News:The Worst Cars of All Times (Forbes)

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The current lucky generation of automotive customers has no real understanding of how truly awful a car can be.

Even entry-level vehicles and subcompacts these days are surprisingly well made, thanks to a revolution started mainly by Japanese automakers like Toyota (nyse: TM - news - people ) and Honda Motor (nyse: HMC - news - people ). Honda's first-generation Accord came out in the days when Detroit was producing real stinkers like General Motors' (nyse: GM - news - people ) Chevy Vega and Ford Motor's (nyse: F - news - people ) Pinto. Between that time and today, the Japanese proved to the world that just because a car was cheap, it didn't mean it also couldn't be a well-built, value-laden automobile that looked and drove well.
Modern cars, cheap or pricey, are expected to run all of the time. The days of seeing late-model cars on the side of the freeway in the summertime, smoke billowing from their hoods due to overheating, are over. Cars may be more complex now, but they can no longer be mediocre, and they must be cost-competitive.

While the rules of the game may be that simple to explain, their violation can be enough to kill an entire brand. All of the mainstream French and Italian automakers--and plenty of British ones--were, one by one, forced to abandon the U.S. because they neglected issues of quality, engineering and design. If you are expecting to read about a certain vehicle from Yugoslavia, you have come to the right place. (Yugo, by the way, could make a comeback in the U.S. if one-time and potentially future importer Malcolm Bricklin, who was also the first person to bring Subaru to the U.S., gets his wish.)
NOTE: The model years listed hereafter do not always represent the full manufacturing run of the vehicle. For example, the Fiat Strada's model years are listed as 1978-88; this encompasses its entire production history, which is fair to assess as "bad" because the vehicle was never any good. The Honda Accord, on the other hand, is listed as a 1978 model; this is because we take issue with the earliest Accord, but not with the rest of its history. All dates are for model years, not calendar years.
Here are the worst cars ever made!!