Taxiguy57 /PD – modified
When you’re a young auto enthusiast — whether or not you’re yet old enough to drive — you often develop dogmatic attitudes about certain cars or types of cars. Some you love, some you covet, and some you just can’t stand. Over time, some of those attitudes soften, while others only calcify into life-long grudges.
Hating the Dinosaurs
Starting around the time I was in high school, the two cars I most disdained were the G-body Chevrolet Monte Carlo, which by then was no longer in production, but was still a common sight on Midwestern streets, and the Fox-body Ford Mustang, which seemed likely to soldier on until the heat death of the universe. I grimaced every time I saw either of these cars. (I can already sense hackles going up throughout the CC commentariat.)
Bull-Doser / PD – modified
Looking back now, I think there were a number of factors at play in my disdain for these cars:
- They both had a strong poor white trash vibe. There was a level of classist snobbishness to this attitude that I’m not particularly proud of now; for instance, following a family trip to Indiana, where it seemed G-body coupes were everywhere, I began disdainfully referring to the Monte Carlo SS as “the muscle car of the discriminating redneck.” I had yuppie tastes when I was younger, and I was never so economically or socially secure that I felt I could approach things that were déclassé or trashy in a camp or ironic way of the sort the rich and glamorous can often pull off.
- I hated that they seemed so willfully antiquated. By the time I started paying attention to them, both the Mustang and the Monte Carlo were over a decade old, and they looked it. This was an era where the Big Three seemed determined to cling forever to designs that were never very inspired to begin with — aging K-car derivatives, the cheap and cheerless J-body Cavalier, the awful American Escort — but many of those were either not even remotely aimed at me (the late K-car had a decidedly geriatric image, as did the GM A-body cars) or were so obviously budget specials that they were safely beneath contempt. (By the late ’80s, there was no point hating a car like the Chevette unless you owned one.) But in the sporty coupe arena, a warmed-over 1978–1979 design just didn’t cut it anymore. I was especially vexed when I read that the Mazda-based Ford Probe had been intended as a new Mustang, only for Ford to change course at the last minute due to wailing from purists. That first-generation Probe had its weaknesses too, like alarming torque steer with the turbocharged engine, but to reject a more sophisticated modern design in favor of the homely ’79 Fairmont aura of the Fox-body Mustang struck me as a disagreeable corporate commitment to willful anachronism as well as perennial cheapskate-itis.
- Both seemed far too crude and deficient in stock form. I realized then, as I do now, that for many of the fans of the Fox-body Mustang and of the G-body Monte Carlo, part of the appeal was that they were endlessly tunable — not so much cars as cheap canvases for hooning. However, I’ve never had much taste for that sort of thing, and I object to feeling like it’s a requirement for decent all-around performance in a new car. A case in point was brakes: So far as I can think, all of the G-body cars had undersized rear drums, even on the absurdly fast Buick Regal Grand National and GNX, and all but a few rare iterations of the Fox-body Mustang did as well — the same mediocre parts-bin stuff that was barely adequate in the old Fairmont. I recall a Motor Trend “Bang for the Buck” comparison test (September 1989) where editor Jim Miller stubbornly defended the Mustang despite its inadequate stopping power and crude shift linkage, declaring, “I’ll talk to Steve Saleen about fixing the brakes.” Even at the time, I thought, “Why should you have to?” I prefer cars that are better-rounded out of the box, and I resented that Ford and Chevrolet were so stubbornly reluctant to meaningfully upgrade these aging platforms, even where they could have. (The much rarer Mustang SVO, out of production and seldom seen by this time, had better brakes and a variety of detail improvements that never made it to the quotidian LX 5.0 or GT.) The Monte Carlo didn’t even have particularly good straight-line performance to balance its other shortcomings, which was also true of the all-too-common base Mustang, with its rough, nasty, underpowered 2.3-liter four.
- Their anachronistic Detroit Iron vibe often correlated with some very unpleasant jingoism. This was the era when half of America still felt deeply threatened by the Japanese economic bubble, so about two-thirds of popular culture was littered with deranged Orientalist nonsense about ninjas and the Yakuza, and some quite prominent business leaders and automotive pundits felt no compunctions about spewing racist nonsense about the insidious Foreign Devils that could have come straight out of a Sax Rohmer pulp story. There were definite factions who needed little excuse to bend your ear about how they were never gonna drive one of them [racial slur] [racial slur] [term of reproach] ferrin’ cars. Since by this time a lot of Made in the USA products were downsized FWD four-cylinder cars intended to compete with the aforementioned Foreign Devils, this left the Mustang, the G-body Monte Carlo (and I suppose the contemporary Grand Prix, although I saw those so infrequently that they never registered), and the third-gen F-bodies as the most desirable remaining choices among newish American iron of the old school. This correlation was of course not always one-to-one, but spotting a Monte Carlo with Confederate flag stickers was definitely grounds for panic.
General Motors LLC
(If you’re wondering, my regard for the third-gen F-bodies was not a great deal higher than for the Mustang, and in some ways I thought they were even cruder. The difference was that the Camaro and Firebird/Trans Am were at least good-looking, in an impractical and rough-hewn sort of way, whereas the Fox-body Mustang looked like a rental car without the silly GT addenda, and clownish with it.)
Latter-Day Rapprochement
What do I think about these cars now?
I will never love the looks of the Fox-body Mustang, although I’ve come to feel there’s a certain honesty about the cleaner LX notchback that I can respect. As for its other qualities, I find the older Mustang’s strengths and limitations a good deal more palatable as a used car than as a new one. Once a car goes from “new” to “late-model” to just “old,” much of the former competitive pressure falls away. The cars I thought were better when I was in high school are also now “old,” and continuing to press the former rivalry would quickly start to feel rather sad. Also, while I’m still not one for aftermarket hoonery, Fox Mustangs are abundant and potentially very cheap, so there’s no compelling reason not to hop one up if that’s what floats your boat.
Beyond that, I eventually developed a fondness for certain other cars that I realized are not that different from the Fox-body Mustang in concept and appeal, like the AE86 Corolla Levin/Sprinter Trueno/Corolla GT-S coupes or the European Mk3 Ford Capri. The latter has a lot of the same strengths and weaknesses as the Mustang (down to the usually mediocre brakes), and since the Capri was based on the Mk2 Cortina of 1966–1970, it was if anything even more antiquated.
Mecum Auctions
As for the G-body Monte Carlo, a while before the pandemic, I spotted a well-preserved late SS parked on the street some blocks from here, white with aluminum wheels (not the car pictured above, but another ’87 just like it), and had to grudgingly concede that the basic shape did clean up pretty nicely. The LS is less convincing at hiding its 1978 roots, especially with the landau top, but the SS has aged well. I still wouldn’t want one — there’s nothing about the mechanical package that I find remotely compelling — but the kind of swagger the SS was trying to project is no longer as lost on me as it once was.
Long story short, I’m still not a fan of these cars, but I no longer sneer when I see either go by.
So, I’ll put it to the group:
What cars did you just hate earlier in life? Has time changed your mind, or only hardened your resolve?
In my case, I’ve owned all kinds of cars. I’ve owned two Yugos, three Pontiac Azteks, three Fox body Mercury Capris and since children, a bunch of norm-core conventional cars. Generally, I have developed a rather laissez-faire attitude toward styling. I was not a huge fan of the Aztek’s styling, but my wife really wanted one. Once you got past the styling and lived with it for a while, it was a rather pleasant vehicle. I guess what proves Pontiac was about 15 years ahead of the times is that there are dozens of Aztek-like cars on the road now.
I think I project my views of owners of cars onto the cars. When I was a young boy, my dad (who drove truck) always said to avoid Cadillac and Mercedes drivers as they drive like they own the place. So, as a child, I was not a fan of those cars.
Another example was my irrational dislike of AMC Ambassadors. One of our neighbors owned one when I was a youngster and he was a bit of a curmudgeon, always yelling at us neighborhood kids (too noisy, on his lawn, teasing his dog, etc.). Again, I projected my dislike of our old neighbor onto Ambys and 4 door Matadors, too. It wasn’t until a buddy of mine got bequeathed a 401-equipped Matador sedan that I changed my mind.
I came of age right at the end of the disco era, just as the tide was shifting to imported sporty cars (i.e. Datsun 280ZX, Toyota Supra, etc.). My friends and I developed stereotypes of the classic disco guy, slightly tubby and balding, with wide lapel shirts open down to the navel that featured gold chains tangled in their chest hair. These guys were in their late-20’s to late-30’s and were desperately trying to bed as many women 8-15 years younger than them as possible. They seemed so pretentious to us working stiffs, so I was not a fan of that era of those sporty cars.
My current irrationality is my dislike of Subarus, of any type. It has a lot to do with the same reasoning my dad didn’t care for Cadillac and Mercedes drivers back in the day. I’ve encountered a rather large number of seemingly oblivious Subie drivers here in snow belt that are the ones tailgating you in whiteouts (really in any other weather conditions) and generally acting like they own the place. In time, these Subaru drivers will graduate to another type of car and drive just as badly as they do now and I will get over my irrational dislike of those cars, like I did the previous ones.
Great question! My negative reactions to the following have not changed over the years:
– The Olds Cutlass and the Buick Skylark from ’68 through ’71. They looked obese. And the Skylark was too short to pull off the full-length S-curve along the side that didn’t look good on any of the Buicks of that era. I think GM was alarmed by the success of their predecessors, which had looked like 7/8-scale versions of the B and C bodies. They were beautiful and perfectly proportioned, probably stealing sales from the full-sizers. So the replacements were made to look fat and thus shorter than they really were. But because they were fast and comfortable they still sold well.
– The Hummer H1 and H2. Overtly militaristic gas guzzlers. And the H2 even came in a version with a pointless little pickup bed.
– Luxury SUVs – a silly concept IMHO. When the Range Rover became popular in the US in the ’90s, starting a trend, I thought of suggesting they use a rather British sounding tag line: “Quite possibly the most pretentious car you can buy.”
Cleaner look of the Mustang LX notchback? I don’t agree, at least the HB is more practical and its fastback rear breaks up the overall squareness. For the same reason even if they are not HB , I prefer the short-lived aéroback Buick Régal and Olds Cutlass. Yes those that everyone runs to say that they hate them . I like them so much, in two doors form, that I would like to get my hands on one of them and since they are worthless, I would not hesitate to put the Hackzall in their posterior to make 3-door HBs.
The two door one had “frameless window glass”. Other wise I’d a preferred them to the “4dor”, relatives.
Also, if those rear side windows would have been “hinged, pop openers”.
Great question! My negative reactions to the following have not changed over the years:
– The Olds Cutlass and the Buick Skylark from ’68 through ’71. They looked obese. And the Skylark was too short to pull off the full-length S-curve along the side that didn’t look good on any of the Buicks of that era. I think GM was alarmed by the success of their predecessors, which had looked like 7/8-scale versions of the B and C bodies. They were beautiful and perfectly proportioned, probably stealing sales from the full-sizers. So the replacements were made to look fat and thus shorter than they really were. But because they were fast and comfortable they still sold well.
– The Hummer H1 and H2. Overtly militaristic gas guzzlers. And the H2 even came in a version with a pointless little pickup bed.
– Luxury SUVs – a silly concept IMHO. When the Range Rover became popular in the US in the ’90s, starting a trend, I thought of suggesting they use a rather British sounding tag line: “Quite possibly the most pretentious car you can buy.”
I’m a lot younger than most of the commenters here I suspect. I was born in the early 2000s, and started noticing cars and learning what they all were by about 2007. As a kid I had a disdain for most ’80s and ’90s cars, particularly the American ones, since I thought they all looked weird, boring, dated, or all 3. A lot of them were well-loved and ratty looking by the 2010-13 period when I was starting to form opinions. It didn’t help that my Dad, a Gen-X through and through, had a distaste for Foxbodies and C4 Vettes in favor or much nicer imports. Most of these cars I appreciate a lot more now, since they’ve become so much more rare as they’ve fallen off the roads. Even the ugly ones are still neat to spot, and ugly modern cars (I’ll get to later) made me appreciate the ’90s designs more too.
In middle/high school I started getting into online car forums/discussions and absorbed opinions other than my Dad’s and Granddad’s. Around 2015-16 the crossover hate online was big, maybe even bigger than today. I was definitely one of those “Every CUV ever is terrible and the buyers should feel bad” types. My least favorites were probably subcompacts like the first-gen Buick Encore and Chevy Trax. Just terribly proportioned little ballsacks. I still dislike those. Same goes for the Ford EcoSport from a few years later. Nowadays I’ve lessened my crossover hate though, not in the least because I personally find their styling to be much more palatable now than 10 years ago. So many back then were way too rounded and it just looked weird that they tried to be both round and truckish/blocky at the same time. I like the more squared-off SUV shape. The current Nissan Rogue and Pathfinder, Honda CR-V, Pilot and Passport, Chevy Trailblazer, Hyundai Santa Fe, etc. all look so much better than their decade-old counterparts by going back to that squarer shape. And other ones, like the new Chevy Trax, aren’t really boxy but are just much better proportioned than before. Also props to Chevy for offering the Trax and Trailblazer in some really sweet colors, a Trailblazer in that bright aqua turns my head faster than any greyscale Mercedes that costs 3X more.
I appreciate a lot of the cars I used to loathe when I was younger due to maturity and of course reading CC everyday.
The cars I still despise after all these years are the BMC Issigonis cars, the ADO 16 and the other bigger Austin thing, I don’t care how advanced they were or how strong the bodies are I maintain my dislike for those horrible cars with a passion.
It feels weird now, but I used to hate air cooled VWs – especially Karmann-Ghias, which I viewed as wannabe sports cars…now I drive one every day and am a total convert. My girlfriend (now wife) loved them and I bought a 1303 Cabrio for her – not fast, but incredibly solid and great handling on 16” Fuchs.
Then I spent years designing Porsches and had a long trip in a 356SC – an absolute epiphany!
So now I anm passionate about all things air cooled and especially Porsche and VW. I love my faithful daily driver Ghia to bits and have found the whole VW scene to be firiendly and accommodating….
Late to the party, but hate is such a strong word, so I’ll use dislike or other terms.
As others have said, each car has its merits and its detriments, but they are all special in some way to someone. Ok, now that the obligatory politically correct statement is out of the way, I’ll speak to three cars (or car types) on which I’ve had my own change of heart.
When I started driving in the seventies at 16 in 1976, I was a brougham head with a ‘73 LTD. Go figure, as these are old people cars, and now, as an old guy, I drive a Mustang and a Civic Coupe. There were many PLC(s) in between.
First the Civic since I brought it up. I never liked small cars, the Honda Civic included. The 8th gen was especially boring to me. I think the only small car that I might possibly use the term “hate” for was the Datsun B210… Damn that car was ugly.
The change of heart: I love my 2016 Honda Civic EX-T Coupe. It’s fast enough for this old man, an excellent commuter car, gets killer gas mileage, and handles like it’s on rails. Who knew? Apparently about a bazillion other people before me.
Second: CUV(s). Disliked them, because I drive a car and hated (sorry… strongly disliked) getting stuck behind anything around which I could not see.
Then came the Mazda CX-5. A CUV that actually had good looks (IMHO, anyway). When the wife decided she wanted one, and realizing that resistance is futile, I steered her towards this one. We both like this car very much.
I will add another car type I’ve never embraced, and it may be one of the reasons I’ve never had kids of my own… The Minivan. They were freaking everywhere in the eighties and nineties and I could not wrap my head around why anyone would want one of those things. Again, no kids, and thus no perspective here… I drove a Thunderbird… now THAT was a practical car!
The change of heart, even though I’d never own one: Some friends and I piled into a Plymouth Voyager, or Dodge Caravan, or Chrysler Town and Country (I forget which… the all looked the same) and off to the mountains we went to go skiing. It had room for all of us, our gear, and even made it through like 14 inches of snow in western PA without missing a beat. I had a new respect for something I otherwise despised.
The Fox body Mustangs and G-Body coupes were two of my favourite cars from the 80s! I like them because they were anarchistic throw backs. I was not a fan of modern FWD cars or “imports” during this era. Being a hands-on V8 guy that liked to fiddle with cars, they old RWD V8 cars were (and still are) my bread and butter.
There were lots of cars I didn’t like when I was younger. I generally didn’t like any of the mid-70s stuff, big bumper, smog era, broughams. Big fluffy land yachts were everything I disliked about Detroit. Being a performance car guy, I had a lot of disdain for the Mustang II in particular. I also didn’t like the Colonnade cars, especially the Chevelles, since I was a early Chevelle fan. It was actually this distaste for the Colonnade cars that made it okay for my dad to daily drive the ultra low mile mint condition never seen winter ’76 Malibu I found for him. Then after living with the car, I learned to like it – a lot. Now decades later, it sits in my garage. It may not be the best car ever, but it is a wonderful car that I really love and enjoy to drive. And having owned the early A-bodies, I have learned the 1973-77 platform is better in some ways.
As I mentioned above, I also did not like “import” cars. German and Italian stuff was ok, but stuff from Japan – yuck! Now years later, my daily drivers have been exclusively Japanese for many years.
Today, I pretty much appreciate any old car that is still on the road or well cared for, and I have even learned to appreciate the older Japanese stuff I used to hate. What I dislike today, is modern cars. They perform the transportation function very well but are completely soulless.
1974-1978 Ford LTD/Mercury Marquis. With a father and my uncle working for Ford in South Chicago, I made it clear that I thought these popular Ford products were bloated, ugly sedans.
I was wrong. Thanks to CC, I learned that they were bloated, ugly, DEPENDABLY GOOD cars.
Thanks CC for the unvarnished truth.
I own a 1979 Monte Carlo today. Completely stock and original, without any silly modifications, which make me immediately lose interest in any Monte Carlo so afflicted. And in the 1980s, I had another just like it. Back then these cars had a completely different image. They were trim, modern and stylish, a breath of fresh air coming from the bloated disco-mobile Montes that preceded them and not yet associated with all those retrograde mullet-mobile stereotypes. That started later, when the SS model, introduced in 1983, became affordable as a used car (so not before 1986 or so). That’s when all the hooning and hot-rodding began, and then this derogatory image of the car and the social types likely to own one devolved onto all Monte Carlos. I clearly remember a time when all that stigma did not exist. But at some point in the 1980s Monte Carlos certainly acquired it, and had I been in the market a few years later, I would have most likely shared your views.
Here is my COAL on the Monte Carlo:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1979-chevrolet-monte-carlo-time-is-on-my-side/
Now that I’ve defended my Monte Carlo, I’ll answer the question itself…
Back when I owned my first Monte, what I hated was BMW. I thought that they were cars for yuppie a-holes, and in the 1980s I absolutely despised yuppie a-holes with hot heaping hunks of hate. I have since learned to appreciate the cars themselves on their own merits, independently of the stereotypes about typical Beemer owners.
What I never understood was all the hatred for SUVs. I grew up in a large family and my parents owned two Suburbans, simply because that was the smallest vehicle into which all of us could comfortably fit, plus Dad used them for work. We were way ahead of the curve. But when everybody else started buying SUVs, I immediately recognized this as simply going back to the pre-war sedans where you sat upright and higher off the ground. Back to rational space utilization after years of longer-and-lower.
I really hated the Jaguar XJ-S. The car was fine for what it was, but such a disappointment as a replacement for the E-Type and the flying buttress styling was a bit too much like a ’69 Galaxie SportsRoof.
Anything by Nissan. I cannot think of a single Nissan vehicle that I have even the slightest admiration for, except maybe the 1980s Maxima (4 door Sports car) or the original Infiniti Q45. To my eyes, Nissan are cheap, ugly and poorly engineered. Their overwrought styling is utterly lacking in simplicity and elegance, case in point being their front ends…..they all look way too aggressive. I am hard pressed to think of a single Nissan design that could be considered classic or trendsetting. Every one is shamelessly derivative and poorly executed with clumsy details.
I thought of another “strongly disliked” vehicle(s) by a certain manufacturer and that would be the 1980s Chrysler products, in particular the K car and it’s long line of derivatives. My driver’s license class used modified Aries/Reliant 4 doors with passenger-side auxiliary brakes. These weren’t too bad as they were meant to be basic, simple and roomy. The derivatives like the Laser, The Sundance, the E-300, the Dynasty, the LeBaron, the New Yorker, and the absolute worst ever American car, the Imperial. How Chrysler managed to get so many people to purchase their gussied-up K cars is beyond me. They were ugly….too blocky, ill-proportioned, overwrought when saddled with padded roofs and coach lamps, too stubby in length and wheelbase, had too- overhangs front and rear, high cowls with black plastic monolithic dashboards that made for poor visibility, and very low, awkward seating. Yes, they saved Chrysler at the time, but Chrysler’s long-term business model, even today, seemed to be one of going from one crisis to another. Chrysler never seemed to be in a strong enough financial position to ever seem like it wasn’t in a perpetual state of teetering on the brink of insolvency.
long
I love G-bodies. Ive owned 1 from each division and they’ve all been great cars. I like Fox Mustangs and also owned one briefly in the early 90s. Im a musclecar guy so both of those bodystyles are my jam. But as a red-blooded metalhead American kid growing up in the 80s, I hated yuppiedom and their cars and all imports in general.
Today, I’ve grown and diversified my automotive interests and I’d really to have a BMW 633CSI (or even an M6) What a beautiful car with a great engine and a 5 speed of course.