The 50 Worst Cars of All Time # 25-50

The 50 Worst Cars of All Time # 25-29

1975 Morgan Plus 8 Propane





The venerable, and I do mean venerable, Morgan Motor Company of Malvern, Warwickshire, has been making cars the old fashioned way since it was radical and high-tech. With wing fenders, wooden-frame bodies, and sliding-pillar front suspensions, Morgans are mailed to us direct from 1935. But in the early 1970s, new U.S. emissions and safety requirements caused Morgan to pull out of the market. To the rescue came Bill Fink, a San Francisco Moggie-phile and dealer who managed to get the car certified by running its Buick/Rover V8 on propane. For years, small numbers of these bouncy little roadsters had tanks of liquid propane hung perilously behind the rear bumper. And people gave the Pinto grief?



1975 Triumph TR7





"The shape of things to come" quickly became the shape that came and went, in a great cloud of "good riddance." The doorstop-shaped TR7, and its rare V8-powered sibling TR8, were the last Triumphs sold in America and among the last the company made before it folded its tents in 1984. The trouble was not necessarily the engineering, or even the peculiar design, which looked fit to split firewood. It was that the cars were so horribly made. The thing had more short-circuits than a mixing board with a bong spilled on it. The carburetors had to be constantly romanced to stay in balance. Timing chains snapped. Oil and water pumps refused to pump, only suck. The sunroof leaked and the concealable headlights refused to open their peepers. One owner reports that the rear axle fell out. How does that happen? It was as if British Leyland's workers were trying to sabotage the country's balance of trade. Oh yeah.



1975 Trabant






This is the car that gave Communism a bad name. Powered by a two-stroke pollution generator that maxed out at an ear-splitting 18 hp, the Trabant was a hollow lie of a car constructed of recycled worthlessness (actually, the body was made of a fiberglass-like Duroplast, reinforced with recycled fibers like cotton and wood). A virtual antique when it was designed in the 1950s, the Trabant was East Germany's answer to the VW Beetle — a "people's car," as if the people didn't have enough to worry about. Trabants smoked like an Iraqi oil fire, when they ran at all, and often lacked even the most basic of amenities, like brake lights or turn signals. But history has been kind to the Trabi. Thousands of East Germans drove their Trabants over the border when the Wall fell, which made it a kind of automotive liberator. Once across the border, the none-too-sentimental Ostdeutschlanders immediately abandoned their cars. Ich bin Junk!



1976 Aston Martin Lagonda





In the disco days of the 1970s, even supercars were cocaine-thin. Meet the Aston Martin Lagonda, a four-door exotic that lived on dinner mints and hot water. Designed by AM penman William Towns — undoubtedly wearing a very large cravat at the time — the Lagonda was as beautiful a car as ever resembled a pencil box. Mechanically, it was a catastrophe, Aston Martin's Dunkirk. The company decided to build the Lagonda with a brace of cutting-edge, computer-driven electronics and cathode-ray displays, which would have been very impressive if any of them ever worked. NASA couldn't have built this car, much less the heirs to Joseph Lucas, the British electronics' famous "Prince of Darkness." Still, I'd kill to have one of these cars, and the O-scope and multi-meter to fix it.



1976 Chevy Chevette






I include the Chevy Chevette only to note that even the most unloved and unlovely cars have their partisans. There are Pacer fan clubs and Yugo fan clubs, and if there is a Chevette fan club, let it begin with me. My girlfriend in college had a diaper-brown Chevette three-door hatchback, as bare bones as an exhibit at the natural history museum. It had a 51-hp engine and a four-speed manual transmission and not much else. It was loud and it was tinny, but we drove that car across the country three times and it never failed us. Once I got a 85-mph speeding ticket in it. That was on the down slope of the Appalachians, but still. The last time I saw that Chevette it was still plugging along. Vaya con Dios, old paint.

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1978 AMC Pacer





A recent poll by Hagerty Insurance asked enthusiasts to name the worst car design of all time: This glassine bolus of dorkiness is the pathetic winner. Remember Richard Teague, designer of the amputated Gremlin? Him again. But, come on, the Pacer, it's Wayne and Garth's Mirth-mobile, for Heaven's sake! You can't hate on that. Indeed, my family owned a dark green Pacer with that Navajo-blanket upholstery, and it worked just fine until I drove it through a ditch, after which the heavy doors hung off their hinges like beagle ears. What I remember of this car is that, in the summer, it was like being an ant under a mean kid's magnifying glass. The air conditioning was non-existent. You could actually see fumes of volatile petrochemicals out-gassing from the plastic dash. Wayne, I feel woozy.



1980 Corvette 305 "California"





Federal emissions requirements of the 1970s took a big neutering knife to American muscle cars, and no car bled more than the Corvette. The worst of it came in California — dang hippy librels! — where stricter state regs required that the barely adequate 350 cu.-in. smallblock in the 1980 Corvette be replaced with a wholly inadequate 305 V8, putting out 180 hp of pure shame. On top of that, the "California" Corvette sucked its pitiful rivulet of horsepower through the straw of a torque-sapping three-speed automatic transmission. That gave the Corvette — the very totem of hairy-chest, disco machismo — acceleration comparable to a very hot Vespa. These were dark days indeed


1980 Ferrari Mondial 8





Even the legendary Italian sports car company whiffs once in a while, and the first Ferrari Mondial was a big red disaster. Based on the 308 chassis, this large and relatively heavy 2+2 coupe had a mere 214 hp on tap from its transversely mounted, mid-engine V8, and its transistor-based electronics had more bugs than a Barstow motel rollaway. Eventually, every single system would fail, not infrequently accompanied by the smell of burning wires. The factory-authorized service, meanwhile, was more like factory-authorized extortion. It hasn't helped the Mondial reputation that it was one of the "cheap" Ferraris, within reach of a reasonably successful orthodontist. Mondials eventually got much better. They could hardly get worse.



1981 Cadillac Fleetwood V-8-6-4






These days, cylinder deactivation, or variable displacement, is relatively common — the 2008 Honda Accord V6 has it, for instance. And it's a beautiful idea. When the engine is running at light loads, it's logical to shut down unneeded cylinders to save fuel, like turning off lights in unused rooms. But in 1981, when semiconductors and on-board computers were still in their infancy, variable displacement was a huge technical challenge. GM deserves credit for trying, but the V-8-6-4 was the Titanic of engine programs. The cars jerked, bucked, stalled, made rude noises and generally misbehaved until wild-eyed owners took the cars to have the system disconnected. For some it was the last time they ever saw the inside of a Cadillac dealership.



1981 De Lorean DMC-12





Automotive icon, snappy dresser and FBI target John Z. De Lorean left the building in 2005, leaving behind 8,582 stainless-steel DeLoreans and one time-traveling hotrod. Few car projects were more maledicted than the DMC-12. By the time Johnny Z. got the factory in Northern Ireland up and running — and what could possibly go wrong there? — the losses were piling up fast. The car was heavy, underpowered (the 2.8-liter Peugeot V6 never had a chance) and overpriced. And De Lorean was having a few dramas of his own, resulting in one of law enforcement's more memorable hidden-camera tableaux: the former GM executive sitting in a hotel room with suitcases on money, discussing the supply-and-demand of nose candy. The Giugiaro-designed DMC-12 sure was cool looking, though. In August of this year, the Texas company that controls the rights to the name announced it will build a small number of new DMC-12's. How's that for time travel?

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1982 Cadillac Cimarron





The horror. The horror. Everything that was wrong, venal, lazy and mendacious about GM in the 1980s was crystallized in this flagrant insult to the good name and fine customers of Cadillac. Spooked by the success of premium small cars from Mercedes-Benz, GM elected to rebadge its awful mass-market J-platform sedans, load them up with chintzy fabrics and accessories and call them "Cimarron, by Cadillac." Wha...? Who? Seeking an even hotter circle of hell, GM priced these pseudo-caddies (with four-speed manual transmissions, no less) thousands more than their Chevy Cavalier siblings. This bit of temporizing nearly killed Cadillac and remains its biggest shame.



1982 Camaro Iron Duke






There was a time when 90 horsepower was a lot, and that time was 1932. Fifty years later, it was bupkis, especially under the hood of Chevy's beloved Mustang-fighter, the Camaro. As the base engine for the redesigned 1982 Camaro (and Pontiac Firebird), the 2.5-liter, four-cylinder "Iron Duke" was the smallest, least powerful, most un-Camaro-like engine that could be and, like the California Corvette, it was connected to a low-tech three-speed slushbox. So equipped, the Iron Duke Camaro had 0-60 mph acceleration of around 20 seconds, which left Camaro owners to drum their fingers while school buses rocketed past in a blur of yellow.



1984 Maserati Biturbo






"Biturbo" is, of course, Italian for "expensive junk." At least, it is now, after Maserati tried to pass off this bitter heartbreak-on-wheels as a proper grand touring sedan. The Biturbo was the product of a desperate, under-funded company circling the drain of bankruptcy, and it shows. Everything that could leak, burn, snap or rupture did so with the regularity of the Anvil Chorus. The collected service advisories would look like the Gutenberg Bible. The only greater ignominy was the early 1990s Maserati TC, a version of the Chrysler Le Baron (a flaccid, front-drive, four-cylinder loser-mobile) with the proud Mazzer Trident on the nose. Finally, sir, have you no shame?



1985 Mosler Consulier GTP






Warren Mosler, a brilliant economist and investor, built his sports racer out of bits and parts that fell off the Big Three's table — a steering wheel from a minivan here, a Chrysler engine there, some mismatched gauges — but mostly what he did was to add lightness. The resulting fiberglass-bodied car had a marvelous power-to-weight ratio and did so well in racing that it was eventually banned. Or it might have been that the course workers were suffering from post-traumatic stress from the sight of the thing. Mosler had thought of everything but a stylist, and the pride and joy of this arch-capitalist looked like something from an East German kit-car company. Truly one of the ugliest cars ever, the Consulier GTP proved once and for all that building a car is harder than it looks.


1985 Yugo GV








Malcolm Bricklin, he of the Bricklin SV1, wouldn't be satisfied until he had forced every American to walk to work. To that end, in 1985, he began importing the Yugo GV, which turned out to be the Mona Lisa of bad cars. Built in Soviet-bloc Yugoslavia, the Yugo had the distinct feeling of something assembled at gunpoint. Interestingly, in a car where "carpet" was listed as a standard feature, the Yugo had a rear-window defroster — reportedly to keep your hands warm while you pushed it. The engines went ka-blooey, the electrical system — such as it was — would sizzle, and things would just fall off. Yugo. Or not.

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1986 Lamborghini LM002






This V12-powered super dune buggy gets on the list — well, my list anyway — purely because of its appalling clientele. The "Rambo Lambo" was the civilian version of a military vehicle that Lamborghini sold to those beacons of democracy, Saudi Arabia and Libya, among others. The luxurious LM002 appealed to spoiled young Saudi sheiks wanting to cross the sand to survey their oil field holdings. Uday Hussein, son of Saddam, had one, which the U.S. military cheerfully blew up in 2004 during a "test" to simulate the effects of a car bomb. The LM002 is the forerunner of another large and unnecessary SUV that signals pure contempt for one's fellow man, the Hummer H2. Read on.



1995 Ford Explorer







How could the best-selling passenger vehicle in America 14 years running, the mother of all mom-mobiles, the beloved suburban schlepper of millions, wind up on this list? Forget about the whole Firestone tire controversy. In its very success, the Ford Explorer is responsible for setting this country on the spiral of vehicular obesity that we are still contending with today. People, particularly women drivers, discovered that they liked sitting up high. Even though more fuel-efficient minivans do the kid- and cargo-hauling duties better, people came to prefer the outdoorsy, go-anywhere image of SUVs. In other words, people became addicted to the pose. And, as vehicles got bigger and heavier, buyers sought out even bigger vehicles to make themselves feel safe. Helloooo Hummer. All of that we can lay at the overachieving feet of the Explorer.



1997 GM EV1






The EV1 was a marvel of engineering, absolutely the best electric vehicle anyone had ever seen. Built by GM to comply with California's zero-emissions-vehicle mandate, the EV1 was quick, fun, and reliable. It held out the promise that soon electric cars — charged from the grid with all sorts of groovy power sources, like wind and solar — could replace the smelly old internal-combustion vehicle. And therein lies the problem: the promise. In fact, battery technology at the time was nowhere near ready to replace the piston-powered engine. The early car's lead-acid bats, and even the later nickel-metal hydride batteries, couldn't supply the range or durability required by the mass market. The car itself was a tiny, super-light two-seater, not exactly what American consumers were looking for. And the EV1 was horrifically expensive to build, which was why GM's execs terminated the program — handing detractors yet another stick to beat them with. GM, the company that had done more to advance EV technology than any other, became the company that "killed the electric car."



1997 Plymouth Prowler






By the mid-1990s, car designers had powerful new computer tools at their disposal, allowing them to pursue low-volume, high-zoot projects that before would never have recovered the development costs. The Prowler was one such project. Inspired, if not plagiarized, by a retro-roadster design by Chip Foose, the Prowler looked like a dry-lake speedster from the 22nd century, with an open-wheel front end and low-slung hotrod fuselage. Except they forgot to make it a hotrod. Intent on containing costs, Chrysler stuck its standard-issue 3.5-liter V6 under the hood, good for a rather less than spectacular 250 hp. The Prowler didn't even have a manual transmission, which made it almost impossible to lay down the requisite stripes of hot rubber. The result was a flaccid little jerk of a car that threatened much but delivered little.



1998 Fiat Multipla






"Multipla" is a time-honored name for Fiat. The company made an adorable microvan by that name in the '50s and '60s, based on the Fiat 600. The Multipla that appeared in 1998 was anything but adorable. With its strange high-beam lenses situated at the bottom of the A-pillars (base of the windshield), the Multipla looked like it had several sets of eyes, like an irradiated tadpole. It had this weird proboscis out front and a bulky, glass cabin in back, and the whole thing was situated on dwarfish wheels. I rented one of these in Europe and it worked beautifully, but it was just so tragic to look at. The Multipla (and the Aztek and the Consulier GTP) reminds us that cars cannot just work beautifully. They have to be beautiful. At least they can't look like this.



2000 Ford Excursion






GM had its H2. Ford had the Excursion, a Mount Rushmore-sized SUV based on the company's Super Duty truck platform. Dubbed the Ford "Valdez" by the Sierra Club, the Excursion was a passenger vehicle of gob-smacking proportions. It weighed 7,000 lbs, measured almost 19 ft. long and stood 6.5 ft. tall. At the time, Ford argued that many of its customers — ranchers, farmers, um, tugboat enthusiasts — needed a vehicle this big with over 10,000-lb. towing capacity. Maybe that was true, but that didn't keep Suzy Homemakers from driving them to the mall. To its dubious credit, the Excursion pioneered the use of the blocker bar, a kind of under-vehicle roll bar designed to keep the Excursion from rolling over anything unfortunate enough to be hit by it. The Simpsons wrote the Excursion's cultural obituary in the episode where Marge buys the "Canyonero." "Can you name the truck with four wheel drive, smells like a steak and seats thirty-five...Canyoner-oooo!"

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2001 Jaguar X-Type






A business case is not the same as wisdom. Certainly, Jaguar needed an entry-luxury model to compete against the BMW 3-series and Mercedes-Benz C-class. Yes, the company, owned by Ford, had access to a very successful world car platform, the Mondeo, which Americans knew as the Ford Contour. There was money to be saved. But in its attempt to turn the front-drive compact car into an "all-wheel drive" sports sedan, Jaguar ran smack into the limits of platform engineering. The result was the English version of the Cadillac Cimarron, a tarted-up insult to a once-proud marque and a financial disaster for the company. It hardly matters that the X-Type was not that bad a car. Young affluent buyers had the feeling they were somehow being grifted. They were.



2001 Pontiac Aztek






I was in the audience at the Detroit auto show the day GM unveiled the Pontiac Aztek and I will never forget the gasp that audience made. Holy hell! This car could not have been more instantly hated if it had a Swastika tattoo on its forehead. In later interviews with GM designers — who, for decency's sake, will remain unnamed — it emerged that the Aztek design had been fiddled with, fussed over, cost-shaved and otherwise compromised until the tough, cool-looking concept had been reduced to a bulky, plastic-clad mess. A classic case of losing the plot. The Aztek violates one of the principal rules of car design: We like cars that look like us. With its multiple eyes and supernumerary nostrils, the Aztek looks deformed and scary, something that dogs bark at and cathedrals employ to ring bells (cf., Fiat Multipla). The shame is, under all that ugliness, there was a useful, competent crossover.


2002 BMW 7-series





The Munich company's flagship sedan was nothing less than everything the company knew about car building, and that was quite a lot. Perfectly constructed, astonishingly fast and utterly besotted with technology, the big, gracious 7-series had but two flaws: The first was something called iDrive, a rotary dial/joystick controller situated on the center console, through which drivers adjusted dozens of vehicle settings, from climate, navigation and audio functions to things like the sound of the door chime. The reason for iDrive and similar systems is that designers were running out of room for switches and instruments. The trouble was that the iDrive was hard to work. Damn near impossible, in fact. Drivers spent many hair-pulling minutes driving to figure out how to add radio presets, for example, or turn up the air conditioning. When confronted with complaints, BMW engineers said, with barely disguised contempt: Ze system werks pervectly. Dis is no problem. Since 2002, BMW has gradually improved iDrive to make it more intuitive, but it's still a pain. The other flaw? The silly bubble butt, called the Bangle Bustle, after lead designer Chris Bangle.



2003 Hummer H2






One struggles to think of a worse vehicle at a worse time. Introduced shortly after 9/11 — an event whose causes were tangled in America's unquenchable thirst for oil — the Hummer H2 sent all the wrong signals. It was/is arrogantly huge, overtly militaristic, openly scornful of the common good. As a vehicle choice, the H2 was a spiteful reactionary riposte to notions that, you know, maybe we all shouldn't be driving tanks that get 10 miles per gallon. Not surprisingly, the green-niks struck back. A Hummer dealership was torched in Southern California. The H2 was also a PR catastrophe for GM, who happened to be repossessing and crushing the few EV1 electric cars at the time. It all contributed to GM's emerging image as the Dick Cheney of car companies.



2004 Chevy SSR






It's surprising, considering that Chrysler and GM are in the same town, that GM didn't learn from the Plymouth Prowler episode. When GM decided to kick up some custom retro mojo, it commissioned the Chevy SSR, an awesome-looking hotrod pickup truck with composite body panels and a slick convertible top. Alas, the chassis and mechanicals for the SSR were borrowed from GM's corporate midsize SUV program, making the putative performance machine heavy, underpowered and unforgivably lazy. It was no more hotrod than Britney is the next Helen Mirren. In the next couple of years, Chevy amped up the SSR but by then the credibility was gone. The SSR also violated a principle of hotrodding. Hotrods are homemade subversions of the existing order, mechanical folk art. There is no such thing as a factory hotrod. Seems obvious, in retrospect.

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lmao. I had a Yugo in '87. Paid $7000.00 for it. pos. 3 cylinder. Would wind out at 65 mph. I trashed that car. It was so fun. Thanks for the memories GM.