World's 15 Ugliest Cars

[Dave]

World's 15 Ugliest Cars


I kinda liked a few of them. But not this one.




See them all at:
www.cbsnews.com/2300-504784_162-10007470.html?tag=page

[keith]

I was just ready to say none of them made my list until I got to number 1. I owned 2 of those a wagon and a sedan. At the same time I had the wagon, a good friend had a Gremlin.

[Dave]

I always liked The Thing, but wondered about the safety of the convertible, although they were probably no more unsafe than other convertibles.

Re the Gremlin, I had a Sportabout Wagon, a cousin to the Gremlin. It had very nice lines, I thought, but Consumers' Union listed it as troublesome on their Frequency of Repair charts in the wiring area and I'm afraid my experience agreed with them. During the 4 or 5 years I owned it I had constant electrical problems.

[keith]

I had my Pinto wagon for 7 years without any particular problems. I got my 2nd during the Carter administration, I think that was about the time gas jumped from $.50 to $1.00. Had to sell it when our 3rd child came along.

Never thought of either of them as notably ugly. They were just cars.

[Dave]

I had a Pinto wagon, too. It was a '73. I bought it from a neighbor in '75 and ran it till about '80, by which time it was turning itself into a rust pile. The driver's seat leg popped right through the floor one morning when I jumped in. A piece of plywood fixed that.

There seemed no more rustier period for vehicles than the 1970's. I had a pickup truck that I used roofing cement on the outside of the floor welds to keep the cab dry and comfy.

[keith]

Mine was also a '73, bought it new and kept it until '80. That one didn't rust badly but it was getting rather worn.

In the same time frame we had a '70 Dodge Dart. That was my wife's 1st car after we were married. Everyone I've known who had a Dart from that era loved it. It had about 100k miles on it when we bought it & ran for several years after that.

That one was a real rust problem. It felt like the engine & transmission would go on forever but when it got to the point that you could see the road through the holes it no longer seemed safe for wife & child.

[Dave]

I always got the old rusty car, so the family had use of our newer car. Our parking lot at work was full of junkers, since most felt the same way I did. All I needed to do was get to work on a route common to many of us who were used to the occasional rescue stop when a fellow worker's jalopy broke down. My boss kept a blanket in his Horizon in case he had to lean over the engine in his Brooks Brothers suit. For trips to the airport or to another development lab in Endicott or "downtown" to Westchester or Da City, we used rental cars or the train to NYCity.

My wife would from time to time lament our auto situation, saying, "Do you think someday we'll have two decent new cars in the driveway?" I'd plead economics, but truly I was just cheap.

[keith]

Pretty much the same here although we sometimes made exceptions if one of us had a long commute, but the Dart was her first car and remained hers almost until the end.