WHAT'S THE WORST CAR OF THE MILLENIUM

Car Talk dot com ^ | unknown date | Staff

[sharktrager]

Didn't "Clinton's War" result in our bombing of the Yugo factory?

I don't know, but if it did this is the single greatest accomplishment of the Clinton administration.

[wallcrawlr]

My first car. Thanks, dad.
(Not the actual photo)

[struwwelpeter]

My vote goes to the Zaporozhets, the air-coolered, rear-engined Ukrainian Corsair. Here's the luxury stretchoviy model. A close second would be the two-stroke East German Trabant. Wenn mein trabbi schneller waere, dann heist er 'galoppi'!

[Brookhaven]

#3 Ford Pinto

They should have also put the Ford Mustangs that based upon the Pinto chassis and drivetrain. The current Mustangs are great, but the Pinto/Mustangs were little more than Pintos with a prettier body.

[capt. norm]

I thought the Pinto got a bum rap. I drove a Pinto into the 300,000 mile range with only the usual maintenance one would expect with an aging car. It looked bad but it always got there.

The fact that it look like crap (as did those horrible AMC Pacers) was a contributing factor.

[SW6906]

Haven't read what everyone else posted, but this reminded me of an article I read in a Life magazine (I think) retrospective on the seventies. It had somewhat lengthy mini-articles on all different kinds of things related to the seventies. For the Chevy Vega it had one sentence:

There's something disturbing about a car that rusts on the showroom floor.

[realpatriot71]

No air conditioning, no radio, can't pull a trailer, and if you touch it, it will blow up . . . .

[TheRightGuy]

I'd give a left testicle for...any of the business coups, any Hudson or any Falcon V8.

I had a '64 Falcon convertible, 260 V-8, bright yellow with black interior ... it was special.

[Whilom]

The prettiest car I ever owned, and one of the prettiest ever made, was my burgandy 1951 Mercury. It had uncanny powers. Under a cloudless sky it was flawless. But it knew when a cloud was about to come over the horizon and would tell me by beginning to cough. Long before rain started to fall, it would head for the side of the road and go into hibernation. I sold it to a meterologist, who became rich and famous using that Merc to predict the weather.

[Clovis_Skeptic]

WHAT'S THE WORST CAR OF THE MILLENIUM?

1984 Hyundai Excel...my mom has one. Cant even find it in Google image search. It still looks ok, and starts, and runs, but this car has no power, never has. I hate this car.

I cant believe the S. Koreans are still making these cars. I suspect they have improved over the years, cause there are lots of them on the road here in CA.

[InvisibleChurch]

worst car? howzabowt a K-car ?

[morjon]

Yeah...the guy says his Granny in her walker would pass a Falcon...well, if she comes across a Falcon Sprint V8, 289 4spd, 4bbl dual exh, she'd better have a super-charger up her arse!

[BikerNYC]

I thought the Pinto got a bum rap.

No, the rap was well deserved. On a corporate level, the car cost Ford a lot of money.

[N. Theknow]

I owned a beat up VW bus that had over 200,000 miles on it. It was our "second" car that I used to drive to the airport and park while I was away all week on sales calls.

One week I was in a hurry to make a flight from MSP to LGA and left the keys in the ignition and didn't realize it until I was in the air over Ohio. I spent all week wondering if the insurance was up to date.

When I returned, I went to the parking area to ascertain that the VW had indeed been stolen before I entered a stolen vehicle report. To my dismay, it was still there! I retrieved my luggage and went to the car and found a note on the steering wheel that read: "You've got to be kidding!"

[painter]

What was bad about the early Vegas was the engine. They were some of the first all aluminum engines Chevy used.You were lucky to get 20,000 miles before connecting rods came through the block.

A friend of mine was an engineer for Shell oil and they had Chevy send over some new Vega engines for testing.He said they were so bad out of the crate he sent them back and said "NO Thanks".

Chevy finally wised up,probably after spending $Millions on warranty repaires and started using iron block engines.They turned into decent little cars finally.

[gracie1]

I learned to drive on a Corvair Spider, a car that had a much undeserved bad rap.

Me too! My dad had two in the 60's, and the problem was with the people that drove them, not the car.

We went all over the state of California in that car. It did have a nasty habit of breaking down at inopportune times though.

But since it is the car I learned to drive on, it will allways have a place in my heart.

[newgeezer]

The first Chevy Monza (the 2+2) introduced rectangular headlights to North America.

Oh, sure, that and some 20 other 1975 GM models.

[newgeezer]

What was bad about the early Vegas was the engine.

That, and the RUST. Few cars before or since rusted as easily and thoroughly as the Vega.

[Labyrinthos]

I also had a Monza and that was the last GM product I have ever purchased, and I will never purchase a GM product again. (Wasn't the Monza built on the Vega platform?) The fuel economy was something like 4 quarts of oil per tank full of gas.