In recent days I’ve encountered different articles featuring retrospectives of ‘ugly’ and ‘worst’ cars. The articles were not found in the glossy pages of auto-fanatics’ niche magazines like Car and Driver or Motor Trend. Surprisingly, they’re features in more MSM pubs like Business Week and Time. The native Angeleno in me had to take a closer look.
The first article is Business Week’s "The World’s Ugliest Cars". I didn’t see many traces of objectivity or data-fueled reasoning for such a strong proclamation as the title suggests. Granted people may not dig some of these cars, but isn’t beauty in the eye of the beholder? Even if the beauty explodes in a minor fender bender?
Without any substance to dive into, it was easy for me to get a little teary-eyed in response to some of the cars I was looking at.
Take the Pacer (shown above). I remember seeing these around when I was a kid. I didn’t think much about it, but I do recollect that the Pacer seemed a little bloated, even back then. About 11 years ago, I came across a Pacer in the Castro and it blew my mind.
This particular Pacer I saw in 1996 was in mint condition, absolutely spotless inside and out as if it were driven right out of a 1978 showroom.. The car was parked on Castro at 18th street, complete with ‘For Sale’ signs. The absolute clincher was the personalized license plate. The California plates were 80′s era with the sun on the horizon. The plates on this perfectly maintained Pacer read "FAT CAR". Damn, if I had the cash, I’d a handed it over right there.
The other car striking a chord for me is the Pinto. It seemed like everyone talked about the flawed design of the Pinto in the 70′s. The gas tank exploded when the rear bumper was hit by another car. Chock it up to poor design and an even worse damage to the Ford brand for doing nothing about the problem. That was until 1977 when Mother Jones discovered the Pinto Memo and exposed Ford’s cost-benefit analysis for fixing the problem. Apparently, Ford chose to save money over human lives for eight long years.
Time’s special feature "The 50 Worst Cars of All Time" is a much more expansive retrospective of ‘bad cars’, but the editorial and any true analysis is still lacking. Why is this? And why the new fascination/media attention with inferior cars over the previous decades?
Is it possible these sudden retrospectives of poor car design are
strategically timed for the US slowdown in auto sales? If enough people
are able to compare yesterday’s design flaws with today’s
award-winning accessory-loaded design spectacles, could it incite consumers
to commit to that new car purchase or at least lean in the direction? Is it so crass of
me to think this way?
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