For one thing, its looks are earnestly geeky in a way you don't often see nowadays. The Sprinter is the equivalent of the goofy junior high kid who grew six inches over the summer and now can't muster up any degree of coordination.
The most intriguing thing about the Sprinter, though, is the world of possibility it opens up. I'm tempted to buy a Sprinter just to wade into the mind-bending array of opportunities it represents.
Today's
Car Disgust spotlight shines on a car so thoroughly compromised, so
obviously a cynically mediocre car, that it embarrassed everybody
involved four years before it even debuted.When
rumor began to circulate that the long friendship between mid-1980s
Chrysler potentate Lee Iacocca and Maserati honcho Alejandro DeTomaso
might result in a collaborative automotive project, everybody sat up to
take notice--who would have guessed that one of Italy's most prominent
luxury/performance automakers would deign to produce a car with the
beleaguered American automaker?
It
was, of course, a brilliant idea--why not combine all the frumpy
styling sensibility of a mid-1980s Chrysler with the legendarily spotty
reliability of a Maserati?
The Chrysler-Maserati TC failed to meet even those rock-bottom expectations.
AutoWeek
debuted the car with a cover story in late 1985, with the cover blurb,
"Let's hope it comes in more flavors than this." The opening line of
the article was, "Maybe we expected too much."
Today's Car Disgust is a car that I loathe out of personal experience--the 1993 Saturn SL2.From
its inception, Saturn has enjoyed a mystical halo--a reputation of
kindness, decency, and the ability to inspire cultish devotion among
its customers. Part of it, I think, was the much-hyped Saturn no-haggle
price policy, which in my opinion was breathtaking in its cynicism.
There's actually no need to dicker on the price of any car--just offer
to pay full price, and you'll have a grinning salesperson ready to sign
you up without negotiation. Negotiation is good for the customer because it will get you a lower price.But,
whatever the motivation, Saturn has enjoyed one of the most passionate
and fervently joyful owner bases in autodom. What really confuses me
about this is that until the last year or two, when they increasingly
became rebadged Opels, the cars weren't great.My wife and I purchased a six-year-old '93 Saturn SL2 from some Saturn-loving friends of ours. The idea of owning a Saturn didn't
especially excite me, but we needed a second car and a Saturn seemed a
harmless if boring choice. The SL2 at least had a twin-cam engine and a
five-speed, so I thought it might be at least mildly interesting to
drive.Not so. The interior was strictly
econobox-class, with abrasive, cheap plastics, poor design and layout,
unsupportive seats, and shoddy construction standards. The exterior
design was uninspired and cheap-looking.Things
were vastly worse on the mechanical front--and I can only think that
the problems we had with our Saturn were part of General Motors' highly
successful campaign to drive away a loyal customer base during the late
1980s and early 1990s. It certainly had that effect on me.
My inclusion of the 1974 Chevrolet Chevelle Laguna Type S-3 454 as an object of Car Disgust might seem puzzling. Why would a 454-cubic-inch Chevelle-based muscle car wind up lumped into Car Disgust, especially when the 1970 Chevelle SS454 was one of the very first Car Lusts?Continue reading "1974 Chevrolet Chevelle Laguna Type S-3 454" »
Yugo introduced its unreliable, underpowered, hopelessly antiquated GV hatchback in 1986 to worldwide jeering and derision, a level of scorn that only grew as people became more familiar with the intrinsic problems with an ancient Fiat design assembled with the meticulous disregard and thorough apathy of Yugoslavia's Zastava auto group.
The Ford Fairmont debuted in a mid-1970s America that was
eagerly seeking a rationally sized family sedan. With the fuel crisis and
tightening emissions standards, GM, Ford, and Chrysler were stuck with their
mastodon-sized sedans while customers clamored for something smaller.
The
Ford Maverick, a heavier and less sporting machine than the Ford Pinto
on which it was based (a difficult concept to wrap one's head around),
was a weak and flaccid family sedan, featuring the all-too-familiar
1970s bugaboos of a strangled engine, flexible and weak chassis, and
garish styling.
