These Are The Cars You Say Deserve Worse

The F-150. in a perfect world, it would be the best selling truck in the country, a small category of vehicles populated by vehicles that are used for work.

Instead, it’s the best selling vehicle in the country. It’s mutated from a solid work truck (my dad had 2, replaced the last one with a van because “the truck is too damned tall to use”) to a bloated and overpriced, oversized luxury passenger car for guys who simultaneously buy a vehicle with crap-tastic gas mileage and a 25 gallon tank as a daily driver AND complain about the price of gas like cheap fuel is some sort of god-given right. The things that have been done to the F-150 in the last 20 years don’t make it a better truck, they don’t make it a better vehicle for hauling tools, they make it a better car.

the F-150 has become the off-the rack costume of choice for blue collar cosplay. It needs to go back to what it was designed to be- a really good truck for people who work with their hands.

I respect the anger. Let it flow through you. It will make you stronger! (Not that you’re wrong. To be honest, you’re correct. The pickup truck is a much different animal that it used to be.)

Submitted by: Buckfiddliousagain

Nissan Rogue. It’s pure “meh” on four wheels, but it sells like crazy. I’d have gone with the Dodge Journey, the minivan that is desperately trying to convince you that it’s not only not a minivan, but not the worst minivan ever, but I’ve actually met people that adore their Dodge Journey... for some reason. I’ve never met anyone who owned a Rogue that would bother to defend it.

The Rogue is not a car that needs to be defended. It just does what it does, and doesn’t ask very much of the people who own it.

Submitted by: Mattwrotethis

Wheezy engine, indecisive transmission, awkward seating position. For some reason people pretend it’s not as outdated as the Frontier. It coasts along on the Tacoma = Good fanboys, and the ease of making it look ‘overland chic’ sure isn’t hurting.

Taco is love, Taco is life... or so I’m told. I think it would be looked at a bit differently if it didn’t have a manual transmission option. Who really knows, though?

Submitted by: Laststandard

Shitty build quality, and not all that impressive tech really when you get down to it. They survived on the Cult of Elon and by being the only one in the market for a while, and the legacy carmakers should feel ashamed for letting those shitboxes dominate for so long. Thankfully they seem to be on the way out now.

It’s okay, folks. The Cybertruck is coming to completely revitalize the brand any day now. Right, Elon? Right? Oh yeah, and the Semi. That’s absolutely right around the corner as well.

Submitted by: skeffles

This turd. Yeah, it’s a fun hot(ish) hatch. Yeah, it’s different from the other hot hatches on the road. Yeah, it’s European...

It’s also the most unreliable piece of steaming shit I’ve ever witnessed. My neighbour has one; purchased new in 2013. For the past nine years I’ve watched that car leave the neighbourhood on a flat deck more times than I can count. The owner is constantly bouncing between raving about how much fun it is, and bitching about how much it’s cost him over a decade.

Fiat 500 Abarth... time to die.

Counterpoint: the 500 Abarth is good, actually. It’s so cute and loud... just like me.

Submitted by: JohnnyWasASchoolBoy

Nearly every company has it’s mostly badge-engineered luxury brand, but the second-gen Cadillac Escalade became a pop-culture icon as a status symbol during the “bling” era of the early aughts for no good reason. My friend had one (complete with the now bog-standard 22" chrome wheels), and there was virtually no difference between it and a top-trim Suburban/Tahoe. It epitomized the pre-bankruptcy GM phoned-in parts bin sharing MO, yet every poser with bad credit and bleach-blonde spiky hair tips thought it was the ultimate status symbol.

Luckily, the new Escalade is a vast departure from the prior generations and the vehicle in which is based on. Check one out sometime, you’ll forgive the Escalade a little bit. Also, Tony Soprano had one, which means it was awesone.

Submitted by: paradsecar

(puts on flame suit)

VW Type 1, aka The Beetle:

In production well past its expiration date, but even after all the updates over the decades it was still slow, noisy and had horrible crash protection.

THIS THIS THIS. I loathe this car to my very core.

Submitted by: Earthbound Misfit I

The Dodge Challenger. Yes, it looks good, yes it has ridiculous amounts of power. When you’re driving it, can you actually see anything? No. The sight lines out of it are atrocious. Passing on the interstate involves prayer. Driving in a major city involves having in-flight refueling options. As much as I love looking at one, I’ve driven a couple as rentals (including an SRT-8) and found them impossible as a daily driver.

Don’t be a goober. Take this back right now.

Submitted by: GTB

Puts on flame suit..

93-98 Supra.

I’m not saying it’s a bad car. Because it isn’t. But it is massively over-rated.

What happened to the Supra is that it got introduced just as the hp wars were re-starting. Over 300 hp was insane in 1993. But by 1998, anything under 350 was a bit underpowered.

Even worse, the Supra went through an explosion in the Yen’s value. In 1993, it was about 10% more than a C4 Corvette and had more power and performance and refinement to justify this cost. By 1996, it was 50% more and Chevy had introduced the C5 which was no longer miles behind the Supra in refinement and was able to out-perform it in most measures.

I’m not saying the Supra was a bad car. It wasn’t. But it’s over-rated. It’s a good early 90s sports car. But nothing special by the late 90s.

(oh and before we talk about aftermarket, realize the C5's LS motor has a robust aftermarket as well.)

You are braver than I am. The last time I made a take this hot I was canceled by Twitter.

Submitted by: hoser68

Tons of enthusiast cred, for reasons that remain somewhat unclear to me. My experience with Mazdas (Miata aside) is that they aren’t really any better or worse than their competitors to drive, so what is the appeal?

There is a lot hype around Mazda that I don’t totally get. I will however say that the company’s interiors are usually a notch above its competitors, especially for the price.

Submitted by; V10omous

The Dodge Journey. I live in a small town in the Midwest, and every time I see one of these (and I do with disturbing regularity) it just screams, “I asked for a car with a heated steering wheel, and that was my only criteria. Also it’s burnt orange, so its cute.”

It serves no appreciable purpose. Is it a car? An SUV? A minivan? It’s somehow all of them but also none at the same time. It tries to be a jack-of-all trades but instead just sucks at everything.

A lot of this argument could apply to Dodge’s lineup writ large.

A Dodge Journey is the Mercedes-Benz R-Class we have at home. It’s a fine vehicle for fine people who needed a car to lug their shit.

Submitted by: Sponge

My mom briefly owned a 2009 and it was just underwhelming at every turn. It looked OK, but the interior was a sea of gray. The front seats were meh, the backseat was borderline bad. The CVT made it feel slow and I just didn’t see the point of the car at all yet they keep making them and people apparently keep buying them.

First- and second-generation Foresters were cool little things. After that, well, not so much. Where has the strangeness gone, Subaru?

the HUMMER, I wish they had some kind of massive defect that rendered them useless and off the road. I still see them every once in a while. always with coal roller “global warming is a myth” bumper stickers. no vehicle has given me a stronger desire to commit vandalism than those massive over sized wastes of space.

General Motors has seen your complaints and will now be offering an eco-friendly option: the 10,000-pound GMC Hummer EV.

Submitted by: Bigburito

GM full sized pick-ups.

If you can get past the awkward styling, the Silverado / Sierra 1500 series trucks seem perfectly fine, right up until you drive an F-150 or a Ram 1500.

With all the outstanding engineering resources and accumulated institutional knowledge GM has, they’ve still managed to just “phone it in” on their pick-ups for several generations relative to the competition.

It’s not just me though, you can’t find an independent comparison test that doesn’t rank the GM trucks somewhere behind either the Ram or Ford.

And yes, we should acknowledge the new EV GM trucks might really shake things up, competition wise.

Still, maybe having the 3rd best truck was ok. But damn, you guys could have done better. A lot better.

People love their big TRUGGGGS.

Submitted by: factoryhack

A hot sports car with a REAR, not mid-engine, layout with its inherently bad handling characteristics? Is this the triumph of starry-eyed excuse making? As I understand it, Porsche keeps scooting the engine mounts to a more mid-engine layout as the years have gone by, but not there yet. So even they realize a rear-mount layout sucks. And yet groveling 911 fans keep buying these wildly over-priced cars. Wow.

My friend, the 911 is literally the benchmark sports car. What are you on about??? Wild, my man, wild.

Submitted by: 2 Dodges in the garage