Construction quality of the early Chevettes epitomized mid-1970's Detroit, a period when disgruntled workers sometimes welded Coke bottles into the sills of cars going down the assembly line, creating mysterious rattles that were impossible to fix.
I agree with some of his choices but his reasoning is pretty terrible. For example, the Ford Explorer might well be considered "worst" for mainstreaming SUVs, but it mainstreamed SUVs by being a quantum leap ahead of the "utility vehicles" it evolved from. Before the Explorer there was the Bronco (going back to 1967) and Bronco II (going back to 1985). The Explorer used a compact truck chassis (not an F150 chassis as claimed) and didn't have the terrible twinbeam front suspension of the Bronco II. It also had four doors, allowing a family access to the category without requiring them to buy a Suburban (available since 1976). Pick on the Explorer for the type of vehicle it is all you want, but recognize that it became ubiquitous because it was actually a damn nice ride for the price. The rest of his choices are arbitrary and ill-informed. The SVX, for example, was actually an exceptional little car, largely hindered by the lack of a manual transmission option. Subaru sold it as a sport-luxury vehicle to replace the XT-6 and it did that quite nicely. The design was actually licenced from Ford, who put it up at the Detroit Auto Show in 1986 as the Ford Probe VI (?) concept car. They, in turn, cribbed the window-within-a-window idea from any number of racers and exotics; Vectors had them, Lamborghinis had them, other less notable vehicles had them. The buying public wasn't in the mood primarily because the guys who were willing to put up with windows like that wanted a stick, not a slushbox. In some cases he's just mean. The Pinto, despite having a bad rep, was no better or worse a car than its contemporary, the Chevy Vega. And as far as PR disasters that ended up being meaningless, what about Audi's misadventures in the '80s and Toyota's misadventures two years ago, both shamelessly rigged by 60 Minutes? Pintos simply weren't that dangerous, and since pretty much any American car of that vintage was similarly sucky, singling out the Pinto is lazy and not particularly insightful. Listing cars like the Bricklin also shows the scatter-shot and asinine approach of the author. Realistically speaking, the Bricklin wasn't any more of a piece of shit than the DeLorean, but Robert Zemeckis didn't put one in a movie. Finally, he picks and chooses his facts as he sees fit. Corvairs were about as dangerous as the Porsche 911s of the time for the exact same reason - they had lots of oversteer and were tail-heavy and if you grew up driving Bel Airs, they would surprise you. Every car had an "entymologist's" steering column at the time, but not every car got witch-hunted by Ralph Nader. Finally, the 65-69 Corvair answered pretty much every bitch Nader had (not all of mine; their fan belt arrangement was f'ing terrible) and is still widely acknowledged as one of Detroit's more interesting designs (compare and contrast with, say, the Fiero). If I had to guess, the author is cribbing heavily from this book: http://www.amazon.com/Lemons-Worlds-Worst-Timothy-Jacobs/pro... ...which was given to me long ago as a gift, and sucks in the exact same directions as this man's article.
The "Lemons" book you referenced got some pretty shitty marks for accuracy... looks like this guy picked the wrong book to plagiarize. The first car I owned that actually ran well was a white chevy Nova hatch back that we all referred to as "the Egg". I loved that car. What was your first ride?
'66 Falcon Futura 4-door in existential brown: http://ford-parts.uneedapart.com/images/ford-falcon-parts.jp... (mine actually had a cream-colored top) What really stung was that it had been my grandmother's, who had initially purchased a '66 mustang until deciding that it was too low to the ground and rode too hard. on the plus side, it had a 289 V8 and weighed 1800 lbs. On the minus side, it had a 289 V8 and weighed 1800 lbs and was a unibody design from Ford Motor Co. in 1965. Drum brakes at all corners, miserable handling and a 3-speed column shift that, when combined with the 2.73 rear gears, meant that first gear was good to 45, 2nd gear was good to 85 and 3rd gear was good to a verified 135, at which point it smoked an example of the very Maserati bi-turbo mentioned in the article. Note that speeds in a '66 Ford Falcon are kind of like "dog years." 135 in that Falcon was roughly the equivalent of 700 MPH in any reasonable car. It's also worth mentioning that I'd been through a number of cars by the time I left for college. There was the Falcon, a miserable piece-of-shit '77 skylark that I bought for the engine and then managed to get running, a '66 Corvair Monza and '74 Ford Ranch Wagon that I hauled out of someone's yard, got running and sold, a '74 Mazda RX-4 that I similarly salvaged, sold to my sister who then wrapped it around a lamp post, and, of course, the mother-of-all Redneckmobiles: http://imgur.com/a/3968x#0 (the most visible bits of which are a Triumph TR-7, another vehicle maligned by the author)
The Nova was my first car I liked the first car I actually got from my parents was a 1984 Plymouth Horizon that was so badly rusted out that the floor in the car had a huge hole in it covered by a piece of ply wood. My friends called it the Flintstone mobile (cause if it ran out of gas we could always lift up the ply wood and run like Fred). It had no heat and in the winter in MI, there were times it would get so cold that I would literally push in the car lighter and warm my hands over it. It was essentially a death trap. I think at once point it had no windshield wipers either. How my parents thought it was safe, I have no idea. Perhaps they were trying to tell me something? As for your redneck mobile, it is INDEED the mother of them all. Holy shit, I think if I look at those photos long enough a mullet might magically appear on my scalp. Why am I suddenly craving Kodiak Wintergreen, Cool Ranch Dorito's and Mountain Dew? -Great looking ride. No joke, quite the creation. You still have it?
Dad didn't kill me, I'm pretty sure he was glad I was alive. At least your story involved a make out session. I was driving a wood paneled station wagon of my parents, not quite the chick magnet your mazda was.
The Pontiac 6000. An uninspired, woefully under-powered, door handle-breaking turd. I got it just over 90mph going downhill. I kid you not. My first car was a Horizon. Not much to look at, but faster than my pal's Feiro, and it cut through snow like it wasn't there. It was so light, it handled like an old army jeep. I had a blast with that car. Being a manual helped.
http://www.americanlisted.com/minnesota_23/cars_2/1989_ponti...
Pontiac 6000 huh. That car reminds me of my grandmother for a lot of reasons.