Thankfully, no. and yes, you should. The POP500 doesn’t make any of the most recognised lists of top worst cars of all time. So it’s OK to enter HERE to win a brand new FIAT POP 500. TMR’s top list of worst cars follows. We’d love to hear some of your suggestions for our back page article on the topic in next week’s print edition of TMR
10. A cold war inspired Russian classic. What is the difference between a golf ball and a Lada? You can drive a golf ball more than 200 metres.
9. Despite the fact that it sold very well, the Austin/Morris Marina was one of the worst-built cars ever to disgrace the road. In an effort to cut costs, British Leyland decided to cut the following from the features of the Marina: engineering, wires that were soldered rather than twisted together, quality, testing, and forethought. Also the east-west engine was a treat in the heat (not). Most words courtesy complex.com
7. At one point, somebody in the UK realized that he could sells three-wheeled cars to people who didn’t have proper driver’s licenses. After that epiphany, said person promptly stopped thinking and designed the Reliant Robin, which looks like a cheap clog that falls over while cornering at slow speeds. Words courtesy complex.com
6. You could put all the names of all the British Leyland cars of the late ’60s in a hat and you’d be guaranteed to pull out a despicable, rotten-to-the-core mockery of a car. So consider the Triumph Stag merely representative. Like its classmates, it had great style (penned by Giovanni Michelotti) ruined by some half-hearted, half-witted, utterly temporized engineering: To give the body structure greater stiffness, a T-bar connected the roll hoop to the windscreen, and the windows were framed in eye-catching chrome. The effect was to put the driver in a shiny aquarium. The Stag was lively and fun to drive, as long as it ran. The 3.0-liter Triumph V8 was a monumental failure, an engine that utterly refused to confine its combustion to the internal side. The timing chains broke, the aluminum heads warped like mad, the main bearings would seize and the water pump would poop the bed — ka-POW! Oh, that piston through the bonnet, that is a spot of bother. We’ll not hear the last of Triumph on this list.Words courtesy TIME
5. Less a car than a 5th-grade science project on seed germination, the Peel Trident was designed and built on the Isle of Man in the 1960s for reasons as yet undetermined, kind of like Stonehenge. The Trident was the evolution of the P-50, which at 4-ft., 2-in. in length could justify its claim as the world’s smallest car, or fastest barstool. Words courtesy TIME
4. Here’s what Jeremy Clarkson had 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.”
3. This is the car that gave Communism a bad name. Powered by a two-stroke pollution generator that maxed out at an ear-splitting 18 hp, the Trabant was a hollow lie of a car constructed of recycled worthlessness (actually, the body was made of a fiberglass-like Duroplast, reinforced with recycled fibers like cotton and wood). A virtual antique when it was designed in the 1950s, the Trabant was East Germany’s answer to the VW Beetle — a “people’s car,” as if the people didn’t have enough to worry about. Trabants smoked like an Iraqi oil fire, when they ran at all, and often lacked even the most basic of amenities, like brake lights or turn signals. Words courtesy TIME
2. With an engine producing a whopping 14 horsepower that could take the Janus all the way up to 50mph, Zundapp created a car that was like riding a bicycle down a steep hill…but with slower acceleration. You can look stylish on a bicycle. But it’s impossible to look cool trying to figure out which end of your stupid palindrome of a car you’re supposed to get into. Words courtesy complex.com
1. Australia’s classic lemon. It was often said that when taking a P76 in for servicing it was easier to list the things that still worked on the car rather than those that required servicing. Also called the P38 because it was ‘half the car it should have been’. It was designed by Italian Giovanni Michelotti who was told to make a big car for a big country and make sure the boot could hold a 44 gallon drum. He achieved all these requirements however forgot one major feature… he forgot to make it look good, the side view is not horrific with an aggressive looking wedge style but the front and rear are below standard and plain compared to the rest of the market. Michelotti is known as being one of the greatest designers of cars ever; having worked with Ferrari and Maserati for most of his career the P76 is a major spot on his otherwise exemplary record.
