56 of the Worst Cars of All Time(part 1)

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1. 1899 Horsey Horseless

This bizarre vehicle was intended to soothe the nerves of horses that shared the road with automobiles. From the crackpot mind of inventor Uriah Smith of Battle Creek, Michigan, came a buggy with a wooden horse head attached to the front. Hoping that this would cause the buggy to resemble a horse drawn carriage. Smith even recommended that the horse head be hollow and full of fuel, because that wouldn’t be dangerous or anything right? “The live horse would be thinking of another horse,” said Smith,”and before he could discover his error and see that he had been fooled, the strange carriage would be passed.” History isn’t 100% clear on whether or not the Horsey Horseless was ever built or if it was just a pipe dream from a nut job, either way it’s a terrible idea.

Photo by american-automobiles.com

2. 1911 Overland OctoAuto

Designer Milton Reeves rejected the general consensus that automobiles only needed four wheels, feeling that six or eight wheels was a better idea. Under the auspice that more wheels would equate to a smoother ride, Reeves began modifying a 1910 Overland. Welding in some parts, adding two more axles and four more guncart-style wheels, Reeves gave birth to the OctoAuto. He displayed the Frankenstein monster of a car proudly at the Indianapolis 500. The OctoAuto measured over 20ft long. Zero orders for this hideous vehicle were made, but Reeves didn’t let that stop him. The following year he tried again with the Sextauto, which was a six wheel, single axle design. As evidenced by the lack of six wheels on normal cars today, the Sextauto was also a flop.

Photo by thies59

3. 1913 Scripps-Booth Bi-Autogo

The Scripps-Booth Bi-Autogo was a massive 3,200 lb motorcycle with training wheels, a V8 engine, and copper tubing everywhere. This crazy idea is the brainchild of James Scripps-Booth, an heir of the Scripps publishing fortune and a self taught auto engineer. The two-wheeled Bi-Autogo carried the weight of the vehicle on 37-in wooden wheels. When going slow, the driver could lower smaller wheels on outriggers to stabilize the vehicle, preventing it from tipping over. Even for 1913 this was a bizarre vehicle. One good thing that came out of the creation of the Bi-Autogo is the V8 engine. This was the first vehicle to come out of Detroit with a V8 engine in it, making it at least somewhat important to history.

Photo by Jack Snell – USA

4. 1920 Briggs and Stratton Flyer

By time 1920 rolled around we had started to get the hang of building automobiles. Rolls-Royce, Cadillac, and Voisin were all producing luxurious automobiles and pushing forward with technological advancements. On the other end of the spectrum was the Briggs and Stratton Flyer. Compared to other automobiles you could hardly call the Flyer a car, it was pretty much a motorized bench with bicycle tires on it. No body, no suspension, no windshield, and no style, this vehicle was an attempt to make a very cheap automobile. The Flyer was powered by a tiny 2 horsepower engine driving a traction wheel, similar to a boat with an outboard motor. No actual power went to the Flyers axles.

Photo by ReneSpitz

5. 1933 Fuller Dymaxion

Designed by R. Buckminster Fuller, the Fuller Dymaxion was initially conceived as a flying machine. The plan was to install jet engines and inflatable wings, so you could drive it like a car and then inflate the wings and fly away when you want a plane. The wings never became a part of the production model, and without them the Dymaxion looked like a goofy pill rolling down the road. The Dymaxion was a three-wheel vehicle, with a levered A-arm carrying the rear wheel, which swiveled like the tail of an airplane. The first model had a terrible wobble from the rear wheel, the next two built were bigger and heavier, while the third model had a stabilizer fin on the roof. A fatal accident involving the Dymaxion ( due to unknown causes) killed the vehicles chances of public acceptance.

Photo by ucanvance

6. 1934 Chrysler/DeSoto Airflow

Truthfully the only reason that the Airflow is labeled as a “worst” car is that it was ahead of its time. The design of the Airflow is similar to cars that were developed in the 50’s. Aerodynamic body, steel subframe, 50-50 weight distribution, and light weight are all features of the Airflow. For whatever reason though, in the 30’s Americans did not get on board with the Airflow’s dramatically different design style. Some of the issue likely was derived from the major problems that plagued the Airflow. It’s never good when an engine falls out of a car. The radical construction techniques used to craft the Airflow had yet to be perfected. Chrysler and Desto tried to restyle later models, but there was no coming back from the bad taste already in the consumers mouths and sales never took off.

Photo by SeeMonterey

7. 1949 Crosley Hotshot

The Crosley Hotshot was the first postwar America sports car, and it was a pile of garbage. The Hotshot was slow, dangerous, and weighed very little for a steel car, clocking in at 1,100 lbs. The Hotshot can be seen in the 1961 driver’s ed video Mechanized Death, where it appears mangled and smashed up. The Hotshot was designed by Powel Crosley Jr., of Cincinnati. Crosley had radio fame, but he wanted to build cars, which he did, poorly. It had CIBA (Cast-Iron Block Assembly) which was average at the time.  There was good things too… A Super Sport (Hotshot with doors) won the Efficiency Index at the 1951 LeMans race.

Photo by Metrix X

8. 1956 Renault Dauphine

The Renault Dauphine is a french made vehicle that originally was to be named the Corvette. Luckily that name was used for a much better vehicle. The Dauphine was so rickety and the metal used was so paper thin that rust was guaranteed. The design was similar to other cars of the time, it just used low quality materials. Worse than the shoddy construction was the Dauphines performance. It took the drivers of Road and Track 32 seconds to reach 60 mph. That’s slower than even the weakest vehicles sold today. Somehow this super cheap, poorly built vehicle managed to sell over 2 million units around the world. Just goes to show that at the time people would buy any car, just to say that they had a car.

Photo by wikimedia.org

9. 1957 King Midget Model III

In the 50’s, Caud Dry and Dale Orcutt, of Athens, Ohio, decided that they were going to create cars that everyone could afford. They started with the Model I, offering the vehicle as a home-built kit. The kit contained a frame, axles, and sheet metal patterns that needed to be crafted by someone with fabrication skills. Any single-cylinder engine would power the vehicle. It was like a giant do-it yourself model that you could drive down the road after you built it. Somehow they remained in business until the late 60’s, with their crowning achievement being the Model III. The Model III was a folded steel box with a 9 horsepower motor. Thankfully government safety standards caused the King Midget to become nothing more than a memory.

Photo by mr.paille

10. 1957 Waterman Aerobile

Waldo Waterman once heard aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss remark how he would like to drive and airplane away from the airfield. After hearing this Waterman went to work and spent years developing the Aerobile. In 1934 he flew a prototype, the “Arrowplane”, which was a high wing monoplane with tricycle wheels. The wings folded against the fuselage when it was on the ground, like an insect’s wings. The fact that the wings folded backwards is terrifying to think about, considering a failure in the air would just fold the wings back and plunge you to your death. Decades later in 1957 Waterman perfected his design, the Aerobile. No one wanted to tempt death by buying one of these machines, so the one working prototype resides in the Smithsonian as the first flying car.

Photo by The Henry Ford

11. 1958 Ford Edsel

The Ford Edsel was doomed once the hype machine surrounding the car got rolling. The marketing department at Ford led everyone to believe the Edsel would be a fantastical car of the future, a plutonium powered scientific wonder. What they delivered was a Mercury. The Edsel wasn’t that bad a car. Sure it looked kinda plain, it drank gas, and it was far too expensive, especially during the 50’s recession, but it wasn’t as bad as it’s made out to be. Some critics blame the Edsel’s failure on the grille,which resembled a vagina. Apparently 50’s America was really phobic about the female nether regions. In truth it was probably a mixture of all of the above as well as the public jumping on the bandwagon with critics.

Photo by axisboldaslove1

12. 1958 Lotus Elite

Back in the 50’s, fiberglass was used as an alternative to steel when building sports cars. It was durable, versatile, lighter than steel, and cheaper than aluminium. Fiberglass was the carbon fiber of the 50’s and Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus, was all about using it. The Lotus Elite was built primarily out of the material. Weighing 1,100 lbs and powered by a 75 horsepower engine, the Elite was a very successful race car. It was also a very popular little coupe, that was until the suspension mounts couldn’t handle the strain of the vehicle and broke through the body. Weight reduction is a good thing in race cars, there is a line that crosses into the unsafe and the vehicle is no longer structurally sound. Chapman found this out the hard way with the Lotus Elite.

Photo by ZionMJ

13. 1958 MGA Twin Cam

The original motor offered in the MGA was a fine engine, but someone at MG decided that the MGA needed more power and the company offered an optional high-performance engine with dual overhead cams. This motor was not the upgrade that MG wanted it to be. The engine leaked, burned pistons, fouled spark plugs, and caused all kinds of headaches for owners. Unless you were a gearhead and routinely checked timing, fuel octane, and made sure to stay within RPM limits the Twin Cam motor would break apart and puke oil all over the place. Long after the vehicle was retired, the problem was narrowed down to the carburetors. At certain RPMs the fuel would froth, causing a lean condition and burning the pistons.

Photo by flakahoo

14. 1958 Zundapp Janus

Zundapp was a well known motorcycle manufacturer based in Nuremberg, Germany. During a low point in motorcycle sales the company decided to try its hand at building a car. Based on a Dornier prototype, the Janus was powered by a 250cc 14 horsepower engine, with a top speed of 50 mph. If you actually wanted to go 50 mph, you needed plenty of road and time on your hands. The backseat had a rear facing bench seat, so passengers could watch traffic go around this slow moving pile of metal. The Janus’s design resembled a trapezoidal shaped VW Bug, with less charm. Sales were dismal, and the Janus was discontinued, ending this rolling hazards life as an automobile.

source:carophile.com