The World’s Worst Cars

Most manufacturers have made some great cars, but all manufacturers have made some unquestionable disasters. Cars that were either terrible designs, badly engineered, poorly manufactured, or misjudged the market. Or in some cases, all of the above. So what went wrong? How did these cars ever get off the drawing board, let alone into the showroom? And how many people bought them? The World’s Worst Cars takes a detailed look at 150 of these motoring mistakes, both old and new and from around the world. North America’s embarrassments include the notorious Ford Edsel, the malfunctioning Chrysler TV Maserati collaboration and the grand folly of the Tucker Torpedo. From Britain there’s the simply leaky Morris Marina, the pop-up headlights that didn’t pop up on the Lotus Elite and the “What were they thinking of?” three wheeled, orange fiberglass Bug Bond. Globally, such horrors as the rapidly rusting Alfa Romeo Alfasud, the flimsy Lada Samara, and the plain ugly Subaru SVX all claim their place on the world’s worst cars list. With an annotated, full-page photograph for each car, detailed technical specifications, archive images and text on every vehicle’s failure, this book is a celebration of the world’s worst automobiles in all their flawed glory.