The worst car

[ticketchecker]

Just seeing this thread. Chevy Vega

[St. Jerry]

Lots of Fiats and Dodges in here https://www3.forbes.com/business/37-...term=yahoo.com

[Ted Striker]

As another point of perspective on this: at 15 I had a classmate whose family had just bought a Yugo and it looked like he was going to be driving that and I was going to be driving a Renault 16. He was pretty smug about it, and I couldn't blame him.

Ha!

That whole saga is beautiful. If you grew up in France, your father might be half forgiven for a somewhat misplaced sense of national pride, but I suspect that's not the case.

[jono]

You are correct, although my dad was pretty close with the one Frenchman who married into the extended family. He and his wife raised their kids speaking French at home, but I don't believe they owned more than one or two R16's, so perhaps that's why we saw less of them later on.

Somewhat amusingly, I learned later that they were great admirers of the Citroen 2CV, which they praised for it's most innovative design choice: more suspension travel than ground clearance! That way, if you cornered too hard the body would hit the ground and you could "never roll it over." I don't recall hearing that rollovers were a major concern for the French, but given the R16's unmatched wheelbase, it does seem kind of reasonable.

[riser4]

You are correct, although my dad was pretty close with the one Frenchman who married into the extended family. He and his wife raised their kids speaking French at home, but I don't believe they owned more than one or two R16's, so perhaps that's why we saw less of them later on.

Somewhat amusingly, I learned later that they were great admirers of the Citroen 2CV, which they praised for it's most innovative design choice: more suspension travel than ground clearance! That way, if you cornered too hard the body would hit the ground and you could "never roll it over." I don't recall hearing that rollovers were a major concern for the French, but given the R16's unmatched wheelbase, it does seem kind of reasonable.

That sounds like a challenge to me!

[jono]

Doesn't it? I mean it's a shitbox shod with unevenly inflated, half-bald bias-plies somehow generating enough lateral traction to touch the ground. I'm envisioning a really strong roof rack loaded with everything they owned, box-spring on the bottom.

[XXX-er]

don't forget all of yurp had been bombed into oblivion

[jono]

don't forget all of yurp had been bombed into oblivion

Good point, that should make it substantially easier. I always envisioned sliding sideboard-first into a ditch and flipping it real nice on the other side, but conveniently-located bomb holes make this almost too easy. Particularly if you can't source 4 matching tires to start with.

[Ted Striker]

Somewhat amusingly, I learned later that they were great admirers of the Citroen 2CV, which they praised for it's most innovative design choice: more suspension travel than ground clearance! That way, if you cornered too hard the body would hit the ground and you could "never roll it over." I don't recall hearing that rollovers were a major concern for the French, but given the R16's unmatched wheelbase, it does seem kind of reasonable.

You can't roll a car that doesn't run!

Once they were empty nesters my parents moved into an apartment, and the guy with the adjacent stall in the underground garage had a Deux Chevaux. I had never seen one and was intrigued by it, so I was always on the lookout for the owner. Once I found him, I managed to go for a ride in it - but only around the two levels of the garage because he only had insurance for storage. I made a wise crack about what that said vis a vis his confidence in the machine, but he had heard it all before. I did get an earful when I said it was like a French VW.

Once I really had a look at the thing, it actually reminded me more of an old fabric covered airplane. Air cooled, under powered, no "interior", hinged windows, cloth roof, more bolts than welds...

The suspension was quite clever but pointless considering the minuscule hp and ultra-low top speed.

[XXX-er]

Lord Louis Mountbatten told the lads don't come home boys cuz there is nothing here

I was thinking of it from the POV that there was nothing and no money which is maybe why you got cheap shitty cars in Yurp, NA benefited greatly from never getting bombed or occupied ... never being a war zone

[jono]

Yeah, sorry, I got that. In fact, one of the more curious things about that conversation to me has always been the total acceptance that the challenges of reconstruction (50 years on, by then) were just part of the background, while at the same time it was just assumed that all cars must be French. Definitely some francophilia at play there.

Of course, that Citroen was in production until 1990, so maybe there was just a taste for early, flightless airplanes? The ostrich's slower cousin?

[BmillsSkier]

Actually that whole segment Clarkson and May did on Peugeot had me laughing so hard there were tears when I first saw it.

[PNWbrit]

There used to be a 2CV oval grass track championship run throughout Europe in 70s/80s, The UK round was held at a fairground near where I grew up.

It was hilarious good sport. Involved much of the field rolling over. Was also fun to watch them routinely do 10 minute engine swaps between heats.

[XXX-er]

well apres WWII the japanese were occupied/pacified by America, and with help from America industrialized and made better stuff

google William Edwards Deming (1900-1993) is widely acknowledged as the leading management thinker in the field of quality. He was a statistician and business consultant whose methods helped hasten Japan's recovery after the Second World War and beyond.

when Bill came home nobody in America would listen to him and now all your shit is made somewhere else

[BmillsSkier]

I'm not sure how the WWII discussion addresses how Peugeot is currently turning out garbage cars.

I did always love the looks of the 505, particularly in wagon form.

[fatnslow]

I'm not sure how the WWII discussion addresses how Peugeot is currently turning out garbage cars.

I did always love the looks of the 505, particularly in wagon form.

505 stx was a cool car if your trunk waa filled with cash to pay your mechanic weekly.

[philippeR]

Nice to see Renault finally getting some love in this thread. Anyone who thinks Japanese trucks and Chevy Citations deserve any mention here obviously never shared the back seat of a Le Car with 3 siblings through 6 states.

Ever since Le George's epic rant on Seinfeld a person might be forgiven for thinking the lowly R5 deserves mention among the worst ever on its own, but that person would be wrong. I mention the R5 because, while it was bad--worse than the Alliance, the Encore (really Renault? an encore?), the Fuego, the Medallion, and Premier--it was actually a Hudge improvement over a whole set of Renaults which were never even named and got by on numbers alone.

The R10 with its rear engine was quite bad and the 12 and 15 certainly lacked commercial success. But by far and without competition the worst car ever was the Renault 16. These cars so successfully combined unreliability, ugliness, unobtainable parts, bad performance and quirky design choices that they became giveaways within a sub-culture that was so oppressed that its former members bear the scars to this day.

I have cousins and other family members who can sometimes mention the name Renault, but never while looking each other quite in the eye. Words don't do justice to the familial shame of even being related to someone who was suckered in by the inclusion of a free parts car and somehow stayed with it even after spending long hours of a night on the side of the road with young children, hoping it was just vapor lock. Again.

Renaults had an ability to shake a person's faith in reason and make them question the foundations of parental wisdom. They set innocent children down the ugly path of existential philosophy, never quite admitting their lives' central question had become: "if the people who chose to make me also chose these Renault 16's, what does that say about me?"

Membership in this oppressed subculture of Renault 16 owners meant having an extended family which, moreso than any real extended family, no one would ever choose--and yet, somehow someone did. By extended family I mean the cars. Downtrodden as they were, the people were never the problem. They just reflected the horror that was the R16 and the sad truths it revealed about the human condition. Addiction. Denial. Unfounded loyalty so strong it made Stockholm Syndrome intuitive to twelve year olds.

My mother managed to find humor. She recently recalled the time we were driving past a salvage yard and someone pointed out the R16 in the parking lot, to which I truthfully stated "It's probably waiting to get in." 3 decades on she still laughs. And I still don't.

The first time I ever skied we piled into my dad's friend's Chevy Citation to go get a rental discount on Easter Sunday at a tiny hill with two lifts and a platter pull. The Citation seemed like a fine car to me.

Let's hope this one finally got in (and its former occupants got the help they needed).
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That was an inspired rant, but a terrible take. The Renault 16 was a great car. Actualy groundbreaking for the mid 60's. It was one the first versatile hatchback in a world filed with three boxes designs, it had a great handling, was very comfortable for the time and had a modern and efficient aluminium engine (that Colin Chapman saw fit for the Europe).
It sold like hot cakes and rightly so. It was also quite reliable, in a european context where 100.000 trouble free km were the benchmark.
Stirling Moss thought it was the most intelligently engineered automobile he had ever encountered, and who are you, exactly, to argue with Sir Stirling ?

Source : My parents owned 2 R16 and I learned to drive in one.

I'm not sure how the WWII discussion addresses how Peugeot is currently turning out garbage cars.

I did always love the looks of the 505, particularly in wagon form.

You'd be surprised to find that Peugeot upped its game those last few years... The Top Gear video is hillarious, but not really accurate anymore. The new 3008 and 508 are very good cars.

[riser4]

Buddy had a 505. Nice car when it was running. He had to give it up because he didn't like the trunk loads of cash to keep it running.

[jono]

I'm sure my dad met several people of pillipeR's persuasion. And unfortunately brought a few others along to it, as well. It did have some good points: it was light, which made it was easier to push. The parts you could find were free because (at least in the US) you couldn't own one without finding the one local(ish) mechanic who was willing to work on them. And hence the co-dependent community of R16 owners, at least half of which were ready to give the damn things away with little prompting.

I say things because no one ever owned just one. Everyone needed a parts car. Which is nice because the one that couldn't move under its own power wasn't out banging fenders with Dodge owners. So you got yourself a parts car in the same color and you put the best fenders and doors on the one with a working engine and you were good to go for at least 2 weeks. The pic I snaked from wikipedia is a perfect example (and not a US car): its owner had a brown parts car whose paint oxidized just a little differently. You may have to look twice to see the passenger door is a donor. It's a better match than most.

In the US nearly all R16's were red, which was good and bad because the red stayed factory color for about two months and then every one of them morphed into its own personal shade of dark pink or maroon. But there were plenty of body panels available.

[philippeR]

505 stx was a cool car if your trunk waa filled with cash to pay your mechanic weekly.

Buddy had a 505. Nice car when it was running. He had to give it up because he didn't like the trunk loads of cash to keep it running.

Too soon...

[BmillsSkier]

I will lament the loss of the option to get your new car's trunk filled with cash.

Some things really were better in the old days I guess.

[jono]

Do we have a shitty car appreciation thread? Cause if not we need one.

Bump because yes. Yes we do.

[BmillsSkier]

Bump because yes. Yes we do.

Would you look at that, we do!

Art needs to post his wagon stoke stories over here. Hilarious

[Core Shot]

Has anyone ranted about the Audi fox? Or the Audi 4000 or 5000 series? Fucking shit boxes.

[riser4]

Heh. My parents had an Audi Fix for a while.