The World's Worst Cars

I picked this up at a book store on the bargain table. When I was still flipping through the pages 10 minutes later, I knew I had to buy it. I've always liked cars, and think the 50s and 60s were tremendous years for the auto industry. Those fanciful fins. The luxury of push-button transmission. Windows that go up and down with the touch of a finger. Some of the cars in here are no surprise (the Yugo, Chevrolet Citation). Others are so little known, I'm amazed the author KNEW about them, let alone what made them flops. Others in the book surprised me because I always thought they were so cool - the 1963 - 66 Dodge Dart. I even liked the Ford Maverick - you still see plenty of them on the road today - but, geez, why would they make a pimpled undercarriage (in Detroit, no less) and not think of that pesky seasonal problem we call ROAD SALT? Almost everyone loves cars. Almost everyone who comes to my house picks THIS book up among the pile on the coffee table. You can read three pages if you only have 5 minutes, but I should warn you: it's addictive. You'll read through descriptions of 20 cars, and then read through 20 more. Also good for the "reading room." lol Oh - I've also found this to be a fun little ditty as a gift: birthday, going to a party (everyone will take wine - your bottle will get lost; why not take something they'll remember?).

What I like about this book is that many of the cars reviewed as the "worst" are cars we all know about, presently have, had in the past, or know someone who has or had the car. Other such books talk about obscure or experimantal cars - such as flying cars, etc. - But this is a book we can all relate to. Nice organized layout also. Lots of fun reminiscing.

I went through all of the cars in about 2 hours. Not many books make me laugh out loud, but this one did. It's really quite hilarious. I regretted reaching the last page. One crit is that a fair number of cars are obscure English or European cars, but Americans will recognize most of the cars in this book. In fact, I owned one of these appalling cars, The Mazda 121, aka Ford Festiva, Ford's CAFE special of the early 90's. I slammed the hatch once and it dented the back panel!

With an upside-down three-wheeled car on the cover, you'd expect a lot of yuck-yucks inside. Nope! In a very dry, veddy British manner, various cars are elucidated as being right but at the wrong time, or big bombs that sank their companies, or shoddily made, and so on. I guess it shows my bourgoisie-ness (is that a word?) when I don't have a clue about some of Mr Cheetham's comments. He says that such and such a car has ugly lines or has a front view not in keeping with its rear view. Sheesh, if he says so. Car devotees will love this book, with its statistics of weight, speed, etc, for each car. But don't pick it up for a light, amusing read. It's more in-depth than its cover implies. Which is fine, really! If you want to read serious one-page analyses of "bad" cars, this is the book for you.

There's mountains of books out there for great cars. There's whole libraries devoted to them but what happens to those stinkers that fail miserable, have poor performance, or are just dang ugly. Craig Cheetham has put forth this book listing roughly 150 of what he deems are some of the worst cars in the world. It's easy to go through and makes for an entertaining coffee table book. Each entry gives the basic stats during production and then paraphrases why it is included in this tome. There's a wide spread of vehicles from numerous countries. Craig is very careful to point out, these are only HIS opinions based on ownership, research, and personal views. There are plenty of photos, every entry has at least 2-5 images of the car itself. I'd like to have maybe had one less of the car per page and include a shot of the dashboard features. Unfortunately, many of the problems that make these the worst becomes redundant - rust rot, poor handling, bad performance at speed, and looks. The book is broken into 5 categories. 1) Badly Built - self explanatory. 2) Design Disasters in which the manufacturers just weren't thinking much on the layouts. 3) Financial Failures in which the car just didn't sell, cost more to make it than it was worth, suffered from lawsuits, or drove a company to bankruptcy. 4) Misplaced Marques in which on company tries to slap a logo and minor change to another manufactures creation. 5) Motoring Misfits which entails oddball vehicles that just don't work properly or became jokes. Some of these cars went from being famous to infamous due to restructuring or financial problems. There's a huge variety of vehicles including the expected AMC Gremlin and Pacer, the Ford Pinto, Tucker's Torpedo, the Edsel, Pontiac Aztek (horrifically ugly and impractical car), DeLorean, Jeep ripoff India made Mahindra Indian Chief, Reliant Robin (3wheel car), Amphicar, Nash Metropolitan, and even into the Lotus and Lambourghini Espada ranks. Just when you think your prefered brand is safe, one will pop up in this list. The books inexpensive and was entertaining to go through. Sadly, I can say I have owned four of the cars in this book: Mustang II, Ford Explorer, Subaru SVX, and Subaru XT coupe. Enjoy and find your car.