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Opinion of the Worst Cars

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bgbassplyr said:
Nader's original Corvair rant over the rear suspension completely ignored the fact that this same suspension was used in:
Corvair (engine in the rear)
Pontiac (engine in front, transmission in the rear)
Oldsmobile (engine in front, transmission in the rear)
Buick (I think) (engine in front, transmission in the rear)
Last three touted the low floor hump because THE TRANS was in the rear! All used the swing axle design and all would jack up in a hard turn with low tire pressure.

Similar designs in:
MB's
Volkswagons
Renaults
just to name a few.

Nader pi$$ed me off then, and still does.

Take me back to the home.
Click to expand...

First of all, the Buick Special and Olds F85 had conventional drivetrains. Only the "rope drive" '61-63 Tempest used a transaxle with swing axles.

Secondly, the Corvair was MUCH worse than the Tempest for the same reason the Mk. 1 GT6 was MUCH worse than the Spitfire with the same swing axles. The Corvair was powerful enough for it's size to "jack-up" the inner axle while cornering, creating deadly oversteer that the average driver could not cope with. The Tempest was simply too slow/heavy to accomplish the same thing. The Corvair seriously compounded the issue by not using safety rims, allowing for frequent blow-outs when the "jacked" axle returned to supporting weight.

To make matters worse, much like the above mentioned Ford discussion on the relative cost of Pinto wrongful death suits vs. voluntary recall, GM knew before the Corvair was released that there was a problem. A $14 sway bar was removed from the prototype, with the mitigating modification of recommending abnormally low tire air pressure, in order to satisfy the bean-counters.

And that's not to mention Division President Ed Cole (of small block V8 fame) sitting in the prototype and declaring it too comfortable. He demanded the roof be lowered by 1 inch to make the car less appealing so it wouldn't pull customers from the "big cars", where the money was made. If you look at a Corvair sedan now, that change is pretty obvious.

The Corvair was a very bad car, but it didn't have to be. It had the misfortune of being released just as Detroit's arrogance was peaking, creating a very different future. :frown:
 
TOC said:
We had a Pinto/Vega wrecking yard up here for years.
They never, as in ever, had a burned Pinto come in.
Click to expand...
Well, here's one:

Ford Pinto Crash

Notice how little damage there is to either car before the fire. As I recall most fatal Pinto fires occurred with impacts of 25 mph or less. The main problem was that the before the gas tank was forced into the rear axle the rear quarters pushed forward, pinching the doors shut. It was a literal death trap.

After the recall fix, a ($20 as I recall) shield that forced the tank below the axle as the car collapsed in a wreck, the Pinto had one one of the better safety records among small cars. Before the fix, it was NOT. :shocked:
 
DougF said:
I was surprised that the Renault Dauphine was not on the list.
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Hmmm...there must be several versions of the "list" out there, since I saw the Dauphine on one "worst" list I found in a quick Google search. Too bad, since I don't think the Dauphine was all that bad a car. I actually wouldn't mind having one someday, but preferably it would be a somewhat rare and special version! :driving:
 
I spent my first 3 years driving in a 65 Corvair Monza. I pushed it, abused it and learned how to drive sideways. I thought it was a great car, summer and winter. Better than most of the sleds of the day.
 
sail said:
I spent my first 3 years driving in a 65 Corvair Monza. I pushed it, abused it and learned how to drive sideways. I thought it was a great car, summer and winter. Better than most of the sleds of the day.
Click to expand...
That's the really sad part. By 1964, with the introduction of a transverse leaf spring (among other changes), the Corvair was completely benign in it's handling. The 2nd generation (1965 and up) had a true independent rear, and was among the best handling regular passenger cars you could buy.

But it was too late.
 
They don't build them like they used to (or maybe they do) Back in the early 70s we had a Toyota Crown wagon, it had a small six cylinder, it also had perpetual brake problems despite numerous trips to the shop, and occasional starting issues and electrical gremlins. It was not a dependable car and my mom had to drive it home on the emergency brake a few times, I think even if the accelerator stuck down it wouldn't have caused to much concern, not exactly a dragster.

The old RX sedans were cool cars when they ran, my dad had one, they did some engine work under warranty, but it never would run well for long, but was quite enjoyable and perky when it ran well. He did not keep the car long.
 
I had a '71 Pinto. Got rear-ended hard enough to push the backseat against the frontseats(which had snapped rearward). The car ended up being about 2ft. shorter and 1ft. higher than when it left the factory. But, No Fire...


Also had a '74 Vega that I drove for several years. Never changed the oil, just kept adding more...
 
booley said:
Also had a '74 Vega that I drove for several years. Never changed the oil, just kept adding more...
Click to expand...


Sounds like an LBC....
 
I worked in a genuine gas station in high school pumping gas and on the weekends doing some light work in the garage bays (fixing tires, oil changes, etc) and I seem to recall several Vega owners buying STP from us occasionally when they needed to top up. I think they thought the thick stuff would minimize the oil usage. :smile:

Scott
 
Mu wife gave me a book... The World's Worst Cars by Craig Cheetham. So many of the cars were ones that I thought would be neat to own. The chapters are Badly Built, Design Disasters, Financial Failures, Misplaced Marques and Motoring Misfits. Of course the Triumph Mayflower is included, Stag, Yugo, Trabant, Wartburg, many Renaults, both made in France and made elsewhere- Romania, and so many British Leyland cars of the seventies.
 
I bought a 1958 Renault Dauphine a few years ago. I call it "Marie Antoinette Bardot." Marie Antoinette because the engine in the back seat has no head and Bardot because its once curvy/ alluring lines are now just a bit tatty, worse for wear. A friend owned one years ago. She was driving with two friends up a mountain/ hill in eastern Pennsylvania. She had take one friend up the hill and return for the other, the car wouldn't hail all three to the top. T.T.
 
I just can never get out of my mind that the Caravelle drophead came with a bar you had to insert in the door jams to keep the body from folding up when you jacked up the car to replace a flat tire. I realize that our LBC's do not exactly represent the pinnacle in automotive rigidity but good lord! I've owned a few of these "Worst" cars and yep, they weren't great. I even had a Cosworth Vega which must have been the first "performance" car designed by focus group and committee. The RX2 was interesting in that it shared a trait with the Stag - never, ever overheat one. The RX2's issue went a little farther in that it really, really required that it be warmed up before driving. A lot of people fired them up and hammered the gas just like their Chevy station wagon. Too many dissimilar metals expanding at different rates would kill the motor. I played around with rotaries in high school and a neighbor gave me a original motor RX2 with 180k miles and that thing never gave one problem. I used it as a disposable car for going to mexico and the like with the thought that if it broke, just leave it but that thing ran and ran. What about the Audi 100 LS that could only go 8k miles between worn out brake pads ont he inboard brakes?

I do own a Trabant repair manual if anyone needs help with their Trabant. I have no idea what language it's in but the author's son appears to have excellent skills with crayons for the bits that require diagrams.
 
cheseroo said:
I do own a Trabant repair manual if anyone needs help with their Trabant. I have no idea what language it's in but the author's son appears to have excellent skills with crayons for the bits that require diagrams.
Click to expand...

LOL
 
I knew a guy with a Vega wagon - he always
carried around a case of oil in it.
I also thought that a Vega would make oil-
changes easy - run it out of oil,put a new filter
on,& fill it with oil.Don't need to mess with
those darned drain plugs.

- Doug
 
When the oil goes through the engine that fast, it won't.
But I'd be willing to bet, if you stop and think back, you never had tailgaters, right?


Tended to smear their windscreens with oil splatter so bad they couldn't see.
 
I had a '76 Vega wagon which did not give me any real problems until one front fender rusted away. It was new enough that it had the upgraded engine so that might have helped. At the time a lot of the problems were blamed on the car having been over heated. So I ordered the radiator that used when the car had AC, but did not order the AC.
 
Back to the original subject - I hate it when
I read things like that when I own/have owned many of
the cars listed,especially when I really liked the cars.

- Doug
 
Me too. I always wonder about the background of the author when I see these articles. Has he/she actually ever driven one of the cars being written about?
 
The TR7 makes many of these lists, my brother bought a '79 TR7 new, it was a pretty reliable car for him, I think he had an electronic ignition issue once, but nothing else that would leave you stranded, and many of the other cars built at that time had many as many or more issues as well.
 
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