As they get older, some cars age gracefully and manage to become more desirable than they were when they first rolled off the factory floor. While that’s true for the likes of the original Mini or Mustang, it’s not the case for everything.
As such, we turned to you and asked what vintage cars have aged the worst. We were inundated with a raft of old cars that are starting to show their age. Here are some of the best responses we received.
“Personal Luxury Coupes from the ‘70s. Think Chrysler Cordoba, Ford Elite and Chevy Monte Carlo they are truly anachronistic in a time when we are moving to EVs.
“All virtual clones of each other – big on the outside, small on the inside, vinyl roofs, plushy interiors with no lumbar support and a large thirsty V8 up front, but with 0-60 times in the nine-10 second range.
“The worst offender IMO is the Lincoln Mark V.
“This takes up about twofeet more space than it really needs.”
Launched in 1977, the fifth-generation Lincoln Continental is the largest two-door coupe ever sold by Ford Motor Company.
Suggested by: earthbound-misfit-i
“11th Gen Ford Thunderbird (2002-2005).
“Wait, how can a 2000s car be ‘vintage’?
“Some states allow ‘antique’ plates as soon as 20 years (CT MD KS), so you can get antique plates NOW for the first model year. Second, these retro-futuristic boomer-carriers were ‘faux-vintage’ for those that could not bother with something that was ‘old’ and required work (now they are old and need work). However, today they all look like cheap knockoff with early/late 90s switches... and a lot of ‘Camry dents’ hiding under AAA stickers.”
This early 200os car is officially an antique. Feeling old yet?
Suggested by: futuredoc
“Cadillac Cimarron. Chevy Citation. Oldsmobile 4-4-2 (not to be confused with the timeless class of the 442).
“Most cars where the designers at least tried to do good work age reasonably well. The late seventies and early eighties when GM said ‘why design when we can just repaint and rebadge’ was a low point.”
Sold between 1982 and 1988, the Cimarron was meant to be all about “adventure and pioneering” when it first launched.
Suggested by: Adam Martin (Facebook)
“The 1st gen Dodge Charger (‘66-’67) is nothing to write home about.
“Take a clunky two-door Coronet, slap on fastback roof (what they did back in the day connoting ‘sporty’) and hideaway headlights, so boom! you’ve got a youth market car. Dodge had their backs to the wall and this is what they whipped up. Yeesh...all those flutes and channels running everywhere on the sheet metal...it’s almost as bad as a rat’s maze. Just ghastly.
“You want a big 2-door fastback that’s aged well, check out the AMC Marlin—the 1st gen Charger’s hot cousin.”
There’s a lot to unpack in the first-generation Dodge Charger. It was a good first draft at a muscle car formula that would soon be finessed by subsequent models.
Suggested by: the1969dodgechargerguy
“Most of the cheap 1970s British saloons look pretty bad still and are undesirable even today- the Allegro, the Marina, the Hillman Avenger. There are some that look good- like the Fords (Escort and Cortina) and the Rover P6.”
Picking out a dated British car is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. The Allegro is one of the worst offenders though, with its dull look and lackluster interior.
Suggested by: Joseph Lynn (Facebook)
“Here’s a more obscure choice, but still a valid one: The Stutz Blackhawk.
“This monstrosity of mis-matched concepts and ideas was THE elite car to buy in the 70s for some reason. Horrible 70s Box coupe, with giant gas-guzzling V8s with no power. Then let’s just slap some weird sharp angles and side pipes on it, because why not?
“How elite was this abomination upon the eyeballs?
“Elvis bought the first one. And, he wasn’t the only one to jump on the bandwagon to buy these (Adjusted for inflation) $150,000 crap-boxes. Here’s a few other people you may have heard of: Lucille Ball (who got her 1971 Blackhawk as a gift from her husband Gary Morton with a dash plaque saying I Love Lucy - Gary), Sammy Davis Jr. (who owned two 1972, one for himself and one for his wife), Dean Martin (who owned three and crashed his 1972 Blackhawk with vanity plate DRUNKY), Robert Goulet, Evel Knievel, Wilson Pickett, Johnny Cash, Erik Estrada, Jerry Lewis, Liberace, Willie Nelson, Isaac Hayes, Muhammad Ali, George Foreman, Tom Jones, Billy Joel, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Al Pacino, Wayne Newton, Barry White, and H.B. Halicki.
“The Shah of Iran reportedly owned twelve of them.”
Made between 1971 and 1987, the Stutz Blackhawk never made it to the UK, so this is the first time I’ve ever seen one. And oh my, does it look like a hot mess of automotive design!
Suggested by: Knyte
“I’m gonna catch some heat for this, but Jaguar E-type coupe.
“It looks great in a photo, but I saw one on the highway last week and it looked ridiculous. It looked like a clown shoe on wheels, like a parody of a sixties car, a child’s parody drawing crafted in steel. It wobbled as it wove its way down the roads. It does not look hip and cool no more.”
This is giving me flashbacks to that RS2000 take. Please don’t shoot the messenger!
Suggested by: skeffles
“The Tucker 48. It’s an interesting car but the three headlights look weird.”
If you took away that third headlight this would look pretty sleek. With it, the Tucker 48 looks a bit like a chonky mole.
Suggested by: RJ Batts (Facebook)
“Here’s one that I certainly think counts.
“None of the 58 passenger cars from GM were particularly pretty, but I’m not sure what happened with the Buicks that year!”
Not even a tasteful pale pink paint scheme can save the styling on this old Buick.
Suggested by: 200touring
“DeLorean DMC12. Interesting concept, poorly executed.”
If the DeLorean hadn’t been in Back to the Future, would anyone remotely care about it? Discuss.
Suggested by: Jason Marques (Facebook)
“The C3 Corvette, especially catalytic converter era dogs. The rose tinted glasses of time will never hide the fact that these lumps are a whole lot of rolling useless.
“Too heavy, horrible build quality, with the handling and braking prowess of a Soviet limousine. These cars will never be anything but ‘chick bait’ for trailer park Marlboro Men across our wide open spaces.”
Click bait is out. Chick bait is in.
Suggested by: ginsunh
“The unreliable, unsporty-looking Maserati Biturbo.”
If you’re sending out press shots of your car finished in brown, you know you’ve messed up somewhere.
Suggested by: Colin Koran (Facebook)
“I’m a VW guy. Beetles still look great. Vans still looks great. My squareback still looks great. My Karmann Ghia still looks great…. But the 1970+ type 3 fastback just doesn’t do it for me. And it never will.
“The proportions are off. It’s not so much a fastback as some weird egg with a long frunk. And the plastic interiors were definitely a product of their time. I’m not sure if this counts as ‘vintage’ for the list. But it qualifies for a vintage tag in Georgia so it’s good enough for me.”
Sold between 1961 and 1973, VW built more than 2.5 million Type 3s, including this Fastback variant as well as a sedan delivery and four-door model.
Suggested by: hotsauceisthebest
“I’m sure this will be an unpopular opinion but the Foxbody Mustang as far as aesthetics go.
“I’m not saying they’re bad cars whatsoever because they’re not.”
We can spend all week arguing about what is and isn’t the worst Ford Mustang, this poster thinks it’s the Foxbody from the 1980s.
Suggested by: Charlie Rouse (Facebook)
“Packard-Bakers. I adore Packards and have a fondness for Studebakers, but when Studebaker duped Packard into buying them over faulty accounting, they could no longer engineer the full-size Packards, so they did this.
“I adore most cars of most generations (except some late 90's-early 2000's stuff....2nd Gen Chrysler Concord....3rd Gen Taurus...anyone?), but these are literally the definition of bolt-on Luxury.”
Take a Studebaker and strap on an American idea of luxury. that sounds like a recipe for success, right?
Suggested by:derekrstone