Award-winning cars that suck

Andy44

Andy44

owner: Oil Creek Astronautix
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I can't say I know any of them, but here is one "special" Australian-made car for you: the Leyland P76. Legendry in its ugliness, it made Wheels Car of the Year in 1973. In Wheels' defence, in was probably their only real failing in 45 years of awards. To be safe, they actually withheld the award in '72, '79 & '86 when no cars were deemed worthy of the title!
 
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Yes, sitting at the traffic lights would have been fun for all the family, and pedestrians!

I remember the saloon, but didn't know about the LeMans car. Looks quite good, wonder why they didn't pursue the racing aspect? Mpg and noise don't matter much there.

http://www.rover.org.nz/pages/jet/jet5.htm

N.
 
Notebook said:
I remember the saloon, but didn't know about the LeMans car. Looks quite good, wonder why they didn't pursue the racing aspect? Mpg and noise don't matter much there.
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Most likely regulations. The regulators have a tendency to outlaw new technology that will dominate, especially when it is available to only one, or few, manufacturers. Witness the banning of turbo-chargers from the Australian Touring Car Championship in 1993, which was protection for the local manufacturers from the then dominant Nissan GT-Rs (not that I'm still bitter or anything... ;))
 
Urwumpe said:
Well, maybe the bad MPG can be used for making such stunts easier controlled:

http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/article.aspx?cp-documentid=13293303
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Ouch! Bet that woke the congreation up...

N.


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tblaxland said:
Most likely regulations. The regulators have a tendency to outlaw new technology that will dominate, especially when it is available to only one, or few, manufacturers. Witness the banning of turbo-chargers from the Australian Touring Car Championship in 1993, which was protection for the local manufacturers from the then dominant Nissan GT-Rs (not that I'm still bitter or anything... ;))
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Hadn't though of that, would have ended up a one-horse race. Or 150Hp race.
Be a bit boring watching one manufacturer constantly winning...

N.
 
tblaxland said:
Most likely regulations. The regulators have a tendency to outlaw new technology that will dominate, especially when it is available to only one, or few, manufacturers. Witness the banning of turbo-chargers from the Australian Touring Car Championship in 1993, which was protection for the local manufacturers from the then dominant Nissan GT-Rs (not that I'm still bitter or anything... ;))
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Reminds me on the demise of the original DTM. First they raised the maximum allowed weight, so it favored the battleships of BMW and Mercedes-Benz. They banned Audi, after they dominated two seasons with their Audi V8 on the base of the claim it used an illegal crankshaft (For compensating the disadvantage of having only a weaker engine inside the company, Audi changed the phase between the cylinders from 90° to 180°).

This finally turned the DTM into a pure technology race, of the cars becoming nowhere similar to the street versions they claim to be.
 
Sounds like NASCAR and the infamous restricter plates they force everyone to put on their intake manifolds to limit horespower.

The OP is just Car and Driver's screwups, but there have been many bad cars besides those. The Ford Pinto and Chevrolet Chevette come to mind. We used to call the latter the "Chevy Shove-it" since that was the usual means of locomotion.
 
The other problem with gas-turbine cars is that they havn´t the same acceleration out of thight corners as piston engines.
Lotus tried turbine cars in the late 60s at Indy and where quite succesfull. They used the same car for F1 too but it couldn´t match the piston engined cars.
 
Michkov said:
The other problem with gas-turbine cars is that they havn´t the same acceleration out of thight corners as piston engines.
Lotus tried turbine cars in the late 60s at Indy and where quite succesfull. They used the same car for F1 too but it couldn´t match the piston engined cars.
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I never knew that, I used to follow Lotus.

N.
 
Andy44 said:
The Ford Pinto and Chevrolet Chevette come to mind. We used to call the latter the "Chevy Shove-it" since that was the usual means of locomotion.
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Funny, my parents loved my dad's Chevette, and it never gave them much trouble, other than being too small once there were four of us.
 
Moonwalker said:
But I like the old design. Today industries are producing a lot of meaningless and faceless crap (which is also related to airplane design).
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The design was reused in the 1983 Audi 100, but you are right, designers could attempt a better design language. Today, they only show creativity in the design of the lights, and let aerodynamics dominate.

Also, I think gas turbines could be the perfect choice for powering full hybrid cars.
 
Now if you want a car that's a real piece of crap maintainance-wise, go for a mid 90's Plymouth Voyager. The transmission on the thing was a nightmare.
 
Did the Fiat Multipla win any awards?
I don't mean to offend anyone but whenever I see one I want to throw up.
I hear it is nice to drive though.
 
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