You know what I never liked? I mean, other than Circus Peanuts and when the lobsters in the tank at the grocery store lure you close and then seize your genitals in a cruel pinch, having fooled you with a slit rubber band that wasn’t really restricting their claw, as they lock their weird little black eye nubbins with your eyes and they know they have you beat. Other than that, what I never liked are stupid, hacky lists of “worst cars.” I hate these dumb, lazy lists. They almost always re-hash the same cars, most of which don’t even deserve to be on those lists, anyway. So what I’d like to do today is to take what seem to be the ten cars that most commonly appear on the list, give each of them a little defense, and then let’s vote to see which one deserves to be on those lists the least. The best worst car, if you will. And, oh, you will.
First, I suppose we need our list. I’ve been reading over as many of these dumbass worst car posts as I’ve been able to stomach, and I think the ten most common recurring characters are the following cars: Yugo, Edsel, Pontiac Aztek, Ford Pinto, Chevrolet Corvair, AMC Gremlin, Reliant Robin, Chevrolet Vega, Austin Allegro, and the Trabant. In my loud, messy opinion, I don’t think any of these cars deserve the amount of scorn they tend to get, but for now, we’re just going to pick one. We’re going to pick the one that deserves to be on these dumb lists the least, and from there we’ll contact our crack team of D.C. lobbyists to push through legislation to ensure this sort of injustice never happens again to whatever car comes out the winner. So let’s get to it.
Yugo
As you may guess, as a Yugo owner myself, I have never felt the Yugo earned all the derision it gets as an almost guaranteed member of these worst car lists. I even made a whole video about it, as you can see right above, when I worked for the Old Site. Here’s the thing about the Yugo: it’s fine. It’s not even a particularly unusual or radical design; it’s a FWD, transverse-engined hatchback that follows the template of so very many other cars of its era. Tons of them have been sold all over Eastern Europe especially, and they’ve proven to be useful workhorses for decades.
Sure, the build quality wasn’t great, but remember, these things were dirt cheap. Under $4,000 for a new one when they came out! They made Hyundai Excels look like the kind of lavish expenditure you’d expect from a sultan. Nobody paid any money to fix or maintain these things because why would they? You could buy distressed designer jeans for more than a new Yugo, even back in the day, so who would put money into them?
The truth is, the cars worked. They were decent transportation and did the job they were designed to do, cheaply. Dirty deeds of transportation, done dirt cheap. I respect that.
Edsel
For a very long time, the name “Edsel” was synonymous with automotive failure, perhaps even failure in general. And, sure, the Edsel was sort of a flop for Ford, but was the car really all that bad? No. It just wasn’t. The Edsel was a failure of marketing over-hype and misreading of markets more than anything else. It just wasn’t appreciatively worse than anything else being built by the Big Three in the late 1950s.
Sure, some people thought that the horse collar grille resembled a vulva, a bit, but it’s not like 1957 American car styling was any less ridiculous than what the Edsel was.
I mean, come on, look at this Chrysler. It looks like those two lovers are seconds away from making out over the carcass of a beached whale. The Edsel just got a bad rap, and never shook it. That’s it.
Pontiac Aztek
You know what the Aztek’s biggest crime was? It was ahead of its time. Okay, it was kinda ugly, too, but it’s not that ugly. Is an Infiniti QX really so much prettier? No, it isn’t. It also looks like some kind of cybernetic warthog, and yet it doesn’t show up on these lists anywhere remotely as close as the Aztek, which is MVP of these bullshit things. That’s because the QX had the good sense to start to exist in an era when we all somehow decided we wanted huge-ass SUV things, and the Aztek, which hit the scene in 2000, was just a bit early.
The Aztek trapped a huge amount of usable room inside that kinda ungainly body, a body that featured a fastback design that’s also now gaining in popularity. And that fastback even had an optional tent attachment, something that would fit well with modern overlanding and car-camping trends.
People used the crap out of these things, just fine. Like these others, it’s just not that bad. If you can’t stomach looking at an Aztek, maybe it’s time to grow up already, and remember how many other important and good things in life can be ugly, too: like a fancy smoked leg of ham or a scrotum or a waste treatment plant.
Ford Pinto
Okay, this one is a little trickier, because the car did have a pretty significant Achilles’ heel, one that’s a big deal if you’re into Tort law. We can’t ignore that. But, at the same time, the Pinto’s engine, also called the Lima engine or the Pinto OHC engine in Europe, went on to be a really reliable and potent little engine, ending up in Escorts and Transit vans and Capris and Merkurs and even in the TVR Tasmin!
Having a great engine at its core has to be worth something, and I think what it is worth is for the Pinto to not be thrown onto these stupid worst car lists.
Chevrolet Corvair
Yes, I know about the damn book. I know that most Americans didn’t know how to deal with an oversteering car. I know all that. I also know that the Corvair was one of the most innovative and bold cars GM ever made, and I know they’re a blast to drive, too. Plus, the Corvair may have been one of the most influential American cars ever, design-wise. Look at this, which I’ve showed you before:
So, no. No way is the Corvair the worst of anything.
AMC Gremlin
The Gremlin is one of those cars that you just can’t judge without the proper context. Because the context is the entire point of the car, and in context, it not only isn’t the worst, it’s brilliant. Here’s the context: perpetually-broke AMC needed a subcompact to fight the VW Beetle and all the new Japanese imports, desperately. They had no money to develop something new, from scratch.
What they did have was designer Dick Teague, an absolute master of making something out of almost nothing. Teague chopped the back off the AMC Hornet and replaced it with a little Kammback and glass hatch, and, boom, the Gremlin was born. All of a sudden and with pretty minimal development costs, AMC had the smallest, cheapest American car, and something that could actually compete with the imports.
Sure, it wasn’t as efficient with either gas or space as its competition, but it had a distinctive look and a lot of charm. Given the context, this thing is a triumph.
Reliant Robin
Yes, it’s the butt of so many jokes, and yes, it was hilarious when Jeremy Clarkson tumbled one around like it was possessed by Mary Lou Retton’s dybbuk, but the truth is that these little three-wheelers gave weatherproof, useful mobility to Imperial tons of British people who would otherwise be stuck on motorbikes. Plus, it’s worth noting that the little Reliant kept on going after all of those rolling-overs.
These things understood the assignment.
Chevrolet Vega
Okay, maybe this one is the trickiest one on this list, because these things really did have their share of quality problems when they came out, but even with that in mind, it’s hard to call a car that sold over two million examples and looked as pretty as this one a complete failure. Because it just wasn’t.
Chevy sold as many of these as they could build during the fuel crisis era, and they were actually pretty fun to drive. There was even the Cosworth Vega hot version, which is still desirable to enthusiasts today.
Austin Allegro
Okay, this one shows up on plenty of lists, but, not being from the UK, I don’t have much experience with the car. So, I found someone who did, our own cranky Brit, Adrian Clarke:
The Austin Allegro. A car that epitomized everything shit about the British motoring industry in the late sixties and early seventies. Lovingly smashed together by strike happy workers in between labor disputes, the Allegros failure was more of BL management decision making than the car itself. Badly built and under developed, the car itself was pretty sound and really gets an unfair rap. It was probably a bit too far ahead of its time for the market, with interconnected Hydragas suspension similar to a Citroen and on the bigger engine versions an OHC set up in 1969. The shape wasn’t quite what was promised in Harris Mann’s original sketches, but it was a very modern looking thing for the era.
I guess that’s not really glowing praise, but it’s also not a total indictment, either. I’ll take it.
Trabant
The Trabant is another car that absolutely needs to be judged in context. Because, in context, the Trabant is an absolute miracle. The East German government wanted a peoples’ car, but they seemed almost perversely unwilling to give their engineers and factories the resources needed to really pull off such a monumental task. And yet, somehow, VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau managed to find a path, using limited resources and clever engineering, to get almost four million Trabants out there, getting people on wheels and moving.
No steel for bodies, or even fiberglass? That’s fine, because the Trabant engineers figured out how to turn old Soviet underpants into body panels. Can’t afford a fuel pump? Let gravity do the work! Government won’t approve an update to the car? Then do so much work in secret that when they get shown what you’ve done, they have to approve it. The Trabant was a car built in spite of everything, with minimal support and even outright obstacles and hostility thrown in its path, all the time. And yet, somehow, it existed, it worked, it thrived.
The Trabant doesn’t deserve to be on these lists, but you know what? I bet it doesn’t care, either, because it’s seen so much worse.
Okay! I’ve made my cases! Time to vote! Which of these unfairly treated automotive icons is most deserving of a break?
It’s Time To Stop Sharing That Meme With All The White SUVs Because It’s Wrong And Stupid
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Voted Aztek, but my dad had a Corvair, and loved it. I think he may have had more than one. And, iirc, when he was in college, he and a buddy took one (probably crashed), chopped it and lowered it (the CG) so much he said it would roll up in the other direction around turns, and was super fun.
Hey Terry, say hi to Paula!
Edsel! Knew what I was gonna pick after seeing headline…BEAUTIFUL cars (besides grill & wasn’t that bad), also part of it was the recession in 1957 which had nothing to do with car
Voted Aztek, wondering if it might get more respect if not for the concept car, which set everyone’s expectations so high, like the Trans Sport in before times.
My second choice was Corvair, mainly because of The Queen’s Gambit, which knocked my socks cleanly off with Jolene’s.
The other problem with these lazy lists is that they’re comparing cars from different eras and judging them all by today’s standards.
OMG this so-called sports car hasn’t even got front brakes, and you have to hand-crank the engine. Stutz Bearcat WURST CAR EVAH!
I just want to consider the 3 American subcompacts on this list.
I actually voted Gremlin. Since you want to take every other car in context, so must the Gremlin be. And the context for the Gremlin is that AMC was broke (as always). They did what they could with the Hornet to make it into a subcompact. It was heavy though, so it needed an I-6 to move, but the I-6 itself was so heavy that it threw off the balance and therefore the handling. When it got the I-4 later in the run, it really was a decent car.
I’m lumping together Vega and Pinto as the worst of the worst for the exact opposite reason as the Gremlin was best. Ford and Chevrolet had plenty of money with which to develop decent subcompact cars, but they JUST CHOSE NOT TO. Management *hated* the idea that the market forced them into building a cheap small car, so they acted like bratty toddlers and totally half-assed it. Most of what I hate about both of them is they went for some sort of “sporty” design, instead of a practical one. Economy cars are for practical people. Both cars came as base models with stupid, useless, tiny trunks. They never bothered to try to build a sedan, and even the wagons only had two/three doors. Yes, both of them had a few redeeming qualities, but both were totally unfit for what the design brief should have been.
It wasn’t that it ever needed a 6, it was that was the only thing AMC had.
Always seemed so weird to me that it took American Motors until the 1980s before they figured out they could chop 2 cylinders off the straight 6 and make a cheap 4 off the same rolling, in the meantime, they spent the ’70s license building an underpowered Volkswagen/Audi 4 at a high royalty fee, dicking around with rotories that went nowhere, and buying Iron Dukes from GM at a markup. One of those slap your head things, they did it eventually, but could have done it 15 years earlier and saved a lot of trouble
*tooling, not rolling
Considering how slow a six-cylinder AMC is, the VW-engined ones must have been impossibly awful. Like a large man with a weak heart and a stomach full of Arby’s.
I suggest we figure out the actual worst cars in existence. I bet a ton of fwd cvt cuv/SUVs with planned obsolescence will make the top of our lists and you won’t even see a single car from others “worst” lists on there.
In 1971 my parents bought a Ford Pinto. I was mortified and wanted nothing to do with it. Turns out it was actually fun to drive. The rack and pinion steering was wonderful and the four speed kept it on the tepid. Years later I keep reading about having fun driving a slow car fast. Surprisingly flingable.
Most of these probably deserve a break, for the reasons mentioned. Hard for me to vote, though, as I have no personal experience with most of them. I did ride around in a Pinto a lot that belonged to a good friend of mine in college and even survived a really scary accident in it. It seemed fine and he liked it, even if we did give him no end of crap for driving it. I also owned a ’72 Capri with the 2 liter Pinto engine in it and it was freakin’ great. I guess the Pinto has to get my vote.
I also have indirect experience with the Corvair. My dad owned one when I was really little, and it’s the first car I remember riding in. My dad maintains to this day that it was the worst piece of shit he ever owned. The thing was continually falling apart, so I can’t vote for it for reasons that have nothing to do with Ralph Nader.
I still think the Aztek was especially ugly. I’m sure it was a decent car otherwise, but I feel that precisely because it *was* ahead of its time, the designers got somewhat lost. There was no sense of what “that kind of car” was meant to look like, so they just threw a bunch of ideas together. It’s incoherent.
It was ugly at the time, but by 2023 standards it’s downright handsome.
No it isn’t, unless you’re comparing it to a modern BMW.
Jason i wonder what criteria you would use to judge a car as bad or worst? If you excuse underfunded and poorly built failing in all metrics. If over hyped, over priced, over chromed to the point 90% of the market think its hideous what does qualify?
That Infiniti you linked in the Aztec paragraph. I can never remember Infiniti’s alphabet soup names for more than about 12 seconds. Anyway, I’ve always marveled at how it’s the first car I’ve ever seen that has fat rolls. Guess it’s fitting it’s built predominantly for the US market. But one of those things in beige looks like My 600lb Life on wheels.
No hate for Mondial 8?! I guess it’s just the sportscar pariah. Maybe we’ll get a follow-up sporty be/wo list.
You’re on thin fucking ice, my pedigree chum. Thin fucking ice.
Word, the Mondial is one of my fav Ferraris (and the 412…). Sadly, even if the hoi polloi keeps hating on it, it will never be within reach for me.
The bad rap comes from the original C&D road test (where they just hated it for not being manly enough) and MT where they had trouble with the shifter meaning it got a lousy 0-60 time. Agreed the original 8 was probably a bit marginal on power (but still quick) but from the QV on (which I have) they’re fine. Not road burners but 240bhp in a 1400kg car and it’s quite short geared. It’s essentially the same car as a 308/328 with less familiar styling and +2 rear seats (or additional padded luggage space).
I adore mine and it gets loads of attention. Plus pop up headlights! And I’d love to try a 412 manual.
Went with the Corvair for its design flexibility (vans, pickups, station wagons, coupes, sedans and ragtops), innovation (for a contemporary US car – air-cooled, rear-engine, turbocharging, rampside bed) and sheer sexiness (Monza Spyder). It lasted a solid decade in production and only improved. Pintos and Azteks could easily have been my choice, too. I even like the early Vega and Gremlin, though – for safety’s sake – I don’t think the terms Vega and Gremlin should routinely appear in the same sentence. In the end, too many good Corvair memories to vote for the others.
Surely it has to be the trabant, for providing cheap transport for 4m eastern bloc families, whilst being hamstrung by lack of resources and soviet bureaucracy. That’s a hell of a legacy.
The Allegro was introduced in 1973. It did, however, use a 1969 engine (BMC E-Series) that came out in the 1969 Maxi.
The Allegro was derided by the public in its time as a proxy of getting at the whole BL debacle, management and workers. As a car it wasn’t too bad, especially considering it was developed with minimal spend, and it had quite a nicely designed cabin for the day. Even the “square” steering wheel wasn’t a killer as non-circular wheels aren’t unkown. It’s biggest problem was that its predecessor, the ADO16 1100/1300 (optimistically the Austin America when sold in the USA) was, in its day, so good and so loved (despite having a much worse build quality) that the Allegro almost took on the role of young step-mother.
Rehabilitate the Allegro!
Hey, we’re doing what we can here:
http://www.allegroclubint.org.uk/
Mine’s a later Allegro 3 with an A-Series engine and a round steering wheel, though.
Yeah got my dates crossed up there. The engine was ‘69, the car was ‘73. But I was under the gun a bit. Still witchcraft for the time though.
One of my absolute favorite designs ever is the Ogle SX1000. I don’t have any proof, but aside from the front fascia the Allegro is just an Ogle turned into a family car.
It wouldn’t surprise me, they are very similar.
It was a tie between the Yugo and the Trabant so I took into consideration the fact that the Trabant used extremely dirty two-stroke engines (though in context such a decision is understandable in light of how power & fuel efficiency were priorities) and voted for the Yugo with its cleaner four-stroke engine as the least worst. It seems like most Yugos other than the ones sold in the US used pushrod OHV engines whereas US-spec Yugos used OHC engines with timing belts which required being changed every 40,000 miles with the unfortunate result of many Americans simply disposing of their Yugos due to those unusually short-lived timing belts breaking & destroying the engines. Indeed, it’s not all that unusual to see pushrod Yugos still running in other parts of the world, as noted by David Tracy on the Old Site when he was traveling through Europe in his diesel Chrysler Voyager.
“It was a tie between the Yugo and the Trabant so I took into consideration the fact that the Trabant used extremely dirty two-stroke engines”
Is that so much worse than the two stroke Saab 96 or DKW?
The Aztek has aged amazingly well. I drive past a yellow one everyday on my way to work and I can’t help imagine what it would look like cleaned up with an aggressive tire in a slightly larger size.
Looks like I don’t even need to imagine…someone has rendered one for me!
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/pontiac-aztek-rendered-as-overland-monster-with-beefy-tires-142267.html#agal_0
Maybe it’s not the most deserving option on the list but I had to vote for the Gremlin because my Grandmom had one. A blue one with the white stripe.
I mean, most of the criticism of the Gremlin is just “it looks weird”, which is, OK, how does that make it bad at performing the functional job of being a car? Its domestic competition was the Plymouth Cricket, Ford Pinto, and Chevy Vega, against those, the Gremlin was a masterpiece of durability, reliability, and build quality. Really the only domestic subcompact that wasn’t totally guaranteed to be a complete disaster to own right out of the showroom, hell, they used the engine in Jeep Wranglers up to 2006.
Also, it was the same outside length as a Beetle and about the same price, but, for a customer base that was starting to grow weary of the 1930s design, was, obviously a more modern and more substantial car, with a 6-cylinder, available automatic, plush front seats, etc
I went the Edsel as it was a GOOD car, in fact it was a REALLY good car (for the time) it was badly marketed and that grille was a bit on the nose for the time I’m sure, but its nothing on today’s cars.
The Aztek was ahead of its time, but its still rubbish, it was built by GM in the 00’s, I have a coffee cup on my desk that is made out of better plastic than the Aztek’s interior. It was also ugly. Worst car of all time? No, not by a long shot, crap sure, worst? Not even close.
Corvair I lump in the same boat as the Edsel, it got bad press. Its good.
Vega, badly built, but kinda cool, so no.
Ford Pinto – good engine and thats it. Its ugly, its dangerous, it wasn’t a particularly small, small car for the time. It deserves to be on the list.
Trabant – yes its terrible! BUT when viewed in context, its a miracle it was available in the first place, so no, not on the list.
Yugo… I’m conflicted, because its not really that bad. If you look at say my old ’88 Mazda 323, it had just as much wiring dangling from behind the dashboard, it had NO luxury appointments at all and I’m certain it cost a lot more than a Yugo, it’s not like the makers of the Yugo intended it to be amazing, so no, not on the list.
Gremlin? No! Its fantastic. Sure it sucks at being a small car, but that its only downside. Otherwise I think it looks great!
Robin, should be on the list, it wasn’t that liberating, it wasn’t well made, it didn’t look good and its more of an indictment on the UK’s driver licensing system than anything else, however I don’t think cheap cars should qualify.
Allegro – mmmm worst sure, the worst oohh noo… its good buddy the Marina was far far worse.
I have some criteria to be considered worst car. It must be from a main stream manufacturer, for example a Hyundai from 1984 doesn’t count, Hyundai had just learned how to make cars, of course they are bad. However a Hyundai from 2004 does count. The point being a main stream automaker ought to have known better. Budget cars don’t count, they are bad by necessity, a Mirage for example is bad, but its so cheap that of course its bad. Conversely high end cars don’t count, if you have that sort of money, you can figure it out for yourself.
So with no further ado this is what the list should be:
1. Nissan Tiida (Versa) its ugly, its too small and Nissan should have known better, I know that in the US it was cheap, everywhere else it was priced to compete with the Corolla and it was just terrible. So so so terrible. Especially given that it replaced the actually quite ok Pulsar/Almera.
2. Morris Marina – I’m just gunna leave it there
3. Holden/Chevrolet/Opel Captiva/Antara and whatever other name it was called, both versions the small one and bigger one. Rubbish, I had two as company cars and they were just awful awful awful, totally unreliable (my bosses ones engine exploded one month after the warranty expired), my colleagues one was always in for DPF repairs, my seat collapsed after a month
4. Daewoo Tosca/Holden Epica – someone called the design team and went “please give us a generic car, we need it to compete with the Mondeo and Camry, please ensure that it has a small straight 6 to compete with the four cylinder competition, just make it have less power so it doesn’t use too much fuel, but not too efficient. Yes front wheel drive, we don’t want it to drive well”
5. Austin Allegro – just cos it deserves to be here
6. Ford Capri – the Australian one. 1, its ugly, 2, it was unnecessary, 3, the MX-5 was launched at the same time!!!! What the hell were you thinking?
7. Chrysler PT Cruiser. It looked cool with its retro styling, but that was it. Badly made, awful dynamics. At least it was cheap.
8. Holden Camira 1st gen, this was Holden’s J-body car. It was so badly built that in New Zealand at least we stopped buying them and instead imported the Isuzu Aska and slapped a Holden badge on it and called it the Camira until the 2nd gen came out. How much of a disaster can you have when your ONLY overseas operation refuses to sell it?
9. Vauxhall Signum, lets make a Vectra with a smaller boot and one less seat. Make it look like an Astra and less practical than the Astra – OH and more expensive than the already quite awful Vectra. Good work Vauxhall. Good work.
10. Citroen C3 Pluriel, why oh why? Citroen gets a long rope on which to hang itself, it makes some weird cars, but the Pluriel uh uh thats stretching it too far. It was ugly, slow, badly made, badly thought out and poorly executed.
You madman, you’ve done it. You’ve compiled the most honest list of terrible cars I’ve ever seen.
Thank you for your recognition of the absolute shitheaps sold here in Aus. Man, we really had a lot over the years but thankfully most of the world doesn’t believe Australia is real, so we don’t get the publicity. The Captiva and Camira were some of the worst things you ever be legally allowed onto tarmac.
Your list needs more Daewoo! Maybe some SsangYong too. Lanos, Leganza, Stavic, Musso….not good to look at or drive.
I think the Versa gets a pass since for a long time that was the cheapest car you could get in America. Overseas sure, maybe it’s overpriced crap, but here in the states it’s a dirt cheap car that gets the job done, is reasonably reliable, and totally something you can live with.
The Ford Pinto, in addition to having a good engine, also happens to have surprisingly good handling. It shares its platform with the Mustang II, which is the gold standard of front suspension swaps for street rods. There was also a wagon variant of the Pinto that didn’t have the exploding gas tank problem, and there was a panel van variant of the Pinto wagon which was available from the factory with a porthole window in the side! Styling wise, they were no better or worse than anything else at the the time either. The exploding thing was a notable problem, but otherwise the Pinto was a fine car, and the problem did eventually get fixed.
The Reliant Robin is cute, you shut your mouth about this “ugly” business! And the flipping issue is exaggerated for laughs by everyone. In most situations the Robin is safe enough. Plenty of people made do with them and even loved them.
Otherwise I agree with your list!
The Capri was a fantastic idea while in planning, and would have been a massive hit if those lazy Aussies hadn’t taken the better part of a decade to develop it. Once the MX-5 was already out, they didn’t stand a chance.
It’s really funny that they both use the Mazda’s B6 engine, and a number of parts from the 323.
I got all nostalgic and bought an ‘86 Hyundai Pony in 2016, which was remembered in Canada as an absolutely horrible little car. They didn’t run in the rain, they were using late 60s technology, they rusted out in a heartbeat, etc, etc. They were the second cheapest car you could buy here, next to the Lada.
Here’s the thing, with $25 worth of decent quality tune-up parts (and no winter driving), it’s been wonderful. I’ve put a ton of mileage on it, it gets close to 50 mpg, it’s comfortable as hell and was styled by Giugiaro. And being RWD, it’s actually sort of fun.
I voted Corvair because I daily drive an early model and it is spacious, comfortable, and very reliable. With good, properly inflated tires and a 4 speed manual, it is quite fun to drive. It does have a couple of flaws that needed fixing:
– The oil leaks. These are not fatal but really really annoying. With modern gasket materials, the situation is much better but even so, they will eventually come back. Over 10 years, Chevy never found a solution to keep oil inside an aluminum container.
– The heater. It isn’t very good and then after the oil leaks start, it will suffocate you in oil fumes. The first cars came with a gasoline heater that solved this problem but the bean counters and marketeers discontinued it.
I always felt that style-wise, the second-gen Corvair coupe was at least the equal of the BMW E9. Trim, pert, balanced, & beautiful.
I am disappointed that the Lexus SC wasn’t considered. Ever since the Top Gear crew named it the worst car in the world in their special of the same title, car enthusiasts have been parroting that assessment, and I was prepared to defend the car.
While I haven’t driven one, the same is true for all of the cars above, so I’m just as entitled to express an uninformed opinion about it.
Clearly it’s not a racecar, and it’s not practical for hauling more than one passenger or a small grocery run, but it looks comfortable, has reasonable reliability ratings, and has a cool trick roof. Is it really even worse than its competitors, the boring Toyota Camry Solara or the dreadful Chrysler Sebring/200, let alone worse than everything else ever made?
I did suggest it.
“Top Gear crew named it the worst car in the world”… all things considered.
I think they did a great job because I have driven one and the car just doesn’t do anything good. It’s slow, noisy, harsh, uncomfortableish, inefficient, and for the time pretty low tech.
But the “worst car in the world”??? Lots of cars are “slow, noisy, harsh, uncomfortableish, inefficient, and low-tech”, and there are many that are slower, noisier, harsher, more uncomfortableish, less efficient, and lower-tech.
I’m not arguing that the Lexus is the best car in the world. I’m not even suggesting that it’s a “good” car, but it was never in the “worst cars” discussion prior to that TG special, and then all of a sudden a bunch of people started hating on it just because the British men said so.
The only low tech was that famous cassette deck, but it was a sad, also-ran, half-baked attempt at competing with the Mercedes SL. We would have forgotten about it entirely if it wasn’t so bulbous and goofy looking.
How people are not voting for the only car that can’t stay on it’s wheels is beyond me.
Reliant Robin.
Because it does stay on it’s wheels, unless you have it modified by a BBC film crew and special effects people
The Edsel wasn’t a bad car – it’s a Ford (actually probably more accurately a Mercury) under the skin, so it is just as good as any ’58-’60 Ford product, which is to say Pretty Good. The styling just went over like a lead balloon, and it came around just in time for the automakers to figure out that they were trying to slice the market into too-thin slices with the ‘companion makes’ like DeSoto wedged between Dodge and Chrysler, etc. Why Ford and Chrysler tried this in the 50’s after GM tried and failed with the Chrysler/LaSalle, Oakland/Pontiac, Oldsmobile/Viking, Buick/Marquette pairs in the 30’s and 40’s I don’t actually know.
Just because the creation of the Edsel brand was a bad business decision doesn’t make an Edsel a bad car.
The Edsel is also an object lesson in the risks of “analysis paralysis”. Ford dithered for a decade on, not whether, but *how* to field another medium-priced car. Every detail was “scientifically” analyzed and focus-group tested according to the latest midcentury methods. While they were doing that, they missed record sales year after record sales year and finally came to market in time for the first recession in 20 years. If there had been a 1955 Edsel, there would’ve been a 2009 Edsel (after that, all bets are off).
As an aside, mid-2000s FoMoCo pretty much was where 1955 FoMoCo wanted to be, with Mazda for the “E-F” demographic who wanted something a little bit nicer than a regular Ford, Volvo for the “E-M” one who wanted essentially a luxury car but not really a flashy one, and the Mercury Grand Marquis for the Edsel target *cohort* who had been the young up-and-comers of the mid ’50s and 50 years later were the recently-retired. Too bad the British marques made PAG a failing money pit.
When I was in college in the late 80’s, we did a week on the Edsel and how it suffered from relying solely on focus groups for design. Ford built exactly what everybody said they wanted, but it was such a collection of different things that the tradeoffs turned everyone away. We even had a former Ford marketing person give a lecture later that year. What an interesting take on the auto industry.
I always thought that we needed a brand to bridge the chasm between Ford and Mercury. I think they kind of did that in Canada, with their Rideaus and Montcalms and god-knows-whats.
I just wanna know how many people have actually had real riding and driving time in a Pontiac Aztek. I do. It was a perfectly acceptable car. People hated how it looked but that doesn’t mean it’s BAD at being a car.
My Source: My parents had one, my dad is the cheapest man alive and got a deal he couldn’t say no to. He didn’t give a fuck. It left their ownership with 200K miles and if not for the rubber cladding, would have looked it a lot worse due to rust. It wasn’t perfect. No car is. But it was pretty fucking reliable and cheap to operate and that’s all my dad wanted. We drove that thing to Florida and back from Chicago numerous times with zero issues.
If I remember correctly it needed some AC work early. It broke a spring once in the cold. Had the GM 3.4 Intake Gasket Leak replaced. Outside of that nothing major. It’s most redeeming quality was its stereo system. In the higher trim levels you got a pretty good Pioneer branded stereo.
I’ve driven and ridden in this thing extensively. It’s a decent vehicle to go about an average day to day life in. It’s just ugly as all hell. Now, what IS a bad vehicle to ride and drive in are the 2012-2015 Honda CR-Vs. Gross. I was overjoyed to get rid of that thing a few years ago.
People tend to forget that the more conservatively styled platform mate of the Aztek, the Buick Rendezvous, was actually fairly well received and sold well for quite some time. Those cars were basically AWD GM minivans under the skin, so uninspiring but not bad cars. Another car that was a styling failure, but not ‘bad’ in the way some of the others on this list (looking at you, Vega) were genuinely failure prone piles of garbage.
The Rendezvous also had third-row seating. Not as accommodating as the minivans, but useful for other people’s children (not necessarily literally, but so yours could each bring a friend). Without it the Aztek was left struggling to justify its’ size and cost over the Vibe whose styling it looked like a rough draft of.
Thank you for your perspective. It’s rational and lines up with my experience too. The Aztek was on the better side of just fine. Way too many people blindly shitting on it.