The Best Of The Worst

Regular readers of my blogs will hopefully notice I tend to take a wry and ironic look at the world as that’s where I find the most entertaining ideas and narratives can be found.  There are perhaps those who have come to believe that this is my natural state and will have me as a dyed-in-the-wool cynic constantly pained by the idiocy of both myself and my fellow humans. But the reality is that it’s in looking for the worst it helps us to appreciate the best of our lives and I hope that most will see this as the undertow, and indeed, humour of my ramblings. 

So, bearing that in mind, I decided to look for the best examples of the worst cars ever constructed if that makes any sense at all?  I’ll state from the outset that this list is purely subjective and is made up of my on-line research of similar reviews combined with my own particular pet hates but I hope will include some undisputed four-wheeled horrors we can all agree would have been better left on the drawing board. Of course, I know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that there are some things – cars included- that can, with the passage of time, transcend their initial badness to become true contemporary classics. Maybe a few of these are listed below so let’s get on and see where we end up…

Austin Allegro: Many will see this as a cheap shot. How much more can be said about the ‘All Aggro’ that hasn’t already been written? We all know about the amorphous shape, the square steering wheel, the (alleged) rust, the diarrhoea coloured paint options, the indifferent interiors and woeful performance; surely that should be enough. However, I find I like what Sir Digby Jones said when commenting about bad business practice: "It is what I call the British Leyland model – you put a lot of money in at the top, and an Austin Allegro comes out at the bottom.”  The only questions to answer are whose bottom is he referring to and whether it also gave us the Metro, Maestro and Montego?

Morris Marina and/or Ital: At one time the word ‘Morris’ pre-fixed some very worthy motors. Try adding Oxford, Minor, A35 and you’re in good, if not great car territory.  Sophisticated they weren’t but at least they were solid, steadfast and maybe even reliable. Salt of the earth motoring from a bygone age made by manufacturers who seemed to care about their product and produced it as well as they could.  Then at the end of the British Leyland story, there were the moribund efforts above. Cynical attempts by accountants and marketers to milk the last vestiges of integrity from a well thought of brand by applying it to whatever crap the company could be bothered to shove out of dying car factories in the West Midlands. Try buying a new Morris branded car today.  You can’t can you?  I wonder why.

Triumph TR7.  The successor to the TR6 and an ignominious end to the noble ‘TR’ series cars. A wedge shaped ‘sports’ two-seater that resembled a doorstop or a hunk of cheese. I suppose on the plus side it does easily evoke the decade in which it was conceived and made.  It’s irrevocably 70’s in look and design, no doubt about that; but even if you think that’s cool, even though it was driven by Joanna Lumley in The New Avengers, this was a bad car. It was the very definition of form over function in automotive clothes. Despite their futuristic looks they were badly built and based on ageing technology and platforms that were spared any form of innovation that might have made them worth owning – that’s a bit sad really.

Trabant: The Cold War people’s car.  After a 15 year wait residents living east of the Berlin Wall were able to purchase one of the most indifferent cars ever made.  Not only were they smelly, noisy and horrible to drive the bodywork was made from the bi-products of cotton manufacture. I encountered a lot of these cars whilst in Berlin just after the Wall came down. Liberated East-Berliners joyously drove their two-stroke Trabis across Checkpoint Charlie into the free world in search of Levi Jeans, Coca Cola and Marlboro ciggies immediately polluting the whole area with noxious, oily fumes. 

I vividly remember seeing lines of them spewing clouds of blue/white smoke which would cause most western drivers to stop and wonder if they’d accidentally filled up with diesel. Then there was the teeth clenching crunch as gears were engaged and the squeal of minuscule drum brakes. But you know what; according to some reports they just kept going with reported lifespans in excess of 28 years in some cases. I wonder if that would be the case if they’d been made in Cowley for example?

Lada Riva:  Another communist conveyance. I had a mate who drove one of these Soviet lovelies and we’d tootle about quite happily in it wincing at the crashing noise as we hit potholes in the road.  But what an austere box it was. Based on a Fiat 124 the Riva pretty much defined basic motoring.  When they were introduced to the UK they traded on their cheapness and were reasonably popular as robust economy cars.  When our emissions standards changed their dirty engines didn’t make the grade and that pretty much did for them as saleable cars in the UK. 

However, despite their general awfulness, they did have a couple of unique advantages over other cars in that they were designed to cope with harsh Russian winters so invariably started well on cold days and had a great heater!  As for finding any other redeeming features you’d have to say: 'niet!'

Ford Pinto: This is the notorious car that killed people. Not necessarily a bad car overall until that is you were waiting to turn with your indicator flashing. Then it changed from an indifferent car into a bomb. Under these circumstances a rear end shunt created a deadly fireball as the live electrics combined with a burst petrol tank. 

Worse still, Ford knew about this design defect and instead of recalling all cars for an alleged one dollar fix, they calculated that paying the resulting lawsuits would work out cheaper. It’s one of the worst examples of corporate accounting at its most cynical and dangerous. Luckily the US courts found this out and punished Ford to the tune of millions of dollars.

Pontiac Aztek: I have to mention this as it always appears on bad car lists but it I still think it a pity it wasn’t sold in the UK. The Aztek personifies - to the extreme - the malign effect accountants and marketing people have on car design and, similar to British Leyland et al this blinkered penny pinching destroyed an historic US car brand. 

As a crossover SUV it apparently functioned quite well but aesthetically it was a minger to end all mingers. Interestingly the Aztek has recently been given some late-onset street cred' as the featured car in the wildly popular US series Breaking Bad.

Like him or not Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson has a subtle way of indicating he’s in the presence of a bad car: he affects a Brummie accent when describing it. In this one vocal inflection he telegraphs one of the common factors that tie many of these cars and their rotten reputations together and whilst you could equally use a Scouse or Oxfordshire accent, the message is clear: at some point many car manufacturers lost their souls to money, politics or incompetence. 

Perhaps worse, many just stopped caring and as a result they’re now gone. 

So there you have it. Were my choices right? What would you have added (there’s plenty more I might have mentioned)? Alternatively, perhaps you’re the owner of one of these ‘beauties’, now simmering and thinking about adding a comment rebuking me for my unkind words?  If so, please refer to paragraph one, and remember I owned one or two of these cars myself.

First Published in H&H CVC Magazine  - Copyright Anthony Boe 2014 All Rights Reserved

Italian Lemons, Japanese Cherries and Opel Fruits

It occurs to me of late that Citroen is basically French for lemon which means in effect the classic I drive is car trade parlance for a dodgy motor.  That got me thinking.  Is this the only lemon I’ve ever owned?  I’m afraid not, far from it in fact. Try this: get a piece of paper and write down the make and model of every car you’ve ever owned.  For some that might be quite a list but do your best and hopefully you’ll get them all.  Now review your work.  Ask yourself, if I were to show this list to a friend, to which cars would they say ‘wow!’ and over which would they exclaim ‘whoaa’? By way of a confessional mine’s an indifferent list from start to finish with nothing too exotic or expensive on it and in compiling it confirmed my early car purchases were, without exception, based on cost, practicality and extreme need i.e. I required a car urgently! As such, I cared little for looks, reputation, or street cred’ if it was cheap to insure and didn’t require too much fettling I was happy with it.

When I share what these vehicles were you'll find there’s more than a few 'clunkers' that will almost certainly make you go ‘urrrgh’ I suspect. In fact, reviewing the list and looking up how the cars are now perceived, it seems I had a spectacularly bad taste in transport.  I will reveal a few of these monstrosities momentarily but I have to say despite what’s been written about some of them, my memories are quite different and my ability to source a car that was mainly reliable, did the job of getting me from A to B, could actually pass an MOT (more than once) and didn’t cost the earth to maintain was, on the whole, quite good. And, when my cars did need some mechanical work doing, in many cases I could it myself mainly because my chosen motors were so rudimentary.  So now it’s time to hold your breath, clench your buttocks and prepare yourself for the list. Here goes…

Morris Ital 1.3 (T Reg):  Oooh what a start!  It’s been voted the second worst car ever made by some polls (after the Austin Allegro).  Out-dated when it was launched and based on ancient platforms including the Morris Minor this was a sheep in a more rubbish sheep’s clothing.  It was in effect a Morris Marina pimped up by sticking bits of plastic to it in an attempt to give it an Italian style make over.  It fooled nobody and didn’t last long either commercially or physically as they rusted faster than Usain Bolt running over hot coals. Paradoxically, given that most quickly became oxidised cubes of scrap, they are now quite rare as classic cars go. Having said all that, I quite liked my denim blue Ital. It cost about £200 and had twelve month’s ticket. Although I didn’t yet have any frame of reference on the ‘bad car’ scale I found it was largely reliable, great fun to chuck around (as it was rear-wheel drive), was roomy and if you didn’t look to closely, not a bad looking motor.  I actually did a lot of untutored work on this car, referencing a Haynes manual and buying parts from scrap yards I found fitting them myself was both satisfying and great fun. Of course, when the rust bug really got a hold it was time to move on and I swapped it for a…

Datsun Cherry 1.3 Pulsar (W Reg):  Arrgh, not a classic Datsun, great engine but terrible bodywork?  Correct, and this one, in rust flecked crimson, was a total shed which lasted about 6 months until the MOT ran out and with no prospect of a cheap pass it had to go. But, after a few months on the bus, I desperately needed a car again so decided to get a…

Datsun Cherry 1.3 Pulsar (X Reg):   Arrgh, yet another classic Datsun, great engine but terrible bodywork?  Correct you read it right. I was so taken with my first one I got another.  Better basic quality it’s true but exactly the same sleek looking car, in rust flecked crimson, but this time with a radio! And it served me well.  OK, it had a bit of duct tape on the roof covering a hole where the metal was very badly oxidised.  And yes, it has weird splodges of rust in random places which no-one could explain why that had happened but, overall, l thought this car was great.  It could run on unleaded petrol which was cheaper than the still available leaded fuel. It went pretty fast too and as a hatchback was pretty handy for the many home moves I made at the time.  It was only a year or so after this was made that Datsun became Nissan and we all know that went pretty well.  I like to think of myself as prescient in this regard; recognising quality car manufacturers by buying their early rubbish cars – it’s a talent I’m sure you’ll agree. Eventually, after a couple of years of pretty hard service the Datsun was still going strong and, remarkably, still had some value when I sold it in favour of a…

Opel Kadett D 1.2 (Y Reg):  Basically a Vauxhall Astra but badged with the Opel lightning flash emblem so it was a weird Anglo-German hybrid? This lurid green example wasn’t even a three-door hatchback having instead a boot which I think was relatively rare. Let’s overlook the fact that it almost immediately needed a new clutch or that in the wet it was spectacularly difficult to start. I soon got used to it more or less. It was, however, the car that gave me the most stressful breakdown I ever had. One wet morning after a lumpy start it decided to give up the ghost, in driving rain, during the rush hour, right in the middle of the Parrs Wood intersection with the A34 with no prospect of moving anytime soon.  Fully suited and booted I had to physically push/steer it to the safest spot I could find amidst the tooting cars and impatient drivers I was blocking (none of whom offered to help). It lived to fight another day but eventually the persistent oil leak and ever-more reluctance to start meant I decided to send it to the great scrap yard in the sky and in the process doomed myself to a yet another year on the bus. Until I saved up and got a…

Ford Fiesta 1.0 Mk 2 (B reg):  I shouldn’t include this one really given that it’s actually the best car I ever owned and gave me no problems whatsoever. It was nippy, practical, reliable and cheap to maintain I still miss it in fact. Even though I moved up to BMWs thereafter it remains to me the zenith of great motoring where simplicity, good design and no nonsense engineering offer the driver everything they could possibly need in a small but perfectly formed package.

So that’s it.  My subsequent Beamers have been fine and of course I now own a classic but paradoxically, now that I regularly service my cars (and have up to date MOTs) I find better quality cars mean more expensive parts and higher insurance premiums.  I would say, therefore, my cars cost me much more now than these early lemons yet do basically the same job. That’s food for thought that is.  Lemonade anyone?

First published H&H CVC Magazine 2012. Copyright Anthony Boe 2014 All Rights Reserved