50 Worst Cars of All Time

[Tervuren]

Just so you guys know, I got ticked at some of these, and took the the time to look up the author, things he's written, etc. You guys say "they" in all your posts like a group of people at LA times wrote this, its just one author's opinion that writes for them.

He contradicts himself a lot, and is obviously writing purely to play audiences. He is not ignorant of automobiles, but chooses to ignore things at times to try to get a handclap from some.

[BeerBurner]

I enjoyed the article. No, I didn't always agree with his choices and reasoning but they still often made me laugh. Another thing I love about articles like this is how annoyed some people get over these things, especially when a car they love is placed on these lists.

It didn't change my opinion of any cars... but it did make me smile.

BB.

[Normy]

WOW!

Great post. Now, let's get down to business:

The very first car I ever drove was my father's 1980 chevrolet Chevette. This was extreme southeastern Michigan, in 1981. I was 15 years old at the time.

Here's the story: In 1979, when I was 12, my parents moved to Temperance, Michigan. NO, it's not a "dry" town. I wanted to fly radio control model airplanes, and it just happens that the foremost club for these existed about 4 miles from my house. This was the famed "Toledo Weak Signals", and to this day I have a key to their club field in LaSalle, Township, Michigan.

Well, I built several model airplanes, and one Saturday in 1980, when me and dad were scheduled to go the Weak Signals field...

DAD followed me into the garage and then handed me the keys to the Chevette. I was astounded; he told me that he would tell me what to do, so I climbed into the uncomfortable left side of the car, and immediately felt lost.

[Oh..my...god! What am I doing here-? I thought.]

-The very first time I took off in a 747, I was thinking about that moment; I wanted to know if the "rush" that I felt when I drove a car for the first time would come back. Of course, it didn't; in fact, the whole thing was rather correographed. That just means that the first time I ever drove a chevrolet chevette it had no structure but I got a huge rush. The first time I ever flew a 747 it just felt like any other airplane.........

In the end? I have to say that my first ever drive in a 2100 pound, 65 horsepower chevette was more eye-opening than my first "drive" in an 833,000 pound, 210,000 horsepower 747. The fact that you are the single person operating the controls makes all the difference. But the fact that you are assuming the controls of something that is WAY beyond what you've touched before is what makes the situation special.

[Normy]

I'm not 100% sure that I agree with the "chevette", which was actually a '70's Opel Kadett, being included as one of the 50 worst cars of all time. Me and my friends all knew that my dad's '80 chevette automatic would not exceed 70 mph, but it also absorbed a lot of abuse:

[all of this took place in Monroe county, Michigan]

1. The donuts on the north lawn of Bedford Junior High School in 1982...

2. The incident where the front wheels were hanging over the edge of a cliff next to the Consumers Power station at the end of Erie road. I was showing people how easy it was to do donuts with the rear-drive Opel Kadett chassis, but accidently took it too far. All those scenes in the movies where the car is hanging over the cliff? You get the idea. Pierre Stevens showed up with his half-naked girlfriend and his dad's Ford stake-truck, and dragged the car backwards with a rope until it could drive again. I bought Pierre a few beers afterwards; I probably owe him a few more~

3. I accidently put a chevrolet chevette automatic in reverse at 65 mph one day, trying to demonstrate the top speed of dad's work car. Hello? It stalled. The car coasted to a stop, and my best friend sat there quietly in the right seat while I endured several levels of hell. When we finally stopped, I was frantically shifting the shifter back and forth, and twisting the ignition key.

ALL sorts of things were going through my head! "What if I destroyed it? I bet dad will throw me out of the house! I'll live in the pool house the first night, but after that dad will be looking for me and I'll get shot. Maybe Dan will let me sleep in his pool house? I can mooch of Margaret and her family for a few days..." You get the idea. I was *****ting my pants, figured I was DONE at home...

"Maybe...maybe if you put it in park...it will start again?" Matt said to me, calmly as ever, looking over at me with his brown eyes.

Guess what: it started right up and drove just fine...::shew!::


In any case, the chevette drove like a golf cart. It was a horrid car: your arms hit each other, and since it was a traditional "Hotchkiss drive" with a mid-mounted transmission and rear drive, you had a HUGE transmission tunnel and you felt like your feet were squeezed into a 5 gallon bucket.

A few years later, I owned a '66 Ford F100. A short bed, it still weighed 5900 pounds when I put it on the scale at the airport. I could walk on the hood of that truck without it bending under my 150 pound weight! Yet..this nasty monster of a truck had LIGHTER steering than that chevette~

[Porsche-O-Phile]

I'd add the 1977, six-cylinder Camaro (non-Z28) to the list. I owned one - first car. Absolute horrid piece of garbage. I bought it for $550 from a co-worker's sister, who was obviously older and wiser than me to unload such a wretched, rust-prone piece of trash onto me. The only redeeming part to the story was that I fixed it up and sold it to the town drug dealer for $1,600 because he thought it was "b1tchin'".

Other junk I've owned include a horridly underpowered '78 "Formula" Firebird with an asthmatic 305 CID engine (useful only as a boat anchor, not for any kind of real SBC tuning), an '88 GMC Pickup (more GM junk) and an Isuzu Impulse, which grenaded the transmission in untimely fashion halfway from Florida driving to Massachusetts. To the Isuzu's credit, it had done the trip twice before without problem or incident, and it was probably attributable to my failing to check the transmission oil level before the long trip again, but still. . .