What Crap Car Would You Perversely Love To Have?

Aa Chevette Scooter
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Yesterday, and I can’t exactly remember why it happened, we ended up talking about the Chevrolet Chevette, especially the ultra-base model Chevette Scooter. I found myself getting into a real Chevette-hole, trying to find pictures of just how austere and punishing that entry-est level of Chevettes was, with its absent rear seat and armrest-free door cards and rubber mats on the doors, carpet just a glorious, decadent dream. The best place for those pictures, by the way, is this 1977 Car and Driver review. More importantly, though, is this fact: I started to want one of these miserable things.

The Chevette, even in its most lavish versions, was a primitive, cramped hunk of crap, to put it generously. Its RWD drivetrain was last-generation’s tech in an increasingly FWD world, just shrunk down and crammed into a hatchback. The build quality was often on the level of how on-model your average superhero-based popsicle is, and the car really didn’t offer any especially clever or compelling details.

And yet, somehow, this sad little thing has some strange charm I found myself drawn to. I remember carpooling in high school with my friend Emily, listening to Camper Van Beethoven in her white Chevette, and those are good memories! That car wasn’t too bad, right?

So, yeah, somehow I tricked my brain into kind of wanting a Chevette Scooter. There must be crap cars that you, dear, sexy readers, have somehow found yourself desiring, against all better judgment, right? Cars that you never really thought were especially interesting or appealing or, hell, even good, that somehow hijack your desire?

Tell us about them! Spill your guts! We’re here to commiserate, or describe something even worse!

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Mercedes Streeter

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238 thoughts on “What Crap Car Would You Perversely Love To Have?”

  1. I kind of still want a 1977 Pontiac Can Am. these were the full size one year only luxo barges with Trans am hood scoop and a Duck tail spoiler. They were slow, even with a 455 or 400, big poncho V8, all of the ones I have ever seen were white, which is not my favorite color by a long shot, but I still want one with Ox Blood red vinyl interior and I think they could be had with swivel buckets like the Monte Carlo of the same year.

  4. The only silver lining around last years frantic job search was that at one point it looked like I’d have a 160 mile commute, which meant I’d need a frugal car, something that could cope with being angrily thrashed across Englands shittest roads.

    I had an excuse to buy a Citroen (I know, this is supposed to be dependable transport) AX (yes, it’s a rattly shitbox that I’ll be in for at least 5 hours a day, but it gets worse) Diesel (urgh).

    It’s a terrible choice for a long distance commuter, apart from being surprisingly comfortable and capable of 100mpg (UK gallons). But I still really wanted one, despite them being over 30 years old and French.

    Then I got to work from home. No clever light weight (and also lightweight) car with the same windscreen wiper motor as a Lotus Elise. Practical and stupid.

      2. I don’t like diesel as a fuel because the slightest spill makes the roads lethal for motorcycles. Plus it’s a bit smelly.

        I’m fine with the rest of the Diesel driving experience. The two cars I grew up driving were my 2CV and my mum’s Citroen BX 1.9 Diesel, which was like a rocket ship in comparison.

  7. For some reason I miss my ’83 Dodge Aries. I had the very sporty two door version. It was a POS, but it didn’t apologize for simply being “Car.” There were not frills, maybe even negative frills. It was like Chrysler hadn’t got the memo that frills had been invented and could be added to cars. This was just “Car.” I liked the brutal honesty of it, the government issued appliance quality of it all I guess.

  8. I always liked the looks of a Chevy Vega, although I know they are built extremely poorly. They predate me a bit, so I never saw them new, just rusted out. The fact that I grew up in Texas made the rust issue even stranger to me as a child.

    1. Since many of them were squirreled away, the Cosworth variants are usually in good nick and relatively cheap because so few can be seemingly made to function still. I would take a black and gold Cosworth and LS swap it.

      1. The very definition of Get In, Sit Down, Hang the Hell On!
        —there were still a fair few smallblock-swapped Vegas on our local main cruising drag in the 80s, and they were pretty sketchy. I still want a Kammback, tho…

        1. Indeed, I saw one with a 400 SBC that tore the rear end out of the vehicle after one too many launches. they “upgraded” to a Monza, but the underside of a monza was really just a Vega anyway. I think that one had a one wheel peal that might have saved the Copo 10 bolt from immediate detonation.

  9. I’ve always said if I won the lottery I’d have a fleet of 70s-90s “performance” versions of otherwise unloved normal cars. Think Chevy Citation X-11, Dodge Omni GLH, Ford LTD LX, etc. Lots of those are considered “crap” by many people.

    This guy is living my dream and spent a lot of time completely restomodding a car that most people forgot about long ago: https://www.hagerty.com/media/car-profiles/reviving-junkyard-olds-omega/

    1. It would be fun to have a B-O-P and GM version of the Nova, Monza, and Chevette from the mid to late seventies, but really only to see if they were any different really outside of cosmetics.

  10. I unironically think that the first generation Geo Metro is an excellent example of 80s hatchback design, and I very much want to build a straight up SEMA-level Geo Metro 3 door with comically large time attack style box flares.

    Maybe a GR Yaris drivetrain would be in order so it would still be a 3 cylinder?

    1. Who not Dream Big and go for a Geo Metro Turbo?

      I don’t think it was all that much fast, but it had a racy “TURBO” decal on the air inlet….

      Jazzy hubcaps, too.

        1. In Canada (and nowhere else in the world), the turbocharged engine continued to be available in the car that was called Geo Metro here (in my mind it’s the second generation Suzuki Cultus), but only with Chevrolet Sprint or Pontiac Firefly badging, as far as I can tell.

          1. Right, and there was also a Suzuki Swift turbo sold in the US at the same time as the Geo Metro, but my point still stands. There was no car sold as “Geo Metro” with a turbo.

            1. Correct.

              Although there wasn’t a Swift Turbo, either, you might be thinking about the Swift GTi/GT which had a 16-valve 1.3-liter engine with 101hp. I’ve owned two Turbo Sprints but a Swift GT is one of my thousands of Holy Grails…

  12. I do not know if it counts as a crap car but I always wanted an early ’90s Cadillac SLS/STS. Northstar engine issues and transmission woes be damned – I think they still look really slick.

  13. The Pontiac Aztek. There, I said it. Wow…that felt good. After years of denial and suppressing my secret fantasies of living the plastic-fantastic life of early-2000’s era GM shitboxes, I’m finally ready to come out to the world. There is nothing wrong with me, and no amount of time spent locked away in a “conversion camp” will ever change who I am. That’s right world! I’m an Aztek lover, and I’m not afraid to admit it anymore!

    Damn…this website is better than therapy.

    1. Wow. Until today, I thought I was the only one in the world who had a thing for Aztek. Now that I know that there is one (and probably only one) other, my eyes have been opened to a new day.
      Remember everyone, the Aztek is only “ugly” if you’re not driving it like God intended.

    3. Eh, I also secretly lust after a GM in lots of body cladding and polarizing style….OH yes, one day I might even find an early 2000’s Avalanche 2500 with the 8.1 Gas V8

    5. A surprising number of people like them. I’m not one of them, but they were practical vehicles with a kind of iconic inverse snob appeal, like an AMC Pacer.

    6. Denial & suppression? Screw that: fly your freak flag proudly and hold your head high!

      —tho maybe a support group: “Hi, my tag says TOSSABL and I like shitbox beaters!” Can you just imagine the parking lot?
      🙂

  14. Oh, I think mine are pretty well documented at this point. Basically anything having to do with the letters J or K, particularly the fancy models of each.

  16. I’ve always kinda liked the Chevette too, but the pedal box is too cramped for my 6E wide feet.

    For me, I want another Geo Metro. 5-speed hatchback, of course. Several years ago now, somebody sold me a ’98 model (technically a Chevy Metro that year) for next to nothing. I rallycrossed it for two seasons, and ran a Gambler 500-Illinois in it. By the time it drove itself into the junkyard, engine knocking like crazy, and pushing oil back through the fill cap, I still didn’t have $500 into the thing. I might have teared up a bit.

    That car was so much fun. Way more fun than any vehicle with 58 horsepower had any right to be. Lift-off oversteer on loose surfaces was so easily managed, and could be induced with just a tap of the brakes. I miss that car so much.

      1. Uhh…. sure they can if set up right. My stock SVT Focus could do it, and my Mazdaspeed 3 could once I installed an aftermarket rear sway bar. I could easily trigger it on freeway cloverleaf onramps.

        1. So lift off oversteer is when you are at higher rpm and lift off the throttle, causing strong engine braking. Strong braking on the rear wheels during a corner can cause oversteer.

          That’s what we’re talking about about, right? Engine braking on the front wheels won’t make the rear step out, at least not more than regular braking would.

          1. It’s the weight transfer that does it. That little bastard was so front heavy, lifting off on loose surfaces was often enough to induce some oversteer.

            If lifting off didn’t cause oversteer, or if I wanted more, I just needed to tap the brakes a bit to transfer a little more weight.

            Again, I’m only talking about loose surfaces. I rallycrossed the car. I was never going remotely fast enough to do this on pavement.

          2. Nope. Nothing to do with engine braking whatsoever. It’s when you’re going around a corner and lift off the throttle which transfers the weight onto the front tires and causes the rear end to get light, which in turn can cause the rear tires to lose traction and oversteer. In theory you could lift off oversteer even without the transmission in gear.

            1. Okay…… I’ve never experienced something like that, in FWD or RWD cars. I’m having kind of a hard time believing that just lifting off the throttle would create that strong of a weight transfer forwards without actually having any braking. Lifting off the throttle and ceasing acceleration usually just means the car returns to neutral weight distribution, right? Maybe none of my cars are fast enough to make a significant effect when lifting off the throttle, but they’re all faster than a Geo Metro……. I’m kinda confused.

              1. It is absolutely a thing, I assure you. Going around a freeway cloverleaf onramp at a “spirited” pace would only require me to slightly lift off the throttle to get the back end to “drift” slightly. In fact I had to be careful to not accidentally do this in the rain. On FWD cars you typically need a pretty stiff rear suspension to do this.

                Plenty of examples on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vl343kDl04

                1. That’s so weird, I have never once experienced oversteer that seemed to be triggered by lifting off the throttle like that. Triggered by plenty of other things, yes, but not that, and especially not in a FWD car.

                  Just so you know, it’s your fault that I will now be taking corners at crazy speeds and going on and off the throttle.

                  2. Find some smooth gravel, and use the lightest fwd car you can find. My 82 Rabbit would do it in a heartbeat, and my Subaru GLF even more so.
                    Bonus points if you can induce a Scandinavian Flick without using the brakes!

            2. Best example was the Mk1 and 2 VW Rabbit/Scirocco/Golf.* Because of the beam rear axle, if you lift and turn in sharply, the rear tire on the inside of the turn would lift completely off the road, halving the traction and making it rotate beautifully. You could take turns at some truly scary speeds that way.

              *Never tried it in a Jetta, but there’s a lot more weight back there. Not sure it works as well.

    2. I want a Metro, too! Two door hatchback with a stick! I know having AC would suck up approximately half the HP, but I’m not living without it. I’ll just plan my on ramps accordingly.

          1. Fill-ups come more often than you’d think, but that’s because the tank is teeny tiny. I think the most I ever put into it was 8+ gallons. To be fair, I’m not the type to let the needle go way below E loke some people.

    1. Former first-gen Neon owner here. Yep, they were cute, and maybe fun to drive if you had the manual (I had the three-speed auto, and it was definitely NOT fun). However, it was terribly made. And by “terrible” I mean maybe the worst car I’ve ever been in my entire life, and my parents owned both the Chevette and Pontiac LeMans.

      You know how the key that starts the engine and locks your doors is supposed to do both things? Yeah, not my Neon. The main key would start and stop the car in the ignition, but wouldn’t come out. This means I had to carry around a second set of keys to lock and unlock the door.

      While this may seem like a big-time safety issue, mid-90’s Chrysler products were so easy to break in and steal, I was probably better off making it even easier so I could buy a much better car, like the Civic, which I ended up replacing it with.

    2. Had 2, both manula thankfully. Very fun to drive. Mine were pretty durable, for the most part, but mine ate transmissions and head gaskets. Typical Chrysler products.

  18. I knew a guy in high school who, upon getting his license and being asked what kind of car he wanted, told his parents that he wanted a Vette.

    They bought him a Chevette.

    I really want a Subaru XT Turbo. I know they’re not that fast. I know the Cybrid suspension system is made of unobtanium parts. I know it will only break my heart.

    But by God, I wanna walk up to it, flip the spring loaded finishing panel on the door handle, open her up, adjust the column mounted instrument cluster, and drive off into the neon lit future that Mona Lisa Overdrive promised us.

    1. They actually were pretty cool in that goofy ’80s way. Also, the suspension can be changed out to standard . . . well at least it should be slightly easier to find those parts. I think the one my friend had was the regular suspension from an EA82 GL, but that was 30 years ago, so I can’t trust that memory.

  21. Anything that’s underpowered but with a manual transmission, I’m in!

    I’ve secretly always like the boxy old Ford Festiva. That thing with some retro-styled graphics and an AutoZone pod filter? That would a (glacially slow) riot! You just have to lean into the absurdity of it.

    1. I’m not sure the Panda 4×4 is a crap car. It has the reputation of being more capable than it should be. I drove a rental Panda in Italy a few years ago and loved it.

  23. The Chevrolet Citation X-11. A terrible car all the way around, but I’m kinda obsessed with it.

    The King Cobra is also an inexplainable love of mine.

    1. My old man had one of these – the two tone gold/lighter gold combo – with the dreaded GM diesel. Drove it a couple times and it was the exact antithesis of my Mustang. Frankly…I dug it.

    1. I ALMOST ended up with a Mustang II. I see why they’re maligned but the one I looked at had a slightly warmed over V8 and the stick shift.. it really wasn’t bad!

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