1964 Chevrolet Chevelle Super Sport convertible

1964 was the first year for Chevrolet's mid-size Chevelle series. This car sold four million copies in nine years. Happy days for General Motors.

Tweet

2001 Pontiac Aztek

"1. 2001 Pontiac Aztek: Incredibly it drove even worse than it looked. But the Aztek is the very worst car of all time because it's the only car on the list to kill an 84-year-old car company. It's undeniable that the Aztek's utter hideousness drove the biggest and last nails into Pontiac's heavily side-clad, plastic coffin." -Edmunds.com, "100 Worst Cars of All Time"

The Aztek was a smaller SUV available with all-wheel drive. In other words, a crossover. And it was introduced when the crossover concept was catching fire. So GM had exactly the right idea at exactly the right time. And they actually had a big winner in the form of the Aztek's sister vehicle, the Buick Rendezvous (same car, except normal looking). Hoping to sell 30,000 plus Rendevzous per year, Buick surprisingly doubled that number.

Unfortunately, GM could not have done everything more completely wrong in the execution of the Aztek. One reviewer said, "The only vehicle to look like it's been in a bad accident even before it left the factory, the Aztek will be remembered as evidence that advanced degrees in automotive design are not necessarily indicators of good taste – or spelling ability."
 
OK, it was hideous. Pontiac dropped the strange plastic side-cladding to give the Aztek a more normal look after 2001. What else was wrong with it? Early advertising suggested the Aztek was a rugged off-road-type vehicle, which it clearly was not. And it pretty much handled like the minivan from which it was derived. But the worst car of all time? It's not like the Aztek was a piece of junk the day it left the factory, like the Chevy Vega or Ford Pinto.

So maybe the Aztek got a bad rap? People who owned them really liked them (something that definitely cannot be said about many GM models). The Aztek had among the highest CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index) scores in its class. 

Tweet

1979 AMC Concord DL

Perhaps you've seen the Simpsons episode Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield, in which Marge repeatedly alters her Chanel suit because she can't afford a new one. Apply that same idea to a car, and you've got the AMC Hornet-Concord-Eagle.

In the fall of 1969, AMC introduced its new Hornet model as a compact car for the budget-minded. Now flash forward a decade. Compact cars are becoming more popular, and AMC is trying to stay in the game but they don't have the money needed to engineer new models. So AMC adds plush seats, a vinyl top and... um... color-coordinated wheel covers to the Hornet. Now it's a unique "luxury compact". Sounds crazy, right? Incredibly enough, this gambit actually worked - this car sold 100,000 copies in 1979 alone. Who can explain anything from the 70s?

And if that isn't unlikely enough, AMC pulled the same trick again a couple of years later when they put the same old bodies atop their new Jeep-derived chassis, thus creating the Eagle - the first four-wheel drive "crossover". Even the old Gremlin got turned into a 4x4. Good times!

Tweet