Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Be there and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio, and I
Speaker 1: love all things tech and this is gonna be a
Speaker 1: fun episode. Now, I am not much of a car guy,
Speaker 1: so I really don't do that many episodes about cars,
Speaker 1: even though cars aren't clearly tech. You know, I've done
Speaker 1: a few about car companies, and I've done a few
Speaker 1: about specific technologies that are car related, and a couple
Speaker 1: that are focused on specific cars, including one that we'll
Speaker 1: mention in this list. Uh, and I've done some on
Speaker 1: autonomous cars as well. But I thought it might be
Speaker 1: fun to do a round up of some cars that
Speaker 1: have a reputation, you know, a bad reputation. So this
Speaker 1: episode is dedicated to cars that frequently pop up on
Speaker 1: the worst Cars of All Time lists. Some of these
Speaker 1: cars are thought of as the worst because of their reliability,
Speaker 1: or rather there the lack of reliability, some because the
Speaker 1: company that made them famously backed the wrong horseless carriage
Speaker 1: and subsequently went out of business. And I should add
Speaker 1: this is just a a sampling, if you will. An
Speaker 1: amuse bush of the worst cars of all time, and
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily the worst worst because there are tons
Speaker 1: of different lists, right. I didn't select these cars myself.
Speaker 1: What I did was I went through lists like goliath
Speaker 1: dot COM's the twenty five Worst Cars of All Time,
Speaker 1: otto wise is ten Worst Cars Ever, made, The Drive's
Speaker 1: article the ten Worst Cars of All Time, time dot
Speaker 1: COM's article the fifty Worst Cars of all Time, and
Speaker 1: an Edmond's list called fifty Worst Cars of All Times.
Speaker 1: So I used all these lists to curate a small
Speaker 1: selection of vehicles that just weren't good for one reason
Speaker 1: or another. And I am not ranking these either. These
Speaker 1: are not in no particular order, because the whole concept
Speaker 1: of worst is at least partly subjective. In fact, there
Speaker 1: are some cars that are on this list that other
Speaker 1: people who wrote the other lists say that that car
Speaker 1: gets a bad rap, it's really not that bad. So
Speaker 1: there's no there's no metric I can hold up that says, okay, definitively,
Speaker 1: this car is the worst one. And also, you know
Speaker 1: where they put cars on on their rankings changes a lot.
Speaker 1: Some lists have the Ford Pinto taking the top or
Speaker 1: or bottom honors. If you want to look at it,
Speaker 1: that way and others will put it somewhere in the middle.
Speaker 1: So we'll actually start with the Ford Pinto because it
Speaker 1: does pop up on a lot of lists. Just know
Speaker 1: that these bad cars appear in no particular order, but
Speaker 1: we will begin with the Ford Pinto. This car is
Speaker 1: one I remember hearing jokes about when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: because Ford made these cars between nineteen seventy and nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty and I was also made between nineteen seventy and
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty. Uh. The Pinto was meant to fill a
Speaker 1: niche in the North American market. It was the first
Speaker 1: subcompact car that Ford produced in North America. So for
Speaker 1: those not familiar with American car classifications, it behooves us
Speaker 1: to go through what those are really quickly so we
Speaker 1: just understand what we're talking about. So on the smallest
Speaker 1: end in America, you've got what are called many compact
Speaker 1: cars M I, n I compact cars that includes stuff
Speaker 1: like the Chevrolet Spark or the Fiat five. Those are
Speaker 1: roughly equivalent to what would be called a segment mini
Speaker 1: cars in Europe. Now, if you go slightly larger than that,
Speaker 1: you have subcompact cars that includes the Pinto or the
Speaker 1: Ford Fiesta. Then you go up another level and you
Speaker 1: are now at compact cars. This would include cars like
Speaker 1: the Honda Civic or the Toyota Corolla. Then when you
Speaker 1: go a little bigger, you get to mid sized cars
Speaker 1: that include stuff like the Toyota Camry and the Volkswagen Passat.
Speaker 1: And finally you have large cars like the Chevrolet Impala
Speaker 1: or the Cadillac c T five. So it's really in
Speaker 1: size that we're talking about. And there are other terms
Speaker 1: that can be pop. You know, it can be used
Speaker 1: in addition to these or in replacement of these, like
Speaker 1: you might hear mid sized luxury like a midsized luxury
Speaker 1: sedan or a full sized luxury car, but you get
Speaker 1: the idea, like, these are the classifications that came out
Speaker 1: of the United States e p A, which is the
Speaker 1: Environmental Protection Agency, and it defines these specific classes of cars.
Speaker 1: So you know, a car fits these based upon specs
Speaker 1: that the e p A drew up. And typically the
Speaker 1: e p A uses the interior vaul lume of a
Speaker 1: car to determine its classification. So you could theoretically have
Speaker 1: a really big car has very small interior volume, and
Speaker 1: arguably you could say it's not a large car, even
Speaker 1: though the exterior would be quite large. But that's how
Speaker 1: e PA defines size for vehicles. Anyway, the car companies.
Speaker 1: Oh and by the way, that applies to cars, I'm
Speaker 1: not talking in that sense about things like SUVs and trucks.
Speaker 1: That's that's slightly different. But I had to you know,
Speaker 1: draw the lines. I can actually talk about the bad cars.
Speaker 1: So anyway, car companies would market subcompact cars as being
Speaker 1: more economical in their fuel consumption. Because you gotta remember
Speaker 1: this is after the seventies where we had some oil
Speaker 1: crises that drove up cost of gasoline. There were gas
Speaker 1: shortages around the United States and the seventies, So the
Speaker 1: cars of the past, which were real gas guzzlers, you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about some cars that would get less than
Speaker 1: ten miles to the gallon. That was looked at as
Speaker 1: being a seriously bad and wasteful thing by the time
Speaker 1: you get to the late seventies in the early eighties,
Speaker 1: so there was this move towards economy having cars that
Speaker 1: are less uh, you know, of a gas guzzler. So
Speaker 1: it wasn't always the case that subcompact cars actually were
Speaker 1: that economical, but that's how they were marketed. The American
Speaker 1: companies were rushing into the design of subcombat cars because
Speaker 1: foreign car companies were gaining ground in North America and
Speaker 1: the American companies suddenly found themselves facing serious competition from overseas.
Speaker 1: So for decades, the American car companies were sitting pretty
Speaker 1: in the United States. You know, we had foreign cars
Speaker 1: being imported into the country, but they weren't on a
Speaker 1: very large scale. It was only when you started seeing
Speaker 1: more German and Japanese cars coming in that the American
Speaker 1: car companies started to get a little nervous. So Ford
Speaker 1: cut the development time for the Pinto nearly in half
Speaker 1: compared to their normal process. And this was in an
Speaker 1: effort to stave off the growing threat of foreign cars
Speaker 1: and to establish an American subcompact vehicle. So when the
Speaker 1: Pinto debuted, you saw this two door car and it
Speaker 1: had an enclosed trunk. But a hatchback version of the
Speaker 1: Pinto followed shortly thereafter. And you know, originally there wasn't
Speaker 1: that much criticism about the Pinto. Some people complained about
Speaker 1: the brakes a little bit, some people complained about the suspension,
Speaker 1: But what would really seal the deal for the Pinto
Speaker 1: would be its fuel tank. So Ford had designed the
Speaker 1: Pinto to have a rear mounted fuel tank, and it
Speaker 1: sat nestled between the car's rear axle, which is where
Speaker 1: the rear tires attach, and the rear bumper, so sandwich
Speaker 1: between these two components in the car and um At
Speaker 1: the time, the US government had really focused on front
Speaker 1: end collisions when it came to forming safety regulations because
Speaker 1: the seven late seventies was also when the United States
Speaker 1: was starting to say, you know, we probably need to
Speaker 1: have some regulations in place to protect drivers on the
Speaker 1: road that car companies have to meet these specifications if
Speaker 1: their cars are going to be sold in our country.
Speaker 1: So that had mostly focused on the front end collision
Speaker 1: side of things at this point in history, and therefore
Speaker 1: they didn't really take a look at the back end
Speaker 1: and what might happen with a rear collision. And the
Speaker 1: fuel tank location meant that if someone driving a Pinto
Speaker 1: were to get rear ended by another car, there was
Speaker 1: a very real possibility that the fuel tank would be
Speaker 1: damaged potentially ruptured that in turn presented a serious fire hazard.
Speaker 1: The Pinto didn't have any significant crumple zone in the
Speaker 1: back of it. So if you collide at a good
Speaker 1: clock of speed and you know, we're talking about more
Speaker 1: than ten miles per hour, certainly, if it was more
Speaker 1: than thirty miles per hour, you're looking at a real
Speaker 1: potential to have a ruptured fuel tank. And there were
Speaker 1: cases of collisions in which people were you know, badly
Speaker 1: injured or even died from burns, and it's undeniably horrible. Now,
Speaker 1: I should also add that the reputation of the Pinto
Speaker 1: was also due to a few sensational articles that may
Speaker 1: have inflated numbers to make it seem like the Pinto
Speaker 1: was even worse than what it really was. Not that
Speaker 1: it wasn't bad. I don't think you could really argue
Speaker 1: that it was, you know, good, but rather that the
Speaker 1: reputation the Pinto received was worse than what it was merited. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's also this story about a famous cost benefit
Speaker 1: analysis memo, and depending upon whom you ask, that cost
Speaker 1: benefit analysis memo either showed that Ford had callous leaking
Speaker 1: included that if they fixed the problem, it would be
Speaker 1: more expensive than just paying off the lawsuits that would
Speaker 1: come up, so instead they just said, we'll just deal
Speaker 1: with lawsuits. That's one telling of that memo. Uh Or
Speaker 1: it was more like it was saying the likelihood of
Speaker 1: a tragic accident was no greater than for the average
Speaker 1: vehicle of especially of that size. Still, this was bad
Speaker 1: enough for the Pinto to show up on a lot
Speaker 1: of these worst Car lists, and Ford was pressured to
Speaker 1: recall one and a half million Pinto's and Mercury Bobcats,
Speaker 1: which were essentially the same car. In Okay, let's switch gears,
Speaker 1: so to speak, and talk about a different car. This
Speaker 1: one's called the Trabant, or sometimes the Trabby. This one
Speaker 1: came out of what was at the time East Germany,
Speaker 1: and quick history lesson for all you young uns out there.
Speaker 1: Once upon a time, after World War Two, Germany was
Speaker 1: split into two nations, who had East Germany and West
Speaker 1: german Many. East Germany was a communist country, essentially an
Speaker 1: extension of the then Soviet Union. So East Germany began
Speaker 1: producing the Trabant back in the late nineteen fifties, and
Speaker 1: while there would be a few models produced over the
Speaker 1: decades of production, the actual design of the car remained
Speaker 1: almost identical. So in other words, like if you were
Speaker 1: to look at a Trabant that was made in the
Speaker 1: late fifties and one that was made in the early eighties.
Speaker 1: You probably wouldn't be able to tell that there were
Speaker 1: very many differences. They were essentially the same. In some ways.
Speaker 1: That makes things easy because replacement parts are going to
Speaker 1: be plentiful. I mean, presumably that will be compatible across
Speaker 1: multiple models. But it also shows, let's say, a lack
Speaker 1: of evolution and innovation. It was a tiny two door car,
Speaker 1: and the Trabant's body was made from a material called
Speaker 1: dero plast, and this is a fiber reinforced plastic, so
Speaker 1: kind of like fiberglass. Typically the fibers in dero last
Speaker 1: work cotton or sometimes wool, so these were cars that had,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes cotton reinforced plastic bodies. One issue with
Speaker 1: this was that the process of shaping and curing the plastic,
Speaker 1: called thermo setting, is an irreversible process. So you start
Speaker 1: off with a polymer that's in a liquid format, and
Speaker 1: you can pour this liquid into say a mold. Then
Speaker 1: you can subject that mold to you know, heat and
Speaker 1: high pressure, and the liquid polymer cures and it hardens
Speaker 1: into shape. But you cannot do the same process in reverse.
Speaker 1: Once it's hardened into shape, it's locked there, so you
Speaker 1: can't just you know, heat it up and melt it
Speaker 1: back down into a reusable format. So that makes makes
Speaker 1: the tribun a bit of a pain to deal with.
Speaker 1: When they reached the end of their useful life cycle,
Speaker 1: which for some of these vehicles appeared to be shortly
Speaker 1: after they rolled off the assembly line, eventually people figured
Speaker 1: out how to shred the car bodies and use that
Speaker 1: material as aggregate for concrete production. And there's some stories
Speaker 1: that say that pigs found deer o plastic delicious. Uh,
Speaker 1: those maybe urban legends, and I would probably treat it
Speaker 1: as you know, being such and not taking that as gospel,
Speaker 1: But there are so many articles out there that just
Speaker 1: casually present that as fact. It's just when you do
Speaker 1: some digging you find out there are any like reliable
Speaker 1: reports on it. Anyway, the car ran on a mixture
Speaker 1: of oil and gas, so you sort of refuel the trabant,
Speaker 1: you would actually have to open up the hood of
Speaker 1: the car. There was no like, you know, gas tank
Speaker 1: that you could access outside the car. You had to
Speaker 1: open the hood so expose the engine and then it
Speaker 1: had a little fuel tank at the top of the
Speaker 1: the engine blocks. You would open that up and you
Speaker 1: would pour in a mixture of oil and gas into
Speaker 1: the two stroke engine and then close it back up
Speaker 1: and shut the hood. There was also no fuel gauge,
Speaker 1: so there was no way to tell from behind the
Speaker 1: wheel how much fuel you actually had, so if you
Speaker 1: wanted to check and see how much fuel you had,
Speaker 1: you had to stop the car. You had to pop
Speaker 1: the hood, open up the fuel tank, and use a
Speaker 1: dipstick to check the fuel level. So not super convenient.
Speaker 1: The Trabant was famous for being notoriously unreliable and smelly.
Speaker 1: It would produce a lot of exhaust, like visible exhaust,
Speaker 1: like you were rolling coal every time you drove a Trabant.
Speaker 1: And it was also very loud. It was the engine
Speaker 1: was loud, and it was allowed experience to ride in one.
Speaker 1: It was also really slow. I saw one video in
Speaker 1: which an owner of one of these said he had
Speaker 1: only coaxed a Trabant up to a maximum off on
Speaker 1: flat road. Uh, he got a little faster if he
Speaker 1: was going down a hill, but on flat road fifty
Speaker 1: five was where it maxed out. And also that the car,
Speaker 1: you know, handles pretty poorly. It had no interior signal indicator,
Speaker 1: and so the turn signal was a bit of a
Speaker 1: thing because if you turned the turn signal on and
Speaker 1: then you made a turn, it would not automatically reset.
Speaker 1: You had to manually turn off the turn signal. But
Speaker 1: there was no indicator inside the car that the turn
Speaker 1: signal was on, so you know, if you didn't remember
Speaker 1: to do it yourself, you'd be irritating everyone behind you
Speaker 1: as they just start yelling go ahead and turn already.
Speaker 1: So in other words, it was just a lousy car.
Speaker 1: But it was also the only game in town if
Speaker 1: you were in East Germany pretty much because you know,
Speaker 1: it was a state owned operation. So to get a
Speaker 1: Trabant East German citizens actually had to submit an application
Speaker 1: and the wait time could be up to a decade
Speaker 1: or longer. So it was a really crappy car and
Speaker 1: you had to wait ten years before you had a
Speaker 1: chance to own one. When the Berlin Wall came down,
Speaker 1: there were stories of people from former East Germany who
Speaker 1: came straight over to West Germany and then they abandoned
Speaker 1: their old Trabant cars while getting you know, any other
Speaker 1: car that they could uh. The Trabants are pretty rare
Speaker 1: these days, especially in the United States, but some collectors
Speaker 1: do seek him out because I don't know why, because
Speaker 1: they're weird. We have a lot more bad cars to
Speaker 1: talk about, but first let's take a quick break. It's
Speaker 1: time for us to talk about an American business man
Speaker 1: named Malcolm Brooklyn, responsible for several cars that pop up
Speaker 1: on worst Car lists. And he's had a really long
Speaker 1: career and mostly focused in the automotive industry after he
Speaker 1: made some serious bank in the hardware business. And it's
Speaker 1: a career. March was some pretty big peaks and big valleys.
Speaker 1: So it's not like it's just failure. I mean he's
Speaker 1: he's he's been behind some big success stories too. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about one of the flops. This one is
Speaker 1: the s V one. Now, before the SV one, Brooklyn
Speaker 1: had co founded uh Subaru of America. You know, there
Speaker 1: was the existing Subaru company, but he created or co
Speaker 1: founded the American division of Subaru. And he did this
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight, and they imported the Subaru three sixty. Now,
Speaker 1: this little vehicle looked a lot like a Volkswagen Beetle,
Speaker 1: and in fact, the suber Ut three sixty also shows
Speaker 1: up in a lot of worst car lists. That's not
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here, though. Anyway, the three sixty
Speaker 1: got some scathing reviews for its performance in various safety tests.
Speaker 1: It was named one of the most unsafe vehicles that
Speaker 1: were available. And this was right around that time when
Speaker 1: the US government was mulling over regulations that would force
Speaker 1: the automotive industry to adopt new safety measures in car design.
Speaker 1: So Malcolm Brooklyn saw the writing on the wall and
Speaker 1: decided to go all in on safety. So in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one, Brooklyn created a car company called General Vehicles,
Speaker 1: which you know, sounds a little bit like General Motors, weird.
Speaker 1: His idea was to create a two seater car kind
Speaker 1: of similar to a sports car like the Corvette, and
Speaker 1: this one would have goal wing doors. You know, so
Speaker 1: those are the doors that you know, they they open
Speaker 1: upward similar to another car that's gonna show up in
Speaker 1: this episode. That's a spoiler. I mean, I'm sure everyone
Speaker 1: here knows what car I'm talking about. And uh, this
Speaker 1: sp one would also have a steel frame chassis complete
Speaker 1: with a rollover protective structure so it would protect passengers
Speaker 1: should the car be flipped over onto its you know, back,
Speaker 1: and it had or top I guess. It had front
Speaker 1: and rear bumpers that were pretty chunky. They extended out
Speaker 1: a good ways from the car, but they would also
Speaker 1: protect the car to a point where the you know.
Speaker 1: Brickland said, his company said, really that any collision up
Speaker 1: to ten miles per hour would have no damage to
Speaker 1: the bumpers. The car would resist that damage because of
Speaker 1: this design. D SP one would have an enclosed fuel
Speaker 1: tank and reinforced side panels for the doors. It would
Speaker 1: have no ashtray and no cigarette lighter. Brick And himself
Speaker 1: was a former smoker, and he thought that smoking in
Speaker 1: cars was dangerous. I happened to agree with him, and
Speaker 1: so he said, yeah, we're just not gonna have it now. Granted,
Speaker 1: people would could eventually buy an SV one and potentially
Speaker 1: have an aftermarket thing put in, but that's beside the point.
Speaker 1: The body was made from an acrylic resin bonded to
Speaker 1: fiberglass that ended up being a really huge hassle. Early
Speaker 1: versions of the car had problems with the acrylic blistering
Speaker 1: and required a total overhaul of the process. It was
Speaker 1: supposed to be a super safe sports car, and the
Speaker 1: s V in fact stood for Safety Vehicle see I
Speaker 1: told you went all in. Brickland was anticipating many of
Speaker 1: the changes that the US government would ultimately impose on
Speaker 1: the automotive industry. He was ahead of the game, so
Speaker 1: the SV one was truly a car that was ahead
Speaker 1: of its time. Now, while General Vehicles had its headquarters
Speaker 1: in America, the cars themselves would be manufactured in St.
Speaker 1: John in New Brunswick, Canada. So Brooklyn was looking around
Speaker 1: to find a place to you know, manufacture these vehicles,
Speaker 1: and he was looking for places that would have the
Speaker 1: government assistance and incentives in order to get things going.
Speaker 1: The idea being that the company would provide you know,
Speaker 1: more than a hundred well paying jobs in a region
Speaker 1: in Canada that was struggling with unemployment problems. It appears
Speaker 1: as though the Canadian government was under the impression that
Speaker 1: the money was going to go straight to production, like
Speaker 1: in other words, everything else was ready to go, we
Speaker 1: just need to start making these cars. But in fact,
Speaker 1: the SV one's design was not yet complete, so a
Speaker 1: lot of the initial money actually went into engineering and
Speaker 1: development to work out kinks in the design. So like
Speaker 1: they knew what they wanted the card to be like
Speaker 1: but they had to find a way to make it
Speaker 1: be that way. Right, You have to test all those
Speaker 1: ideas and reality and make sure they actually work. Now,
Speaker 1: that would mean that Brooklyn would actually have to seek
Speaker 1: additional funding as the project went on because he was
Speaker 1: still working out the bugs in the in the design
Speaker 1: and couldn't go right into production. The car would end
Speaker 1: up being a pretty hefty one. The doors alone weighed
Speaker 1: around ninety pounds each. Now they had a hydraulic system
Speaker 1: attached to them, at least the initial ones did. Uh.
Speaker 1: That did mean, however, that if the hydraulic system failed,
Speaker 1: you would have to lift those cars manually. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the doors were slow as well, even when they were working,
Speaker 1: so if the weather was bad and meant you would
Speaker 1: be left standing out or then sitting in the rain
Speaker 1: or snow or whatever for several seconds because the car
Speaker 1: door takes a while to open and close. It also
Speaker 1: meant that the V eight engine that powered the vehicle
Speaker 1: really had to push hard to meet the demand of
Speaker 1: moving such a heavy car, and Brocklyn had problems and
Speaker 1: that he was buying his engines from the American Motor
Speaker 1: Company and there was a dispute between General Vehicles and
Speaker 1: American Motor Company, and eventually it saw his initial order
Speaker 1: drastically reduced. Now what caused that division is a matter
Speaker 1: of debate. If you were to ask Brooklyn, he was
Speaker 1: said that he was told AMC didn't want to hurt
Speaker 1: their own car sales by supplying engines to a competitor,
Speaker 1: essentially saying, your car is so good that if we
Speaker 1: give you engines, people will buy your car. They won't
Speaker 1: buy our car. However, if you ask other people, you
Speaker 1: might hear that Brooklyn was talking some smack about a
Speaker 1: m C and that that soured the deal. At any rate,
Speaker 1: he would get around MC engines, and it was the
Speaker 1: three eight to be precise, He would have to get
Speaker 1: other engines for future SV one cars. The problems that
Speaker 1: Brooklyn encounter meant that the cost of production kept going
Speaker 1: up UH and that internment that the company was going
Speaker 1: to have to hike up the suggested price for the
Speaker 1: SV one in order to compensate for the fact that
Speaker 1: it was costing so much to produce. Initially, the price
Speaker 1: was supposed to be four thousand dollars for an s
Speaker 1: V one UH. The nineteen version that eventually came out
Speaker 1: more than doubled that to nine thousand, nine eighty five dollars,
Speaker 1: and okay, that sounds like nothing for a car these days,
Speaker 1: But then we have to remember we're talking about the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen seventies here, so if we adju for inflation,
Speaker 1: that nine thousand dollars is closer to fifty one thousand
Speaker 1: dollars today. It was way more expensive than comparable cars
Speaker 1: at the time, and no amount of safety features were
Speaker 1: likely to win people over to it. So why did
Speaker 1: it end up getting so expensive? Well, not only was
Speaker 1: there the quality issues that they had to solve, the
Speaker 1: Canadian policy for workers meant that, you know, Brookland was
Speaker 1: hurt as well. See, Canada had this policy that if
Speaker 1: you worked at a job for at least ten weeks,
Speaker 1: you could then quit that job and you would be
Speaker 1: eligible for unemployment benefits. So there were a lot of
Speaker 1: workers who just decided to leave their job rather than
Speaker 1: continue to work for General Vehicles and admitt that. The
Speaker 1: company had to deal with a lot of turnover, and
Speaker 1: they had to do a lot of recruiting and a
Speaker 1: lot of training, so that drove the price up a lot.
Speaker 1: The company needed more loans from the government to stay afloat.
Speaker 1: But by then the Canadian government kind of wanted to
Speaker 1: get a little distance. It was politically disadvantageous to be
Speaker 1: connected to General Vehicles. The car was being seen as
Speaker 1: a as a money pit, and the government had already
Speaker 1: invested millions of dollars in the SV one, So they
Speaker 1: called it quits. And so, after producing just around three
Speaker 1: thousand vehicles, the company General Vehicles closed up shop and
Speaker 1: the SV one was no more. So. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of folks include this on the worst Cars of
Speaker 1: All time lists. Not because the vehicle stuff had enormous flaws.
Speaker 1: I mean, it did have some, but it wasn't a limon,
Speaker 1: but rather it was because that whole process ultimately led
Speaker 1: to a car company going out of business. But I
Speaker 1: mentioned just now, you know, I alluded to the fact
Speaker 1: that going doors were going to play another part in
Speaker 1: in an in another vehicle will jump right to that one.
Speaker 1: And this is a famous one. It's one that a
Speaker 1: lot of people know about. We're talking about the DeLorean
Speaker 1: d m C twelve. This is, of course, the car
Speaker 1: made famous by the Back to the Future movies. I
Speaker 1: remember seeing the first Back to the Future film in
Speaker 1: the theater in and thinking that car looks super cool.
Speaker 1: But I had never heard of a DeLorean before I
Speaker 1: grew up in rural Georgia. No one had a DeLorean here.
Speaker 1: And I've actually done a full episode about Deloreans in
Speaker 1: the past. So I'm going to give you the cliffs
Speaker 1: notes version of the DeLorean story. The whole story, by
Speaker 1: the way, it's absolutely fascinating. We just don't have time
Speaker 1: to dive into the whole thing here. So John DeLorean,
Speaker 1: who is one of the more colorful characters who had
Speaker 1: been involved in the automotive history history. He was an
Speaker 1: executive with General Motors, but then he left that company
Speaker 1: and founded the DeLorean Motor Company in the mid nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: So Brickland's s V one, which remember that one came
Speaker 1: out in the seventies, had going doors. And there was
Speaker 1: another similarity between the s V one and then the
Speaker 1: DeLorean d m C twelve. And that's the fact that
Speaker 1: John DeLorean also shopped around to find a place where
Speaker 1: he could, you know, establish a manufacturing facility, and he
Speaker 1: was looking for a government that would provide incentives to
Speaker 1: allow him to do that, so like tax breaks and
Speaker 1: government assistants, and that kind of thing. So for the
Speaker 1: SV one that ended up being Canada. For the DeLorean
Speaker 1: it ended up being Northern Ireland on the outskirts of Belfast.
Speaker 1: The d m C twelve was to be a pretty
Speaker 1: odd car, and not just because of the going doors.
Speaker 1: The body panels were made of brushed stainless steel and
Speaker 1: they rolled out of the factory unpainted, so the classic
Speaker 1: DeLorean has that stainless steel look to it. Now some
Speaker 1: people would later go and get a hate job for
Speaker 1: their vehicles, but standard was unpainted stainless steel. Curiously, Dolorean
Speaker 1: picked a very weedy engine for the DMC twelve. It
Speaker 1: was a V six that was capable of just a
Speaker 1: hundred thirty horsepower. For a car that was styled like
Speaker 1: a sports car and a chunky sports car at that,
Speaker 1: that wasn't very much power, and in fact, during test drives,
Speaker 1: drivers found that the car's acceleration left a lot to
Speaker 1: be desired. It could take up to ten seconds to
Speaker 1: reach sixty miles per hour, that is not fast for
Speaker 1: a sports car, and its top speed was around a
Speaker 1: hundred nine miles per hour. The car is definitely striking
Speaker 1: to look at, I mean it is it is a
Speaker 1: cool looking car, and it might have been a modest success,
Speaker 1: and it may have even allowed the company to continue
Speaker 1: making more vehicles besides the d m C twelve, except
Speaker 1: that the path from establishing the company to actually producing
Speaker 1: the first vehicles was a really rough one for DeLorean.
Speaker 1: A lot of the employees at the manufacturing facility had
Speaker 1: little to no experience in manufacturing in general, let alone
Speaker 1: in the automotive manufacturing industry. There were a lot of
Speaker 1: errors in production that ended up being very costly. There
Speaker 1: were supply chain issues, and all of this drove the
Speaker 1: cost of production up. Sounds very familiar, right, It's just
Speaker 1: like the s V one, And this meant that, like
Speaker 1: the SV one, DeLorean had to jack up the sales
Speaker 1: price for the DeLorean in order to compensate for that expense.
Speaker 1: By the time the cars were ready to be sold
Speaker 1: in nine, which was a couple of years behind schedule,
Speaker 1: they came in with the price tag of twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. So if we had just that for inflation,
Speaker 1: that would make the DMC twelve a seventy five thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred dollar car, or thereabouts. That's how much it
Speaker 1: would cost you to buy a DMC twelve for a
Speaker 1: comparable amount of money if they were, you know, hitting
Speaker 1: the road today for a car that looks like a
Speaker 1: sports car but doesn't drive like a sports car, that
Speaker 1: is an astronomical price. DeLorean didn't produce as many vehicles
Speaker 1: as the company had projected. In the two years that
Speaker 1: had actually made cars, it fell short of production goals
Speaker 1: and it was hard to sell them at that exorbitant Brice.
Speaker 1: The DeLorean Motor Company went out of business in three
Speaker 1: whole years before Back to the Future would come out.
Speaker 1: And like I said, I had never even heard of
Speaker 1: Deloreans before the movie came out. Also, knowing what I
Speaker 1: know now, when Doc Brown talks about getting up to
Speaker 1: eighty eight miles per hour, I think he was being
Speaker 1: really generous over how much time it would take to
Speaker 1: achieve that speed. Anyway, because of the failure of the
Speaker 1: DMC twelve, the DeLorean Motor Company never got a chance
Speaker 1: to make another model of vehicle. All right, we've got
Speaker 1: some more bad cars to talk about, but let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break. Okay, I was talking about Brooklyn before
Speaker 1: the break. You know, he was the one behind the
Speaker 1: SV one and uh you know also the SUPERHU North America.
Speaker 1: And since we were talking about him, let's mention another
Speaker 1: infamous car that he's associated with. This time, this is
Speaker 1: not a car that he developed. It's one that his
Speaker 1: team discovered in an effort to find the quote cheapest
Speaker 1: car in the world end quote. This was because car
Speaker 1: prices in America this would be in the early mid
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties. Um, We're skyrocketing, largely due to inflation, and
Speaker 1: there were a growing number of Americans who found themselves
Speaker 1: priced out of buying a car. Brooklyn saw an opportunity
Speaker 1: to cater to those potential customers if he could just
Speaker 1: find a car that was cheap enough, and that car
Speaker 1: would be drumroll, please the You Go. Now, before I
Speaker 1: jump into talking about the UGO, I want to mention
Speaker 1: that these lists are so darned subjective that I come
Speaker 1: across disagreements in them when I was researching this episode. UH.
Speaker 1: The Edmonds list in UH includes the seven You Go
Speaker 1: as its fourth worst car in a list of fifty.
Speaker 1: Time dot Com didn't rank its list, but the Night
Speaker 1: five You Go is on that one. UH. The website
Speaker 1: The Drive lists it as number six on its top
Speaker 1: ten worst cars of all time. Goliath lists it at
Speaker 1: number two, in case you're wondering they gave the Ford
Speaker 1: pinto the number one spot. Also, Triple A has it
Speaker 1: on a list of worst cars, as does motor Biscuit.
Speaker 1: The website motor Biscuit that puts The Night You Go
Speaker 1: at number twelve. However, Riley at ottawise dot com lists
Speaker 1: it as a car that's been judged unfairly. So I
Speaker 1: guess you're mileage may vary pun intended. So let's walk
Speaker 1: through the complicated story of the You Go. And it
Speaker 1: starts not in the part of the world where we
Speaker 1: used to call it, you know, Yugoslavia. Instead it starts
Speaker 1: in Italy. So the company Fiat created an economical family
Speaker 1: car called the Fiat one, and then they had a variation,
Speaker 1: the Fiat one seven, that would serve as the starting
Speaker 1: point for the UGO, which was a little bit shorter
Speaker 1: in length than the already tiny Fiat was. A car
Speaker 1: company called Zastava Automobiles secured the rights to produce a
Speaker 1: version of this vehicle, which the company marketed as the Coral.
Speaker 1: It's a k O R A L. Or It's how
Speaker 1: Rick says his son's name, and the walking dead anyway,
Speaker 1: it was a subcompact hatchback and it was in fact
Speaker 1: very very cheap. Brookland's team reported back, and Malcolm leapt
Speaker 1: into action, and the story gets complicated, but ultimately began
Speaker 1: importing the Coral and changed the model name to you
Speaker 1: Go and marketed it as an ultra budget car. In
Speaker 1: the United States. This was in and the you Go
Speaker 1: was an odd car. One of the standard features advertised
Speaker 1: for the vehicle was carpeted interiors, which I guess tells
Speaker 1: you about the luxuries you could expect with a UGO,
Speaker 1: and I mean it was a budget car, no one
Speaker 1: was really expecting much. Also, the early models had an
Speaker 1: engine that put out a measly fifty five horse power
Speaker 1: that was still an improvement over the Eastern European version
Speaker 1: that topped out at forty horse power. That engine could
Speaker 1: push the tiny you Go up to about eighty six
Speaker 1: miles per hour as its top speed, and this made
Speaker 1: the you Go the car with the lowest top speed
Speaker 1: sold in the United States at that time. Dealers would
Speaker 1: sell the car for around four thousand dollars. This was
Speaker 1: about twice what they paid when they were buying the
Speaker 1: car's wholesale from Eastern Europe. The car had a reputation
Speaker 1: for being unreliable, though folks like Otto wise Is Riley
Speaker 1: say that that was largely an issue with people just
Speaker 1: failing to maintain their cars properly. Consumer Reports was less kind.
Speaker 1: They called the UGO the barely assembled bag of nuts
Speaker 1: and bolts, which is a big yikes. Honestly, most of
Speaker 1: what I found sites issues with the manufacturing processes, so
Speaker 1: it's good to remember these cars were built in a
Speaker 1: then communist country and the manufacturing facility was not a
Speaker 1: top of the line plant. To put it kindly, Uh,
Speaker 1: there were real issues not just with the quality of
Speaker 1: the plan itself, but also there was not a real
Speaker 1: motivated workforce there. There were stories of like people drinking
Speaker 1: on the job and such. Turns out, if you're drinking
Speaker 1: a lot, high precision assembly line work is probably not
Speaker 1: the best combo there. Anyway, there's a widespread joke that
Speaker 1: the UGO had a rear window to froster, not because
Speaker 1: you need to clear off ice off the back windshield,
Speaker 1: but rather it was there so that you could keep
Speaker 1: your hand ends warm while you push the car after
Speaker 1: it would inevitably break down. I know that It's a
Speaker 1: widespread joke because it showed up in nearly every article
Speaker 1: that mentioned the Ugo as one of the worst cars
Speaker 1: of all time. It's a joke that's been used a lot. Now,
Speaker 1: next up on our list is an entry that really
Speaker 1: hurts because it was a car that I genuinely thought
Speaker 1: looked super cool. I really like this car when it
Speaker 1: first premiered, and it is the Plymouth Prowler. This car
Speaker 1: showed up on a couple of lists for the worst
Speaker 1: cars of all time, and I can kind of understand why,
Speaker 1: but I still think the car looked awesome. Alright. So
Speaker 1: it's the nineteen nineties and Chrysler was creating some really
Speaker 1: sexy cars. For example, they their Dodge division created the Viper,
Speaker 1: which was a super sexy sports car that really good
Speaker 1: acceleration and speed and abysmal fuel economy, like no fuel economy.
Speaker 1: Now that that thing consumed gas sitting in the garage.
Speaker 1: It was not meant for daily driving. It was meant to,
Speaker 1: you know, impress people. Essentially, the Plymouth division, which historically
Speaker 1: was meant to produce cars for the low price market,
Speaker 1: later re emerged to be a brand that was meant
Speaker 1: to appeal to a youth market. Well, they dipped into
Speaker 1: a seriously retro design to propose the Prowler, and the
Speaker 1: Prowler hearkened back to hot rods of the thirties, forties, fifties,
Speaker 1: and sixties and had sleek, curved lines, uh, open front
Speaker 1: wheels like there were a little bumperrets that were over
Speaker 1: the tops of the wheels, but otherwise the wheels were
Speaker 1: open in the front, had a raped windshield. Uh, the
Speaker 1: hood narrowed to a sort of pointed curve in the front.
Speaker 1: A lot of folks thought the whole thing was really outlandish.
Speaker 1: I thought it looked gorgeous. Like reading over some of
Speaker 1: the critiques blows my mind because I thought this car
Speaker 1: looked amazing. However, despite having a hot rod exterior, what
Speaker 1: was going on under the hood was a different matter.
Speaker 1: The Prowler's engine was a three and a half liter
Speaker 1: V six with two horsepower. That engine could push the
Speaker 1: Prowler to an acceleration of zero to sixty miles an
Speaker 1: hour at around seven point two seconds. That's just not
Speaker 1: super duper impressive. It's not the worst. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are other cars on this list that have, you know,
Speaker 1: worse acceleration, but it's not impressive. Top speed maxed out
Speaker 1: at around a hundred fifteen miles per hour, still, you know,
Speaker 1: not like super crazy for a hot rod. And Plymouth
Speaker 1: only made automatic transmission versions of the Prowler, so that
Speaker 1: meant you couldn't have a manual transmission and peel rubber
Speaker 1: and pretend like you're racing for papers because you only
Speaker 1: could use an automatic, So the performance of the Prowler
Speaker 1: couldn't live up to the style of the exterior. Plymouth
Speaker 1: was using a lot of parts that were originally designed
Speaker 1: for other Chrysler vehicles. This was a kind of a
Speaker 1: cost saving measure, so like the steering rack, the suspension,
Speaker 1: the engine and more, we're all kind of leftovers from
Speaker 1: other Chrysler models. The Prowler failed to find a place
Speaker 1: in the automotive market. Curiously, two of the lists I
Speaker 1: found both have very similar criticisms, namely that the Prowler
Speaker 1: was a concept that looked great on a computer screen,
Speaker 1: but it was just not as impressive in person. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that one or both of the people
Speaker 1: who wrote those lists copied someone, but I will say
Speaker 1: that whenever the two lists had the same car listed,
Speaker 1: the wording was not identical, just really similar. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to name them, but I will say like I
Speaker 1: since there's some plagiarism going on in this world, which
Speaker 1: is why I tried to pull from so many different sources,
Speaker 1: because I didn't want to get like a list that
Speaker 1: someone made that was considered to be definitive and everyone
Speaker 1: else just copied it. Anyway. Ultimately, the Chrysler slash Plymouth
Speaker 1: Company produced fewer than twelve thousand of these cars. Chrysler
Speaker 1: would rebrand it. It was the Plymouth Prowler for a while,
Speaker 1: but then it became the Chrysler Prowler. Um. It's still
Speaker 1: a car that would love to tool around in, particularly
Speaker 1: if I could find one in the original purple paint job,
Speaker 1: which I really liked. Some lists also include the PT Cruiser,
Speaker 1: by the way, is one of the worst cars of
Speaker 1: all time. In many ways, the PT Cruiser was a
Speaker 1: kind of spiritual sister car to the Plymouth Prowlers, also
Speaker 1: meant to appeal to the youth crowd. UM. I like
Speaker 1: the look of the PT Cruiser as well, but I've
Speaker 1: also heard that it has a pretty significant blind spot,
Speaker 1: so it does have its own drawbacks. But it didn't
Speaker 1: feel like it was enough for me to you know,
Speaker 1: included on this list. Will do one more for this.
Speaker 1: I've actually got a few more, So maybe I'll do
Speaker 1: a part two and talk about a few other cars,
Speaker 1: because there's no shortage of cars that people have listed
Speaker 1: as being one of the worst of all time. As
Speaker 1: I said, that's very subjective question, so we can probably
Speaker 1: do a part two of this. But you know, three
Speaker 1: of the lists that I looked at included a British
Speaker 1: car called the Reliant Robin. Now I'm gonna stay up
Speaker 1: front that I imagine a really big reason that these
Speaker 1: lists included that particular car is that there was a
Speaker 1: famous segment on the very popular show top Gear that
Speaker 1: made the Robin look like it would spend more time
Speaker 1: flipped over on its side than it would upright on
Speaker 1: its wheels. Also, it only had three wheels, so as
Speaker 1: a three wheeled car, the one wheel in the front
Speaker 1: was used for steering and the two wheels in the
Speaker 1: back would drive the vehicle. That's where the power train
Speaker 1: would deliver the power. So the engine was mounted in
Speaker 1: the front. It was not a rear mounted engine, so
Speaker 1: not like the old Volkswagen Beetle engines. In the front
Speaker 1: of the car, but it's the drive train provides power
Speaker 1: to the rear wheels. I looked at all that was
Speaker 1: said about the Reliant Robin and all of those lists
Speaker 1: said that had a reliable tendency to tip over if
Speaker 1: you moved into a turn it to hide our higher
Speaker 1: rate of speed. Like they all repeated this um. They
Speaker 1: also said if you went through a particularly tight curve
Speaker 1: in the road you were, you were going to potentially
Speaker 1: tip over. And this is what viewers saw if they
Speaker 1: watched that episode of Top Gear. The car tipped over
Speaker 1: multiple times in that segment of that episode. However, later on,
Speaker 1: the host admitted that his production team had re engineered
Speaker 1: the differential on the Reliant Robin so that it would
Speaker 1: tip over more readily. In other words, they engineered it
Speaker 1: so that it would perform orm in a specific way,
Speaker 1: that is to become unbalanced and fall over, you know,
Speaker 1: for the camera. So while the car appeared to be
Speaker 1: as steady as a domino on a waterbed during this
Speaker 1: television segment, that was not necessarily a fair reflection of
Speaker 1: its performance for the average driver. But why would a
Speaker 1: UK car company even make a three wheeled car in
Speaker 1: the first place. Why would you go that way? Well,
Speaker 1: the answer to that kind of boils down to taxes.
Speaker 1: So by making the Robin a three wheeled vehicle, and
Speaker 1: by building the body of the car out of fiberglass
Speaker 1: so that the weight would not be too great, Reliant
Speaker 1: was able to have the Robin classified as a motorcycle
Speaker 1: while still marketing it as a car. So motorcycles in
Speaker 1: the UK were the subject of a different and less
Speaker 1: expensive tax than cars were, so you didn't have to
Speaker 1: spend as much tax to buy a motorcycle, and that
Speaker 1: meant the three wheeled cars were slightly more affordable than
Speaker 1: the four wheeled versions because their price tag didn't climb
Speaker 1: as higher as high due to higher taxes. But when
Speaker 1: I say affordable, I don't necessarily mean cheap. They cost
Speaker 1: around uh well, when they came out around eight hundred
Speaker 1: pounds when they first came out of that would be
Speaker 1: around eight hundred pounds today, which is around say eleven grand.
Speaker 1: They were also more economical when it came to fuel consumption.
Speaker 1: Found sites that said you could go up to around
Speaker 1: sixty to sixty four miles per gallon on Robin. That's
Speaker 1: really impressive. The engine was very modest. The original Robbins
Speaker 1: boasted an engine that had an output of just thirty
Speaker 1: three horsepower. It took nearly fifteen seconds to coax a
Speaker 1: Robin to get up to sixty miles per hour. Not
Speaker 1: that I'm convinced that would have ever been a good
Speaker 1: idea in the first place, because even though they weren't
Speaker 1: as prone to tipping over as was depicted, they still
Speaker 1: could Anyway, I feel like the Robbins inclusion on lists
Speaker 1: is largely due to that top gear piece. I mean,
Speaker 1: sure it was not a speedster, had a very small capacity.
Speaker 1: You couldn't carry very much in it, but it would
Speaker 1: also serve just fine while puttering around like a small
Speaker 1: English town as long as you know you weren't taking
Speaker 1: corners like Mario and Dretti. So I feel like that
Speaker 1: one has uh an unearned reputation, or at least only
Speaker 1: partly earned reputation, for being one of the worst cars
Speaker 1: of all time. All Right, we've run out of time ourselves.
Speaker 1: I do have a couple more cars that I was
Speaker 1: going to talk about, but I'll save those and we'll
Speaker 1: do a part two on this in the near future,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about some more cars that for one reason.
Speaker 1: Another people have singled out to say this was a
Speaker 1: really bad one. Uh, it would be great to kind
Speaker 1: of focus on some that have had ooriously atrocious fuel economy,
Speaker 1: for example, particularly cars in the seventies when the oil
Speaker 1: crisis made that sort of thing even more of a problem.
Speaker 1: But we'll save that for the next episode. If you
Speaker 1: have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes,
Speaker 1: please reach out to me. The best way to do
Speaker 1: that is on Twitter. The handle for the show is
Speaker 1: text Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again,
Speaker 1: really sick. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.