1947 Chevrolet Fleetmaster

This is the smallest car General Motors made in 1947. It is not small.

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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.

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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. 

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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!

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1966 Ford Mustang

This 66 Mustang is exceptional. From a distance it appears to be fully restored. but upon closer inspection, it's all original. It's powered by a 289 v8 with dual exhaust. That color is called Sauterne Gold. It's unusual to see a Mustang with spinner wheel covers parked on the street. Those wheel covers are quite valuable.

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1990 Geo Prizm

By the end of the 80s, General Motors was finally producing a compact car that was reliable, handled well and that had a light yet relatively powerful engine. Not that GM had come up with any of that on its own of course; the Prizm was a copy of the Toyota Corolla, made in the California plant then co-owned by GM and Toyota and now owned by Tesla. So good job GM, but did you really need to create yet another nameplate (Geo) to sell this car? One of GM's biggest problems was that it already had too many divisions and thus too many management hierarchies.

Observations:
* I've see red cars with oxidized paint before, but this is extreme.
* "Prizm"? Come on, it sounds like "prison".

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1975 Daihatsu Taft F10

No, the Taft was not named after America's fattest President. TAFT stands for Tough Almighty Fourwheeldrive Transport. This Taft was parked at one of the two (that I know of) used car lots in Seattle that specialize in Japanese cars designed for use in Japan. Daihatsu, a company owned by Toyota, made an effort to sell cars and SUVs in the US in the late 80s/early 90s. I have on occasion seen a Daihatsu Rocky on the streets, but I don't recall ever seeing a Charade (that car needs a better name).

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1978 Chevrolet Chevette

Young drivers today have the advantage of buying inexpensive 10, 20 and even 30-year old Toyotas and knowing that their cars will likely be safe and reliable despite their age. Kids of my generation were not so lucky. The old Detroit-built cars we had were pretty much junk when they were new. And once they were 10 years old and we got hold of them, well, any time you got behind the wheel you knew there was some chance you were not going anywhere due to the possibility of a busted water, oil or fuel pump or leaky radiator, or something wrong with the ignition, or the transmission, or the brakes... you get the idea.

But even those among us driving Ford Mavericks or old Chrysler K-cars with cracked CV joints had pity on any poor soul forced to drive a Chevy Chevette. Everything about the Chevette screamed, "You are trapped in a terrible car!" It appears on any list of the cars that most damaged the reputation of General Motors. From Popular Mechanics:

"The Chevrolet Chevette was already outdated when it appeared in 1976. Based on GM's "T" platform, it was a primitive, front-engine, rear-drive subcompact in a small-car world that was busy being revolutionized by front-drive cars such as the Honda Civic and Accord, Volkswagen Rabbit and Ford Fiesta. It was underpowered too, originally being offered with a 1.4-liter Four making 53 hp or a 1.6-liter version of the same engine rated at 70 hp.

Chevrolet saved itself a lot of development time and money by picking up the Chevette design from GM Brazil. The Georgia-built small car was a solid sales success too, selling almost 450,000 units in 1980 alone. But it was always a car that sold strictly on price, with no real virtues of its own. And it was a huge help to Chevrolet in sneaking in under the federally mandated CAFE standards. But it also meant that for 11 years GM didn't bother developing an advanced small car specifically for the American market."

 

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1972 Chevrolet C10 Pickup Truck

Considered the most collectable series among Chevy truck enthusiasts, the 1967-72 C/K trucks are sometimes call the Glamour Pickups. The year after this good-looking truck was made, Chevy introduced the "rounded-line generation" which continued largely unchanged all the way through 1987.

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1972 Chevrolet El Camino

The classic car-truck is a common site in Seattle, including the El Camino, Ford's Ranchero and the VW Rabbit pickup. I'll also be covering the Subaru BRAT when I spot a good one.

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