The ugliest car of all time #2

The ugliest car of all time.

Yesterday (Monday, February 6, 2012) the Daily Messenger newspaper in nearby Canandaigua, where I used to work, ran a story titled “The 10 worst cars of all time.”
The story was by Ted Reed, and was not locally written.
That is, it came from outside.
Except they “reefed” it on the front-page of that section. I ran on that section’s back page.
It was “The 10 worst cars of all time,” as opposed to “The ugliest car of all time,” although I agree with the story’s conclusion, that the 2001 Pontiac Aztek was extraordinarily ugly, and also the worst car of all time.” (It was produced through 2005.)


The fourth-worst car of all time.

The article also says the 1987 Yugo was the fourth-worst car of all time.
It was plain and junky. —It fell apart as you drove it.


The second-worst car of all time, the Pinto-based Mustang.

It also says the Pinto-based Mustangs were the second-worst car of all time.
Well yes, a marketing stumble, but Ford was basing Mustang on its cheapest offering.
The original Mustang was based on the Ford Falcon (its cheapest offering at that time), but was very well done.
Plus the Falcon was earlier available as a sporty model (the “Futura”), and could be had with a V8 and four-speed floor-shift.
Shoehorning a V8 into the lowly Pinto chassis was a mistake.
Plus Ford didn’t do much to make the car a Mustang.
You always felt you were driving a tarted-up Pinto.
The article also concludes the 1971 Chevrolet Vega is the fifth-worst car of all time.

Mine was red with a black stripe, and I still have the hatchback.

Photo by Ron Kimball©.

1970 Trans-Am Firebird.

Well, poorly engineered, but very well styled.
I think the ’72 Vega GT is one of the best styling-jobs of all time.
Right up there with the early second-generation Firebirds.
Although like the Firebird (and Camaro) its doors were too large.
I had a ’72 Vega GT myself, and it was an engineering disaster.
Ya didn’t dare let it overheat, and it was very stable at first, but that deteriorated as body-parts rusted away.
Part of its solidity depended on its front fender-wells, thin panels which rusted away.
Without those fender-wells, the front-end of a Vega sagged. Mine did.
And if it overheated, its aluminum engine-block warped, and it ended up burning oil like a mosquito-fogger.
I was very happy with my Vega — I learned a lot from it.
But it rusted to smithereens, and did overheat once.
Other cars were included, the Edsels, and the ’82 Cadillac Cimarron, essentially a gussied-up Chevrolet Cavalier.
Missing were the 1959 offerings of General Motors, comparable to the Aztek in ugliness.

1959 Pontiac.

1959 Oldsmobile.

Photo by BobbaLew.

The ugliest Chevy of all time.

The ’59 Pontiac was dreadful, the ’59 Olds laughable, and the ’59 Chevy is the ugliest Chevrolet of all time.
But they weren’t engineering disasters; they were okay.
I don’t know how bad the Aztek was engineering-wise, but it was rather ordinary. GM’s front-wheel-drive platform made into a box.
Extraordinarily ugly it was.
The article claims it destroyed Pontiac, although I don’t think so.
Pontiac kind of destroyed itself, by being so unreliable.
A coworker once told me of all her travails.