Ford Pinto

You know, the Ford Pinto wasn't such a bad car if you didn't mind a leaking gas tank resulting from rear collisions. It seems that a slight redesign would have saved some lives,according to a leaked(pun intended) Ford memo showing it would cost less to pay off lawsuits then to fix the problem. Check out Wikipedia and other sources for more info on this topic. If true, this is a horrible way to run a business. Maybe all those people who signed off on this manufacturing defect should have their relatives strapped in Pintos undergoing rear collision testing. To make it more fair, they should also weld the doors closed and film the testing. Once the Pinto occupants roast to death, the Ford Executives should be forced to watch the tape in an endless loop for the rest of their lives. Which might not be too long if they were forced to drive Pintos. Could there be any lower form of life then these guys?

VW Thing

Remember the VW Thing? I am sure you wish you'd never been reminded of this abomination. Thankfully VW only imported them to the U.S. for only 2 years, 1973 and 1974. What the heck were they thinking? Did Volkswagen management really think this would be a huge seller? Just take a look at this ugly piece of ****. Thankfully the few that did sell around here went to an early grave due to the rust worms that loved the fine poorly rustproofed German sheet metal. Just climb into the interior and settle down into those comfy looking seats. I've seen nicer seating sitting out at the curb. Talk about a spartan interior, even the bean counters couldn't have found a way to save a penny here. Look at all of the safety equipment in one of these puppies. Hopefully no one is ever involved in any kind of accident with all of the hard metal edges in this thing(pun intended) . Wait, is that one of those bic pen knock-off windshield wiper stalks we saw in the VW Rabbit? Nuts don't fall far from the tree do they? The robust turn signal stalk must have fallen off already. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this engineering marvel.

Buick Roadmaster

Buick introduced the extremely large Roadmaster Sedan and Wagons in the early 1990's. Many referred to these vehicles as bloated or beached whales. They are gargantuan in length and width. Many states require "WIDE VEHICLE" signs when these barges are driven on public streets. Picture one of these hippos in the rear view mirror of your Smart Car, hope you have an extra pair of shorts available! Driving one of these around town is like piloting the Queen Mary through tight locks. Try parking one of these in one of the compact parking spaces that are being installed in all of the malls built in America. Can you say 10 pound package in a 5 pound space! Maybe high gas prices are a good thing, as this dinosaur should be extinct!

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.

ISUZU VEHICROSS

I bet many of you have never even seen or heard of a Isuzu Vehicross. That would make you a very luck person indeed. Your eyes would have been spared the indignity of one of the ugliest motoring oddity ever produced, even though the Pontiac Aztec still rates as more grotesque, by a slim margin. Luckily there were only 4153 sold in the U.S. market between 1999 and 2001.

Gardens and Cars

Hey, no-one said that you couldn't like cars and gardening. I found this blog that had a photo of a Chicago area homegrown tomato ready to eat in June. This is a miracle, so I thought I would share the site with you. http://gardensightings.blogspot.com/ Check it out!

Ford Edsel

I guess Ford is in the gun sights again. Before the Edsel was introduced in 1958, there was much hoopla about a totally new car coming from Ford. This new car would be so much better then anything else sold to date. Newly created Edsel dealers blanked out their windows in anticipation of the unveiling of this gift to the motoring world. From what I have heard from witnesses to this event, when the curtain was raised there were gasps and many stood in stunned silence. What was unveiled was a much overhyped automotive joke. Looking like an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon, the grille was the first thing that shocked everyone. The rear end was not much better. At first glance this all new car, once you regained your composure after seeing the grille, was just a redone full size Ford with ghastly styling. Sales of the car never amounted to much more then a drop in a bucket and the car soldiered on until the last one came off the assembly line in 1960. Wouldn't you have wanted to be an Edsel dealer and lost all of your investment on this dog?

Cadillac Cimmaron

This was Cadillac's answer to the luxury imports. Wonder why it wasn't a huge success? "Hey George, we've got a bunch of these Chevy Caviliers that aren't selling. Maybe we can throw a Cadillac name plate in it and sell it for $6000 more. Then we advertise it like it has the quality of a Mercedes, BMW, or Volvo. It will sell like hotcakes!" Way to go GM!!! It has been more then 30 years and the domestic car companies are still in ruins, both financial and in creative ways. What new or innovative product have they come out with since the last fuel crisis? The navigation system, or heated and cooled seats come to mind. Leave it to the imports to give us a usable hybrid car. Check out the fine engineering of Ford and GM's hybrids. the Ford Escape/Mariner hybrids shut off the engine when the vehicle is stopped. What's wrong with that you might add? The A/C compressor also stops, so no air conditioning while sitting at a stop light. Does the Toyota Prius do this? I think not, Toyota was smart enough to use an electric motor to run the a/c compressor when the engine is not running. Check out the fuel mileage of the "NEW" Chevy Malibu Hybrid, IIRC there is only about a 2 mpg gain on the highway. This is a hybrid? Does the Malibu also turn off the a/c compressor when the engine shuts off at a stop light? I will let you do the research. Do you have to wonder why the domestic car companies are in trouble?

Renault Le Car

It it is hard to believe that the Renault Le Car was designed and built in France. All these years I thought the crisp flowing lines was a product of styling studios of Italian's Bertone or Giugiaro. I love the way the grille flows into the headlight, or how deeply inset the lamps are positioned. This front end is probably as aerodynamic as an outhouse. For those of you too young to know what this is, think porta potty lying on its side. The racing(?) stripe on the side really emphasizes the performance slant that a Le Car exudes. Unfortunately where I live, rust has taken its toll on these fine vehicles and sent them to an early grave and there are no more to drool over. Didn't AMC sell these nuggets as well as the Renault Alliances? If so, way to go AMC!

AMC Matador Barcelona

Holy crap batman! Take a gander at this rolling pile of dog doo doo. This car should have been renamed the barfelona. I hope these things came with a king size barf bag as standard equipment for anyone who had to look at this rolling work of art. With the slick styling it is hard to tell which end is the front and which is the back. Who was the designer of this thing? There is just so much wrong with this design, where does one start. What is it about those bug eye headlamps. It looks like the car is on qualudes, or else someone is standing on its gonads. The vinyl top is another styling gem. Now check out the interior. Wow, is that fabric from a barcalounger recliner? It will be hard to top this one!

Chevette Love

Who could not love the Chevette? Even the name is enticing! What cars didn't the american auto companies put vinyl woodgrain on? Yuk! These were dark days for sure. The '70's and '80's give me much fodder to work with.

1983 Toyota Tercel SR5

A reader requested this hideous abortion to the blog. Yes, Toyota did make an ugly looking car at one time. Check out the appendage on the rear hatch. Is that an ATM machine? Might be kinda handy if it was! You might think the atm machine was bad enough, but think again. Check out the dashboard for the angle and tilt gauges. Yeah, I bet a lot of these Tercels hit the slopes and needed to know if they were in danger of tipping over! It might be good if you had a barf bag handy when you view the next picture of the interior.... There will be no comment on the stylish seat cover materials used as I am too busy using the previously mentioned bag.

You Thought The Gremlin Was Bad

What can one say, but GASP!

A Sharp Fastback!

The gorgeous gremlin. AMC was on a roll and finished it with the pacer. What fun it would have been as a fly on the wall of the design studio. "George, look at my 3 year old son's drawing, I think it should be the next Gremlin!"

The 1978 Corvette had 185 horsepower from its 350 cubic inch V8. Doesn't my lawnmower have more horsepower?

As was pointed out to me, the years that Pontiac plastered big chickens, oops, I mean eagles on the hoods of Trans Am's was definitely a low point in American muscle cars. These firebirds should have been renamed clown cars instead. When emission controls choked the V8 engine in these things, GM spent more at the decal shop then on engineering an engine that made more power instead of less. Way to go!!!

Maverick Interior

Here is a picture of a 1977 Ford Maverick interior. This one has the optional "tooled vinyl" bench seat. You have to look closely to see this impressive tooling in the vinyl. Why would anyone pay extra for this nasty design on the seats? Also check out the mighty fine dashboard on this beauty!

Ford Maverick

I had a request for a Ford Maverick picture so here it is. Hope it brings back many happy memories!

If you find a better car, buy it!

Do I need to say more?

Cool Auto Related Magnets

Check out this neat site selling bumper sticker magnets. www.mixitandstixit.com
I love the "Getting Hosed" magnet!!! I have already ordered a few of them for my friends. This is hilarious!!!

Here's a real beauty of a vehicle!

Check out this gorgeous specimen of motoring excrement. The AMC Pacer was a gift to automobile enthusiasts the world over. NOT! Whoever dreamt up this nightmare should be chained to its bumper and flogged. Is it a wonder why AMC is no longer around? Please post other vehicle monstrosities and share your feelings with the rest of the world.