mmarshall

That's because Ford management, to keep the car's empty weight below 2000 lbs and costs down, ordered it into production (against the warnings of Ford engineers), without an added frame cross-brace behind the gas tank, leaving very little, besides the thin rear bumper and some rather flimsy sheet metal, to protect the gas tank in a collision. The rest, of course, is history. Trial lawyers had a field day with this car, much of it deserved. Ford paid through the nose in damage awards.

I'm not one for frivolous lawsuits by any means, and I'm firmly opposed to excessive damage awards being slapped on corporations for questionable or frivolous reasons, but, with the Pinto's gas tank, Ford management brought most of it on themselves....they pretty much deserved what they got.

trukn1

LOL!!! 2 things that I thought I would never see in the same sentence when referring to the EDSEL!

mmarshall

Though perhaps ugly-looking today by our standards, Edsels actually WERE considered fairly good-looking cars for their time, and more or less in tune with the typical ornate late-50's styling, except for the awkward, quirky grilles. They failed for two main reasons. First, their quirky dash and transmission controls, and, Second, the public (correctly) perceived them as little more than mildly restyled/rebadged Mercurys, and not necessarily meriting the added price. It was more or less the same thing that killed off Chrysler's De Soto a couple of years later.....the De Sotos, for more money, offered little that upmarket Plymouth and Dodge models didn't.

toy4two

My family's Previa made it to 250,000 miles. I guess lemon isn't the word I should be using to describe the Previa and MRS, both were reliable.

The Previa was ugly IMHO, and the MRS was just such a failure considering the MR2 MKII Turbo I used to own, I was part of the petition to bring it back and there was so much demand for a comparable car. Many in the MR2 community were very disappointed and I think that is why it didn't sell well. I couldn't test drive it because I couldn't even get my knees into the car thats how small they made it, they got rid of the trunk, they got rid of the turbos, they got rid of so much and came away with a really disappointment to MKII owners.

The RX7 = lemon speaks for itself...

my real point is, there have been tons of US lemons, and very few true Japaneese lemons (zero?)

djyoshi626

iTrader: (5)

My mom has a 98 Town & Country, bought it brand new, it hasn't had many problems other then poor fuel efficiency.

nthach

haha, I saw that episode of Rob and Big when they gave away the car in a skate competition...

SLegacy99

We had ours for 13 years, 105,000 miles. Subaru gave us $3000 for it as it had AWD. My Legacy has a 108,000 on the clock and has been a bit more reliable.

mmarshall

Keep a close eye and feel for how the transmission engages and shifts. At the first sign of delay, sluggishness or trouble, take it in ASAP, even if it is 11 years old and out of warranty. Chrysler minivans are notorious for transmission problems and premature failure of the clutches, especially if the wrong fluid is used.

Byprodrive

iTrader: (1)

I believe more accurately it began in 1973 when our government forced the automakers to install 5 mph bumpers & pollution control devices prior to 1973 GM cars were the standard of the world

mmarshall

Significant emission controls (retarded timing, hotter thermostats, hotter-range spark plugs, low-lead gas, etc...) started in 1971, although the air-pumps first were installed in 1968. By 1975, catalytic converters and totally lead-free gas were the norm.

The 5-MPH bumpers, though somewhat ugly and awkward-looking, were pretty effective in minimizing low-speed impact damage.....I'd say it was one of the better things to come out of that decade. The standard was rolled back to 2 1/2 MPH in the 1980's....I was opposed to that.

JDMUSCLE

iTrader: (1)

I was going down the list and I was hoping he had not forgotten the all might Pontiac Aztek..... Then there it was!!

I would like to add a few...

1) Buick Reatta.... what a POS!! It actually has a light that stated 'Halogen Light on' when you turned the headlights on!!
2) Cadillac Alante.... Not bad looking but certainly not a worthy competitor to the Benz SL at that time!!
3)Chevy Uplander, Buick Terranaza, Saturn look alike..... Ohh boy, what the hell was GM thinking when they actually gave it the go ahead for production!!
- #3 was rated the worst family mover in the entire automotive history!!

Now they blame it on the economy for not doing good!!

mmarshall

The Aztek, under the skin, was actually not that bad a vehicle. It was somewhat unreliable, like many other GM vehicles, but it was the Aztek's ugly front and rear ends that killed it, not the mechanicals.

tex2670

I'm not fan of Chrysler, or its minivans. Anywhere you read, the Odyssey and Sienna are currently head and shoulders above it.

But--Chrysler's been spitting those things out for a quarter of a century, and for the bulk of the 90s, who produced a minivan that was definitively better? Chevy Venture APV? Ford Windstar? Mazda MPV? The Sienna didn't come around in the late 90s, and I can't believe the original Odyssey without the sliding doors was a better mini van.

You can't just put the Chrysler minivan on this list solely due to that legendary Chrysler reliability and quality--it just does not belong on that list.

rdgdawg

GM Executive leadership 2000-???= EPIC FAIL

IS-SV

Agreed, this disaster of a corporate meltdown did not happen overnight, it took years of mismanagement and repeated bad decisions.