Some people say there’s no such thing as a truly terrible car these days, but there has been no shortage of complete clunkers in the past, and a list of the worst cars of all-time is incredibly difficult to narrow down to just 10 names.
I’m giving it my best shot anyway. Not all are terrible to drive. Not all are terrible to look at. But each and every one was a bad idea that did nothing to endear the world to the brands that spawned them.
1. Aston Martin Lagonda
It might seem scurrilous to include the now-classic Lagonda here, but remove those rose-tinted spectacles, because this William Towns-designed wedge on wheels really was a bad idea. They were – and still are – popular in Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, where fuel and running costs are lower.
The Lagonda looked like the future when it was launched in 1976, with LED displays on the vertiginous dashboard, along with touchpad and steering wheel controls decades before other manufacturers embraced such technology. The problem was that none of it worked for more than five minutes at a time. Mechanically, too, it was a catastrophe, with a build complexity that would no doubt have baffled the engineers and scientists who managed to land man on the Moon. Having said all that, though, few cars can touch the Lagonda for pure 1970s cool. So, if you have the means…
2. Austin Allegro Vanden Plas
The Allegro was, like the Morris Marina and Ital, a product of 1970s British Leyland – a sprawling, nationalised colossus that was an embarrassment to the United Kingdom when countries such as Germany and Japan had begun building quality cars that didn’t necessarily rust at the first sight of morning dew or leave their occupants stranded on the hard shoulder every other journey.
With a body styled by Harris Mann, who was hampered by BL’s insistence on parts sharing with other cars – resulting in the use of a bigger engine, which affected the body height – as well as oversized seats that were responsible for the Allegro’s square steering wheel that needed to be shaped to allow the driver to get their knees under it. It handled like a blancmange, and if you jacked it up in the wrong place, its rear windows would pop out. But the biggest joke was the Vanden Plas, with leather upholstery, walnut picnic tables and a chrome grille that aped that of Jaguar.
3. Chevrolet Corvair
One of history’s most notorious vehicles, the Corvair was named by amalgamating Corvette and Bel Air – that was bad idea number one, and they just kept coming. The Corvair’s engine was an all-alloy, air-cooled, flat-six unit, and was rear-mounted (sound familiar, Porsche 911 fans?), but it only generated, at launch, a paltry 81hp. Unlike Porsche, GM didn’t really spend any more money in trying to make it handle properly, and the location of the engine, along with other notable safety defects, served as the impetus behind a now-legendary book by the American author, Ralph Nader: Unsafe at Any Speed.
Its dangerous handling characteristics weren’t the only problem – it suffered horrendous oil leaks, its heater pumped poisonous fumes into the cabin, and overall, it came to be viewed as a complete dud.
4. Chrysler PT Cruiser Cabrio
An undeniably cynical attempt to cash in on the demand for retro-styled cars in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the PT Cruiser failed in every respect to capture the essence of times gone by, unlike, say, the reborn Volkswagen Beetle and BMW’s Mini. Dynamically flawed, the car that Chrysler had hoped would appeal to the masses had very little going for it to begin with.
So the obvious thing to do in 2005 was to lop off its roof, right? Wrong. The PT Cruiser Cabriolet was an amalgam of everything that was wrong with car design at a time when most manufacturers were starting to really up their games. The bracing bar that bisected the canvas roof served no purpose unless you had to use it to push the car to safety after breaking down, and the only people it seemingly appealed to were those who knew absolutely nothing about cars or driving.
5. Ferrari Mondial 8
Proof that even the best can get it badly wrong at times, Ferrari’s Mondial 8 not only looked awkward (blame the design brief for 2+2 seating in a mid-engined sports car), but was also woefully under-engineered when it emerged, in 1980, as a replacement for the Bertone-designed, wedge-shaped 308 GT4. That it was pathetically underpowered was one thing, but there was much more to come for anyone silly enough to spend their money on one.
The electrics were more convoluted than those on the Large Hadron Collider, and were prone to catch fire once they had enough working out whether you wanted to use your indicators or your windscreen washers. Life really was too short for it, but the Mondial did end up being a decent car, especially once it shared the drivetrain of the 348, and its looks improved over time, too. But the first generation’s place at the bottom of the pile looks assured – in recent times, when collectors have gone nuts over anything with a “prancing horse” attached to it, prices have remained resolutely unmovable.
6. Jaguar X-Type
The X-Type wasn’t particularly offensive to look at or drive, so you might be wondering why it’s included in this list of offenders. Let me explain. It was an exercise of marketing gone wrong. Jaguar needed a volume seller to compete with the BMW 3 Series, Audi A4, Mercedes C-Class et al, but it didn’t really want to spend any money taking on the establishment. So it decided to make a Jaguar using the platform of Ford’s Mondeo, and once everyone heard that, nobody wanted to buy one. The ride was ridiculously choppy, and thanks to the drivetrain being cannibalised to become four-wheel drive, it was a rather thirsty machine. So, really, what was the point?
7. Morris Ital
The Ital was basically a face-lifted Morris Marina, a car that was old fashioned when it launched in 1971, based on the archaic underpinnings of the Morris Minor. And the Minor was bad enough already. Top Gear's Richard Hammond said of that car: "I'll guarantee that nothing exciting, vibrant, dynamic, new, creative, hopeful or beneficial in any way to humanity has ever been done, thought of or driven to in that drab, dreary, entirely beige, willfully awful pile of misery."
Named after the Italdesign studios, this horrible automobile was actually penned by Harris Mann in the UK, and boy was it bad. The Ital soldiered on until 1984, and appalling build-quality issues mean that very few survive to this day, most having rusted themselves into oblivion on lawns in the rougher parts of UK towns and cities. Unbelievably, China’s Chengdu Auto Works bought the Ital’s tooling, and built it in 1998, calling the result the Huandu CAC6430. Production ceased once again a year later, hopefully never to be restarted.
8. Rover CityRover
The final death throes of the British car industry are perfectly encapsulated by this insult to motoring. While Jaguar Land Rover might be going strong these days, that’s down to Indian parent company coffers. When the CityRover was launched, MG Rover was the last surviving mass producer of British cars – a remnant of British Leyland that had shed itself of all the glamour and prestige once associated with it.
Which might go some way to explaining why it decided the CityRover was a good idea. It wasn’t that offensive to look at, be inside or drive. But it was a massive insult to the UK motor industry, because it was essentially a re-badged Tata Indica – a result of MG Rover having no money to develop a new, world-beating small car. The company never stood a chance.
9. Ssangyong Rodius
Apart from perhaps the Pontiac Aztek (the ugly crossover made famous by Walter White in Breaking Bad), has any car in history had less visual appeal than the first Rodius? Looking like the result of various styling cues being tossed into a blender, there was zero harmony or continuity. It was designed by a Brit, Ken Greenley, who had been in charge of the automotive design course at London's Royal College of Art. He claimed his aim was "to capture the essence of a luxury yacht". Hmm.
But perhaps Ssangyong might be forgiven if the first-generation Rodius was at least a decent steer. It wasn’t. If Greenley had set out to design a land yacht, the engineers must have got wind of this, because that’s exactly how the car handled. Its structural rigidity was reportedly so lacking that if you cornered hard enough in one, the rear door could unexpectedly fly open.
10. Vauxhall /Opel Vectra
Jeremy Clarkson would no doubt have become infamous without the mid-90s Vectra, but the two will always be inextricably linked. Both he and the car hit the headlines when his review of the hapless saloon was broadcast on a previous iteration of Top Gear. Clarkson's six-minute piece saw him driving around in complete silence except for the occasional remark about the weather.
He reasoned that the engineers and designers responsible for the Vectra hadn’t been bothered to put in any effort, so why should he? The car’s British manufacturer, Vauxhall, suffered years of pain after the rubbishing it got, while Clarkson reportedly received death threats from some of the company’s offended workforce.
The next model was better, and when the Insignia came along years later, it showed what could be achieved with a bit of effort. The Vectra will simply be remembered for being completely forgettable.
