'90s Cars That Aren't As Great As You Remember

The first car on this list is a mid-engine V8 Ferrari? Am I crazy? This was the last Ferrari that Enzo himself signed off on. Surely it must have been an incredible car.

The Ferrari 348 suffered from Ferrari being pretty shit at building cars in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Designers and engineers at Ferrari got their asses handed to them by Honda’s new NSX; just absolutely laughed out of the game. At the time it was lauded for its looks—which have faded with age—but its performance was bested by Corvettes and chunky Nissan 300ZXs.

This isn’t a specific hit against the 348, but Ferrari’s number names have always been bad, and continue to be today.

We all like to remember the DSM triplets as the all-wheel drive turbocharged monsters that we read about in magazines, like the Talon TSi that was used in press photos. But they weren’t all great ones. Most were basic front-wheel drive economy coupes with barely any sporting intentions whatsoever. They competed against Pontiac Sunfires and Ford Probes in the market, and lost. Bad car.

This one hurts both of us. I love the Dodge Viper. I am still convinced I will purchase one in the near future. I’ve looked at a few and came close to pulling the trigger. But they’re not good cars.

Bob Lutz wanted to revive the American testosterone dream of the Shelby Cobra in the late 1980s (and garner some headlines and showroom traffic for an ailing Dodge), and that’s how the Viper was made. But it was made on a shoestring budget and wasn’t fully fleshed out by the time it hit the market. Buying a Dodge Viper was basically buying a 400 horsepower engine, a transmission, and two seats to sit in. Not much else was included in the deal. Early cars didn’t even have windows or a roof.

Plus the damn things were deadly as all hell.

I’ve had my fair share of Fox Mustangs. They’re a great bang-for-the-buck platform, particularly in LX 5.0 guise, but the vast majority of them are powered by a 2.3-liter Lima four cylinder mated to a sluggish three-speed slushbox. I had a convertible that was so rusty, you couldn’t leave the top down overnight or you’d have to jack up the back of the car to get it to latch again.

This was a car that debuted in 1979, and by 1993 it was way behind the times. The interiors are rattly and uncomfortable garbage. The performance is underwhelming by today’s standards, and that’s an understatement.

I bought an Allanté a couple of years ago because I was just plain addicted to the gorgeous Pininfarina design work on this car. Within the first 500 miles, however, I knew that I’d bought a pure pile of shit. The V8 under the hood is gutless and adept at the magic of making gasoline disappear. The suspension is floaty and incomprehensible. The interior is the worst excuse for luxury ever conceived.

I hate to admit to failure, but this one was a failure. I shouldn’t have bought that car. Don’t meet your heroes.

This is another one that I absolutely loved when it came out. This might actually be the car that made me obsessed with cars. It was the first scale model I ever bought. It’s a shame they’re so terrible. The promise of speed and ultra cool played up by the car’s aesthetic appeal was never realized in its mechanical ability, and that’s a bummer.

The Explorer can be blamed for our current state of SUV everything, and for that it deserves our collective ire. SUVs were supposed to be uncomfortable and capable off-roaders and farm vehicles for the extra-urban family, but they became daily drivers and responsible for billions of extra gallons of gasoline wasted for nothing but looking tough and sitting up high. Was it worth it?

The Sephia was Kia’s first independently-developed car, and the best thing going for it was that it was cheap. Even when the Sephia got a Mazda BP engine for the 1995 model year in the U.S. it wasn’t well built enough or assembled of high enough quality components to stand the test of time. My parents had one of these in the 2000s, and it was a rough drive.

The Kia Elan was kinda cool, because it was just a re-badged Lotus Elan, but that doesn’t count because they didn’t sell it here.

I’m not going to admit that the Corvette or Camaro were particularly good in the 1990s, but they were certainly a step above the standard Chevrolet fare of the day. I can’t find much good to say about a Beretta or Monte Carlo or Malibu, and if you think you can, you’re lying.

Okay, fine, maybe the Beretta Indy 500 Pace Car is cool.

This is my hottest take. Between 1989 and 1997—the 964 and 993 generations for my fellow Porsche nerds—I’d much rather drive an ‘entry level’ 944/968 or Boxster than their contemporary 911s. The 964 was a poor update of the iconic Carrera 3.2, and the 993 looks like a gross bar of soap. It’s important to note that neither are as good as the aircooled gods that came before it, or the 996-generation that came after it.

They’re overpriced. They’re a weird mix of too complex and not advanced enough. They’re bad.

Statistically this car doesn’t exist. Only seventeen examples and two pre-production units were made before the company went bankrupt. It’s also just plain bad. The drivetrain is a chain-driven GM THM425 unit cribbed from the 1960s Oldsmobile Toronado and the twin-turbocharged V8 was extremely unreliable.

At least it looks cool, I guess? Consider it rolling art and don’t get any closer.

This is another one that I grew up loving, but learned to hate over time. It’s a little bit the ugly duckling between the incredible Countach and the finally perfected Murcielago. It was that weird zone between complete Italian meltdown and total German oversight reliability and functionality. The design has also mellowed out with time, as everything that came before it and after it was wilder and more angular. No, thank you.

You’re going to want to fight me on this one, but I’m right. The F1 was fast, and it was lightweight, and it had three seats. The ethos of this car is cool, but that’s all it is, an ethos. In practical use the McLaren F1 has squeaky brakes, the clutch is too heavy, it’s easy to stall, it’s hard to get in and out of, and it looks frumpy.

Feel yourself welling with rage, and then think about what you’re getting mad about. It’s a car that only extremely lucky people, exploitative billionaires, and war criminals can own. The world would be a better place if it just didn’t exist.

This is another ’90s car that I have owned. I loved mine because it was just so incredibly shitty and yet, it kept soldiering on. I traded a mini-keg of Bells Oberon and a Wendy’s Baconator for my Aspire. It didn’t have a back window or a fourth gear. It was a tired and slow beater, and it was begging me for death, and when I finally grenaded the gearbox I knew my life would be better without it.

Ford thought it was a good idea to import the Korean-market Kia Pride and re-badge it as a Ford ultra-cheap car. It’s a bit of a bummer that cars like this don’t exist anymore, but damn, maybe that’s for the better.

That’s right. I’m bookending this list with another Ferrari. Yucky.