What do the following cars have in common?
Ford Explore
Plymouth Prowler
Fiat Multipla
Jaguar X-type
Hummer H2
They all share the dubious distinction of being named by Time Magazine as the 50 worst cars of all time.
On the 50th anniversary of the Ford Edsel Time Magazine got together
with Dan Neil, a Pulitzer Prize-winning automotive critic, and came up
with a comprehensive list of the worst clunkers of the automotive
industy.Perhaps you've owned some of these cars.
Time magazine describes the 1998 Fiat Multipla's design by writing "It had this weird proboscis out front and a bulky, glass cabin in back, and the whole thing was situated on dwarfish wheels."
On the other end of the weirdness scale was the well selling 1995 Ford Explore.
Time Magazine faults the classic explorer with starting the country and the car maker down the road that eventual lead to the recent and painful demise of the SUV by writing:
"In its very success, the Ford Explorer is responsible for setting this
country on the spiral of vehicular obesity that we are still contending
with today. People, particularly women drivers, discovered that they
liked sitting up high. Even though more fuel-efficient minivans do the
kid- and cargo-hauling duties better, people came to prefer the
outdoorsy, go-anywhere image of SUVs"
For the entry luxury category of cars Time faults the 1991 Jaguar X-type for over promising and under performing:
"The result was the English version of the Cadillac Cimarron, a
tarted-up insult to a once-proud marque and a financial disaster for
the company. It hardly matters that the X-Type was not that bad a car.
Young affluent buyers had the feeling they were somehow being grifted.
They were."
You can see all Time's 50 worst cars of all time HERE.
