5. 1985 Yugo GV
If the fact that it was manufactured in Soviet-controlled Yugoslavia didn’t make it scary enough, the Yugo GV had a tendency to break apart violently like the country that produced it. The Yugo was infamous for being a vehicle of tragic attrition. Upon purchase, it would steadily decline in function until it took its own life (and, if it hadn’t already, the lives of those driving it) in a mangled mess of Soviet angst. At 50,000 miles the Yugo’s engine belt would invariably snap, turning off the engine, and shaking the car apart. In addition, the Yugo was so fundamentally unsound that it could be blown off a bridge by a gust of wind. But what did you really expect from a car that advertised “carpet” as a standard feature?
6. Trabant
The Trabant was the product of the sexual frustrations of a dollhouse and a serial killer. Manufactured in communist East Germany in 1975, the only thing redeemable about the Trabant was that it was an affordable solution for suicide. It often just didn’t come with brake lights or turn signals, and its already tenuous fiberglass body was reinforced with recycled cotton and wood. As if to add insult to injury, the car vomited more pollution into the surrounding environment than a freshman who thought Everclear was just a bad 90s’ band.
7. Ford Pinto
With a rear bumper that couldn’t withstand more than a tickle, doors that sealed shut on a collision more than 40 mph, and a gas tank that exploded on impact, this car just shouted safety and reliability. Or were those just the frantic shouts of people trapped inside this mobile human furnace? The Ford Pinto was released in 1971 to the tune of completely no fucks having been given during its production. While normal cars take about 43 months to move from concept to reality, Ford executives decided that with the Pinto they’d just go for 25. But they didn’t just churn out a shitty product. They went out of their way to make it lethal. Crash tests performed long before production began revealed that a collision to the rear of the Pinto had a high chance of igniting its ass-mounted gas tank. “Well, hell,” the executives thought, “we’ve already designed the assembly line to make Pintos with our Al Qaeda engine; it would take extra money to change production methods and make a model with the safer engine that we already have a patent for……” So what did they do? Lobby Congress of course! For 8 years after the first Pinto was manufactured, as Americans burned to death in the fiery hulks of this mechanical miscarriage, the Ford Company challenged a federal safety standard that would have required the Pinto to have a not-going-to-incinerate-everyone-you-know-and-love style engine installed. And the Ford Pinto was the most sold American subcompact in 1977. Now that, I think we all can agree, was a victory.
– CS ’16
