Modern Vespa

Could this really be the world's worst car?

Any other nominations?

I think the Yugo has to be in contention. (it certainly is in the lead for dud car jokes.)


Yugo jokes...

Yu*go (yoo-go)

n. 1) Small, economical, Yugoslavian-built automobile.

2) 4x4 hood ornament.

adj. 1) What dosen't happen when you press the accelerator.

Q. How do you double the value of a Yugo?

A. Fill the tank with gas! (If it can still hold liquid.)

A. If not, put a gallon of milk in the back seat.

Q. What comes with every Yugo User's Manual?

A. The bus schedule.

What do Yugos have in common with Ferarris?

- A Ferarri can go from 0 to 60 in 4 seconds.

- A Yugo can go from 0 to 4 in 60 seconds.

Actually, a Yugo CAN accelerate as fast as a Ferarri,

...if you give it a fast enough running start, so it clears the cliff's edge...

Q. How do you fix a broken Yugo?

A. 1) Lift off the radiator cap.

2) Push off cliff.

3) and drive brand-new one underneath radiator cap.

(30-mile/3-day warranty included!)

A man entered an auto parts store...

Man: "I need a windshield wiper blade for a Yugo."

Clerk: "Well, only if you throw $20 into the trade."

I once bought a Yugo with a tow package.

...It was in the front.

Q. Why does a Yugo have rear a window defroster?

A. To keep your hands warm as you push it.

Q. What do you call a Yugo at the top of a big hill?

A. A miracle!

Yugos are now much safer and come standard with an air bag.

When you sense an impending accident, start blowing *real fast*

Q. How do you make a Yugo go faster?

A. A towtruck.

Q. What do you call the shock absorbers inside a Yugo?

A. Passengers.

Two guys in a Yugo were arrested last night in Oakland following

a push-by shooting incident.

A friend went to a dealer the other day and said, "I'd like a gas

cap for my Yugo." The dealer replied, "Okay. Sounds like a fair

trade."

I have also said for years that the car is named because "Yugo,

but it doesn't".

Q. How can you get a Yugo to do 60 miles an hour?

A. Push it over a cliff.

Q. Why don't Yugo's sustain much damage in a front-end collision?

A. The tow truck takes the impact.

Q. What do you call a Yugo with a flat tire?

A. Totalled.

I think the USA designed that car first (the Dymaxion by Buckminster Fuller). The Dymaxion wasn't released to the general public for the same reasons your reviewer found out, that and it killed the test driver. It was an interesting car though with good aerodynamics, tonnes of space and a great turning circle. I suspect that any car from the 1950's would be hell for a modern driver though.

I needed a new key for my 05 Typhoon, and went to the locksmith to get one...
He found a Yugo blank, and cut my key from it....and he wanted $3 for it....
and I said, "does it include the car too!"

I want one. i would trick that out. It just needs moar chrome!

Hilarious

A Bucky car!

I was in the car business 25 years, here's a few for me.

Lexus SC430 convertible.

Chrysler Cordoba.

80's Volvos, all of them.

Mitsubishi 3000 GT including the retractable hardtop version. (Dodge Stealth)

All Hyundai.

Anything with a Chrysler A604 transmission in it.

5 cylinder Audi and Acura.

That's my shortlist.

SDG

Still have bad memories of trying to drive my friend's sister's Pontiac Fiero in the snow....she'd already slid off the road and gave up for the day.

I would give the early 80's Volvo 240 a free pass as a reliable car, that's my only edit.



SDG

you are driving a light-weight rear drive sports car in snow. Dude.

My father had an 80's Volvo and loved it. After a couple of 100k miles it started to look a little tatty but it never failed him. They weren't designed to be pretty but if I could choose what car to be in for a head on collision then a 1980's Volvo would be right up there. A few of your cars are in various top 10 lists of most reliable cars (Acura TL, various Hyundai's). Can you say why they're bad?

My nomination for worst car is any Renault but particularly my wife's Scenic. Mechanically it's average but the electrics are unbelievably poor. She actually likes the car but I now refuse to pay for repairs for anything electrical - currently drivers side electric window doesn't work, we've had all the windows fail multiple times and Renault charge a fortune to fix them and then they just fail again. The fan only works on setting 3, the air conditioning only works on fan setting 2 which means you can't have cold air in the car. The dashboard is currently failing - Renault suggests that 10 years is a good life expectancy for a dashboard and wants to charge £600 to fix! Stereo currently not working. Bizarrely the electric handbrake in the car worked fine but Renault noticed this and recalled the vehicle for an update to the handbrake software (?) and then 2 days later it came on by itself in central London and refused to release. Renault refused to accept any liability for the incident and wanted to instead charge us £70 for inspecting the vehicle (the same issue happened to many others with the recall). I could go on ...

I want one of those Hoffmans. WantWantWant! That thing is beautiful - ok, a few mechanical issues to straighten out, but still...

Johnny

Doog beat me to it. YUGO would be my first guess. Followed by a Pinto. Remember those fireball cars?

I'll second Judy's Pinto suggestion.

The only car my first wife ever bought on her own was a used early '70s Pinto station wagon with the smallest available engine, automatic transmission and A/C.

What a pig. I once held my foot to the floor for about 10 miles on I-95, and the car never topped 70.

Remember the Chevette Scooter from the 70s? GM's futile attempt to beat back the flood of Japanese compacts.

My '60 Ghia handled great in the snow - if it started.

Also have to add to the junk pile the Chevy Vega. With that aluminum engine that would warp. And, the body that started rusting with the first rain, if the engine didn't catch fire first.

I would like to nominate the absolutely gutless, terribly uncomfortable even for a small person such as myself Chevy Aveo as the current world's worst car.

from a reddit discussion:

"...The Aveo is a gutless vehicle that is outperformed in every way by imports a decade older than it. Everyone says it is bad because anyone who has been forced to drive one for any period of time can attest to the general lack of any sort of redeeming qualities. The car is THE definition of a shitbox, and not even in a charming way."

I nominate the East German icon:

but then it only cost 400 Euro ($430) new and if you sold it now then you'd get around 4200 Euro ($4500) which isn't bad.

Mine worst car would be the Austin Martin DB5 in Skyfall.

Something about aluminum heads in the 80's. I had an 84 Plymouth Reliant and an 87 Isuzu P'up back in the day. They were both very well maintained and both ended up in the junkyard with less the 120,000 miles. Just got sick of failing head gaskets and cracked and or pitted heads. By contrast, my 96 Ranger is running fine with 670,000 miles and the head has never been off.

I'll edit once I figure out the brand/model for sure - my father recently rented what was, I THINK, a Chevy Spark when visiting. Holy cow what a POS. Thing felt like it was made of tin, the interior design as abysmal, and despite being a 2015 model it was already clearly coming apart in some (admittedly cosmetic) places. Would NEVER buy one - I can't see something like that lasting very many years at all.

Do you remember the Diesel Chevette?

Thanks for that memory bump. I checked for a Ford Escort diesel as a result, and yes there was an '84 Escort Wagon on Craigslist. Hmmm.

I had an ORANGE 1976 Chevy Vega. It had the steel block so I dodged that bullet but still.. American cars of the 70's.

A brand new 1972 Pinto. The '71 had a 1600 English Ford engine. My '72 had a 2000 German Ford, with a progressive 2-bbl carb. Would cruise up the Grapevine doing 70 mph in top gear. Had two each Lucas Square 8 lamps, fog and pencils. Had co-phased CB whips, with a 100 watt linear amp:

Sold for a '77 GMC K2500.

Wife came with a '75 POS Pinto that her brother sold to her $300 after he had a collision in it. Passed SMOG. Two years, without any maintenance other that checking water and changing oil if we remembered, passed SMOG. Tires wore out, got the cheapest tires I could find figuring it would be dead before the tire wore out. Almost didn't. But three months after letting both oil and water low I lost an intake valve on the way to work. Was firing up the intake the car didn't run at all well, but made it to work. Managed to get it started after work and drove it home. Figured out which was the bad cylinder, ripped the spark wire which gave me enough power to go 20 mph. Drove it to/from work for a month, finally drove it to Pick-Your-Parts which gave me $110.

Pintos were great cars.

No, but I remember the V8 (Chevette) Monza. Sure it was a POS, and you had to jack the engin to change the plugs, but it sure was fast!

can I add anything built in Britain in the 70s by Austin/morris /bmc to this please

No 1 1958 ford Fairlane

This pos had so much wrong with it. I remember how the vehicle overheated.
There was a block of wood in a radiator hose! We only had the car a year. I remember going back to the dealer every month to have stuff fixed


No. 2 1964 Buick Special

My folks purchased it new. Less than 3 years old it was so rusted when a wind sheild was replaced the tec said he had to build up the area at the bottom of the window because it was so rusted.


My first car was a used 1964 Renault Daulphine. Let me say that no one collects them even as a driver. You can't keep them running long enough.

AMC Pacer. Period.

One of the prettier cars was also the worst quality car made in America in 25 years according to Lemon-Aid. The problem was that the employees knew they were going to be laid off in a few weeks when the Corvette assembly plant moved from Missouri to Kentucky.

All of the parts were included on mine, but very few of them were aligned properly at the factory. At least the brakes worked.

To make it worse, this was the era of the soft camshafts and plugged-up catalytic converters on GM cars. Mine was a constant challenge, and the dealer repair shops were not trained on computerized four barrel carbs or electronics in general. Some had never seen impact connectors under the hood before.

Please do not buy one.

Cheers,
Bob

Because you are looking for the World's worst car, maybe I can help you.
I live in Eastern-Europe. Here made a lot of rubbish cars. Maybe, you haven't heard about it, but let me show you some of them. (Here the Yugo was a dream at the 80's...)
The cheapest car in the USSR was the ZAZ (Zaporozets).
It was the copy of the German NSU Prinz 4. In my country it was the worst car too. It was 887ccm (later 1200 ccm). The most interesting thing in this vehicle was a gasoline stove for heating.
If you don't mind I will continue the list. But I don't want to disturb the discussion.

Please continue. For those of us in the USA, at least me, these cars have been mysterious. More pictures would be great. Thanks for your input.

Bob

That brings back memories. The Prinz 4 was a neat little car. A friend's family owned many NSUs and I drove all the models. IIRC some were two cylinders. My friend also raced the model TT in hill climbs.

VW bought NSU and killed off the Prinz because it competed in sales (very favorably) with the Beetle.

Thanks. I am not an expert, it's only nostalgic for me.

Why people bought a ZAZ? In socialist countries you couldn't go to the salon to buy a car. If you wanted a new one (only eastern vehicles), you had to wait for it. About 2-5 years(!), because there weren't enough cars. And the office called you, when the car's arrived. And while you waiting for it, the price went higher, thanks for the inflation. Although, you wanted a red one, but you got a green. Sometimes the chassis was broken a little bit. (If you you had good connections in the party, everything was easier.) The ZAZ waitinglist was the shortest. About 5 months. This was the secret of this crappy car. But when you got it, you discovered the problems. Weak chassis protection, loose screws, noisy. The gasoline tank was next to the rear seats. It was very dangerous.

Yes, two cylinder air cooled engine in the rear. My friend has access to one through his family when we were in High School in the early 60's. One memorable day, it broke it's motor mounts and the entire engine flipped up side down. It was replaced with a VW.