Let’s face it: cars are like clothes and other accessories. They’re our most visible tip off to the world about how we see ourselves. And since modern cars pretty much all function reasonably well enough, the image factor is of course more important than ever. So which car from the modern era would be most painful for you to be forced into driving for a year?
For me, it’s the Wuling Great Wall Buick Rendezvous; or at least for the moment. It just screams cheap pretentiousness; a pathetic WalMart Lexus RX300 knock off with horrible proportions. The Aztek doesn’t even come close; at least it was original. Every detail on the Rendezvous is painful: from the ridiculous attempt to create an oval grille on the blunt front end, the desperate rear hip character line and the indentations on the bottoms of the doors to disguise its bread-box mini-van roots. The way its whole rear suspension (on AWD versions) hangs out low in full visibility from the rear. Every time I’m forced to be behind one in traffic, I cringe. Really; has a car ever looked more like a bad Chinese knock-off? Strictly speaking, if it had been a genuine knock-off of another CUV, it would have looked much better. And no one in China ever tried to imitate the Rendezvous. OK; ’nuff said. Your turn.
Given that we can actually buy Great Walls here, I’d have to put them first on the list, together with Cherys. Partly for concerns over build quality and engineering standards, but more to the point of this post because it shouts to everybody else “I know nothing about cars and have no interest and therefore likely no competence in driving, or I’m just really cheap”. Same people that drove Kias, Daewoos and Protons 10 years ago.
I’d also avoid the small & midsize Chrysler products sold here in recent years plus junk like the Nitro. As mentioned earlier the Hummer H3 (H2’s and proper Hummers are $$$ private imports), with the exception of an Adventure spec one if I was going to purely use it offroad, which still wouldn’t make it a good idea given the likely non-existent parts supply.
Anything from China. Even the names of the cars that they build freaks me out. How would you like to be seen in a car called Smiley?
A Smart or the Fiat equivalent. I saw one the other day, don’t know which, though. It looked like it was going to fall over on its side.
A windowless Dodge Tradesman.
Is that a car you would hate to drive drive or get kidnapped by?
Good question…either! 🙂
Maybe a 1970s version where every surface of the interior (sides and ceiling included) is covered in vinyl or carpeting of a loud shade of brown or orange.
It rubs the lotion on its skin!!!!
It will point out that the Dodge Tradesman was the serial killer van of choice in Manhunter, Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon.
I can’t report on newer cars as I don’t travel for business as much as I did at one time.
I’ve already had the displeasure of driving tons of older (early 90’s) Corollas when I was selling them, none of which had any rewarding driving qualities for me. Additionally, I did 6 years with a Mercury Topaz which was its own form of torture.
There are some rental spec GM compacts from the mid 90’s I never want to spend time in again, mostly due to the crap seats they used to install in them. Not having owned them, I don’t know what the rest of the ownership life was like, I just couldn’t stand sitting in the cars for a long time.
For all of the love piled on Honda Civics, my mother’s 2004 was a pile of blah. A competent car, but nothing I could see driving every day.
Maybe I’m too grateful to be able to drive ANYTHING rather than walking or taking the bus. But I’m really hard pressed to come up with anything that I would truly HATE to drive for a year…
Dull as it may be, I’d still rather drive a Corolla than a Smart or Scion iQ. The latter two just force you to make too many sacrifices. The Corolla would at least be comfortable enough to drive on a daily basis.
I’m slightly surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but the Saturn Ion would probably be what I’d least want to be forced to drive for a year. Cheap materials in the interior and the ridiculous speedometer in the center of the dash…no thank you.
Ooooo, good one, especially the early ones with the chicken pot pie sized steering wheel.
LOL: Great description.
The Saturn Ion was so bad that I actually feel sorry for it…
There has to be a Deadly Sin article on these eventually.
The car that replaced it, the Astra, might be the only car that was ever a Curbside Classic in its own time. I don’t know about other parts of the country, but here in the Northeast, they are an incredibly rare sight. I easily see more late ’80s Camrys and Accords on the road and even their Saturn SL predecessors are more common by far.
I’m in the Northeast too and it took me until after the Saturn brand folded to see my first Astra – which was, to this day, the only one I’ve ever seen. Wikipedia says only 18,266 were sold in the US, but that still seems like too high a number to me…
Strange times for GM during their “bankruptcy years”… they only ever sold 457 copies of the Saab 9-4X before that marquee bit the dust! Has anyone ever seen one? I haven’t…
I did name the Saturn Ion. In fact it was the only car model that I mentioned specifically in my post. I had one as a rental. I thought it was pathetic.
My bad. I missed that.
Fortunately, I thought of another car I might despise just as much, if not more: the Suzuki X-90.
Anything that’s Panther based.
GM “Dustbuster” minivan
Pontiac Aztek
Subaru Justy
Chevette Scooter
Yugo
Trabant
Any BMW newer than an e30. The styling has gotten progressively uglier, the development has gone ever more toward useless gadgets over durability and reliability, and the image projected by driving one isn’t who I want to be seen as. The fact the the X3 profoundly outsold the concurrent 3-series wagon despite being inferior in every measurable way says it all.
I’m sure it wouldn’t be all that horrible from behind the steering wheel, but I would be embarrassed to be seen in one of the Pontiac Grand Ams with the Ram Air snout in a color like this…
@ Stephen: The Toyota Echo does not get the amount of sheer visceral hatred it deserves. That is my first pick for car of the last 15 years I would rather walk than drive. It’s far, far uglier than the unfairly maligned Aztek, which at least A) had a Judge Dredd kind of look about it and B) has been copied, to some extent, in the Honda Crosstour and BMW X ugliness. The Echo is mind bendingly ugly inside and out. It, unlike the Corolla, offers no redeeming values, and before you say reliability, where did they all go? There was NO reason to choose one over one of its competitors. When I see one, I think, no one, anywhere, at any time, ever had fun in this car.
I don’t disagree with your take on the Echo. However, I can report at least one positive – several years ago, I met an older guy at a Toyota dealer lot. The place was closed and we were walking around. He wanted to replace his Echo, which he liked because it sat a little taller than average, and he had bad knees. The Yaris (and everything else in that class) sat lower, and was harder to get in and out of. So, there it is – the only reason I have ever heard to buy an Echo.
I owned an Echo and a well-worn Geo Metro side-by-side for some years.
The Echo was obviously the more reliable. Guess which one I preferred?
Yup, the Geo. The Echo (like many modern Toyota products) had all the driving fun removed – as if with a cutting torch.
I currently own a Yaris – for my economic straits. But I can compare the two; they’re basically the same car, the Yaris being an evolution and a hatchback.
The Echo sat higher. But the driving position was less comfortable. And the chassis was more twitchy; although both have poor directional stability.
That’s about a sum of the differences. Both have unremarkable fuel economy; both are bulletproof – and both use the same drivetrain, the same 1.5 liter four.
Neon. The company I work for has four of them that are long paid for. We use them as last resort vehicles or for our “cash rental” customers. As a manager who gets a company car, I get the pleasure of driving one when all the other rentals are out. What a miserable piece of crap they are. They all smell like melting crayons on the inside.
When I get stuck with one I park it two doors down from my house in the driveway of a foreclosed home. I’ve tried to kill them all with abuse, but I give them credit, 9 years of unloved rental car abuse and they run great.
I tried to be a cash customer one time to see what it would be like and eventually pulled out my platinum Visa after the experience degraded to the point I was about to walk out.
If you’d kept it up, they’d have forced you into a Neon! THAT would have taught you…
Fiat Multipla. Next to it, even the Aztek starts to make more sense.
Just when I thought nothing could top the ugliness of the nissan murano, they build the juke… but this thing?
I’d have to have a six-pack of barf bags handy before getting behind the wheel of one of these Clown Cars…. “QX-56” fits this POSer appropriately…. It makes even the Hummer look grown-up….for just under $60K!
Prius, Corolla, Aztek, Rendevous
Late to the party, but a Mitsubishi i-Car. And before you ask, yes I have driven one for a couple hundred kilometres (courtesy car from the Mitsi dealer while the boss’s Outlander was being serviced). It was the most emasculating thing ever. But at least it was slow so that people could get a good look at me…
The rendezvous is a awesome. People give me thumbs up every were I go in mine. Mine is black with grey lather and I put on some nice 24″ rims and a badass pioneer 20000wat sound system. I commind attention anywere I drive. Buicks is nice from 1980s to todays. My dad got a 86 Regal thats not running I gonna restore someday hopefully get a nice vette motor or grandational gn 3.8 and get the old regal back on the road with some serieous horsepower.
I drove a Gremlin for a weekend. It felt like months. Hard seats, noisy AF on the highway. Could not hear the radio. Opening the window was like opening the gates of hell for the noise and the wind buffeting. Felt like a 5000 pound car. The speedo bounced from 20-80 MPH at random. After turning it in at the rental place I swore never to set foot in one again, on pain of death.