30. 1976 Aston Martin Lagonda

Designed by William Towns the Aston Martin Lagonda was described as an extreme interpretation of the classic 1970’s “folded paper” style. When it came out and to this day the Lagonda is considered an oddly designed car. The interior was awash in leather and the electronic instrumentation was state of the art for its time. The problem is the electronics failed constantly. The Lagonda was outfitted with digital LED dashboards and touch pad controls, that were great when they worked, but for the most part they didn’t. Mechanical failure was a common problem with the Lagonda as well, with the engine needing constant repairs. On paper the Lagonda was a great idea, but the technology wasn’t fully fleshed out at the time. Unless you had a background in electronics and auto mechanics, you would have a hard time keeping the Lagonda on the road.

31. 1976 Chevrolet Chevette

The Chevette was constructed to be an inexpensive economy class vehicle. While the succeeded in their quest, the end result was an unreliable pile of junk. Light switches shorted out, transmissions failed early in the vehicle’s life, and sometimes the car just wouldn’t start. The Chevette had a slow top speed due to its tiny 51 horsepower engine and weak four-speed transmission. The brakes were terribly inadequate, making it difficult to stop the vehicle. looks wise, the Chevette was a rather ugly little car,with a long snout and stumpy body. Due to brand loyalty, plenty of people bought the Chevette when it came out, and because of their experiences with it many ended up switching car brands to get the bad taste of the Chevette out of their mouths.

32. 1978 FSO Polonez

The FSO Polonez is a Polish vehicle, that was considered by many to be one of the most undependable, unstylish cars ever made. The car’s name comes from the Polish dance, polonaise. The materials used to build the Polonez were cheap and resulted in the car being relatively unsafe. Jeremy Clarkson of BBC’s Top Gear had these choice words to say about the Polonez: Built by communists out of steel so thin you could use it as a neck curtain, it is as reliable and long lasting as a pensioner’s erection. I can only assume that here, [the stylist] was experimenting with trying to design a car after consuming four liters of absinthe.” Even though it was a rather terrible car, the Polonez was produced until 2002.

33. 1978 AMC Pacer

It may have been the car Wayne and Garth drove in Wayne’s World, but the AMC Pacer was far from a good car. Even with the icon status the Pacer has achieved due to those films, it is still regarded as one of the ugliest cars of all time, as made evident by a poll done by Hagerty Insurance. The large, bulbous windshield acted like a magnifying glass and rapidly heated up the car’s interior and not even the A/C system could save you; that is, when the A/C actually worked. The Pacer had asymmetric doors – the right was longer than the left, so passengers could climb into the back more easily. But the oddball design feature had unexpected consequences. When the Pacer was converted into a station wagon, items stored in the back fell out when the right door was opened.

34. 1980 Corvette 305 “California”

Thanks to the strict federal emissions requirements of the 70’s, many of the gas guzzling muscle cars we all love from the 60’s ended up as underpowered shadows of their former selves in the 70’s and 80’s. Of the cars depowered in this way, the Corvette was hit hardest, even worse was the “California” edition. Due to even stricter standards in California, the Corvette ended up with a weak V-8 motor that put out 180 horsepower and a power-draining three-speed automatic transmission. This was a Corvette in name only, the essence was stripped out of it and it’s dead husk was sold to the public. Thankfully as technology advanced we found ways to make the Corvette comply with emissions regulations and be the powerhouse we love.

35. 1980 Ferrari Mondial 8

Ferrari isn’t a company you would expect to have a car on this list, but even the italian supercar company made some mistakes. The Mondial was based on the 308 chassis and was big, heavy, and weak for a Ferrari. The mid-engine V-8 only had an output of 214 horsepower. The electronics had a habit of failing and the smell of burning wires wasn’t uncommon. The engine itself had its fair share of problems as well. Some of the blame for the Mondials shortcomings can be blamed on the decision to make a more affordable Ferrari, leading to a cheap vehicle. Seems like anytime a high end sports car company tries to make a low cost sports car they end up with something like the Mondial.

36. 1981 Cadillac Fleetwood V-8-6-4

The Cadillac Fleetwood V-8-6-4 was a pretty reliable, well made car, with the exception of one thing: the cylinder deactivation technology. Here in 2015, cylinder deactivation is a stellar idea. When the engine is under light load, the on-board computer deactivates a cylinder bank and the car saves on gas mileage. In 1981 however, on-board computers were still in their beta stages. The V-8-6-4’s cylinder deactivation was anything but smooth. The ECM lacked the programming and processing power needed to manage the system efficiently. The car would jerk, buck, stall, shudder, and in extreme instances fail. Cadillac issued thirteen updated PROM chips for the ECM to correct the issue, but it still wasn’t enough. Luckily the vehicle could be taken to the dealer to have the system deactivated.

37. 1981 DeLorean DMC-12

The DeLorean may be an iconic car due to its role in the Back to the Future films, but as a real world car the DeLorean was nowhere near as cool as its time traveling counterpart. The brainchild of John Z. DeLorean, the first DeLoreans were produced in a factory in Northern Ireland. The car was heavy, under powered and over priced. The little 2.8 liter Peugeot V-6 under the hood was ill-equipped to move the massive stainless steel monster. Without some modifications, it’s questionable if the DeLorean could actually get up to 88 mph. The one thing the DeLorean had going for it was that it was a cool looking car, especially the doors. The only problem with the gullwing style doors was that once the struts wore out, you needed to have plenty of arm strength to open and close them. Dropping one of those steel doors on your leg would not feel good.

38. 1982 Cadillac Cimarron

In an effort to get into the luxury compact market during the 80’s, Cadillac rushed production of the Cimarron. They took a GM small car platform and covered it in glitz. Leather upholstery, air conditioning, alloy wheels, intermittent wipers, and anything else that they could cram into the car were added. Customers saw right through Cadillacs ploy and immediately recognized the car for what it was: a Chevrolet Cavalier covered in glitz and glam. The engine was the same little four-cylinder found in the Buick Skyhawk and the Oldsmobile Firenza. Cadillac tried to keep the Cimarron alive, even adding in a V-6 option in 1985, but consumers never took the bait. In 1988 the Cimarron was discontinued. The Cimarron was such a colossal failure that Cadillac product director John Howell kept a picture of it in his office with the caption “Lest we forget” written on it.

39. 1982 Camaro Iron Duke

The Camaro is a car known for having a big powerful motor and the potential for speed. The 1982 Camaro Iron Duke was the exact opposite of this. The engine was a 2.5 liter, four-cylinder that had a underwhelming 50 horsepower. The Iron Duke was the smallest, weakest, most un-Camaro engine ever placed under the hood of a Camaro. To make matters worse, the Iron Duke was mated to a three-speed pile of garbage transmission. With a zero to sixty time of over 20 seconds, the Iron Duke went nowhere fast. It’s pretty embarrassing when you’re sitting behind the wheel of a Camaro and a grandmother in a station wagon blows past you like you’re standing still.

40. 1984 Maserati Biturbo

The Maserati Biturbo is another example of a luxury car manufacturer trying to build smaller, more affordable cars. In a bold move, Maserati stopped making supercars and focused on smaller vehicles, resulting in the creation of the Biturbo. The Biturbo was an awkward clone of the BMW 3-series, with rear wheel drive and a six-cylinder engine. The engine was equipped with a twin-turbo, the first ever twin-turbo on a production vehicle. If anything, Maserati deserves a little credit for being the first to stuff a twin-turbo into a production vehicle. The Biturbo would have been a good car, if it wasn’t so poorly made. If it could leak, break, burn out, seize up, or just stop working, it would do so on the Biturbo.

41. 1985 Mosler Consulier GTP

Built by Warren Mosler, the Consulier GTP was a race car built of of bits and pieces of other cars. The engine from one car, a steering column from another, mix matched gauges, a suspension from here, and a transmission from over there. His intention was to save money and make the car lighter. In this he succeeded, the car had a superior power-to-weight ratio and was eventually banned from racing. The issue with the Consulier GTP was the looks. This was one of the most hideous cars ever built, looking like something that was slapped together in the backyard of an eastern bloc country. This experiment proves that building a car is much harder than it looks, and requires more than just technical knowledge.

42. 1985 Alfa Romeo GTV 6

Usually the GTV badge is worn on powerful Alfa Romeo vehicles, having been proudly worn on rally champions in the 60’s and 70’s. During the underpowered 80’s the badge was worn on the less than impressive GTV 6. The exterior of the GTV 6 was praised, the fastback body was aggressive and fitting for a vehicle wearing the GTV badge. Unfortunately the engine of the GTV 6 was a disaster. The gaskets, hoses, and belts were all brittle and prone to failure, resulting in the GTV 6 leaking constantly, in some cases suffering engine failure. To make matters worse, Alfa Romeo left the U.S. market in the 90’s making replacement parts difficult to locate.

43. 1985 Yugo GV

Imported by Malcolm Bricklin, the same guy who designed the Bricklin SV1, the Yugo GV was a terrible car. Built in Soviet-bloc Yugoslavia, the Yugo GV seemed like it was thrown together quickly so the assembler could go somewhere else, perhaps to assemble a better car. The engine was weak, resulting in poor acceleration and a low top speed. The engine also routinely failed, due to the timing belt snapping. The electrical system was known to have shorts, resulting is that wonderful burning wires smell filling the cabin and sometimes pieces of the car would just fall off. There’s some people who claim that rigorous maintenance of the Yugo will keep it running with no problems, but a pile of junk that you need to constantly maintain is still a pile of junk.

44. 1989 Eagle Premier

There was nothing redeeming about the Eagle Premier. There was no style to the exterior design, with generic body lines and boxy edges. The engine was a 2.5 liter AMC four-cylinder that produced an underwhelming 111 horsepower. The interior was plain and without frills, even though the car was marketed as a luxury vehicle. Everything about the Premier was underwhelming, it was as though the designers didn’t even try to make a car that consumers would want. This car looks like the generic silhouette of a vehicle in which you would spot only on a 25-year old poster that has been hanging in tired DMV, generic and apathetic in nature, faded and defeated from years of exposure to fluorescent lighting and the restless complaints of impatient souls.

45. 1990 Ford Explorer

The Ford Explorer is one of the top selling cars in Ford’s stable, and rightfully so, the Explorer is a great vehicle. The reason the Explorer is on the list is due to the Ford/Firestone tire controversy. When first sold in 1990, Ford internal documents show the company engineers recommended changes to the vehicle after it rolled over in tests prior to production. Rather than follow through with these changes, ford lowered the recommended psi of the tires to 26. The lower pressure led to the tires getting hot, which led to tread separation, leading to the vehicle rolling over. Over 240 deaths resulted from these failure and over 3,000 estimated catastrophic injuries also resulted from the issue.

46. 1991 Subaru SVX



Subaru is not known for making bad cars, if anything they are lauded as one of the better car makers on the planet, but the SVX is a definite misstep on their part. The SVX stands as a monument to misguided styling, with odd panel breaks and complex windows that defined the car – and killed it in the showroom. The windows were a two-part design, with fixed outer sections that had sliding panes set within them. They might have made sense to the stylist who came up with them, but to everyone else, the windows seemed ridiculous. Like the fashion of wearing clothes backwards during the mercifully brief reign of the hip hop duo Kris Kross, the SVX’s radical window design died a quick death: The car was taken off the market in 1995, just four years after it was introduced.

47. 1995 BMW 318ti

Introduced in 1995 the BMW 318ti was a three-door hatchback targeted at customers who couldn’t afford the more expensive 3-series. BMW tried to get away with making an incredibly cheap car, and assumed that people would but it just because it had a BMW badge on it. Consumers saw through this marketing ploy, as the car looked cheap inside and out. It looked like an E36 3-series that had the rear end chopped off and replaced with a hatchback. The only engine was a weak 1.8 liter 138 horsepower four-cylinder that took more than nine seconds to reach 60 mph. The interior was covered in mostly tacky plastic and the seats were uncomfortable even on short drives. Sales where dismal as they should have been for this pile of junk.

48. 1996 Ferrari F50

After making the awesome F40, a supercar capable of speeds upwards of 190 mph, Ferrari tried to capture lightning in a bottle a second time with the F50. The engine was powerful, with a whopping 513 horsepower at the rear wheels. The Suspension perfectly tuned, letting the F50 handle corners like the supercar that it is. Those faithful to Ferrari gobbled up the less than 400 produced by Ferrari without batting an eye, but the F50 was a hideous car. The Ferrari F50 is without question the ugliest Ferrari ever built. The troughs on the hood, the deep cavities in the side panels, and the wing that was a part of the rear fender all add to the hot mess that is the Ferrari F50.

49. 1997 GM EV1

The EV1 was ahead of it’s time when it came out. It was the best electric vehicle anyone had ever seen. Designed to comply with the strict zero-emissions-vehicle mandate in California, the EV1 was a decent car. Decent power, giving it a nice amount of speed, while also being fun to drive. GM made claims that the EV1 was the next step in all electric cars, eliminating pollution causing gasoline engines. Unfortunately, GM was off the mark. The battery technology was not sufficient at the time to deliver on GM’s claims. The lead-acid batteries couldn’t give drivers the range they needed for the car to be useful. The later nickel-metal hydride batteries couldn’t handle the load either. The EV1 was also incredibly expensive to build, leading to GM terminating the project.

50. 1997 Plymouth Prowler

In the late 90’s Chrysler engineers were given free reign to design whatever they wanted in a “hod rod” or “sportster” type vehicle. The result was a design from Thomas C. Gale, the Plymouth Prowler. The Plymouth Prowler looked like a hod rod from the 30’s, only it didn’t have a hot rod engine under the hood. Cutting corners and pinching pennies, Chrysler plopped a 3.5 liter V-6 under the hood of the Prowler, giving it a less than impressive 250 horsepower. The open wheel front end and hot rod fuselage looked nice, but the lack of power made the Prowler an unappealing dud. To make matters worse, the Prowler was cursed with an automatic transmission, so you couldn’t even drive the vehicle like the speedster it appears to be.

51. 1998 Fiat Multipla

If there was an award for weirdest looking car the Fiat Multipla would have won it. The high-beams were situated at the bottom of the A-pillars, the A-pillars themselves wrapped under the windshield and connected, resulting in an ugly bulge on the hood, the rear was bulky and odd shaped, and the whole mess sat on small wheels. The whole vehicle looked like a car that was bombarded repeatedly by radiation until it mutated. Mechanically, the Multipla was a decent car. The suspension handled whatever was thrown at it, the engine provided adequate power, and the interior was comfortable. If it wasn’t such a horrendous looking vehicle, the Multipla wouldn’t be on this list. I’m not sure what Fiat was thinking when they designed this mess.

52. 2001 Pontiac Aztek

Another hideous vehicle, the Pontiac Aztec was almost universally disliked when it was unveiled at the Detroit auto show. The car was an awkward, bulky, plastic mess, that looked like nothing else on the road. Rather than embrace the unique look of the Aztek, most recoiled. Interviews with GM designers revealed that the original design for the Aztek had been fiddled with, altered, and had corners cut to reduce costs resulting in the mess that we have today. Oddly enough years after the Aztek had been removed from production, a resurgance in popularity and public interest happened, all thanks to its association with Breaking Bad. After watching lead character Walter White drive an Aztec, suddenly the car became cooler than it ever was when it was in production.

53. 2001 Jaguar X-type

The Jaguar X-Type was designed to compete with rear wheel drive compact vehicles. The problem is Jaguar, or more accurately Ford, didn’t want to spend the money to develop a new platform. Instead Ford used the Ford Contour platform to create the Jaguar X-Type. Ford upgraded the engine heads and added all-wheel drive in an attempt to appeal to a wider audience. The interior was spruced up with wood veneer and a healthy dose of leather, while the exterior was giving a chrome grille similar to other Jaguar vehicles. Sales in the first year were good, with a healthy 33,018 units sold, but it didn’t last. The X-type was ridiculed for being nothing more than a re-bodied Ford and not a “real” Jaguar. Sales eventually fell off and the X-Type was put to rest.

54. 2002 BMW 7-Series

The 7-Series was and still is an awesome car. Fast, comfortable, great suspension and handling, and the standard great German engineering. What makes the 2002 7-Series one of the worst cars is the iDrive system. First introduced in 2002, the iDrive system was a goofy joystick/dial in the center console that controlled practically everything electronic in the car. Climate control, audio controls, navigation, interior lighting, the sound of the door chime, if there was a way to adjust something electronic in the car, the iDrive did it. The problem was the iDrive was a nightmare to control. Trying to navigate sub-menu after sub-menu to get to where you wanted to go was so aggravating there was a chance you would just give up and accept the car the way it was. Over the years BMW has made changes to the system to make it more user friendly, but the initially released system made the 7-Series a terrible car.

55. 2003 Citroën C3 Pluriel

The Citroën C3 Pluriel is a variant of the C3 supermini built by Citroën. While the regular version of the C3 is an efficient little car, the Pluriel variant was a disaster. The roof was removable to turn the vehicle into a convertible, but there was no room inside the car to store the roof pillars. In the event of a sudden rainstorm, the occupants were getting wet. There was a retracting fabric top that ran along the middle of the vehicle’s top, but it was prone to leaking and offered little shelter from the rain. If the roof design was built better, the Pluriel wouldn’t be on the list, but making a convertible that you can’t put the roof back on mid-trip is unforgivable.

56. 2007 BMW X6

Called “The stupidest car in the world” by Top Gear the BMW X6 is an odd design choice for BMW. Dubbed a sports activity vehicle by BMW, the X6 is a mixture of SUV and sports sedan. Sadly the X6 doesn’t perform either of those functions well. Looks-wise the X6 succeeds, with a mixture of SUV stance and sports sedan styling, performance-wise it’s another story. The tall driving position gives the X6 too high a center of gravity to be able to navigate corners like a sports car, while the off-road capabilities of the X6 don’t compare to a standard SUV. Over the years the X6 has found its stride, becoming better with each revision, but the first run X6 was a less than impressive merging of two worlds.

Very Educative and fun to read. No Benz was mentioned!That's Dope!

Very informative and educative. No Benz was mentioned,that's Dope!