Dodge Dart a “worst” car?
The Dodge Dart had some body rust issues aftera few years as did many unibody cars of that era, but overall it was reasonably well built and the slant six 225 engine was famously long lived and near indestructible.
Someone’s pulling some of the cars on this list out of ther ass.
Heh, apologies to any Australian petrol heads, but it just looks Australian 
I thought from reading other car mags that a huge problem was the front wheel drive layout, no one really trusted it on rougher roads.
I read one article that claimed the reason for the Edsel’s failure was and I qoute (as best as I can recall) “While other cars were very phallic, the Edsel had a gleaming crome Vagina on the front.” 
Don’t know if this is the real reason, but it made me laugh my ass off when I read it.
Any bad car list that leaves off the Chrysler Matador is incomplete.
I disagree with the Oldsmobile Toronado. These were quite popular and well-received in snow country. Certainly the original Hummer deserves a spot on the list.
Who_me?, I think by “Nova”, IvoryTowerDenizen means this, rather than this.
My Uncle had a 1976 Nova, one of the first with a catlytic converter. It stunk something awful. They kept it for a long time. My cousin drove it when he turned 16, it was very, um, boring.
No, not after a complete frame-off restoration there isn’t. You had to spend about 50% of the cars cost on accessories or details to make them worth a tinker’s dam.
Why the hatred for the Excalibur SSK ? Retro is cool usually (Miata, Mini two obvious examples) so why hate this car?
And all those Panthers and the Lotus 7 S4 were great performance vehicles for their time, even if somewhat eccentric.
The first car i ever drove was a P76. I was about 10 or 11 years old, and a friend of the family who lived outside town in rural New South Wales (Braidwood, for those who know the area) gave me my first driving experience on the dusty back roads. It seemed a bit like driving a tank, although at that age probably just about any car seems like a tank.
I owned a Samara when i lived in the UK in 1993. I was on a working holiday, and didn’t have much money, and i think it cost me about 600 quid. For the most part, it was a perfectly good little car, and i had plenty of fun throwing it around the curvy Lake District roads.
The only time i had to get anything fixed on the Samara, it was a problem of my own making.
A friend and i drove over to Yorkshire to have lunch at the Tan Hill Inn, famous for being the highest Inn in England. A few miles from the Inn was one of those places, rather common in Yorkshire and Cumbria, where a very tiny bridge crosses over a stream. It’s hardly a bridge, more like a massive speed bump, and you have to slow down about 10 miles an hour to ensure you don’t scrape the bottom of your car.
On the way to the Inn, i took the hump in the prescribed manner. On the way home, when we were a few hundred yards from the hump and i was about to hit the brakes, my mate said “Go on, take it.” Being young and a bit of an idiot, i took his advice and floored the accelerator, and we hit the hump going way too fast. The car went airborne for what seemed like an eternity, then came to earth with a heavy crash. I pulled over to the side of the road to look for damage, and found that the front right suspension struts had snapped, leaving the car listing to starboard and the tyre rubbing on the inside of the wheel well. We limped home at about 20 miles per hour, and i had to pay to get the suspension fixed.
I had one of those, too. This time, it was my first spell in the UK, in 1990-91. I had a Y-reg* Acclaim, which means it was a late 1982 or early 1983 model.
The Acclaim, for those unfamilar, was essentially a rebadged Honda, basically a four-door Civic sedan.
I thought it was a great car, and was pretty much everything you’d expect from a Honda—very reliable, reasonably comfortable, decent rear leg room, and decent gas mileage. The only problem i ever had was a faulty alternator, and that was pretty cheap to get fixed. Not bad for a 10 year old car with 120,000 miles on the clock.
*For those unfamiliar with UK license plates, you can tell how old the car is by the letter at the beginning or end of the registration plate, at least for the period 1963 to 2001. Here’s the list (scroll down). A new, more complicated formula was introduced after 2001.
Any list of worst cars that doesn’t include the Chevy Vega is a useless list. Instead of a spare tire they should have had a replacement engine and transmission in the trunk.
Others cars that MUST be included are:
Plymouth Volare/Dodge Aspen (Defined the word “rustbucket”. They could have had a biodegradable label.)
Volkswagen Dasher/Scirraco (chintzy, problem plagued, poorly engineered)
In the 70’s, went from a Ford Maverick to a Chevy Vega to a Ford Pinto station wagon to a Datsun B210…that list brings back memories 
**Johnny L.A.- ** is it is coffee table book ? Does it have lots of pictures? It sounds like an interesting buy, but the detail on Amazon is lacking.
I don’t see what’s wrong with the Porsche Cayenne. It’s a fast SUV that’s also quite capable off-road. They had some quality problems initially, but Porsche is now back on top of the quality surveys (besting Toyota and Lexus, even).
And Porsche is certainly making money on them - I thought they were selling like crazy.
Thank you, my friend! 3 of my first 4 cars are on this list. 
I had two, count 'em TWO, 1972 Nova’s. Great car! (except for all the problems with the suspension and electrical system).
The guy who compiled that list really seems to have it in for the British Leyland cars of the seventies, not unreasonably since that was the nadir of British car making. Austin, Morris, Triumph, Rover, Vanden Plas, Wolseley, MG, Minis – all were BL brands, and all suffered from terrible build quality and reliability, rusting before they left the factory and so on. British-made Fords and Vauxhalls (General Motors) of the time were not much better. It was during this time that VWs and BMWs and Japanese cars started to sell in big numbers here.
I’m sure the more recent Vauxhall Vectra is only on the list because Jeremy Clarkson (of the Top Gear TV show) et al love to make fun of repmobiles. Really, it’s a perfectly decent car (no, I don’t drive one).
There’s nothing there that mentions Chrysler’s 2.2L Turbo ‘exploder-engine’. You know, the one where the head was made of aluminum and the block steel, so that in very hot or very cold weather, the headgaskets blew faster than Marilyn Chambers on a horny day…?
I disagree. The fact that the vehicle would roll so easily upon tire failure is a fundamental flaw, as far as I’m concerned. If a tire fails on my car, it’s not going to roll over. That’s a forseeable occurance that Ford should have prepared for.
Maybe the author is one of those sports-car purists that reacts violently when a “sports” car has more than two seats. I’ve known people to argue passionately that Lamorghini, Porsche, etc… should never, under any circumstances, be permitted to produce anything but a two-seater. Anything else is considered “selling out,” whatever meaning that can have when referring to a for-profit company. (These same people get really worked up over Ferraris in any color other than red, too.)
That ain’t my daddy’s Nova…
Ours was a hideous box.
Yup. We also got the four door with vinal seating.
