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The Best of the Worst Cars Ever Built
The Best of the Worst Cars Ever Built
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About this episode
Exploring the quirkiest side of automotive history, this episode dives into the 17 best of the worst cars ever built. From the infamous Pontiac Aztek to the notorious Ford Pinto, hosts Scott Benjamin and his co-host dissect each vehicle's unique flaws and redeeming qualities. They share personal anecdotes and historical context, revealing how some cars once praised by journalists became infamous for their shortcomings. Listeners are invited to share their own contenders for this dubious honor, making for a lively discussion on automotive misadventures.
Topics:
pontiac aztek
ford pinto
chevy vega
reliability issues
automotive history
quirky designs
personal anecdotes
automotive journalism
best of the worst
car culture
Cars:
AMC Pacer
Bricklin SV-1
Chevrolet Corvette
Chevrolet SSR
Chevrolet Suburban
Chevrolet Vega
Chrysler PT Cruiser
Delorean DMC-12
Ford Pinto
Oldsmobile Cutlass
Plymouth Prowler
Pontiac Aztek
Pontiac GTO
Toyota Previa
Some of the cars on this list have a redeeming quality or two. Most don’t. Listen in to see if you agree as Scott takes you through a list of some of the best of the worst cars ever to hit the showroom floor.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
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Technical
Too Afraid to Ask
Car
Aztek Pontiac Aztec
"...e actually quite happy with the car and it is the Pontiac Aztec. Now the Pontiac Aztec was built from 2000 to aro..."
Car
American Motors Corporation (Amc) Pacer
"... way on that one the next one on the list the AMC Pacer now the Pacer is another one this is this is a se..."
Car
Chevrolet Vega
"...ngs to say about this one really at all the Chevy Vega and the Chevy Vega was built between 1970 and 197..."
Car
Delorean DMC-12
"...s history. It was created under the reign of John DeLorean so when John DeLorean worked for Chevrolet the Ve..."
Car
Ford Pinto
"...d a lot more information about the about the Ford Pinto and I don't know about the bobcat maybe a little ..."
Car
Chrysler Pt
"...big fan of this car myself personally this is the Chrysler PT cruiser convertible now they spelled out the conv..."
Car
Chevrolet Suburban
"...supposed to look like a nineteen forty nine Chevy suburban that's the that's the car that it's kind of style..."
Car
Bricklin Sv1
"...ked about here on the new car stuff the brickland sv1 that made the list for one of these best of the w..."
Car
Chevrolet Corvette
"...8 engine under the hood it needs to have you know Corvette like performance it needs to have something like ..."
Car
Plymouth Prowler
"...a fun car to own it's a I've actually I've driven prowlers in the past and I happened to work for a Chrysler..."
Car
Toyota Previa
"...the next vehicle on our list, which is the Toyota Previa. Now, the Toyota Previa, I think this is one that..."
Car
Chevrolet SSR
"But the next one is the Chevy SSR. The Chevy SSR was built in Lansing, Michigan. An..."
Car
Pontiac GTO
"So not bad. It was also used in the 2005 to 2006 GTO, that same engine. But they only made this car fo..."
Car
Oldsmobile Cutlass
"... of pick on one vehicle here. The 1979 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Diesel. It's actually a whole line of Old..."
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Welcome to Car Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.
Hi and welcome to Car Stuff. I'm your host Scott Benjamin and today we have got a, what I think is a fascinating list that we're going to kind of follow through.
We've done this in the past on Car Stuff before and of course with two people it's a little easier to go back and forth with these but I feel like this is a pretty good one.
And I want you to understand that this isn't kind of the end all of list of course and this is somebody's opinion and there's a lot of these out there you can find these all over the place but the list that I'm going to be reading today is the 17 best bad cars ever built.
Now that's a strange way to say it I understand so what we're talking about is essentially kind of like the best of the worst the top of the bottom if you will that's if you want to kind of flip it around that way and say it that way.
You know the thing is like a lot of these cars are are going to strike some kind of opinion within you and you might you might say well I had one of these and I absolutely loved it or yeah I had one and I agree with you that it was terrible or I've heard of these cars before and they're just a miserable mess but hopefully it's a decent list and you guys will will appreciate it and what I want really is for you to kind of right hand and chime in with some of your own best of the worst if you will because I know that there's a lot that don't make this.
Clearly that you know they're they're lists of you know 100 cars that people have kind of grown to hate over the years and and some people do agree some people don't agree with those but you know one thing that I want to mention here and it's it's something that I had read about this week while I was reading this article and many others like it.
I found that a lot of cars that in the past had been praised by automotive journalists were then later deemed to be kind of bad cars and it happens.
It's it's it doesn't happen all the time but what happens is you know the the manufacturer gets all excited about a brand new product is coming out and they bring journalists to their property or you know they take them on a some ride and drive events somewhere and they bring out a series of these car you know a selection of these cars for the journalist to drive and allow them to kind of you know run through their paces either for a day on their property or take them out somewhere whatever and the funny thing about this is they will give the journalists
like the absolute best version of that car you know it has the highest trim level it has all the options there are people on hand to make sure that everything is running smoothly and all the software is working right you know the everything is exactly the way it should be in that vehicle.
So these are what a lot of journals would call like ringer cars you know they're the ones that are brought out you know specifically for this purpose to impress the automotive press so that they can you know then write about them favorably
and maybe even you know it get them in early on some awards and that's happened to where you know that the automotive journalists have heaped some you know praise and awards and you know everything on a vehicle and then as the cars launched and you know like maybe they make some production changes or maybe you know things don't always work out and you of course you don't have an engineer standing by to fix everything that goes wrong with it the moment that it goes wrong.
So that happens and you know and the people you know as people drive them and the people start to become familiar with them.
The car is sort of a letdown and there have been a lot of times in history that that's happened and I always find that fascinating when you know the the journalists have to kind of step back and say like yeah we made a mistake on that one and here's the reason why you know this it was just again one of those ringer cars so I thought those kind of funny
funny article to read and if you can just do some research on that and find out what that's all about to but let's dig right into our list here and we will start with one that I think very few people actually you know what I'm going to say.
People have an initial reaction to this one but then later if you talk to somebody that actually owns one of these they're actually quite happy with the car and it is the Pontiac Aztec.
Now the Pontiac Aztec was built from 2000 to around 2005 in Mexico and there was a corporate counterpart to that there was the Buick-Ranavu which is a lot similar had a different look to it though and that's what turns a lot of people off to the Aztec is the appearance of this thing.
It's an ugly car really I mean and that's again my opinion but you're going to hear a lot of that you know all throughout the day today so.
Ford or SUV it just it just never really took off people that did drive them really appreciated them though they really like them and chances are if you get if you know somebody that owns one right now they're probably still happy with it.
I mean from what I hear if you can get inside one and drive one you would like it enough to buy it but that was the thing it was a hurdle that a lot of people couldn't get over is the the outward appearance of this.
I guess you can still get them kind of cheap on eBay if you want to try that and try that avenue to get one or on Craigslist or wherever but the thing was.
It was a very satisfying car to drive I guess at the end and use in one of my favorite TV series in breaking bad of course Walter White's car I don't know but I thought it was an interesting vehicle for this for this list anyway and I can see why it's included in something like this the again just.
A bad looking car but it's it's a very functional car so you know can go either way on that one the next one on the list the AMC Pacer now the Pacer is another one this is this is a second car on the list here that I don't
know it's I've never driven a Pacer I've been around Pacers before I've had friends that have own friends that have owned them I guess friends families that have owned them they were parents you know at the time when I was much younger.
I was built in 1975 to 1979 it's a heavy car believe it or not a Pacer weighs somewhere around 3000 pounds so it's a great big heavy car has a terrible reputation but the thing is it's it's a kind of a nice little wagon and it's got a lot of cool little features to it and it's another one that I guess if you get in and you drive it you would actually be happy with it you know it's of course it was used in Wayne's World in the movie.
It was a Garth I think drove one with flames painted on the side and everything it was kind of a cool version of that I think it even came back later in another movie a sequel even cooler looking.
But anyways it's a cool little car we should probably talk about the Gremlin to at some point but maybe we'll get to that in another another episode but next one on the list here is oh this is one that I don't know if many people will have many good things to say about
this one really at all the Chevy Vega and the Chevy Vega was built between 1970 and 1977 it was it was introduced as a 1971 model your car and interesting thing about this one and I know that this characters come up many times in car stuff's history.
It was created under the reign of John DeLorean so when John DeLorean worked for Chevrolet the Vega was one of the vehicles that he was kind of responsible for he was in charge of that division that created that.
And there were a lot of problems with this car I guess it had a lot of rust issues it was breaking down all the time just it was supposed to kind of make its inroads I guess with the group of people that were starting to transition over to the imports the smaller imports that were fuel efficient and much more.
Gradurable car I guess if you want to put it that way compared to the the big cars that we were we're looking at the time you know the nineteen twenty foot long boats that were you know everybody's driveway during those times in the early nineteen seventies.
It's not a great car did have these rust issues it was just it was a mechanical nightmare for a lot of people other people I've heard that have only in the past said I was a fantastic car I really like mine but yeah you did have to deal with horrible oil leaks and you had to deal with.
You know like the car would smoke every time you started up just build quality was in general poor but for the tie and alone with John DeLorean and maybe you know some of the history that comes along with that it's it's worth looking into if you want to dig into the history of one of these it's kind of fascinating one that I think no one will argue on this list is the next one the Ford Pinto the Ford Pinto was built between nineteen seventy one and nineteen eighty.
And there was also a mercury version of this car was called the bobcat that was built between nineteen seventy four and nineteen eighty you get it in three different models you could buy the two door fast back sedan that had a little trunk attached to it there was also the three door hatchback and then a two door station wagon which I don't know
a little station wagons are kind of cool so that might have been kind of fun to own but the problem was this was an unsafe car and I think we all know exactly what happened with this you know I know that Ben and I have talked about this in the past on car stuff as well we had not a whole show focused on this vehicle but I do know that during a show that we called the ten most terrifying manufacturing defects from 2016 you can go back into our archives on on car stuff show dot com and find that show and and we do talk
at length about the Ford Pinto and exactly what went wrong there of course there you know the safety this car brings up a lot of issues you know safety issues business ethics you know a lot of a lot of other issues come up when you talk about this and you know the internal cost benefit analysis that happened and you know why they didn't fix the problem that they knew they had it did lead to some deaths
you know you would think that it killed everybody that owned one but it didn't it was something around the neighborhood of twenty seven twenty eight deaths I believe something like that and those are the ones in the accidents that resulted in fire there are a lot of injuries and you know we'll tell you all about the fix and and what they eventually did to correct the problem but again go back to that ten most terrifying manufacturing defects show from 2016
and and you'll find a lot more information about the about the Ford Pinto and I don't know about the bobcat maybe a little bit about that we'll see
all right next one list here this is this I think this one might divide a lot of people have not a big fan of this car myself personally this is the Chrysler PT cruiser convertible now they spelled out the convertible in particular because this one has wilds put it this way it has a unique look to it for convertible.
This is a car that was originally supposed to be a Plymouth brand vehicle but as you know the Plymouth brand went defunct in two thousand one so when this car was being launched in two thousand
Daimler Chrysler who was the parent company at the time already knew that the Plymouth brand was going to be going away so they decided to bring that over to the Chrysler lineup of cars and it was made in Mexico and also in Austria
that's where they were manufactured it was built between two thousand in two thousand ten it was supposed to look like I mean the whole thing overall supposed to look like a nineteen forty nine Chevy suburban that's the that's the car that it's kind of styled after
and I don't know some people see it some people don't but a lot of people just think it's blocky it's uncomfortable it just doesn't look good it's underpowered it's just kind of an awkward looking convertible as well so.
Yes, I don't know there's there's so much more to cover in this list you know we'll get to it in just a moment after we take a word from our sponsor.
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And we're back and we're going to continue with our list here I think we just covered the PT cruiser convertible and that was how went a nightmare that
one was I can tell you another one that was a bit of a nightmare for a lot of people and that is the Renault Dophine now the Dophine is a car that
was built between nineteen fifty six and nineteen sixty seven and maybe the sole reason that this one had problems is because of
at the time French engineering and French engineering at the time the French built cars were not fantastic Renault has had some issues
some quality control issues at the time and I don't eat you know honestly I don't even know how they're doing now I'm going to have to dig into the Renault story
a little more and find out what's going on with them now and I think they I think they're producing fine automobiles now but at the time and again qualifying that
with the time French engineering was really really poor I had a former boss the guy that I work for just before coming here to work
you know during this podcast here in Atlanta and this is a decade ago maybe more probably twelve years ago and he had one that he drove through
college and this guy was big I mean when you look at when you look at the Dophine is a small car when I say big I mean the guy was like
he was proportional but he was tall he was like six foot four six foot five I don't know how he got himself into
an out of that car but he was constantly lamenting the fact that he owned this this car for so long during college and it was
always breaking down always giving him trouble that's the only personal experience and that's only like second hand but it was
it was assembled all over the place I mean we say that you know the engineering is is French it was assembled everywhere
though is assembled in course in France Mexico Spain Argentina Australia New Zealand Italy Brazil Israel Belgium it was built
in a lot of different places and I think there even more than that that's just a shorter list
but he can't completely blame it but I guess it wasn't a wasn't a quick car either you know it's but it was kind of
that mid 50s small car that people really wanted I guess the acceleration was really really poor on this thing in this
article I'll tell you what it says it says it went from zero to 60 in 32 seconds now I don't know if that's true or not
it might have it might have been something like that but it did say unless it's being pushed off a cliff at which point it would
finally know what acceleration felt like yeah I like I like snarky lines like that at the end of you know
some of these lists that that are calling out some bad vehicles now this one the next one on the list is something
that to be quite honest with you I'm not sure why it made this list it's it's a one of a kind vehicle
it was a prototype car that was built or a cycle car really it's an American cycle car
it's the scripts booth by auto go and I guess the by part is because it has two wheels but this is a really unusual looking vehicle
it's kind of a it looks like a motorcycle the front but it has a V8 engine and a very narrow car body at the back end
and then again a single wheel but then it also has these outrigger wheels that come out from the back of it
and that's for stability you know when you're in a stoplight or whatever you you can manually put those wheels down
there was really I mean this is such a strange addition to this list it was it built well the company I should say
scripts automobile company was only around from 1908 to 1912 so that's the era of vehicle we're talking about
and there was only one of these built and the car that was built is now on display at the Detroit Historical Society
which is actually a museum in downtown Detroit with a lot of other non automotive related stuff that's going on there
you know they have stuff like the the fur trapping days they have just Detroit history stuff
but if you do want to see this one vehicle that's where you can find it at the Detroit Historical Society
and just go online for a photo and actually this car comes up a lot of times if you search
believe it or not if you do Google search for you know ugly cars or you know just the worst cars ever built
or something like that you'll find that you'll see a not a but the scripts booth by auto go
all right the next on the list is one that we've already talked about here on the new car stuff
the brickland sv1 that made the list for one of these best of the worst cars ever made
and I guess after you know hearing the history of that whole thing you probably would understand why
this car would be included on the list I mean it is an interesting idea just never really found its way I guess
and one thing that I you know we since we've already covered this one pretty much in depth I don't know if I really need to go into a whole lot of detail on this
but I do want to mention one thing you know in that first episode I talked about how I've only seen one of these in person
and that was at the Auburn Court Dusemberg Museum and I was confident that that car was orange in color
well I went back to my desk later that day and I looked up the vehicle and in fact it was a green car that was on display
now it was a brickland of course but it was green I don't know why I had orange stuck in my head maybe
because there are so many photos of orange cars online that had stuck out but I found that it was a car that was on display
it's no longer there it was on display for a total of about 12 years I think I saw one place that said it was 14 years
but it's on display for a long long time it was it was loaned to the museum from someone else someone who owned the vehicle
and I guess they wanted it back they took it back to their collection or for the collection
but again that car was not orange I know it's not huge you know discrepancy for me to know it here but I figured I might as well mention it
because I felt kind of like a fool and I was so confident that that car was that safety orange but it wasn't
all right another car here that I think this one you know what I'm going to say that this car for me anyway
does not belong in this list it's one that I actually like and I think maybe it's something that I've just kind of grown to like over the years
and you know maybe it's a little bit in nostalgia I guess looking back at it if you can call it nostalgia
it's the Plymouth Prower and the Plymouth Prower was built between 1997 and 2002
now I know that this is one of those cars that you know it separates a lot of people they either love it or hate it
and I don't think anybody's kind of like 50 50 about the Plymouth Prower
it has that retro styling kind of a hot ride look or a sportster style you know from I don't know
maybe the 30s or something I don't remember exactly what car was where if there was a car that was was you know
it was designed after but an interesting looking vehicle anyway and and now I mean if you see one now
and I have recently I've seen them on the road I've seen them dealerships even for sale and that you know
you know use car dealers obviously not a new car but I think it's a fantastic looking car the problem was the same problem
or the problem with it even now is the same problem that people had with it right from the very beginning
if you're going to make a car that looks this cool that looks this like much like a hot ride
it needs to have a strong engine a strong V8 engine under the hood it needs to have you know
Corvette like performance it needs to have something like that
the problem was they they just put in kind of a basic Chrysler engine and it was a 3.5 liter V6 and 250 horsepower
the car had a hard time getting out of its own way it really did it was just it was not fast it wasn't
it wasn't particularly it wasn't super slow or anything it just wasn't what you would expect when you see the
Prower it's a dramatically styled vehicle you would expect some dramatic performance out of this car
and I know that a lot of people have modified them have put in V8 engines
have kind of made them their own and you know there's some great versions of it out there
if you really want to get one of these if you if you want one in your garage
because it you know it has that kind of cool retro look and you're not concerned about going super fast
you're not concerned about you know taking it to the drag strip or anything like that
this is kind of a fun car to own it's a I've actually I've driven prowlers in the past
and I happened to work for a Chrysler during the time when they were building this
and we were able to to have some of them at the studio that I worked at and I was able to drive them
and I was I was happy with it I thought it was fun because I wasn't again trying to race it or anything like that
it wasn't trying to drive super fast or you know corner really hard with it
that's what the wipers were there for but again I don't agree with that one being on this list
the next one I want to talk about is the oh this one in particular they call it one certain model is vehicle
or one certain generations vehicle and this is the Lincoln Continental Mark IV
and it was built in 1972 to 1976 and so this is the Mark IV the fourth fourth version of this vehicle
this is a huge car it's a great big automobile and really I think the only reason it's on this list
is because it's just kind of an excessive vehicle it was so so big
had a 460 cubic inch engine that's a 7.5 liter engine a three speed automatic
this thing was 228 inches long which makes it about 19 feet long so it's a great big car
has you know the enormous doors on the side it's a two door vehicle
I think if you recall it had the kind of the false spare tire at the back you know
the head that look at the wheel as if it's facing the back end of the vehicle in the trunk
as they say it's a great big wasteful giant car and I don't really see it that way
maybe at the time it was kind of excessive I think it's kind of a cool car to look at now
and it would be really cool to have one I think outside of fuel prices and all that
that would be tough but I guess it would be a simple car to work on of course
you know it'd be pretty easy to work on the old great big V8 engine
and I guess there's a lot of room under that hood if you look at the hood
of a Lincoln Continental Mark IV you will see that even you could almost put
looks like he could put three giant V8 engines underneath there and you'd still have
room underneath the hood it's it's an enormous car but kind of a cool
kind of a cool addition to the list I mean I again it has to be just because
on here just because of the excess you know just it's a huge wasteful car
and you know what let's let's continue on with our list in just a minute
and we've got one that's coming up here that is an English car
that I think you'll be interested in and you know we'll do that right
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We're back and you're listening to car stuff and I'm your host Scott Benjamin.
And just before the break we had talked about maybe including an English car on this list.
And the one that we've included.
I don't think many of you that will many of you will find this hard to believe.
But it's the reliant Robin.
Now the reliant Robin has had some funny moments in popular culture recently.
In fact, Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear did a very funny...
I guess a little skit I guess about the reliant Robin and how many times it rolled over.
It was a funny bit. It was a funny episode.
But he was continually rolling this thing over.
And the reason that it was rolling over, he's trying to prove the instability of the vehicle.
And I think that later it was found out that the car was actually weighted so that it actually tipped over more than it normally would have.
Just for comedy reasons.
But you can read into that and find out exactly what happened with that whole thing.
But it was later discovered that he did that.
It was just for good humor. It was fun.
But the reason that it was so tipsy, the reason that the reliant Robin is kind of...
Well, it's actually... It's a pretty poor design, really.
And that's because it's in...
Well, it's a three wheel vehicle. We need to set it up front.
It's what's called a Delta configuration, which is the three wheel car configuration where there is one wheel up front.
And that's the steering wheel up front.
And it just inherently makes the thing want to tip over when you're making a right or left turn.
It wants it to kind of nose over onto its right or left side.
The better configuration for a three wheel vehicle as we find out actually has been known for a long time.
I'm not sure why they did it this way.
Morgan has done this in the past.
You know, going all the way back to the beginning of the 20th century is the tadpole configuration.
And the tadpole configuration is when we have two wheels up front and one in the back.
And sometimes there's even a variation on this.
You can have the two wheels up front steering.
You can also have the one wheel out back steering.
There's several different versions of that that can happen as well.
But again, tadpole configuration is far more stable than the Delta configuration.
Now, the reliant Robin, just so we can kind of get some background on exactly what this is all about.
It was a car that was made in the United Kingdom from 1973 to the 1981.
And then from 1989 to about 2001, it was also made in the UK.
It was brought back. It was kind of revamped, I guess.
And then it went away again in 2001.
And it was manufactured then by a company called B&N Plastics.
Now, I guess, well, the reason they don't win away, I guess, is it says,
here's the quote from B&N Plastics.
Due to various problems, production of all vehicles was put on hold in October of 2002.
I can imagine that I think we all know what some of the problems were.
It's physics. That's the issue there at that car.
But the reliant Robin, actually the one that we're talking about is called the reliant Robin B&N 1.
And the B&N 1 actually has a fuel economy of around 80 miles per gallon, which is pretty good.
They also, you know, at the time when they closed too, I should mention this,
they had plans to make an all-electric reliant Robin with a something like a range of like 50 miles
and a top speed of around 50 or 55 miles per hour.
So, you know, it's funny, they had plans to even bring this, you know, far into the future,
but just never realized that was the issue.
The next one on our list here, this is also not going to come as a surprise to anybody.
The Hugo.
Now, we talked about the Hugo in the very first revamped, I guess, episode of Car Stuff.
When we came back just a few episodes ago talking about the Brooklyn SV-1
because the person that was responsible for bringing this car to the US in 1985 was Malcolm Brooklyn.
And believe it or not, this car was made...
Okay, we know it was made around 1980.
It didn't come here until 1985.
It started in 1980 and Yugoslavia, of course.
It was built all the way until 2008, which I find hard to believe.
But, you know, when it did come here to the US and we talked about how popular this car was,
it sold 163,000 units in just three years.
Which made it... I think it was like the best selling of the hottest selling new car in the American market at the time,
maybe the hottest selling new small car.
There was some kind of classification that made it that, but might possibly even the best selling car at the time.
It was also the least expensive new car sold in the US at the time.
And the price was around $3,990 brand new.
And that would get you the Hugo GV and GV stood for great value.
In fact, actually, you know, I bet a lot of people don't know this, but there were...
Actually, it looks like six versions of the Hugo that were sold here in the United States.
There was the GV, which was, of course, great value.
The GVC, which had a glass sunroof.
So, these are minor differences between them.
So, the GVC had a glass sunroof, the GVL, which was nearly identical to the GVC.
There was the GVS, which had a few, you know, like minor trim and upholstery upgrades.
There was the GVX, which was kind of the sportier version of the, of the Hugo, if you can imagine that.
It had a 1,300 CC engine and a five-speed manual transmission.
And then there was even a convertible version that was sold in 1988, if you remember the Hugo convertible.
I mean, I don't know if I've ever seen a Hugo convertible, but they're out there somewhere.
I'm sure you can find one somewhere.
There are lightweight vehicles, you know, decent fuel mileage, decent gas mileage.
It only weighed something like 1,800 pounds, so it was pretty, you know, pretty lightweight.
Got decent gas mileage.
Of course, built in Yugoslavia and didn't last very long here in the United States.
It wasn't terribly popular after people started to realize just how unreliable these cars were.
And speaking of, well, I don't know if I should say unreliable.
It's just something that not many people are familiar with.
Or not many people really would want to, want to own here in the United States anyways.
This is an East German car.
It was built in 1957 and 1991, and that is the Trabont.
Now the Trabont, and I've heard that pronounce a couple different ways, I say Trabont.
But it was one of the cars from East Germany before the wall came down, before East Germany West Germany combined.
And we did an episode that I know featured the Trabont back in July of 2013.
It was called Cars of the Iron Curtain.
And we described exactly how miserable it was to get one of these.
Because you often were on waiting list.
It was a car that was completely outdated by the time you got it.
You were on waiting list for sometimes many, many years at a time in order to get a new vehicle
and kind of having to make do with whatever you had at the time.
So this car again, it was built in East Germany from 1957 and 1990.
But it did continue on after Germany was unified.
And from 1990, just until 1991.
So another one year of production, maybe two, maybe two if you count model years.
But there were something like 3.7 million of these cars produced.
So they're out there just not very prevalent here in the United States, but around the world.
Yeah, you can find Trabont still hanging out.
I don't know how many of them are in great shape or anything like that.
Or if there's even an owner's club that's excited about owning the Trabont.
I'm sure there are. There's clubs for just about everything.
Maybe even the next vehicle on our list, which is the Toyota Previa.
Now, the Toyota Previa, I think this is one that, well, there's actually three generations.
It's made in Japan. It's an old, well, the first one.
I guess the first generation was a, this is kind of crazy.
This is a mid-engine, a mid-engine minivan.
I know that's kind of hard to believe.
For a while, it even had a supercharged gasoline engine.
Then it had a turbocharged diesel engine for a while.
But it's, again, a front mid-engine, I guess.
It's a rear-wheel drive layout.
But that mid-engine of all things in a minivan makes it kind of like really well-balanced.
It's kind of a, from what I hear, it's a fun car to drive.
There's the first generation cars which have, I don't know, it's a unique look.
Let's put it that way.
They were built from 1991 until about 1997.
I think they actually model your maybe as 1991, because I believe they're built in 1990.
But these are still being made.
They're still being produced in Japan.
Also, I think they might even be produced.
They were being produced in Australia, I believe.
But again, if you can get your hands on one of these older versions
and make it into a track car maybe, if I'm kind.
I want to give that a shot and see what happens.
But yeah, that mid-engine thing is kind of funny.
If they have, of course, switched in the third generation to a front-engine front-wheel drive
and then a front-engine four-wheel drive model.
It seems like, I don't know, it seems like maybe get your hands on one of those first two generations
and you're doing all right.
The next one, we're getting close to the end here on this list.
I promise.
But the next one is the Chevy SSR.
The Chevy SSR was built in Lansing, Michigan.
And this is the General Motors pickup, the Chevrolet pickup, rather.
That head kind of that old retro look is supposed to look like a 1947-1955 Chevy pickup truck.
It was, of course, inspired by those 40s pickup trucks.
It has this retro look with kind of like, you know, all the modern technology underneath.
Or modern for the time anyway.
It has the 400-door power, 400-pound foot of torque LS2V8
was going inside the base Corvette, you know, back in 2005.
So not bad.
It was also used in the 2005 to 2006 GTO, that same engine.
But they only made this car for just a very few years or this truck, I should say, for just a couple of years from 2003 until 2006.
And, you know, it's got a pretty good fan base.
There's a lot of people that really like these.
They still see them around town, still see them for sale occasionally around here and there.
Price tags are still kind of high on these things.
So these still can't find them extremely cheap, but they definitely come down from what they were brand new.
And probably worth looking at if you ever see one for sale.
All right, you got another one here that is an unusual one.
This is really unusual before we get to one that probably more people are familiar with.
This one is the Peel Trident.
Now, the Peel Trident was a car that was built between 1965 and 1966 only.
It was very, very small production, very short production.
But it's an extremely small two-seat car. This is a three wheel car.
It was a bubble car, you know, like one of the old micro cars that we've talked about in the past.
We even had an episode I believe entirely on bubble and micro cars.
This was made right after the Peel P50, which was also a micro car.
In fact, the Peel P50 was the world's smallest three wheel car ever produced.
It was the smallest micro car ever produced that was actually road going.
It was an interesting thing.
Again, once again, I think Top Gear did kind of a funny thing with Jeremy.
Actually, dragging this thing through a building into an elevator or that type of thing.
It was designed with no rear gear. There was no reverse gear, rather.
And you actually got out and picked it up almost like you would a wheelbarrow.
And wheeled it into place if you wanted to park it or you could just kind of carry it along with you, honestly.
I mean, you weren't picking the whole thing up, but you were picking up one end of it and wheeling it around.
It was a strange, strange vehicle.
These were made by a company called Peel Engineering Limited.
And they started making the Peel Trident in a place called, actually, you know what?
I'm reading this here on this article.
It says that in 2011, Peel Engineering Limited actually restarted manufacturing the Peel Trident in a place called Sutton Honest.
This is a long name.
So Sutton in Ashfield near Nottingham, England.
Aren't all those names like that in England. It seems like all towns are named through four things.
Sutton in Ashfield near Nottingham, England.
And all vehicles are hand-built to order and you can get them in gasoline or electric form, which I think is kind of cool for the revamp of the Peel Trident.
But, you know, the original Peel Trident, of course, it had two seats, which I guess already made it different from the Peel P50, which only had one seat.
It had two seats, but here's the thing.
If you wanted to, you could include a detachable shopping basket, which took the place of the second passenger.
So, you know, if you wanted two people, that's fine.
If you wanted to rather carry your shopping basket with you, you could bring that along instead of a passenger.
You know, it was marketed as a shopping car or a saloon scooter, which I found kind of funny.
It's only 73 inches long, which is about six feet long.
And it's also very, very narrow. It's only 39 inches wide.
So, it's about a little, a little more than three feet.
You got to be pretty cozy with whoever your passenger might be.
Well, it has a total weight of just 330 pounds, so it's very, very lightweight.
And just like the Peel P50, it has a 49 CC engine, which means that saloon scooter, the scooter designation is because it's a 49 CC.
It's under 50 CCs, counts as a moped.
But it's a DKW engine, which has only 4.2 horsepower and a top speed of about 28 miles per hour.
So, that's 45 kilometers per hour if you're counting it that way.
And it was advertised that the Trident could get 100 miles per gallon, Imperial gallon, which means about 83 miles per gallon U.S.
83 miles per gallon.
Can you imagine driving a car right now? They got 83 miles per gallon, which would be really decent.
And it says it's almost, almost cheaper than walking.
I think that's a pretty funny, funny addition.
It's, anyways, one of the smallest cars in the world.
And, oh, by the way, we should also talk about how low the production numbers on this were.
We said that it was built from 1965 to 1966.
Only 45 of these things were built.
So, if you happen to see one in a museum or even a collector that owns one somewhere, it's extremely rare.
Outside of the ones that have been remanufactured in 2011, I'm talking about the original production.
Just 45 were built.
So, it's actually a pretty rare find.
If you happen to run across one, maybe you should pick it up.
The very last car on our list is, I'm going to take a moment here to just kind of describe this because
what happened here is they've actually given the very last car on this list, this kind of best of the worst list.
They've given the spot to a series of engines that came out in a make of vehicles.
They came out in the Oldsmobile.
And, in Oldsmobile, they ran diesel engines for a very short time from about 1978 to 1985.
So, well, they kind of pick on one vehicle here.
The 1979 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Diesel.
It's actually a whole line of Oldsmobile cars that had kind of the same problems.
So, they all had to deal with these diesel issues.
Boy, it was a bad time in the United States for diesel engines.
I guess some good reasons for that.
We just hadn't really developed it, hadn't worked it out quite yet.
The problem was that these were, of course, pretty big cars at this time.
They produced three versions of the diesel engines between 1978 and 1985.
And they went into several different cars and approximately 310,000 units,
which is about 60% of the total U.S. passenger vehicle sales of diesel-market vehicles at the time.
So, that's a pretty big percentage right there.
And that was the peak of sales in about 1981.
Now, they powered both front and rear-wheel drive vehicles.
And there was a 4.3-liter V6 that was adapted to both transverse and inline.
Front-wheel drive applications.
And here's the problem.
The success was in 1981, of course, they went into all these different cars.
And they looked at that as a success.
The problem was it was really short-lived because the gas prices started to drop after the fuel embargo went away.
And, of course, there was also fuel quality issues at the time.
And so, a lot of these cars that are using diesel fuel,
there's a lot of sources, a lot of producers that are creating diesel fuel
that contain water or other foreign particles.
It was just bad diesel.
There were fuel supply issues all along the way.
So, that's one thing that they were battling.
But here's maybe the biggest thing.
And well, maybe not.
I can't even say the biggest thing, really.
But they got this reputation for unreliability and kind of just poor performance,
which I'll tell you about in just a minute.
And what happened was that at the time, this was the face of diesel in America at the time.
And that was the problem.
Because in North America, you know, the passenger diesel market was hurt for about the next 30 years,
based on everybody's opinion of the cars in 1978 to 1985 that Oldsmobile put out.
So, that was one of the major hurdles that people had to overcome 30 years later
to kind of get over that and trust diesel again.
And then we all know what happened with Volkswagen here.
And some of the troubles that that caused.
And it seems like diesel has just been fighting an uphill battle ever since here in the United States.
I don't know how long it's going to take for the United States to regain its trust in diesel once again.
I know there are other manufacturers that create some fantastic strong diesel engines,
but there have been some real, real stumbling blocks along the way.
Now, one good thing, this is actually a really good thing.
You know what, I'm going to hold off on the good thing just for a minute.
I'll tell you more about the bad, just for a second, and then we'll get into the really good thing.
But I mentioned the poor performance.
You know, these are pretty big diesel engines at the time.
There were V8 and V6 engines, but decent size.
You know, the power of these bigger vehicles, the problem was they just didn't have the power to power those big vehicles.
So we're looking at engines that had horsepower ratings of something like 85 to 120 horsepower.
And we're talking about a big, heavy, large vehicle.
You know, that was tough to get moving, tough to emerge on the highways, tough to pull out the traffic.
So this really poor performance was something that really, really hurt them.
Now, I said I was going to mention something that was good news about these things.
And the one good thing is that these old mobile diesel engines, they had extremely strong blocks.
So you'll see that these blocks are still used in vehicles that people have converted over to gasoline powered engines,
in particular race engines.
So they use these old diesel blocks from these old mobiles and convert them to gasoline.
And because they're built for extremely high pressure for diesel applications, they're bulletproof.
They're very, very strong blocks.
And people really seem to gravitate towards those for racing engines.
So I think that's a decent thing, decent legacy for those.
But it's too bad that it really harmed old mobile's reputation as well as diesel's reputation for quite a long time after that.
And again, I don't know if diesel didn't, but I don't know if old mobile ever completely recovered from that.
And as we know, that brand is gone at this time.
You know, I don't know if I have a whole lot more to cover on this.
I know that, you know, this list, this the 17 best bag cars ever built.
And again, this comes from the coolest.
That's the site.
If you want to go check that one out, it's the coolest calm and search for those keywords you'll find it.
I know it's not a complete list.
It's that they never are, right?
I mean, it's just a short list that someone threw together.
But I think they're fun.
They're fun to go through and kind of pick out your own, you know, I agree with that.
I don't agree with that.
And I hope I've done that along the way, you know, some at least.
And maybe kind of maybe think about some other things.
You know, some other vehicles along the way that you think are some of the best bad cars ever built.
For whatever reason, you know, they have redeeming qualities.
Maybe they don't.
Maybe they're just pure bad.
I don't know.
Just write in and tell us exactly what you think about this list.
And maybe you've seen other lists or maybe you've got your own list that you'd like to send in and talk about.
And you know, if you want to do that, we're definitely hooked up on the social networks.
We've got Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where we are car stuff HSW at all three of those.
And if you want to go to our website and check out our archive of material where we have cash,
it seems like it's well over 900 episodes at this point from the going back all the way to 2008.
You can go to carstuffshow.com and check us out there.
Thanks again for listening.
Carstuff is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works.
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