The eighties saw an incredible burst of energy (cocaine fueled?) in the output of unusual and exotic machinery. Man’s quest to build a car with his name on it reached a new zenith, or nadir, depending on your point of view. Anything to be different…or not. If you’re wondering what these practical conveyances are, starting at the top left, going clockwise, is the Argyle GT, Panther 6, Sbarro Functional, and the Briggs and Stratton Hybrid. If these have whetted your appetite, there’s a large number of scans from the 1980 World Cars Catalog here. But do it after you make your nominations; that would be cheating.
And to all of our friends celebrating Turkey Day today, Happy Thanksgiving. I’m very thankful for all the fun I’m having here, and for all the friends that have joined us here in our endless time-traveling.
The car in the top left looks like the unholy rape-child of a Ford GT and a 280Z.
I’m sorry; but absolutely no imagination or research is required. There’s no way to deny it; the greatest turkey of the Eighties, is – hands down – the Bricklin-imported Yugo.
Anyway you slice it, it belongs on the platter. An idea born in the dim, dank braincase of one of the 20th-Century’s most brazen hucksters? Check. A low-quality product? Check. Engineering dead-end? Check…where WAS the Product Development office, in a plant that built a discarded Fiat design?
Corporate intrigue? Check…witness Bricklin’s misuse of dealer franchise fees; his high living while his company was losing money, et cetera. End in failure? Beyond imagining…a foreign State-owned socialist auto plant, comes in as receiver to a bankrupted distributorship put together by a modern P.T. Barnum. There was no way BUT that it would end badly.
Of all the turkeys, flubs and bloopers…we’ll never see another like the Yugo.
Nothing that bad is being made anywhere anymore
Any Cadillac with a 4100 V8, any car larger than a Chevette with an Iron Duke, 4 cyl Camaros and Mustangs, any GM car with the THM200 trans, and the Big 3 for how long it took them to adopt fuel injection. (Having said that I’ll still take a B-body, M-body, post 85 Panther, or FWD Cadillac with a 4.5 or 4.9 V8.)
Excuse me but GM and Ford lead the way with real EFI, not mechanical or lame vane air flow metered EFI but modern EFI. Eldo’s were available in the 70’s with EFI. Ford did their CFI in 81. Early Bosch EFI did not control idle speed mixture there is a little plug you have to remove stick a Allen wrench in there and adjust the mix. They also didn’t have computer controlled idle speed. One of the reasons for the Audi unintended accel was that Fidle valve, one high fast idle that was high enough to keep it running in -30 degree temps. They also had an extra cold start injector. Toyota EFI didn’t get computer controlled idle until the 90’s, again there was a plug you removed to access the idle air screw. So while GM and Ford may not have been on the bleeding edge of FI they weren’t on the bleeding edge of primitive EFI and waited until it was possible to do it right.
@Scoutdude, I was thinking more of the engines that never got fuel injection of any kind that would have benefited. Oldsmobile 307V8, Quadrajet till the end… the passenger car version of the Chrysler 318V8, two barrel (two barrel for Christ’s sake!) till the end… that was what stuck in my head. I guess I should have said not making good engines GREAT by updating them.
+1 on the THM 200. That and a soft camshaft 305 = my ’82 Z28.
Vega, Honda CVCC, 82 Z28 – can I pick ’em or what!
Don’t forget the Ford 255 V8. 115 horses of AOD-shredding power.
Indeed, a huge part of why seventies cars sucked was pre-computerized carburated emission controlled engines. Hoses, diaphragms and valves everywhere. Open-loop control with no feedback to respond to conditions. A nightmare to maintain and impossible to keep running.
By 1980 microprocessors were powerful, durable and cheap enough to run an engine and its fuel injectors in a smart closed loop, sensing richness directly with the O2 sensor. This was a quiet and mainly unrecognized revolution that put an end to dieseling, stalling, and all those seventies miseries. If not for the chips our cars would be horrible.
If not for computer controls…either the standards would have been gone, or there’d be no cars today.
I’m not a fan of government standards, not by any stretch of imagination…but if there’s a silver lining in that dark cloud, it was that it forced the issue…any number of issues, that brought fuel injection; high-performance ignitions that let a spark plug serve often, the life of a car; sophisticated engine controls that delivered optimal fuel economy…all with smooth operation under any condition. Granted, the price of all this rose exponentially; but if a buyer gets half-again and more, service from an automobile, and uses far less fuel, does it MATTER that the price is forty percent higher?
I think we’re going to look at the time around the turn of the century, as a second Golden Age of engineering. When performance peaked, but before ethanol began corrupting our fuel and corroding all that expensive hardware.
I second the HT4100. Horrible engine in an otherwise nice car.
I’ve been waiting for this…the Cadillac Cimarron. The day it was introduced, May 12, 1981 (thanks Wikipedia), was the day the eventual bankruptcy of GM became a certainty. A company that would do that to its premier brand was doomed to failure at some point.
Yes, the Yugo was a much worse car…but relative to its brand’s heritage (none), it can’t have been as bad as the Cimarron.
I second the Cadillac Cimarron. Maybe not the first 80’s Turkey, but a tell-tale and prophet of what was, and was to come – horrendous, and failure!
How epically awful was the Cimarron? I remember a neighbor having an orange one when I was a boy growing up in Toledo. I was 10 or so and I just KNEW that was a sad, sad, sad, sad, sad car.
The Yugo would be a good choice, but perhaps a bit obvious. A friend of mine had an 80s 4-cylinder Mustang in high school. The engine bay was just a hilarious thing, but I suppose it was easy enough to work on with all that room… I can’t really think of anything else because I didn’t truly become conscious about cars until about 1990, and by then, it was too late for a little boy with no internet to learn anything valuable.
For an early 80’s car, the Cimarron wasn’t awful. Well, no more awful than anything else being put out at the time. And keep in mind that early 80’s cars were no better than their late 70’s forebearers.
What was awful was they they attempted to pass it off as a Cadillac. Had they put the Oldsmobile nameplate on it instead, it probably would have sold reasonably well without any bitching from the peanut gallery.
And while the Cavalier/T2000/Cimarron cars weren’t world shaking, they were OK. Good enough for the Chevy version to keep selling two decades later.
At least the early Cavalier coupes had pop-open rear windows! Ha ha!
My brother and sister-in-law managed a twofer. She had a Pacer, while he got a Cimarron. Not sure if they had the two at the same time, but it was always, er, interesting to see what they had for cars.
OTOH, I rather liked his 1965 Saab.
The one-two-three punch that knocked Cadillac off its pedestal was the V8-6-4, the HT4100 and the Cimarron. I agree the Cimarron was not a bad car, it’s that it was marketed as a Cadillac. I believe it cost $12,000, three times as much as a loaded Cavalier sedan. I must confess that I rather like the looks of the later 1987-88 Cimarrons with the composite headlights and side cladding. I remember seeing one at the 1988 Chicago Auto Show. I was only eight years old, so I guess it made an impression!
Hyundai Pony and Excel. Took a long time for Hyundais reputation to recover. Dacia? Like a Renault with even less build quality.
’82-’86 Pontiac Bonneville.
This is where it gets hard for me to pick just one or two. Unfortunately I can’t add much that hasn’t been mentioned already.
Yugo bad in so many ways.
Hyundai Excel mainly for it’s thermo-wax choke on its Minuki nightmare carb as it became to be known in the auto repair industry and their funky transformation of the Colt’s twin stick 4sp trans into a 5sp “overdrive”.
Cimarron for debasing the Cadillac name.
The V8,6,4 Cadillac 6.0/368, at least it just took clipping one wire to disable it and then it was pretty much as good as its bigger brother the 425.
The Cadillac 4100, those made me a lot of money, I had it down so I could get one out of the transverse applications in about 1.5 hours. Second only to the SBC in the sheer numbers of engines I’ve replaced, of course there were waaaaay more SBCs produced.
Holden’s version of GM’s J-body family of cars, the Holden Camira, was a bit of a turkey. It liked to rust, eat clutches and torque converters, computer failures, engine mount breakages, and warped head gaskets. It wasn’t the biggest turkey of the 80s, but a notable milestone gladly forgotten, a bit like new wave music.
Seconded the Camira was the biggest heap of shit ever.
Cadillac owns this. The V8-6-4. The HT-4100. Ridiculous bustle back Sevilles with standard Olds LF9 diesels. $55,000 front-drive, coach-built roadsters. Dramatically shrunken DeVilles in anticipation of $3.00/gal gas that never happened. Eldorados that looked like a Cutlass Calais.
And, last but not least, “Cimarron by Cadillac.”
I nominate the entire brand.
Good call. The decade from hell for Cadillac.
Aside from your generalization to the entire Cadillac brand (which I also agree with) nobody has specifically mentioned the Cadillac Allante yet.
If I had to pick one car for 80’s turkeys, it would be the Cimarron. Some bad 80’s cars were a case of “You get what you pay for”. Others were the customer being the final beta-tester for under-engineered technology. But with the Cimarron GM expected customers to pay Cadillac money for a poorly rebadged Cavalier. Has any other car ever managed to destroy so much brand equity?
Worthy nominations all. A few more come to mind:
The 1980 Thunderbird. What were they thinking? Just be honest with yourself and buy the Fairmont instead.
The 1980 Lincolns. Not bad cars like the Cimarron, but a tremendous shock to anyone who had been around Lincolns of the 1970s.
The Renault Fuego.
The AMC/Renault Alliance and Encore.
The 1987-89 Chrysler LeBaron – the oil swilling Mitsu V6 mated to an Ultradrive. Run away screaming.
In fact, anything from the 80s with an Ultradrive.
The Aerostar and the first generation Explorer – just when we started to think that cars did not rust like they did in the late 50s, Ford proved that it was still possible.
The 1981-83 Imperial. Chrysler spent a reported $10k PER CAR on warranty claims, much of it for a fuel injection system that was the biggest disaster since the 1958 Bendix Electrojector (also from Chrysler).
So. Many. Choices…
OK my personal (UK market) short list:
1986 Aston Martin V8/Vantage Zagato: Google image search at your own peril – it’s retina scorchingly horrible.
1985 FSO Polonez 5-Door: FSO were one of the many Eastern Bloc motor companies producing obsolete FIAT designs under license. The Polonez rode on 125 mechanicals but under a “sleek, coupe like” 1980s body shell. Craptastic.
1985 MG Montego: For my money the existence of this car puts the Cadillac Cimarron in the shade in terms of badge debasement. And I don’t even like MGs to start with.
1986 Renault GTA: Amazingly manages to make Aston’s Vantage Zagato look tasteful and well styled.
Last but not least the 1984 Ford Capri MkIII “Laser”: Just the Laser, other Capris were fine but the “new” badge introduced this year was the lamest way *ever* of trying to convince the buying public that a N/A 1.6 Capri was hot (or possibly I’m just smarting because it worked on my naive 7 year old self? … for about a week at any rate)
You forgot the Aston-Martin Lagonda. Lucas electrics taken to its ultimate. Or is that nadir?
No, I didn’t forget the Lagonda – I excused it.
A family down the road from me had one while I was growing up. It didn’t come out often, but every time it did my little heart leapt. My theory back then was that it was kept for special occasions. I suspect now that it rarely worked. Nonetheless I’ve always rather liked the oddball styling and character of that Aston. Prettier by far (in its angular way) than the vile Zagato.
Two more: The Maserati Biturbo and the Chrysler TC by Maserati.
The TC!I figured someone would have beat to that one by now, I’m a little late to the party.
Ah, the Biturbo, Italy’s Cimarron. Hard to believe it was related to the Mistrals and Ghiblis of the ’60s.
General Motors–X-cars, J-cars, 4-cylinder Camaro and Firebird, any vehicle with the THM 200 transmission.
American Motors-the Renault Appliance and Encore, indeed the entire Renault line of vehicles.
The Yugo-poster child for automotive turkeys.
The Chrylser TC
At least the Chrysler TC was nice-looking; that, and I wanted one solely because it was different.
The 1982 Ford EXP – all the flaws of the US-spec Ford Escort with only two seats. That way, only one passenger could share your shame. Honestly though, you could easily cram a few more onto the shelf behind the front seats with minimal effort. It was almost as if Ford didn’t feel like spending the cash on a back seat. I realize they were going for a sporty image with this car, but seriously, it was about as sporty as a brick on casters. It was the first car I ever owned, and it was the worst car I ever owned. The sheer variety of different ways by which I found myself stranded as a result of owning that sputtering craptank boggled my teenage mind. It still does. Perhaps someday I’ll offer up a CC about it, Paul, if I ever recover from the trauma of owning one.
The most eloquent nomination yet 🙂
Agreed, this comment is a fine mini-CC. I never understood what was the point of the EXP, from a brand that already had the Mustang.
They were for people who wanted a 40 mpg sporty car but wanted to buy ‘Murican. I always kind of liked them and thought the styling was consistent for Ford as it looked like the bastard love child of the Escort and Mustang. I haven’t seen one in years.
The EXP was originally billed as some sort of baby Thunderbird, at least the two seater one. I think the real idea was to create a competitor to the early Honda Prelude, but several years too late. The car ended up being a competitor (of sorts) the Mustang, but IIRC, they were priced pretty close to the 4 banger ‘Stang or even above. A recipe for mediocre sales. And let’s not start on the abandoned-after-one-model-cycle Mercury LN7. An even larger waste of resources for a division that really needed it.
The Cimarron may have been the tipping point for GM, but the LN7 was the tipping point for Mercury Division. As much as I loved the Mercs I grew up in, and the ones I owned, I could sense that there was a greatly limited future for the brand. After 1981, there were no more Mercury equivalents for Ford products that weren’t mainstream cars. Eventually, they tried specials with the FWD Capri in the early 90’s, and the FWD Cougar in the early 00’s. But like the farked up Marauder launch in 2003, I knew it was just a matter of time (end rant).
What the real question is, how in the hell the EXP survived for an update in 1985. By then, it was even further away from having a reason to exist. It was money that could have been spent on finally bringing over the Euro Escort, or pissing it away on other Euro Fords that we were promised, but never materialized.
At least the 5.0 L Mustang got more horsepower that year…
The more I think about that car the more I realize how entwined it is with the memories of my late teen years, sordid mess that they were. I probably have at least two if not three CCs worth of stuff involving that thing. Scary.
I’ll second my nomination from yesterday – the GM X cars.
It’s a real shame, because they initially sold so well and people had such high hopes for them. We went K-Car all the way, turkeys or not. In fact, all cars I owned for 15 years were Chrysler products exclusively. I wish I were a bit more open-minded, however, ’cause I could have bought a nice, used downsized Chevy Impala coupe, I could afford one then!
How about the diesel powered GM mid sized and large cars?
How about the 1984 watercooled VW Vanagon, all of the flaws of the old Type 2 bus with NONE of the reliability, ease of repair or charm. They took a golden goose and made it into a turkey.
All I know is that I want that Sbarro Function Car.Its far from a turkey-It the bomb as far I’m concerned-Talk about an awesome compact RV, or maybe a post-apocalypse home-mobile cum rebel command center. Maybe even a flat or camo paint job and some strategically placed expanded mesh, like over those big side windows.Needs something less thirsty than the 500 or 425 though, would a Duramax fit under the old Eldorado engine bay?
The Fiat Ritmo (Strada). A friend of mine, his parents bought a new one in 1985. It rusted away in a matter of five years. They had to scrap the entire car five years after purchase, as it was completely rusted through. Talk about destruction of value. It was called “The Rutmo” thereafter.
5 years from a Fiat isnt to be sneezed at thats good
Geez, all these suggestions and not one mention of the obvious choice – the DeLorean DMC-12.
I mean, c’mon, if the Bricklin SV-1 wins if for the seventies…
true!
Given it took this long for the DMC-12 to appear in the comments, I think my defense of the car under the Bricklin article was successful at shielding it from scorn.
The ardicane imitator is just a monza nosecone on a Monaro awful
OK Yugos have come up time and again, and I think they need a defender. Yes, trim quality wasn’t great. Yes, the importer was a fraudster. And yes, they had the engine controlled by a rubber band (just like everything else in Europe at the time.)
I will leave aside the socialist thing, because the political makeup of a country is neither here nor there. Korea was a military dictatorship during the ’80s, and we still took their cars. Perhaps that’s not the best example though….
Anyway, I would say there is absolutely nothing wrong with the Yugo as a car. It met its design brief, as a combination urban car and people’s car for rural areas without high speed traffic. It sold in Europe mainly as a town car. You wouldn’t buy ANY 1 litre car to run up and down the motorway all day.
In the UK, Yugos were often sold in small village dealerships who knew their customers. The UK distributor was a much more honest and open group of people than Bricklin could dream to be. A friend of mine had a Yugo in the ’80s. He brought it in for its 6k service. The dealer said ‘I don’t like the look of the orange peel in the paint.’ He said take this car for a week and then collect yours. He gave the car a full respray with glass-like paint. My friend said that even before, the paint wasn’t bad for a Ford or Austin. He went on to buy two more Yugos before the war ended shipments. He also said that they would waxoyl the cars yearly for what seemed like a nominal fee- £5 or something.
There was a place for the Yugo in the UK in the ’80s. Remember, this was the time of the government rather than the Bank of England controlling interest rates.
This meant that a car loan could have interest of 15-30%, unthinkable today. As a result, for many people, not just the poor, but also normal working families, even a Sierra or Cavalier was out of the question. Used cars weren’t an option either (see the section on ’70s turkeys). As a result, people turned to Eastern European cars.
There was genuine competition at the bottom of the market in Europe, rather than the monopoly the Yugo held in the US. As a result, dealers, whose margins were low, knew the only way to survive was to generate repeat business. Cars were prepared better for delivery. If a car broke down out of warranty, the dealer would often just fix it anyway.
This was a revelation to many whose previous new car was a friday car Marina, Viva or Allegro that you couldn’t get fixed by the dealer for love or money.
People actually bought Yugos, Skodas and Ladas even after their finances improved and they could afford something else.
Brian, you bring up a good point. By the time we got Yugos in the US, our interest rates had relented a little. IIRC, with good credit and a decent down payment, by 1985 an auto loan was 9-11% or so. It wasn’t all that long previously a good interest rate was 14%!
In the US, two car families are the norm. I believe many people bought the Yugo here as either a poor person’s first car, or a third or fourth, for the kids. Either one of those categories are not the best that had limited means to take care of the car.
I didn’t buy mine new, but I did hear stories about the dealers in the US. They ran the whole spectrum, from good car dealers, to the troglodytes who ripped off their clients at every turn. However, this is the one thing I have complained about for years, that the dealer makes the difference in the perception of the car.
My old girlfriend’s Honda dealer was very accommodating years ago. And I had a Dodge dealer back in the 80’s that was great to work with. But the way the laws are structured in the US (each state has it’s own franchise laws), there’s little a manufacturer can do to sanction a less than satisfactory dealer.
But as for the car itself, the two I had were perfectly serviceable for their intended purpose. With my driving routine now, I could probably use another car like that (light commuting, just me in the car). But alas, no one makes a car quite like that anymore.
I have nothing to add here…well, one bright spot, maybe two…ok, 3:
1) The Tuned-Port Chevy small-block. Finally…signs of life for the mouse motor after over a decade of increased pollution controls and decreased power.
2) The GM Turbo 200-4R and 700-R4. I forget when the 200 got its makeover but the 700 got a major upgrade in 1987…it went from being junkyard worthy off the showroom floor to being the must-have automatic. The foundation for the modern 4-L60E.
3) The GM 4.3 “Vortec” V6. Swirl-port heads, roller cam…Q-jet. Just be aware of bad fuel spiders in the later “enhanced” versions and leaky intakes on the last-gen “W” motors.
Oh, yeah, most GM B-and G-bodies.
Mustangs, Panthers and Tauruses.
ChryCo minivans.
Most any domestic truck built after 1984.
Every other 80’s vehicle – at least the American ones – was a turkey as far as I’m concerned, with Cadillac Cimarron and Yugo as King and Queen turkey.
Pretty much anything by Cadillac.
Ford Probe. That thing was supposed to replace the Mustang?! Ford really dodged a bullet there.
Only two mentions of the X-Cars – seriously?
Lots of bottom-feeder compacts, including the Yugo, Hyundai Excel, and Renaults. (Hyundai certainly did not give up, though!)
And, of course, the Maserati Biturbo.
I think ‘turkey’ needs to be better defined. Since the Bricklin SV-1 was the first winner, I suppose it’s a vehicle that promised a whole lot more than it delivered. In that regard, all the econoboxes are out of the running, regardless of how bad they might have been. Unless it had a Toyota or Honda badge, no one really should have expected much from a cheap, eighties’ econobox (certainly not from one with an MSRP of less than $4,000).
My vote goes to the third generation f-body (Camaro/Firebird). The much more reliable, tossable 5.0L Fox-chassis Mustang just walked all over the lumbering, poorly built, GM ‘sporty’ crap-mobiles in both performance and sales.
A close second to the f-body would be the Maserati Biturbo, primarily since it looked so good, but failed so miserably in all other areas.
The list of Turkeys to emerge from the second round of Downsizing at GM was long…
Cars Which I’d love a chance to keep alive in the 21st century…
1986-89 Toronado’s Esp. w/o Trofeo edition
1986 -88 Rivieras
1986 Seville & Eldorado were sad in their lack of quality…
1982 Cimarron!!!!!!
Four cylinder Camaros & Firebirds, Mustangs Oh my…
1981-83 Imperial
MArk V I
Renaut Alliance Encore Etc.
Le Car
The constant stream of REAL MISTAKES to emerge from Cadillac in the 80s are incredible.
I can remember looking at the first CIMARRON in Albany NY, Summer of 1981, I looked The sales guy in the eye to see if he’d let on that he agreed what a shocking SHAM of a Cadillac imposted on a Nova It really was… Even worse that The 5 years of Seville on a Nova that they had just so blatently gotten away with at 3 x the cost.
He insisted it was INdeed Cadillac Quality thru & Thru…HA!!!!!