Posted on 07/11/2008 4:04:11 AM PDT by Apollo 13
Hi everyone - I thought it a good idea to lighten up the mood amidst all the present political brouhaha to present to you a classic article from Time Magazine, concerning er... exotic examples of car types built throughout the 20th century.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
How did the Chevy Vega NOT make that list?
Oh brother.....give it a rest
Wouldn’t know... send me a PM with a piccie if you will.
My current favourite is the Overland Octomobile. Just imagine the traction...
Oh yeah, but it get’s worse. It seems like every other thing they wrote is about how irresponsible America is in it’s “unquenchable lust for oil.” Thanks Time, for reminding me AGAIN AND AGAIN why I don’t buy your crap.
Nah -
it’s all written in good clean fun, and irony. I bet the authors themselves are car nuts driving beautiful vehicles.
bump
The Chevy Vega definitely belongs on the list
Just read the comments on the Renault Dauphine. They got this author rolling on the floor and pissing himself.
The communist cockmonkeys at Time/CNN never rest.
Besides, it was a fad with rich British people for decades. You drove a town car in town and your Range Rover at the estate.
Yeah, putting the Model T on this list was a joke especially for the stupid reasons given.
You can’t run a car on political correctness.
My wife had a ‘73 Vega. It was a nice looking car, silver with black buckets and red piping, four on the floor etc. But, it started taking oil at 30,000 miles so I traded it on a Dodge Charger.
Who in their right mind would design an aluminum engine with steel pistons, no cylinder sleeves, just aluminum.
I had a high school teacher in the 70s who drove a completely rusted out white Vega to school every day. In orange spray paint on one side was “Vega by G.M,” and on the other was “Rust-proofing by Tuff-Kote.”
AMC Gremlin. Truth in advertising.
I don't know, but I hated those when I worked for a Chevy dealer. One thing I remember about those was that the cars were shipped standing on their nose in the railroad cars.
I see the car that The Swimmer should have test driven made the list.
Classic liberal reasoning. He spouts all the nonsense about cars being evil, but much of the article contains lines like
“In order to compensate for power-sapping emissions controls required in the U.S., the car’s primary export market, Jaguar discontinued the reliable 4.2-liter six for an anchor-heavy 5.3-liter V12, which was a total bitch to try to keep in tune and made the car nose-heavy besides.”
I’m always amazed how when you point stuff like that out to them, they look at you like you are crazy. It’s like their brains short circuit.
What TIME thinks about anything doesn’t count for much anymore...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2043863/posts
In Ad Decline, Sales Fall 8% at Magazines (Time, Newsweek hit hard - Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)
This article is useless. It doesn’t have my first car, the Chrysler Aspen.
I remember being seven months pregnant pushing the car along on the street.
And I thought, until I read a comment on FR once, that I was the only person alive who wouldn’t make a left turn across traffic in it.
I had a Vega and it was terrible. The aluminum head warped.
I liked their description of the Trabant:
"the Trabant was a hollow lie of a car constructed of recycled worthlessness"
The pictures are interesting, but the writing is 100% pure sewage. This article is just another hit piece on American auto manufacturers. They must not need their advertising dollars.
I had a 1972 Chevrolet Vega....clearly one of the worst POS a car driver could ever own. OTOH I took the car places one shouldn’t take a car because I didn’t care what happened to it.
I find it amazing that these media whores can take anything and make it political. They take vehicles such as the Explorer, Excursion, and Hummer - calling them bad vehicles - solely because they are the “hated” SUVs. Yet, they don’t mention the Expedition, the Tahoe, the Suburban, or any pick-up truck. These people are schizo!
Chevrolet Suburban Caryall 1935. Few remember that it was the 1992 Suburban that revolutionized ride and comfort in full-size SUVs.
However, the SUV craze probably dates to the Chevrolet S-10 Blazer, released in 1983. The Bronco II was released in 1984 in response. The Bronco II led directly to the Explorer, in 1991.
IMHO, the coincident releases of the Explorer and Suburban, both of which brought new levels of control and comfort to truck owners, started the SUV “craze.”
Not so bad-just ugly.
Yeah, they tend to do that when they don’t have any water. Especially in BMWs, Volkswagens, Toyotas, Hondas, etc.
2004 Volkswagon Beatle. My new wife, a recent convert to right-wing-ism, used to drive one. The engineers thought “outside the box” on everything... meaning you couldn’t find anything. And rather than making things more serviceable, the idea seemed to be to make things impossible to service... such as headlights’ bulbs which took a full fifteen minutes to access.
Yet, at the same time, you could easily access some of the wiring, which ran forward from the rear-engine through the ash tray, (which is in the back seat) so that everytime someone would try to open the ash tray, the headlights would go out...
So now the driver is careening through the dark. Fortunately, the emergency flashers are the one things easy to find on the VW.
Ha! Ugly enough that they blurred it so you can’t see just HOW ugly it is. It looks like a Trabant. And they call it a sports car!
On the other hand, I like the car it’s passing!
A member of the British gentry might also drive a Rolls Royce Shooting Brake around the estate.
"You think you hate it now, just wait until you drive it."
ping
Fun writing but the author should be named “Snide”ly!
GM accountants...........
The attack on the H2 is just an attack on what liberals see as American gluttonous.
I can't wait to buy one in the near future when the prices get in my range. They are reliable and one of the coolest looking SUV's around.
Every time I read or see crap like this it reminds of a show where a person was interviewing a singer named Moby. He looked like he was an AIDS patient and I have no idea what he sings but his house was monstrous with beautiful wood throughout but there was nothing in it. He was touting himself as a minimalist. What a jackass.
Yeah.
Couldn’t they just say it’s a crappy SUV that’s just a rebranded Chevy truck platform?
Time and Newsweak are for the feeble minded.
Hey now ... we had a Vega. Dad bought it in 73 and we still had it (and it was running well) up into the early 80s.
Wow.
I had a friend ,circa 1957, that had a Renault Dauphine.
He supercharged it to keep up w/ Volkswagens.
I’m dead serious.
The topic on the talk radio show was “The worst mistakes you’ve made in your life.”
The caller said, “I’ve made two. I sold the family farm and I bought my wife a Puegeot.”
How did the Plymouth Cricket not make the list. It was by and far the worst piece of crap ever sold. As a combination Plymouth/British Leyland vehicle the suspension was crap, the electrical regulation system was worse and parts were extremely hard to get and very expensive. Even Plymouth dealers quickly stopped stocking the parts. I bought it new in 71 and it was the worst experience ever.
On the other hand I bought a 72 (admittedly a piece of crap) Vega in 1985 and used it to drive to work on base where I was stationed at the time. I didn’t have to pay a lot for it, only had the driver side door fall off and had to replace the timing belt. Drove it for four years and then sold it for $100 to somebody as a project car for their teenager when I PCS’d. It was more reliable and better than the Cricket.
My personal driving philosophy is this: If I can’t see over it, around it, or through it, I DON’T want to be BEHIND it. I could care less about someone’s Hummer, Escalade, etc., just let me see the road in front of me. Not your big, fat tailgate. It’s especialy bad at low sun angles when the sun is reflected off the rear windows and tail gates. It’s blinding.
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