1975 VW Rabbit

Remember all the way back to 1974 when VW introduced the groundbreaking Rabbit. In other parts of the world this car was known as the Golf. VW must have thought that naming a cheap tin box after a warm and fuzzy rodent would make it more palatable to the U.S. consumer. Take a look at that plush interior. Talk about bottom of the barrel plastics and vinyls they used in this thing. Wouldn't that vinyl bucket seat look inviting on a cold winter or hot summer day? The material looks like something that was used on a 1950 boat. Is that BIC pen sticking out of the left side of the steering column? No, it can't be one because the pens have more style. Jeez, talk about an ugly stalk! The turn signal stalk is made out of the same cheezy material. They definitely should have talked to the BIC people before coming out with this hideous design. Did you also notice the ugly black appendage that is hanging out below the center of the dashboard? If this is the heater, most manufacturers had figured out years, no eons ago, how to put this item behind the dash and out of sight. What happened to all of the supposedly better German engineering that went into this thing? I hear it all of the time how German engineering is God's gift to the world. Not to get off topic, but if anyone can take a simple design and make it complex the Germans can. Just take a look at many Mercedes cars and how complex they are. Holy crap batman! Back off the rant. The Rabbits body around here rusted out quicker then some of the Chevy Vegas, and that is hard to do if you took any precautions against corrosion. Guess the engineers in Germany had never seen rust before, so they didn't know how to slow it processes down to make the sheet metal last longer. I won't even begin to go on about what a tin can this car road like on those 13 " tires, nor about the lack of any soundproofing in the interior. Compared to a VW Beetle, this thing probably road and drove like a limousine!

Smart Car

HA, HA, HA!!!! It isn't easy typing this after seeing this joke of a vehicle.
I bet the Smart(?) Car could fit in the trunk of the Crown Victoria that is behind it in the second photo. What a joke of a car(and I use the term car very loosely). It would be way cool to see an Ford F150 or Dodge Ram pickup run into one of these eggs on wheels. Can you say scrambled brains and viscera? Picture how far this thing would bounce and roll after getting struck by anything bigger then a big wheel.

Buick Century & Oldsmobile Cutlass Aeroback

The Buick Century and Oldsmobile Cutlass Aeroback coupe and 4 door sedans were some of the ugliest designs out of Detroit in the late 1970's. GM took a standard 2 or 4 door and slapped this abomination of a hatchback to a nice looking car, but to what purpose. Were people clamoring for a hatchback Cutlass or Regal? Did GM need a sleek design to go racing with? Whatever the case, the designers must have been on hallucinogenic minerals when these things were on the drawing board. If forced to drive one of these things, I would have only taken it out after dark, and would have considered getting a limo tint on the windows. Thankfully there are not many left on the streets in America. Do you think the designers of this car have it in their portfolio when looking for a new job?

Chevrolet Malibu Maxx

The Malibu Maxx was maxx in everything but looks. Even the word Maxx makes me want to regurgitate. I cannot say it better then Car and Driver magazine, "To American eyes, the body is a somewhat runty-looking cross between a family sedan and an ice chest, but it speaks to the Continental preference for hatchbacks." The Europeans would never fall for such an abomination. Leave it to the US automakers to take an existing sedan and tack a hatch on to it, and think it would sell. Remember the Oldsmobile Cutlass, and Buick Century of the mid 1980's. GM took a 4 door version of these and slapped on a hideous looking rear sloping hatchback. This nasty looking vehicle will be fodder for a future blog posting.

Lincoln Versaille

I already reamed Cadillac for making a sow's ear out of a sow's rear, so now it is Lincoln's time. Remember the Lincoln Versaille that was produced for 4 years starting in 1977. Lincoln took a Ford Granada, oops, sorry, a Mercury Monarch, and slapped four rectangular headlamps and a Lincoln grille on the front, and a continental tire bulge on the trunk to create this masterpiece. They tarted up the interior with all of the luxury features they could find, like extra chrome and thicker carpeting. Ford couldn't even change the steering wheel design so that it wasn't the same as a lowly Ford Pinto. Jeeze, Ford had these batwing steering wheels on everything they made for years and years. Then Lincoln throws a high price tag on these beauties so that everyone knows that have bought something special. They were higher priced then the rest of the Lincoln lineup! Talk about arrogance! These jokers had to be laughing all the way to the bank with every one sold. I am surprised that Lincoln didn't slap a continental kit on the Pinto and call it the Le Pissuer. Hopefully I have not let a cat out of the bag by printing this.

Chevy Vega

Here is one that GM wishes never hit the streets. In 1971 Chevrolet introduced the Vega, a revolutionary car to battle all of the compacts. It featured a 2.3 aluminum block engine with a single overhead camshaft. Gm in their infinite wisdom chose to eliminate cylinder liners for a nikasil coating on the aluminum cylinder bores. Simply put, nikasil is a nickel and silicon based process and is supposed to be extremely wear resistant. The cylinder block was of open deck design, meaning the upper cylinder bores are not fixed in place where the cylinder head bolts to the block. When the Vega engine experiences overheating, this method of manufacturing allowed the cylinder bores to move around and caused coolant leaks and blown head gaskets. From what I understand, the early Vega engines would overheat due to poor coolant circulation in the block. These engines were known to burn copious amounts of oil in short time. Whether this was a result of the lack of iron cylinder bore liners, or bad valve seals, I do not know, but when I saw an oil burning Vega on the road in the 70's, mosquito abatement foggers came to mind. Jaguar also used the Nikasil process in some of their cars built in the 1990's and had problems with low compression, so it is not only GM that might have had problems with this metal coating process.

Another problem with the Vega(what, you thought the oil burning and overheating engine was all that was wrong with this car?), was that it rusted out in record time. There must not have been much corrosion inhibitors anywhere on the sheetmetal. You could practically hear the rust worms working once the car was in the consumer's garage.

IIRC, the Vega was Motor Trend Magazine car of the year in 1971. This should make you think carefully before you put much weight on what auto magazines report about cars. Remember that these publishers get paid for advertising in their magazines, and there are many auto manufacturers represented within these pages.

The Vega is just another example why the big three has not been able to compete against the Japanese car invasion.

Bradley GT

Anyone around during the 70's probably remembers seeing one of these rear engine masterpieces around. Anyone could build one of these in the garage. All you needed was the kit from Bradley Automotive, a VW Beetle chassis/floor pan, and some hand tools.

Classic Italian styling aside, it looks like it would blast climbing in and out of the gullwing doors/windows. What do you do, stand on the seat and then shimmy into position? Maybe you sit on the door ledge and swivel your legs in? Being a kit car, the windows probably don't leak too much in the rain either.

Get a look at the size of the headlight doors. They must have gotten these from a garage door company. How many headlamps are housed behind these panels? It looks like at least 4 bulbs could fit on each side. I have never seen the headlamp doors in operation, but my guess is that they would be manually operated. Maybe they are not headlight covers at all, but a way to load repair parts into the trunk(?)

I bet these things perform well in a collision too! :O One tap and you'd be picking up the shards for blocks. This assumes you are still ambulatory, which is highly unlikely if the GT is struck at anything faster then walking speed.

They probably handle better then a Beetle because of the lower center of gravity, but then how well does a Beetle handle anyway? Do you think it sounds like a Ferrari, or a Bug as it drives by? I'm betting on the Bug!

Can anyone figure out why Bradley Automotive went out of business after producing such a fine whip?

Studebaker AVANTI

I believe that the Avanti and the Hawk series were Studebaker's last hope to turn the companies finances around. Raymond Loewy got credit for this futuristic design, but some people believe Virgil Exner was the true creator. The Avanti was only produced for the 1963 and 1964 model years. From what I have read there were numerous problems with the fit of various fibreglass body panels from the original body manufacturer, and that Studebaker had to step in and start producing bodies in order to get the quality up to par. I personally feel that the Avanti design was too modern for its time, similar to the Chrysler Airflow. I'll let you decide what you think of this intriguing car.