10 Worst Cars of All Time

The Cavalier got an honorable mention in the eighth worst car:

"The 1982 Cadillac Cimarron was a symbol of what was wrong with GM in the 1980s, an effort to compete with BMW by redecorating the front-drive, four-cylinder Chevrolet Cavalier and calling it a Cadillac."

From the linked site.

The Cavalier MUST be listed in the 100 worst. Has to be.

I was surprised to see the BMW Isetta in this list. Perhaps those that compiled this list were judging the cars on modern standards and expectations (and safety) rather than what was accepted, expected or practical at the time, and almost certainly they have no experience of what the cars were actually like. In the post-war years these bubble-cars were very practical and inexpensive 'city cars', and they were a very popular alternative to motorbikes and, especially, motor-scooters.

"The whole car was a crumple zone." - no more so than motorbikes, mopeds and scooters. Considering the technology and standards of the time, they were no worse than modern equivalents (city-cars & Smart cars). Unlike many of the other cars listed, these were not a huge marketing mistake; a misunderstanding of popular demand. In fact, they were actually catering to popular demand. And technically they did exactly what they were supposed to do, and what was expected of them (have you heard stories of them continually breaking down, or feet going through corroded floors?)

The fact is, the BMW Isetta was not the only 'Bubble-Car' around (I don't know why it was singled out). There were quite a few others like the Messerschmidt KR200 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_microcars_by_country_of_origin), and the Isetta itself was built by several companies other than BMW. The Isetta was in production for almost 10 years, as were most of the others, and it is said by some that only the arrival of the Mini killed them off. I don't think they would have hung around so long if they were that bad.

I can think of several cars that are far more worthy of the "Third-Worst" spot than the Isetta, such as the early 80s T-Bird (how can such a slow car use so much fuel?!), the famous Russian Lada (crankcase breathing via porous castings!) The Chevy Corvair and Hillman Imp, rear-engined death-traps, and could probably come up with many more if I thought about it for a while.

My point is that the Isetta was not considered a bad car at the time, quite the contrary, and quite unlike most of the others in the list. "We can't understand why anyone would want one." Perhaps the judging panel should not comment or vote on something they don't understand. I would be interested to know where 'Edmunds.com' got their info and the basis for this entry. The fact is, requirements were very different in the 50s in Europe and the US, hence the preponderance of microcars, scooters and mopeds in Europe (and the arrival of such wonders as the Mini, Fiat 500, etc.) contrasted with American 'intoxicated marshmallows' becoming ever more bloated.

I see by your Wiki that there were two Isettas listed. One BMW Isetta 300 and one British BMW Isetta.

Did the British BMW Isetta come from the factory with oil leaks and bad electricals?

Of course, but it had to be designed in. (There is probably a British Standard covering these things).

To take YOUR point, perhaps YOU should stick to cultures (and things) you understand.

The Chevy Corvair (Rear-Engined Death Trap Indeed!). You AND Ralph Nader should get out of the auto-bashing business. My family, (And I, myself) have owned and driven Corvairs over 600,000 miles without a safety issue. I did spin mine, twice, by sheer stupid driving, but NEVER had a single one of the incidents Nader (and presumably you, since Nader was the source of nearly every negative anecdote about Corvairs, and everyone who ever read his books or comments seems to suddenly be an expert on a car they've never driven) describes so chillingly.

I'd buy a Corvair in a heart-beat. But I can't find one available. No one who has one parts with it. And if I bought one, I'd have to buy three (at least) since my wife and at least one of my daughters (the other never drove or road in a Corvair) have said they'll claim the first two I buy.

But your point IS exceptionally well taken. Our cultures differ. Our needs differ. Both have always done so. Both will probably always do so. As a result, there can be NO one-size-fits all list of anything.

But, face it, the editors of that list didn't care about accuracy. They cared to get people to a)buy the source, b)discuss the list, and c)create buzz, causing more people to buy the source document. All that said, I guess we're helping them by panning them. And that fits THEIR needs, anyway!

Sorry, didn't mean to offend, and you make some good points.

First of all, don't be fooled by my location, I was born in Canada (just before the Corvair was launched), although I've spent more time in the UK than in Canada. I had to look up who Ralph Nader was, I hadn't heard of him. I knew a number of people who had Corvairs in the late 60s. Some cars (too many these days, perhaps) are so dull and boring that it is impossible to either love them or hate them. It's usually the interesting ones that break the mould which tend to polarise opinion, and people either love them or hate them. At least the Corvair was an interesting design, and different to anything else that North America had produced at that time, but so many things could have been done better, eg. potential problems with swing-axles were already well known before the Corvair was launched. (And now that I think of it, my wife's car is rear-engined & air-cooled, with swing-axles….oops).

K. Apology taken, and I, too, apologize for being thin-skinned. I've read too many (especially on OUR side of the Pond) who seem to take delight in bashing all things USofA,and I think I jumped to quickly.

As far as swing axles go, yep, that WAS a bad design. OTOH, I have never been in, seen, nor driven one (all would have to have been from 60 to 63 models, because Chevy changed the design to a semi-independent suspension in 64, and fully independent from 65 through the last year they were made, 69) that behaved as wildly as some reported them doing. I OWNED a 64, though I drove all three eras, and I tended to drive them like the sporty sedans and coupes they were intended to be (I did spin mine, twice, remember), so I would have expected to have encountered their worst behavior. I can honestly say I did not, and Nader was a crowd-seeking nincompoop of the first water (my opinion, but, well, just saying, is all!)

I agree some are dull and boring. In fact most are, now. But I never found a Corvair dull nor boring. And the disbelieving looks I got from some very young folks when I opened the trunk to work on mine were priceless!

Don't blame Mr. Nader, he is an attorney with an agenda. (What else is new?). You can blame the nimcompoops what believed him and then elected legislators to pass inane laws.

Different cultures, different needs indeed. French cars are well respected in most parts of the world, as long as the Atlantic is to the West. You can not give away a Renault, Citroen or Peugeot here in the states.

Well easily two of the worst I can recall was the Pinto and the Vega, and going from what I've heard the Tata is a write-in for #3....

The fancy ones looked cool new.....

http://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1974-vega-kammback-gms-deadly-sexy-sin-2-take-two/

But soon look like this...

At least the into had a good engine. The Vegas had a poor design head gasket that would not seal when the engine ran hot. Then the antifreeze would get into the cylinders, and the aluminum pistons would gall against the aluminum cylinder walls. The factory sent out lots of replacement engine blocks. Paid crap for labor on the exchange.

I would have thought that the Ford Pinto would be in the top ten, with possibly the AMC Gremlin and Pacer in close pursuit. All 3 were pieces of crap, dinos the moment when they rolled out the factory doors, and destined for early boneyard lives! Well, maybe in the top 15 or 20 then?

I had three Pinto's with lots of miles, never any mechanical issues, rust--now that was another issue. All were 4 cyl and gave great mileage had plenty of room considering the size. I liked the wagon best of all..GM Cavalier should be on a bad list from my experience as well as most V6 GM products from the early 90's.

I had a Pinto wagon, also. 4-speed on the floor, 4 cyl., ran like a champ. Had a winding in the starter motor die, but could roll-start it every time. We drove it for about 6 years, having acquired it well-used. I loved it. Finally wore it out at about 260,000 miles.

Never got hit from behind, though, so I can't attest to the gas-tank-under-the-rear-catches-fire stories.

Never, EVER saw a Cavalier or Vega run that kind of miles before death, though.

And as a die-hard Ford hater, that Pinto and my Ford custom E-150 van were two of the best buys I ever made. Course the 8-10 Dodges, and the 7-8 Chevvies I've owned were better. But those Fords never let me down. Except the one Maverick I owned. But it was good, for a while, too! And it was free!!!

FORD = Fix Or Repair Daily, or = Found On Roadside Dead.

My now X-wife owned a mid-70's Pinto at the time we were married. Of course it died big time 2 months later w/ only 76K on the Odo. It was piece of crap IMO.

The day after I returned home from graduating BSCE (in '83) my '74 Mercury Capri finally expired. I called the local junkyard to come take the piece of Chit away. It got me around for 3 years, but I constantly had to work on "Betsy" to keep her running. It ate plugs, distributor caps and rotors constantly regardless of the gaps!

I think we all should remember that the so called emission controls at the time from about 1973-1986 were just a bunch of patch ups designed to meet tail pipe standards with no thought to efficiency. Cars ran hot, valves burned up, cams and lifers wore out due to heat and oil that could not lubricate under those conditions.Exhaust manifolds cracked and cooling systems could not keep up with the retarded ignition and cam timing. These were bad years, I know I had my own auto shop complete with a chassis dyno.

Worst emissions control system I EVER worked on (shade tree mech, no automated testers available to me) was the Chrysler "Lean Burn" systems. Circular control systems, where every change wrought further change in some other part of the ignition timing/fire control circuits, and no way to break the chain to test, since it couldn't run AT ALL with any one part broken.

And of course, since they NEVER ran right, you could never fix them, either!

On another note, had an ignition timing retard port on my Pinto's carb, that caused the timing to change slowly when you backed off the throttle, so that the engine continued to run at higher RPM for a longer time. It controlled the vacuum advance on the distributor with a slow bleeding vacuum. I rerouted that and was able to use engine braking, and got better mileage to boot. When I went in for my next emissions check (Virginia Emissions tests are automated, run by a computer, which puts the engine it's paces while sniffing the exhaust) I passed with flying colors. When I checked the NOX and CO numbers against the previous, unmodified numbers, they were improved on both counts. All I could figure was that, while the designed in changes may have cleaned up the emissions on a new engine, they made them worse on older engines. At what point in engine life that occurred, I couldn't guess, but I wonder if the total life-of-the-engine change was better or worse for the environment?

Of course, the only way to know that would be to first establish where the change tipped from beneficial to harmful, probably as an average engine mileage number, and then calculate the number of engines, and miles run, that exceeded that number, against the number that were thrashed before they got that far.

And then the guys like us would come along and skew the whole result. What fun!!!

We were rerouting hoses and plugging others with small ball bearings or BB,s to get around the BS. One customer came in getting under 10 MPG and reported back that he was just under 20 MPG on Imperial gallon. Drive-ability was also much better. Cam shaft was retarded and advancing 8 or so degrees gave big gains in MPG and low end torque. I often called the years from 76-86 the junk years.

Me too! (Junk years). And those were the years when the Auto-Makers Unions wanted us to buy American anyway, just cause, well, we KNOW we build junk, but, IT"S AMERICAN JUNK!

I'm not happy that our industry is so reliant on Asia and Europe now, nor, especially, that we don't even make our own steel. But when you take into account the strides in quality that we've made with the competition, it has, indeed, been to our benefit.

Now if we could only get that sneaky Genie back into the bottle!

I am on my 4 th ford focus and great cars one got over 540,000 KM and still ran well but ex wife did not believe in maintenance so when a wheel bearing seized up scraped the car. ( Idiot) No rust or other issues. Got about 6.5 liter per 100 km. One got wrote off and almost killed me. I was stopped on major highway due to traffic and was hit from rear by Honda Element going 80 KM.. I drove the focus home but insurance scrapped it due to wrinkles in the trunk. Miss that car. Now have 2011 that is doing great. I agree that Ford at least has made some big quality strides. The job is never done they have to keep their nose to the grindstone or someone else will kick butt.

I have a 1992 Olds with 3.3 V6 and with recommended service have needed to replace one original water pump at about 100k and the original front brakes at about 165k, may get another 25k before replace the original rear brakes. The a/c needs a bump in R12 but we'll let that go unless needing to travel south. The olds has been a useful vehicle with low maintenance and 34+mpg, and can still exceed 100mph in 1/4 mile. I'm concerned that when it's time for a replacement the sticker shock will.... In the worst car category I submit the 1983 California emissions, try to accelerate and it would cough then slowdown 10mph for what seemed and eternity, after a full ten seconds then begin to increase speed. Whew seemed one needed an appointment to accelerate.

As WW2 progessed USA faced attrition of the national fleet of autos (how many were model T's?) and national productivity would suffer if there were no replacements available. GM engineered a 'under one ton gross vehicle weight' prototype to meet that need.

The atom bomb ended that problem (etc).

Australia wanted to manufacture so accepted the prototype's design and delivered the first (branded Holden) oin 1948.

The skimpy monocoque vehicle had a unique quality; it could be unlocked by two men alternately stepping on the ends of the rear bumper. The doors then flew open!

The handling was improved by a 93 pound bag of cement in the boot/trunk.

The exciting event was when the ubderfloor cross member broke loose, subassemblies scettered over 100 feet or so! I have seen the scene still with the bits.

Sure a strong contender for the list,

That presents a really funny picture. Sounds like maybe the Yugo took some pages out of GM's "Holden Manual". I never saw the doors fall off of one, but some co-workers can attest to how cold it can be at 10 degrees Fahrenheit, when one is doing 30 MPH, and the doors depart.

The Cadillac Cimmeron was a Cavalier with a fashion designer make over.

If the cavalier was bad, think about having all of the extras that go along with the make over to go wrong, and slow the car down worse.

And the trusty Gremlin ditches the list!!!

The very worst part of all of this is most of these cars were sold to people who really needed an affordable and reliable car that would last. These cars made life miserable for a lot of hard-working people, but that didn't stop the CEO's from getting their bonus.

Wait, what about the Chevett? That POS was worse than the Vega . And don't forget it's Pontiac brother the T1000.

Bob, you're absolutely right...they missed the boat not naming the "ChitVette" on their Worse 10 list!

And the most unforgivable thing of all, to infringe on the good name of the Corvette.