If that car were a transformer it would be a catfish, that sucker is ugggggly.

How about GM's attempt to answer to the popularity of VW and rear air cooled engines?

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Is Ralph Nader still alive?

Oh no. I don't agree. I got to drive a Corvair for a little bit. It was a nice driving car. Corvairs had problems with the drive belt for the huge fan, but it was a nice driver.

I always thought they were quite sporty looking. Especially the 2nd generation Corvairs.

Nader trashed the car with his book, but I agree with Jay Leno. Ralph missed the mark on this; But he did make a successful long term career with his trash talk.

If the Corvair was as bad as he said, I wonder why he did not go after the VW Beetle? I guess I am going to have to go look for a copy of his book and see exactly what he said.

All that said, Corvairs could be rust buckets.

Google. Yes.

EDIT : I'll have to think about the book for a little bit. Even a 50 year old paperback is priced at $45.00. And up. Way up.

But Wikipedia has some good info. There are 8 chapters. Corvair is talked in Chapter 1 only. The other 7 chapters deal with auto safety in general.

Once you learned how to drive a Corvair you entered an Exclusive Club. These things were great! I had hot VW Vans and Beetles, they were cool but Corvairs were an honest improvement in horsepower, styling and yes, handling.
Think of them as 60's Drift Cars.

Unsafe At Any Speed.

The Mazda RX8 could make the list. It had a myriad of problems. Chief among them the approach they took in selling a high-maintenance vehicle. They marketed it as a sort of everyman's sports car. It could have been, but the rotary engine offers some real maintenance challenges. They should never be turned off or revved cold, they should have a premix added for every fill up (they're oil injected, but no one at the dealership would have been telling you that), and you need to keep a close eye on the oil levels. The front cat trapped hot exhaust close to the vulnerable apex seals, which means premature engine failure if not addressed.

God, I miss that car.

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They sold a lot of these but if there was ever a car that had plain Jane written all over it...
...it was the K car! Just awful!

(Probably didn't help that more often than not I saw nuns driving these things around! Man it was like they were a standard accessory or something!)

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Yeah, boring as hell, but fairly well put together and made a ton of money for Chrysler.
Not sure it's fair to call that a "failure". More like just a "bore".

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LOL this thread rules

What saved Chrysler is they received a government bail out. Then all of the federal agencies were required to buy Chryslers so they could stay open and keep all of the factory employees working.

K Cars were big NY State Fleet Cars when I was growing up.

You could always tell whose Dad worked for the State.

1975 Chevy Monza. I had one just like this one pictured. It had A/C, but manual brakes and manual steering. It was a little big POS. This was the successor to the Vega, and apparently, they had a lot of Vega parts left over. It had the horrible 4 cylinder with an aluminum block and cast iron head, same as the Vega. Overhead valve driven by a rubber belt, instead of a chain. What could go wrong!?

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Yeah Ok the K car saved Chrysler...er why?...but foock it was still awful!

Like...I'm afraid!!

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Sounds like the Soviet Union!

From my son in laws chickens perspective.
Tractor Supply pre assembled chicken coup.
Coyote X crappy job fastening fenceing panel wire = massacre. Coyote view much different .
Hold on someone mispelled coup with a extra E
Their bad !

; ) Shane

yes but they paid back that loan with interest , 7 years ahead of schedule , because of this platform of car

And of course, the Pontiac Fiero

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In 78 the boss replaced the Toyota station wagon with one of these as the Company car. I couldn't believe it, it wouldn't go unless you really put your foot in it. Just made a whooshing sound and struggled to hit 50. No room in the floorboard, just a SLED in the purest form.

Coupe only? Usually if the coupe fails, the other body styles fail aswell.

Worst coupe fail? Mustang mach e. Mustangs dont have four doors, screw u Ford!

Ive only owned fords or lincolns my whole life, had 3 mustangs. Still own one. But four doors on a coupe is sacrilege. Theyre trying to be hip with the soccer moms, but theyre killing their golden goose. Imho i dont want an electric mustang either. I want a car with blood(oil) and breathes! Has a pulse. a living machine.

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This was a great car once the bugs were ironed out.

At the height of the gas crisis my father traded in his Olds 442 on a '79 Chevette. Unlike your grandfather's Chevette, dad's was a manual. The only positive memory I have of that POS was that dad would let me work the shifter while he worked the clutch.

It was not a bailout. It was a loan that Chrysler repaid (Wall Street is where the bailouts went to). I could not believe it when I saw a bunch of American Motors cars on one of the naval bases in Virginia in the early 70s. And then it hit me; When given a chance, the Federal Govt. is going to spread the money around.

The situation with Chrysler was no different then than it was in 2008 with "cash for clunkers" and the bailouts for GM and Chrysler (again). The auto industry was so big in the 70s that if Chrysler collapsed it would harm all of the suppliers to the auto industry. And you would have probably seen mass layoffs.

The government loan to Chrysler ( and Lee Iacocca ) gave Chrysler a shot in the arm that it needed. Then the mini-van and the K-car sales were so good that Chrysler lasted for another 30 years before it was taken over by that German company.

Oh, the sacrilege. 4 doors on a coupe? What a travesty. But I sure see a lot of 4-door Chargers on the street. This red one looks like a 4-door sedan. But I sure see a lot of them.

Not too many teenagers are going be buying that electric Mustang. And old farts like me have gotten more practical and prefer opening a rear door to sit down as opposed to having to climb out of the backseat.

And I have got to the point I do not care what is under the hood. If a squirrel in a cage can move a car down the road and let me pass everybody, that is all I care about. And I love 426 Hemi-s.

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A lot of people made that trade. Reluctantly. In the 70s and early 80s, many of these small cars were called Econo-boxes. The Chevette especially so. No one wanted to be seen in one. Interestingly, I don't recall anyone ever calling a Honda or Toyota Econo-boxes.

Agreed. Fomoco took a page out of the corporate GM book of shame. Take an iconic model name and slap it on a turd. See: GTO, Blazer, Malibu, Caprice.

There really weren’t many bugs to iron out, just debris (leaves/pine needles etc) could build up on the rear exhaust manifold by entering right behind rear window and the rear engine cover - thus possibly causing a fire, new weather shield eliminated this. I have had 4, favorite one that I slightly modified is below.

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The 04-06 GTO's were exactly what a GTO was intended to be from the start, a 2 door family car with the biggest engine they could muster.

There wasn’t a 2nd generation fiero. There was a prototype 2nd gen in 1989, and the 1988 had a totally redesigned suspension.

Wasn't the oil pan a quart and a half too small leading to overheating which caused fires? As I understand they had to shoe horn the engine install and use a tiny oil pan. This may have just been the earlier models.

It was the bog standard Iron duke in every FWD GM made then. Manuals were misprinted a quart low, and the engine was already an oil burner, so the early, early ones threw rods and spat oil over the catalytic converter, which was right behind the firewall instead of, say, under the seats like on a front engined car.

the fire thing was blown way out of proportion and the number of fires was super low compared to the production numbers.

Who could forget the Ford Pinto.

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Pretty simple. Also voted worst car in the world by TopGear.

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The dipstick registered it having the correct amount of oil when it in fact was a quart and a half low.

A great Coop.

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Seen here in an earlier photo.

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Looks like a Grand Prix and somewhat like a Grand Am, aka uninspiring and copied. At least with the Corvette's evolution, it was truly an original look each time, with some designs better than others.

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I love all of my Coops equally, don't make me choose

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I got a coupe so ugly, my dog didn't even want to pose by it. Still my favorite car though...

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Thought the Chrysler Crossfire was a damn fine looking car. Rarely see them on the road today but when I do they still catch eye. Always wanted one but had little faith in the Chrysler brand

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Had a dream years ago where I had to choose between these two that magically showed up in my garage. Woke up before I made my decision. That dream has stuck with me for 20+ years.

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