Worst made cars on the road

I'm actually surprised that the F-250 made that list. Ford usually does a decent job on their trucks. I'm not surprised that the Jeep Wrangler is on the list; the new ones look like they are way less substantial than the previous TJ model.

 

GM tops list of "Worst-Made Cars on the Road"

"Four of the seven vehicles on our list of the worst-made cars on the road come from GM brands. And all of the cars on the list -- including Chrysler's Dodge Nitro and Jeep Wrangler -- are made by Detroit's Big Three. Only one car on the list is made by Ford Motor (NYSE: F)."

worst-made-cars-on-the-road: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance

 

Is malorn accepting the award for the top 3 of the Worst-made cars? Forbes is making it pretty hard to love GM ... this, in spite of Toyota's quality woes.



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Re: GM tops list of "Worst-Made Cars on the Road"

Any bets on how long Malorn is busy after this post?

 

In 2007, Time Magazine made a list of the worst cars ever made

Toyota: 0 GM: Too many to count

MSN Autos has a similar list. GM is on it. Toyota ain't.

Automotoportal has another list. The only reason GM is listed once is because they only list five cars. However, that's one more time than Toyota is listed.

Hub Pages has one, too. Guess who is listed multiple times (hint: GM). Guess who's not listed at all (hint: Toyota).

And lastly (actually, there's dozens more, but you can Google them yourself) but most importantly, Car Talk's List of Worst Cars of the Millennium is GM-encrusted and Toyota-free.

 

Where is Malorn?
GM Chevrolet Pontiac Cadillac Buick Oldsmobile Just a few search words for bait.

 

I think the new F-250 made the list because of that absolute horror of a POS new turbodiesel motor. The old 7.3, designed by International, was a pretty good motor

 

I don't know how all those big monster trucks and SUVs can have such poor safety ratings. Safety is why a lot of people buy those vehicles. Especially women. They have the perception they are safer on the highway vs those big trailor trucks and the smaller cars. Trailor trucks are a problem on the highways--there are too many of them in our truck-intensive transport system. And there are frequent breakdown problems due to high mileage and driver fatigue.

Now, it's true that those big SUVs and pickups have a high CM, and are more prone to turning over. But they offer better road visibility with the high seating, and I would much prefer to be driving one on the highway vs. a subcompact. I believe that's why so many women drivers own SUVs, and I can't blame them.

 

How could the Chrysler Sebring, PT Cruiser and Dodge Caliber not be on the list? I have had all three as rentals and they are just the pits. From the rental guys that I talk to all are pretty unanimous that the PT Looser (as they call it) is the worst.

 

I have noticed that he usually finds threads where he is mentioned. But he hasn't found this one yet. Maybe you need to repeat his name 3 times in succession (i.e. like Biggie Smalls on South Park) to summon him. Malorn, Malorn, Malorn. :madgrin:

 

Probably true. I guess the flames are undesirable, although it might be a good way to keep people from messing with your vehicle.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dKLKm5i2ic]YouTube - 2008 Ford F250 Flame Thrower[/ame]

 

Well it used to be (I'm not sure if it's still true) that once a vehicle was over a certain weight it didn't have to pass a crash test. So the Big 3 saved a ton of money on each one because they didn't have to have the safety features. They pushed these in their advertising because the profit margin was much higher on each unit compared to a smaller and safer car. Poor fuel mileage was an unfortunate byproduct.

I remember one year the Chevy Suburban had an abysmal death/injury rate because it still had solid steering shafts that the driver would get impaled on in a frontal crash. Thanks GM!

 

My wife has a PT Cruiser and she absolutely loves it. So far we haven't had any major problems with it. I do prefer my Prius, though.

 

My understanding is that if it's not classed as a passenger car, it's not subject to passenger car standards. I guess trucks just carry 'workers' or something, not people.

 

They have such poor safety ratings because they're unsafe.

 

I'm no defender of GM, but is it fair to count re-badges of the same vehicle multiple times? The Chevy and GMC truck clones are the same vehicle. If style and design are a parameter, I can see it being valid. This isn't the case here. Maybe it's the price to pay for being spread out among multiple brands?

 

I'm really surprised that Ford got a bad rating on their trucks as well - I've always thought that if I needed a huge truck to do actual work, I'd probably buy an F-150.

One of the contributing factors that makes large SUVs unsafe is the fact that many are still built using body-on-ladder-frame platforms. They appeal to people who think "well I hit the other guy and all I have is a scratch on my car and his is totaled" but don't realize that the crumpling of cars is intentional to absorb energy in a crash. This is a very large group of people - I'd argue a majority of Americans. Additionally, body-on-frame designs are cheap to build. While the stiffness of the frame is good for towing and hauling. As a result, the stiffness of the frame results in crash energy directed where it's least desirable: the driver and occupants. Where you might walk away in a collision with a tree/wall/something immovable in an Subaru Impreza WRX STi (I have seen it many times due to the young people who buy the car) - you might have various parts of your body turned to jelly (due to the extreme forces transferred to your body by the vehicle) in a body-on-frame vehicle.

Explanation (and lots of argument) here:
Death of the body-on-frame SUV? - CarSpace Automotive Forums