The Top Ten Worst / Ugliest Car Designs

[Jim Wynne]

From Business Week:

Originally Posted by businessweek

Car geeks are generally an outspoken group. But they really put the pedal to the metal when Hagerty Insurance, a specialist in collector cars, surveyed its policyholders for their picks of the worst car designs of all time.

Here's what one connoisseur had to say the about the top pick, American Motors' Pacer: "0 to 60 in four-and-a-half hours. AMC's only conceivable excuse for this stylistic horror would be if their design crew was tripping on massive quantities of acid...and even then...it wouldn't be a good excuse."

McKeel Hagerty, CEO of the company, ordered up the survey after noticing that several of what he calls "nerd cars" were increasing in value. He says he was surprised when the Pacer-a notorious dud from the days of disco-topped the list. Hagerty bought himself a dark green 1976 Pacer three years ago for $2,300. "If anyone thinks I'm picking on Pacer owners, guess what-I am one," he says.

Kenosha, Wisconsin, where I live, was the home of American Motors, which would have been proud to have three of the top ten:

1. AMC Pacer
2. Yugo
3. Ford Pinto
4. Pontiac Aztek
5. Chevrolet Vega
6. AMC Gremlin
7. Chevrolet Corvair
8. AMC Matador
9. Ford Edsel
10. Chevrolet Chevette

It's not clear from the article whether they were looking for the ugliest cars--as the Kenosha newspaper characterized the survey--or the worst designs overall. I think that it's interesting to note also that all but the Yugo are American cars, and if you're looking just for butt-ugly, I could come up with a few strong contenders from Europe, for example, the VW Thing:



Any more candidates?

[Stijloor]

Hi Jim,

Yes, from the European front:

• Trabant (From Eastern Europe)
• Ford_Anglia (Had one myself)
• Citroen_2CV (Ugly duckling)

Stijloor.

[Jim Wynne]

By coincidence I was just reading a post in another forum where someone was talking about his 1977 MGB, and its general lack of reliability:

Had a 77 MGB as a second car that I drove for 20+ years. I fixed it in some beautiful places - Monterey, Napa, Mendicino. I also fixed it in the dark, in the rain, with a coathanger and duct tape. Joseph Lucas IS the Prince of Darkness. The standing joke at the office was "Well OA, what happened to the B this weekend?" True story - I got so miffed one day I got custom license tags that read MTBF 1HR. Someone saw it and wrote it up in a nationwide MG newsletter.

I love the license plate thing. For the uninitiated, Joseph Lucas was the founder of Lucas Electrical and was often referred to as the Prince of Darkness due to the infamous lack of reliability of the electrical systems provided by his company to the UK automotive industry, especially the now defunct British Leyland Motor Corporation, manufacturers of the MGB mentioned above.

[Randy]

1974 Cherolet Malibu...............yech!

[chergh]

The austin allegro... and the toyota prius

[BradM]

This one came to mind:



Jim, I love the avatar picture!

[Jim Wynne]

Originally Posted by BradM

Jim, I love the avatar picture!

I was afraid of reactions like that.

[Randy]

Originally Posted by BradM

This one came to mind:......

Looks like some of my in-laws here in Arkansas