1958 Edsel Corsair. Many attribute it's horrid looks to it's abject failure, but the car was also ridiculously poorly made.
Prices for the Corsair in 1958 ranged from US$3,311 to $3,390. |
Production Figures for 1958 Edsel Corsair
| Body Style | Units |
|---|
| 2-Door Hardtop | 3,632 |
|---|
| 4-Door Hardtop | 6,355 |
|---|
| Total | 9,987 |
|---|
|  |
AMC Gremlin (1970-1978)
| Launched on April Fool's Day in 1970, the Gremlin marked the beginning of the end for American Motors. Although AMC built a number of terrible cars the Gremlin is generally agreed upon as the worst of them all. It was a small, rust-prone car that guzzled fuel. It's handling was terrible, its engine was crippled by emissions control equipment, and the flip-up back window would often break off in a driver's hands. |  |
AMC Pacer 1975-1981 | The Pacer is an enduring symbol of bad taste. The Pacer featured tall, wraparound windows that gave it the look of a rolling fishbowl. AMC spent millions promoting the car, but it was a sales flop.
Although it was a gas guzzler and a rust bucket, the Pacer's hideous looks were its enduring calling card. |  |
| The 1980s was not a great time for American auto manufacturers and the 1982 Cimarron is a prime example of this ineptitude. The Cimarron was nothing more than a dressed up Chevrolet Cavalier called a Cadillac. It was a complete piece of krap and sold poorly. |  |
 | 1974 Mustang II. Mustang fans despise this car. It’s been giving Mustang a bad name since it was released in the mid-1970s. The Mustang II was a redesigned Pinto. It was poorly made, low on power, and could explode. |  |
Bricklin SV1
( 1974-1976)
| New Brunswick premier Richard Hatfield should have passed on Malcolm Bricklin's SV1 project. Hatfield funded the project anyway. Only a handful of the fiberglass-bodied SV1's were ever built, and the project was plagued with problems that ranged from inadequate brakes to a leaking rear hatch.
The SV1 suffered from crippling design flaws and construction quality that resembled a Soviet-era Lada. |  |
 | 1971 Chevrolet Vega. The Vega's problems were many. The engine wouldn’t hold oil. The front end had a tendency to fall off, and most of the fenders rusted out after only a year in the winter (and in places that never got snow.)
The engine got so hot it routinely warped the heads and destroyed head gaskets. |  |
Chevrolet Chevette 1975-1987
| Rushed into production as a slap-dash response to an OPEC oil embargo that created a market for small cars, the sub-compact Chevette earned a reputation as a car that drove even worse than it looked.
The engine was rough, the suspension was crude, and the interior was lined with cheap plastic. Construction quality of the early Chevettes epitomized mid-1970's Detroit for shoddy workmanship. The Chevette superseded the Vega as Chevrolet's entry-level subcompact and sold 2.8 million units over twelve model years. The Chevette was the best-selling small car in the U.S. for model years 1979 and 1980. |  |
2003 Saturn Ion. | One would think that by the 2000s folks would have figured out how to build cars. Engineers at Saturn didn't and the result was Ion. The interior was poorly designed, uncomfortable and filled with cheap plastic, which also applied to the exterior. | 
Driving the Ion was also an experience – and not a good one. |
 | 1987 Yugo GV. The Yugo GV (GV stood for good value) was a disaster in every sense of the word. The Yugo very often didn’t work at all. The electrical system was something out of Siberia and construction was shoddy, at very best.
The only good thing about a Yugo was that they were light – which made pushing them when they broke down easy. |  |
