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5[[quoteright:350:[[Series/TopGear https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jeremy_rolling_a_reliant.png]]]]
6[[caption-width-right:350:If you can believe it, the driver of this Robin crashed it about eight times.[[note]]Though they admitted later that they purposefully weighted it so it would roll more frequently, so take that with a grain of salt.[[/note]]]]
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8All of those [[TheAllegedCar crappy cars that appear in fiction]] have to come from somewhere, and there's no shortage of RealLife Alleged Cars to provide inspiration. From all over the world, from the industrial powerhouses to up-and-coming nations, people have encountered cars like this. They constantly break down, they're made of substandard materials and fall apart, they're ridiculously underpowered, and they might even be so unsafe that they can't legally be sold in certain countries. You might see such cars referred to as "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_(automobile) lemons]]" elsewhere.
9
10There's also a subset of Alleged Cars that aren't actually truly horrible and non-functional, but they have this reputation because they're cheap, [[MadeInCountryX foreign]], underpowered, ugly, and often [[MisaimedMarketing horrendously mismarketed]]. If these cars function poorly, it's mostly because nobody bothers to maintain them, and any car can become a rickety deathtrap if it's sufficiently neglected. '''Examples on this page should be genuinely terrible cars, or at least have this reputation in the media and be totally unable to shake it.''' We're not here to just catalogue crappy cars that people have found; there's got to be something inherently ''wrong'' with it.
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13%% We're serious.
14%% Please make sure it's an actual Alleged Car. Several examples were deleted because they were:
15%% (a) just really ugly, but nothing else was wrong with them;
16%% (b) just foreign (and often obviously written by a fan complaining that its reputation was undeserved); or
17%% (c) super-experimental (and worked, but nobody was interested).
18%% This thing has to be practically non-functional, have a severe defect, or just completely fail to meet consumer expectations.
19%% Exceptions can be made only for cars that have this reputation in media, so this page can explain why (e.g. Yugo, Edsel).
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24For vehicles that fit the bill of an Alleged Car without actually being cars (boats, planes, etc.), see [[TheAllegedCar/RealLifeOtherVehicles here]].
25----
26!!Examples:
27[[foldercontrol]]
28
29[[folder:North America]]
30!!Canada
31* The 1975 [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricklin_SV-1 Bricklin [=SV1=]]], the only car ever made in Saint John, New Brunswick, was a concept for a safer sports car, but the combination of excess weight from all the safety features and anemic engine performance caused by tuning the engines to comply with emissions regulations gimped its performance to the point that it had less top speed than a Trabant 601 and couldn't outrun a fully-loaded school bus.
32** One of the alleged safety features was the lack of a cigarette lighter or ashtray, as the car's creator Malcolm Bricklin wanted to discourage smoking and driving. (He proved to be ahead of his time on this one, though for safety reasons not associated with the act of driving itself.)
33** Despite the claims of safety, one glaring problem made the car downright dangerous: The gull-wing doors were electrically operated and too heavy to open by hand if the motors failed, so a dead battery meant the only way to get out of the car was to climb out through the rear hatch.
34** The company's production process was so inefficient that the cost of building a Bricklin was over three times the price it sold for. ([[ArtisticLicenseEconomics They probably expected to make it up on volume.]])
35* Asuna was GM's plan for a Canadian brand, in keeping with the company's tendency to sell the same car [[MarketBasedTitle in different countries with different brand names]]. However, it wasn't ''exactly'' the same car, and the Canadian re-engineered version [[BadExportForYou wasn't as good as what you would find elsewhere]]. Europeans got the Opel Kadett E, which became the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daewoo_LeMans Daewoo LeMans]] in South Korea, which became the Pontiac [=LeMans=] in the U.S., which became the Asuna SE and GT in Canada - and after so many iterations, each less reliable than the last, Canada got the short end of the stick. When Canadians realized that their cars were getting 96hp and the European equivalent was getting 116hp, they started importing Opels rather than buying local Asunas. Asuna tried the same thing with the Sunrunner, which was a rebranded Suzuki Vitara, and the Sunfire[[note]](no relation to the later Pontiac Sunfire, which was based on GM's "J" platform)[[/note]], which was a rebranded Isuzu Piazza, both of which had more or less the same thing happen to them.
36
37!!United States
38* The Ford Model T, despite being the very car that put the world on wheels in the 1910s and early 1920s, had become redundant by the late 20s, especially once technological advances made it obsolete. In fact, its early success was ''because'' of its primitive nature - other cars were fancier and more efficient with regards to highway performance (assuming one was driving on a properly paved road), but the Model T had fewer things that could go wrong and was thus easier to maintain if you knew what you were doing. Hilariously, farmers would chop down their Model Ts and turn them into tractors, while some other non-traveling rural folks used theirs as power generators for other heavy equipment (this application could be done since the accelerator of the Model T was actually a throttle lever mounted on the steering wheel as opposed to the now-ubiquitous accelerator pedal). By 1927, Edsel Ford had phased out the Model T in favor of the much more attractive Model A, which also introduced the pedal-and-stick-shift control layout that became practically universal. It is worth noting, however, that Model T's continued to be sold and driven well into the 1930s. In fact, engines for the Model T were being produced as late as ''1941,'' with WWII halting all domestic auto production being what finally killed it.
39* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel Edsel]]'s gotten a ShoutOut in everything from ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'' to ''VideoGame/DestroyAllHumans'' as one of the worst cars ever made. It wasn't that bad mechanically (it was about as reliable as other American cars of its day), but it was [[http://auto.howstuffworks.com/why-the-ford-edsel-failed.html marketed wrong, priced wrong, named wrong, and most of all, just plain ugly]]. Ford thought up the Edsel pretty darn quickly, launching it in 1957, and it sold so poorly that it lasted only two-and-a-half years before Ford cut its substantial losses and shut the whole thing down. It's seen now [[VindicatedByHistory as being a little ahead of its time]], introducing features such as dashboard warning lights and automatic lubrication. But if you want to know what people thought of it in the 1950s:
40** Most of the ugliness came from the "impact ring", a huge, bulbous, vertical chromed grille on the front fascia. Some said it looked like a horse collar. Others less charitably compared it to "an Oldsmobile sucking on a lemon", or even a toilet seat. But perhaps most damningly, as comedians have pointed out, when most cars of the era were thinly disguised phallic symbols, the Edsel had a prominent, enormous, chrome-plated ''vagina''[[note]](one prankster at Ford decided to [[IncrediblyLamePun drive]] the point home by sticking hair inside the grille of a clay model during the Edsel's design phase)[[/note]]. The designers toned down this feature significantly for the post-debut 1959 models, but the facelift did little to boost sales, as the car had a few other problems that weren't as easy to fix.
41** Its transmission was operated by pushbuttons, this being all the rage at the time. But instead of putting the buttons on the dashboard, they were all grouped together in the middle of the steering wheel, where the horn button typically is. It was not very easy to reach them while driving, and drivers trying to honk their horns would [[DamnYouMuscleMemory accidentally switch gears instead]]. In addition, the engine exhaust was routed close to where some of the wiring and solenoids for the system were run, causing the whole thing to sometimes fail from the heat.
42** The Edsel was a Ford brand, and Ford didn't spend a lot of time figuring out where to fit it in the company's brand lineup. They tried to squeeze it between the low-end Ford brand and the mid-range Mercury brand, but there was no space whatsoever pricing-wise between the two lines, which led to a fully-equipped Edsel Ranger ($2,643) costing less than a fully-equipped Ford Fairlaine 500 ($3,138) and a base model Edsel Pacer ($2,700) or Corsair ($3,311) costing more than a base model of their Mercury counterparts Monterey ($2,652) or Montclair ($3,236). This confused potential customers who weren't sure if Edsel was supposed to be a step above or below Mercury, and forced Edsels to compete against other Ford products in addition to the offerings from GM and Chrysler.
43** Ford also didn't think about how to manufacture the Edsel, and they introduced the car without any dedicated factories to produce it, cramming Edsels onto existing production lines for Lincoln and Mercury cars. This caused confusion both in the supply chain and on the assembly line and led to many manufacturing defects: Doors that wouldn't open, trunks that wouldn't shut, and push-buttons that wouldn't do anything were common. Making things worse, Ford's quality control method at the time wasn't pass/fail, but simply taking the best upper percentile of cars produced in a given factory and sending them off to market. As a result, a large number of knowingly-faulty or even ''incomplete'' cars that had never had the exhaust systems or bits of trim installed were being sent to the dealers who couldn't sell them without first doing an extensive refurbishment.
44** It hit the market at the wrong time, right at the onset of the 1958 recession. Americans were just starting to sour on huge, over-the-top land yachts. It wasn't until model year 1960 that Ford introduced the sensible compact Falcon and saw that it was an immediate success; its fancier sibling Comet was a Mercury, but was [[WhatCouldHaveBeen originally considered for the Edsel lineup]].
45** Probably the only good thing about it was how it was promoted. ''The Edsel Show'' was a TV special aired on Creator/{{CBS}} on October 13, 1957 that featured a plethora of the era's biggest stars, including Creator/BingCrosby and Music/FrankSinatra appearing together on TV for the first time. It was a hit among the public, but it couldn't save the car. (It's also historically significant for being the earliest TV broadcast preserved on videotape, used to time-delay the broadcast on the West Coast.)
46* American automakers have been known to have an unfortunate tendency to discover defects and choose not to fix them because it's cheaper to settle class-action lawsuits and wrongful death claims than to tweak every single car on the production line:
47** The Ford Pinto came out in the early 1970s when US automakers were getting serious about competing with imports from Europe and Japan. Although it was fairly popular, it was discovered to have had a defect where a rear-end collision could rupture the poorly-placed gas tank. The result was a hysteria that gave the car its reputation and [[EveryCarIsAPinto named a trope]] for cars catching fire and exploding easily. It wasn't as ''unsafe'' as you might think - only 27 deaths were traced to accidents like that between 1971-77 out of over 2 million cars sold, and the government didn't think it needed recalling in 1974. What caused the panic was the "Pinto memo", as revealed in the ''Grimshaw v. Ford'' case, in which Ford allegedly claimed that there was a cheap fix that would solve the problem, but it was even cheaper not to fix it and settle future injury and wrongful death claims. That pissed off the public and directly led to the court in ''Grimshaw'' slapping Ford with $6 million in total damages. (The memo itself [[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant wasn't actually about the Pinto specifically]].)
48*** The Pinto is hated by muscle car enthusiasts for entirely different reasons, being the basis for the 1974-78 Mustang II. The Mustang II was based on a sound concept - bringing the Mustang back to its compact roots after the early-70s models got a little too big for their own good - but it was hobbled by federal emissions regulations that resulted in anemic performance. While the Mustang II was a sales success in its day, today it's regarded as the AudienceAlienatingEra of the Mustang name.
49** Ford got hit with a repeat of the Pinto fiasco with the [[https://hackaday.com/2020/06/03/fords-powershift-debacle/ PowerShift transmission debacle]]. In short, Ford saddled that generation's Fiesta and Focus (otherwise well-regarded cars) with a poorly-designed dual-clutch transmission which would often cause shuddering and rough shifts, and which would sometimes outright refuse to respond when acceleration is required. Ford did exactly the same thing they did with the Pinto - in this case, they knew the issue before these cars even hit production, and they decided it was cheaper to pay settlements than issue a recall. The backlash was such that both the Fiesta and Focus were killed off in North America, even as they remain popular cars elsewhere.
50** As famously documented by Ralph Nader in ''Literature/UnsafeAtAnySpeed'', the first-generation Chevy Corvair was basically GM's version of the Pinto in the sense that it would become better known for its safety issues than for its merits as an automobile. Although popular, it quickly gained notoriety for its rear-engine layout and swing-axle suspension - common in Europe, but unusual in North America. This configuration requires some expert handling - in Europe, drivers were expected to be able to do it (e.g. the Porsche 911) or the car itself wasn't powerful enough for it to matter (e.g. the Volkswagen Beetle). In North America, drivers expecting the Corvair to behave like any other everyday mid-market car were in for a nasty surprise, and this led to many driver casualties, the most famous of whom was Creator/ErnieKovacs. GM did the same thing Ford did with the Pinto and initially chose to settle rather than fix the problem until the car's reputation killed not only the Corvair but [[GenreKiller also ensured that no other American company would mass-produce a rear-engine car again]].
51* The [[http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/gm%E2%80%9Ds-recall-report-shows-how-lemons-get-built-203412485.html Chevrolet Cobalt]] was never a very well-received car; most enthusiasts thought it mediocre at best, and people only bought it because it was cheap. Then (after it was discontinued and replaced with the far superior Cruze) it was discovered to have an issue where by simply bumping the ignition key ring, the whole car could be sent into a powerless state where it will still drive, but without power steering or brakes. (In fact, you didn't even have to physically bump the ignition yourself - a sufficiently heavy set of keys could jostle the ignition out of place if the car hit a bump.) This led to a recall in 2014 that applied to 60% of the Cobalts still on the road. GM knew about it but didn't fix it, although this time their excuse was that it was 2009 and the entire auto industry was at risk of financial collapse (which is why they had asked for a government bailout).
52* The Cobalt's GM Delta platform relative, the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Ion Saturn Ion]], featured all the mechanical problems of the former and then some, plus some truly bizarre design choices such as the gauges being placed above the center panel rather than on the dashboard. It is considered to be [[CreatorKiller mainly responsible for the Saturn brand's dissolution]] in 2010. While subsequent, more "upmarket" vehicles such as the Saturn Aura would be praised, they made the brand redundant, defeating its entire purpose as a "new start" for GM with a wholly separate dealership network and vehicle platforms. Thus, Saturn was an easy casualty during GM's bankruptcy restructuring.
53* The Chevy [[http://www.carlustblog.com/2010/12/the-chevrolet-vega-what-went-wrong.html Vega]] had a strong debut, winning ''Motor Trend'' Car of the Year in 1971 and being the first car offered (and won) on the 1972 debut of ''[[Series/ThePriceIsRight The New Price Is Right]]''. Unfortunately, the aluminum-block engine (including a cast-iron cylinder head that actually weighed more than the engine block) was susceptible to vibration and overheating, which often resulted in oil leaking into the cylinders from cracked valve stem seals. On top of that, the body was very rust-prone. While GM was able to fix some of the problems later in the car's lifespan, it was too late, and the Vega was dropped after the 1977 model year.
54* American automakers also had an unfortunate trend of trying to compete with the rest of the world by consolidating their entire lineup into a single vehicle platform, onto which they would put different bodies so that they could market them as entirely different cars. Not only was it more difficult to differentiate between each automaker's different badges, but if the base car had a flaw, all of its derivatives suffered.
55** Chrysler was the first with its "K-car", which actually worked out okay for the most part, except when they tried to create a luxury car out of it. They tried making a limousine out of it, only to make something that looked like a slightly longer K-car that still had a four-cylinder engine. They also partnered with Italian luxury automaker Maserati to make the Chrysler TC on the K-car platform, an attempt at creating a luxury sports coupe that didn't even hit the 8,000 mark before being quietly dropped. ''Series/TheRedGreenShow'' often used "K-cars" for projects on the "Handyman's Corner" segments.
56** GM [[FollowTheLeader tried the same thing]] and put even ''less'' effort than Chrysler did, basically just changing the badges, headlamps, and taillights and trying to claim they were different cars. The platform (starting with the [[http://www.carlustblog.com/2009/02/chevrolet-chevy-citation.html 1980 Chevy Citation]]) itself was extremely flawed, including overenthusiastic rear brakes that would lock up and cause an "atomic death-skid", a persistent and quick-onset rust problem, notoriously unreliable head gaskets, and atrocious build quality. [[note]](Interestingly {and frustratingly}, the press who actually reviewed the car got a much better pre-production model that was specifically designed to look good for them. It got rave reviews and was even named ''Motor Trend'' Car of the Year.)[[/note]] GM tried again with the "J-car", based on the Chevrolet Cavalier, only to nearly kill the Cadillac brand with the derivative [[http://thatcarguy.typepad.com/car_lust/2009/01/cimarron-ii.html Cadillac Cimarron]], which was basically the same car [[note]](including the four-cylinder engine and manual transmission, which no Cadillac had had since ''1914'' and ''1953'' respectively)[[/note]] but with a Cadillac badge and pricetag, in an effort to compete with similarly-sized cars from BMW and Audi. It backfired, since the target audience was unwilling to pay BMW-level prices for what was basically a Chevy Cavalier with a few extra standard features. Cadillac survived, but their executives still keep a picture of the Cimarron in their offices with the caption [[MayItNeverHappenAgain "Lest We Forget"]].
57** The Cadillac Catera tried to take the Omega, the flagship of GM's then-European division Opel[[note]](today Opel is a subsidary of Stellantis, a multinational headquartered in Amsterdam but largely controlled by Italians with some French and Americans {being the result of a complex series of mergers organized by Fiat and most prominently involving Chrysler and Peugeot/Citroën})[[/note]], and sell it to American buyers. The Omega was a decent success in Europe, and GM figured they could turn it into a sporty mid-sized luxury sedan that could rival other cars of the same type like the BMW 5 series or the Mercedes-Benz E-class... except Opel is ''not'' a luxury brand and didn't compete with those brands in Europe[[note]](while the Omega was in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-segment the same size class]] as the BMW 5 series and Mercedes-Benz E-Class, it was aimed at a less affluent customer base)[[/note]], and the Catera stripped away what advantages the Omega had, with a derated engine, softer suspension, automatic gearbox only, and bland interior design. The Catera also had problems with the oil cooler and timing belt, as well as a bizarre advertising campaign featuring [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment an anthropomorphic cartoon spokes-duck]]. [[note]](The duck was a reference to the "merlettes" that used to be in the Cadillac shield logo, and their absence from the current version of the logo is attributed to [[OldShame embarrassment]] over the Catera's failure.)[[/note]] No wonder it was described by ''WebVideo/RegularCarReviews'' as Cadillac's [[Music/InTheLifeOfChrisGaines Chris Gaines album]].
58* The 1957 "Forward Look" Chryslers were a smash hit thanks to their bold styling. Unfortunately, owners soon discovered a litany of issues due to Chrysler rushing the products out the door, such as premature rusting, leaking windshield frames, and parts occasionally falling off. The resulting negative publicity, combined with the 1957-58 economic recession, seriously harmed Chrysler's sales. [=DeSoto=] was hit the worst - in addition to the above, they were affected by internal competition from the Chrysler marque caused by the latter moving downmarket to accomodate the Imperial line. Their sales would continue to plummet year after year until Chrysler management decided they were a lost cause and retired the [=DeSoto=] marque after a brief run of 1961 models.
59* The Dodge Neon earned large amounts of critical acclaim upon its launch in 1994 and was a huge success in both the showroom and on the track, as well as being a very influential design and concept that influenced all of today's compact cars to some extent. However, the quality and reliability problems that plagued early models (its tendency for head gasket failure being the most notable), its "cute" design, and the fact that many were turned into {{Rice Burner}}s during the street racing fad of the mid-2000s led to the Neon being a common Alleged Car today.
60** The same goes for the second generation of the Dodge Intrepid. Despite being critically acclaimed and commercially successful, with some of the best sales figures ever had for a sedan at the time, the base model's 2.7-liter engine was plagued with oil sludge problems that led to multiple class-action lawsuits, concerns that Chrysler's bankruptcy and reformation would allow them to avoid liability, and litigation that still has not escaped Chrysler's shadow even after its reorganization into Stellantis. It's telling that this model is often called the "Dodge Decrepit" by some.
61* The Smith Flyer, introduced in 1915, barely qualified as an automobile, being once described as "a motorized park bench on bicycle wheels" - it was just a buckboard with a steering axle! It was powered by a motor-wheel, which was originally a ''bicycle accessory'', mounted on a swinging arm at the rear of the vehicle. But it sold for as little as $125 in 1922 (about $2,000 today), making it the cheapest motor vehicle of all time. The manufacturing rights were sold to Briggs and Stratton in 1922 and the car was renamed the Briggs and Stratton Flyer; the company sold the rights to another company in 1925, but they adapted the motor that powered the fifth wheel to other applications, thus beginning the Briggs and Stratton small motor empire.
62* The [=DeLorean=] DMC-12 is most famous for its appearance as a tricked-out TimeMachine in ''Franchise/BackToTheFuture'', but despite its cool design and gullwing doors, it's notoriously unreliable and suffered from serious production issues.
63** UsefulNotes/JohnDeLorean couldn't find a place to set up a factory; he went all over Europe and was turned down. Finally, he got an offer from the British government to set up a factory in the Belfast suburb of Dunmurry, in Northern Ireland. It was [[UsefulNotes/TheTroubles right on a religious fault line]], and the British were so desperate to get the locals to do something other than take potshots at each other that they were willing to underwrite a big chunk of the costs. It was rumored that the factory had separate entrances for Catholics and Protestants. Many of the workers had also never had a job of any kind in their lives; as such, build quality suffered. The cars often had to undergo refurbishment at point of distribution to fix defects before even the dealers could get their hands on them.
64** Each car had a 12-month, 20,000 km warranty, but even that wasn't enough to convince dealerships to carry out any work on them; they were notoriously unreliable.
65** As for the car's performance, let's put it this way: if you can actually get this baby up to 88 mph, you really are seeing some serious shit. Its performance was quite lackluster, especially for an intended supercar. It was originally designed for a rear-mounted rotary engine, but due to fuel concerns and high development costs, it got a mid-mounted PRV[[note]](Peugeot-Renault-Volvo)[[/note]] 2.8-litre V6 instead. This not only caused weight distribution issues, but also meant the very expensive DMC-12 made only 145 HP (125 in the U.S. due to further emissions controls). So, if the futuristic styling and allure of being a completely new make didn't appeal to you, there was no real incentive to buy when cars from established companies were already on the market with comparble or superior performance.
66** The gull-wing doors, while part of the car's "futuristic" aesthetic, were definitely AwesomeButImpractical. In the event of a rollover they would leave the car's occupants trapped in the vehicle, a serious safety hazard.
67** Continuing financial issues at DMC meant plenty of people in the sales and service networks weren't being reimbursed, leading to a sharp drop off in enthusiasm after the initial debut. Eventually, John [=DeLorean=] would go to trial over accusations he had taken up drug smuggling to pay the bills. Though acquitted, the scandal put an end on anyone willing to loan more capital and anxious investors who wanted their money sped up the company's collapse.
68** It's thanks to the ''Back to the Future'' fandom that so many [=DeLorean=]s have been preserved, especially when people realize that using it as a time machine was proof that Doc Brown [[MadScientist didn't have all his screws in tight enough]] (and now you understand why Marty is so incredulous that he made a time machine out of a [=DeLorean=]). A new company was formed in 1995 and eventually announced plans to remake the DMC-12 in several much more modern and reliable versions (including an electric one!) by 2013. However, these plans fell into DevelopmentHell, related mainly to US government delay in issuing regulations for low-volume manufacturers. After regulations were finally issued, the new [=DeLorean=] announced it would start selling its all-electric [=Alpha5=] in 2022.
69* AMC cars, in particular the Gremlin and Pacer, have this reputation. They were underpowered, rust-prone, and homely-looking. They weren't as bad as people think, though, and they've since developed a kind of cult following (the AMC Hornet, a compact car that was the basis for the Gremlin, was a very reliable and economical car for its time). They're often credited for killing AMC as a company, but what really killed them was the AMC/Renault Alliance, aka "the Appliance". Both companies were well-known for making... interestingly-styled cars, and when combined, the Alliance had the Gallic eccentricity of a Renault and the attractiveness of... well, a Gremlin. The Alliance could be outrun by a loaded Isuzu diesel pickup truck. AMC wound up being bought by Chrysler, and Renault would pull out of the U.S. market for good. Interestingly, Renault had initially planned to offer the Espace, another car with a similarly polarizing design, in the US shortly before the Chrysler buyout of AMC. Considering Chrysler’s dominance in the minivan segment, WhatCouldHaveBeen is at full play here.
70* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac_Aztek Pontiac Aztek]] is considered an Alleged SUV if there ever was one. It was notoriously ugly, earning the derisive nickname "Ass-Tek". It was full of weird angles designed to make it look "[[{{Zeerust}} futuristic]]". Its awkward shape caused aerodynamic problems that worsened the car's performance, and it was also very good at collecting snow rather than shedding it. Its performance wasn't ''terrible'' for an SUV, and its interior space was surprisingly well-apportioned, but that just added to the joke - the best place for an Aztek driver is in the driver's seat, so you don't have to look at it. Its reputation as an ugly, crappy SUV with no resale value is why Walter White drives one in ''Series/BreakingBad'', which gets put through hell and is eventually sold for just $50. The car did pick up a cult following and almost became a character in itself, but only because of the irony of it being an Alleged Car, much like the [=DeLorean=] mentioned above.
71** Averted, however, by the Aztek's twin, the Buick Rendezvous - it was a pretty big success for Buick, which at the time needed younger buyers, and got them by advertising the car with a pre-scandal Tiger Woods. The styling was also much less awkward on the Rendezvous than it was on the Aztek, and they priced it much lower than similar [=SUVs=] from Lexus and Acura. (The Rendezvous eventually gave way, along with the Rainier SUV and Terraza minivan, to the Buick Enclave, now in its second generation.)
72* GM rather infamously ''claimed'' this of its [=EV1=], a revolutionary electric car built in the 1990s. The people who drove it liked it, and it did more to advance electric car technology than any other vehicle, but GM was losing money making it - they first had to compromise weight and range by using mass-produced heavy lead-acid batteries, then they priced it pretty high for a two-seater compact car (although the car was only ever officially offered on lease and was never intended for retail sale, despite offers from some deep-pocketed former lessees to buy their cars outright), and then they claimed they couldn't develop the technology to make it profitable. But GM didn't just end production; they terminated every lease, recalled every car they could, and [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill crushed the majority of them]]. Fewer than 40 examples are known to survive in various states of repair, and most are in museums or universities on the condition that they never be driven on public roads again. On top of that, only ''one'' is in factory-operational condition - the specimen at the Smithsonian Institution, which has a strict policy of accepting only fully-intact specimens. Many people who liked the car called bullshit on the "Alleged Car" designation and suspected that the oil companies had convinced GM to squash it. It was even the [[Film/WhoKilledTheElectricCar subject of a documentary]].
73* The Chrysler PT Cruiser was originally a novelty thanks to its "retro" design, but the novelty wore off quickly. Its anemic performance didn't endear it to younger drivers. Early models were built like anvils, and the overstressed running gear quickly gained a reputation for frequent and expensive mechanical failures (particularly the head gaskets, suspension bushings, and transmission). Later versions were made lighter by "de-contenting" them; in fact, the back seats can be removed without tools, leaving you with a small ''van''. People who drove the "PT Loser" either couldn't afford anything better or were hopelessly and inexplicably in love with the aesthetic. Its reputation is so awful that dealers won't bid on them at private auctions.
74* The third-generation Chrysler Sebring turned Chrysler into a joke during the late 2000s and [[CreatorKiller all but destroyed the company's reputation]]. While marketed as a luxury sedan with the most loaded models costing close to $40,000, you could get a car with superior performance, ride, and build for half that much. That and its odd styling, described by one reviewer as an "art deco mess", made it a universally-panned bust. When Chrysler asked for a government bailout in 2008, they claimed it was because of the global financial crisis, but commentators quickly pointed to the Sebring as evidence that the company brought its financial woes upon itself. Even most Chrysler enthusiasts will admit that it's a terrible car. In the early 2010s, the Sebring was retooled into the somewhat-improved 200 for the 2011 model year, and got a fully redesigned model in 2015. However, the second-gen 200 failed in large part to its transmission which was a nine-speed automatic that due to the way it was designed had trouble finding the right gear a lot of the time, resulting in a jerky driving experience. Couple that with then-Fiat Chrysler's stronger sales in trucks and [=SUVs=], the decision was made to ax the car in January 2016, a little over two years after it was first revealed; the last 200 rolled off the assembly line in December 2016. The plant was then retooled to make the more successful and profitable Ram 1500 midsize truck after that.
75* The Ford Explorer has had its ups and downs over the years, but its [[AudienceAlienatingEra lowest point]] was between 2000 and 2002. These models were involved in a controversy over defective Firestone tires that caused a number of fatal accidents and led to the resignation of Ford CEO Jacques Nasser. The 2002 model had several fatal transmission issues and so many reliability complaints about the rest of the car that it has the dishonor of being [[http://www.carcomplaints.com/Ford/Explorer/2002/ the worst vehicle on "Car Complaints"]]. Some wags have dubbed it the "Ford Exploder".
76* The Ford Bronco II, the predecessor to the Explorer, was notorious for rollovers due to its centre of gravity and narrow track. During the design phase, Ford engineers noted the [=SUV's=] flaws, and some tests were outright cancelled for the safety of the test drivers; said engineers recommended that the company delay the Bronco II to address its flaws, but the top brass balked at the suggestion, wanting to get its product out to market to compete against the Chevrolet S-10 Blazer and Jeep XJ Cherokee in the burgeoning compact SUV market. The Bronco II's rollover issue is so bad that some insurance companies refuse to underwrite policies for the SUV, and it cost Ford millions of dollars in lawsuits.
77* Chrysler's [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_LH_engine#Oil_sludge_and_other_known_problems LH engine]] could turn any car into an Alleged Car. Its oil passages were too narrow and tended to build up with sludge quickly, easily clogging and killing the motor in short order. It also had leaky water pump gaskets that allowed oil and coolant to mix (which would also turn into engine-killing sludge).
78%%* The Crosley "[=CoBra=]" (Copper Brazed) engine, which was an engine with copper brazings inside the block. Unfortunately, it was warp-prone when exposed to excess heat - which, in its case, was not a lot.
79* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldsmobile_Diesel_engine Oldsmobile diesel engine]] was introduced in 1978 to give buyers of full-size cars the option of a large engine with good fuel economy during the '70s gas crisis. Unfortunately, while it did get better fuel economy than a comparable gas [=V8=], the engine performed poorly (the biggest 5.7-liter variant had only 105 hp) and had no tolerance for water-contaminated diesel fuel due to not having a water-fuel separator. They also failed to provide a properly Winterized fuel system; the cars would either fail to start or die somewhere along the road in freezing temperatures. Finally, the fact the block (based on the venerable 350 cu. in. GM [=V8=]) wasn't quite strengthened enough to handle the higher compression of diesel ignition meant warped heads and coolant leaks that would destroy the engine as soon as 20,000 miles in. It is frequently listed as one of the reasons why Americans still distrusted diesel cars well into the 21st Century.
80* In 1975, the United States was the first nation to mandate installing catalytic converters in cars. Unfortunately, the technology was not sufficiently mature and had a few shortcomings[[note]](this is why [[Film/TheBluesBrothers Elwood tells Jake]] that the Bluesmobile was "made before catalytic converters so it'll run good on regular gas")[[/note]]:
81** The converters restricted the exhaust and required carburetion changes that reduced performance and worsened fuel economy.
82** They could not stand continuous highway driving under heavy loads and might require stops every few hours to cool down.
83** Heat shielding was often insufficient. Toasted carpeting and melted floormats were not unheard of, and if you parked on tall grass (or worse, dry leaves) the heat from the catalytic converter could ''set the grass on fire''.
84%% These shouldn't count - and if they do they go on the main page, I would think* Individual examples:
85%% ** A contributor to ''Reader's Digest'' had her Alleged Car publicly displayed. She had driven to Florida to visit a friend just before a hurricane struck. When a news crew was speaking afterward of the devastation, they used a close-up image of her car. The car was completely untouched by the actual hurricane.
86%% ** Conan O'Brien started a contest for people to send in videos of their Alleged Cars called "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Conan, Please Blow Up My Car!]]" where the winner received a new Lexus HS 250h in its place (replacing a 1980 Toyota Corolla two-door with the roof hacked off to make a "convertible"). He also frequently mentions his own Alleged Car, a 1992 Ford Taurus SHO. A similar contest was held in Canada by Auto Trader, called "[[https://www.youtube.com/user/cliffyourride Cliff Your Ride]]".
87%% ** Yahoo automotive contributor Tim Cernea has several of these stories, the most trope-worthy being his [[http://voices.yahoo.com/the-best-car-ever-owned-11309842.html?cat=27 1965 Ford Falcon Ranchero.]] In true handyman fashion, he described the car losing its fuel tank on the highway as "a minor setback".
88%% * Every once in a while, ''Car & Driver'' holds a race known affectionately (and accurately) as "The Battle of The Beaters". For their [[https://www.caranddriver.com/features/battle-of-the-beaters-v-the-geo-metro-craigslist-cup fifth go-around]], they bought four very well-worn Geo Metro hatchbacks (the econoboxes of the '90s, with three cylinders and 47 hp) then drove them from South Carolina to Ann Arbor, Michigan for a race to destruction in a quarry. Well, that was the plan, but only three made it, the fourth dying somewhere in Ohio. Throughout their drive to Michigan, they showed how Alleged they were, with tire blowouts, eaten accessory belts, and other mishaps throughout (one of them even had ''wasps' nests'' under the hood and behind the fuel filler door). In the race, the three survivors indeed ran to destruction, with one conking out with its pistons sounding like they were going to go through the hood due to oil starvation, and another smashing its oil pan on a large rock, then dying and refusing to restart. The winner, so to speak, was sent off a cliff instead of running to death.
89* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicar CitiCar]] was a 1970s electric car that looked like a cheese wedge. Made during the oil crisis, the body is entirely plastic and literally bolted together with "windows" that don't roll down, but have to instead be removed entirely. The engine could only run at four pre-set modes controlled by routing electric power through a resistor: three forward plus reverse, and the fastest setting topped out at 35 mph. It also lacked air conditioning, a heater, or even a radio. It also lacked a defroster even though [[BlatantLies there was a "Defroster" switch on the dash]]. On top of it all, the range was pitiful - the battery generally only lasted 40 miles per charge.
90* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_Vehicles_Free-way HM Vehicles Freeway]] (the "HM" standing for High Mileage) is a ridiculously tiny three-wheeled microcar with a lawnmower engine. While it did have advantages over a [=CitiCar=], like having a heater, a higher top speed of 50 mph, and admittedly good mileage, the Freeway had its own set of disadvantages. The fiberglass body is very flimsy and unstable, the door can get snagged on the bodywork and refuse to open all the way, the wheels rub against the fenders when steering too hard, and the whole car vibrates when driving, giving the impression that it's about to fall apart at any moment.
91* At its height, luxury brand Packard was more prestigious than Cadillac but entered a period of slow decline in the 1950s. As a last-ditch attempt to stay alive, they merged with fellow struggling carmaker Studebaker. The result was pure FromBadToWorse. The 1957-58 "Packardbakers", thinly-disguised Studebakers which came nowhere close to meeting established Packard standards, [[CreatorKiller killed the nameplate off for good]]. Studebaker wouldn't escape unscathed either; while they manage to make a modest recovery with the compact Lark and earned acclaim with the sporty Avanti, they were eventually forced to exit the auto business in 1966 due to poor sales.[[note]](The Avanti design was bought by two former Studebaker dealers and would continue to be built in limited numbers under different owners until 2006, with a hiatus between 1991 and 2000.)[[/note]] While an attempt was made to revive Packard in the 1990s, the project was stillborn, leaving behind a single [[https://rmsothebys.com/en/auctions/SJ14/Motor-City/lots/r112-1999-packard-twelve-prototype/181083 one-off prototype]].
92* Twentieth Century Motor Corporation's Dale (aka the Revette) was a plastic-bodied three-wheeled "car" intended to get high gas mileage and be cheap to produce that never went into mass production. Mostly because the whole thing was a scam being run by CEO Elizabeth Carmichael, who was on the run from charges of currency counterfeiting under her deadname. And it turned out one of the prototypes themselves was even ''worse'' than that, being built with wood and ''without an engine''. It somehow managed to be offered as part of a Showcase on ''Series/ThePriceIsRight'' in early 1975, but the contestant fortunately failed to win it. [[https://jalopnik.com/murder-transsexuals-and-the-price-is-right-the-story-464820740 This article]] has more details on the whole saga.
93* In 2023, a [[https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/ series]] of [[https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/ investigative reports]] by Reuters revealed that Tesla cars suffered from almost comical problems with build quality, with brand-new cars seeing wheels falling off, suspensions collapsing, and electronics getting fried by taking the vehicle through a car wash, as well as their battery range proving to be far lower than advertised. What's more, Tesla had instructed its dealerships and mechanics to blame mechanical problems on driver error and mistreatment of their cars so that they wouldn't have to cover the costs of repairing vehicles under warranty. This came after years of mounting quality control issues, to the point that Tesla's CEO Elon Musk would even [[https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-criticisms-accurate-tesla-build-quality admit]] in 2021 that his company's cars looked like "a bit of a Frankenstein situation" when it came to build quality.
94
95!!Mexico
96* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Sentra#Third_generation_(B13;_1990) B13-series Nissan Sentra]] didn't count as this trope at its debut, being a very solid subcompact car for its time. However, while it was superseded by the more advanced B14 series in the rest of the world, its immense popularity in Mexico led Nissan's Mexican division to continue building it as the [[MarketBasedTitle Nissan Tsuru]] for [[LongRunners 25 years]] with little changes throughout that time. It was popular with Mexican taxi cab operators because it was cheap (under US$10,000) and reliable[=/=]easy to fix, which led to nearly 2 million sales in its lifetime. What puts the Tsuru into Alleged Car territory is modern safety standards; the Tsuru lacked certain safety features often taken for granted in modern cars such as airbags and anti-lock brakes. [[http://jalopnik.com/horrifying-crash-test-against-a-modern-car-shows-why-me-1788423100 In a head-on crash test conducted by the IIHS]] against its modern counterpart, the 2016 Nissan Versa, the Versa's front clip absorbed the impact and the cabin remained intact, protecting the dummy, while the Tsuru's cabin collapsed with the dummy suffering life-threatening, if not outright fatal, injuries. The result of that test, 4,000-plus fatalities involving the car between 2007-12, and the Mexican government tightening safety regulations finally led to the Tsuru's discontinuation in 2017. It also didn't help that the Middle East/African export version of the Tsuru had a number of corners cut to make it even cheaper, for one lacking a ''catalytic converter'', which effectively made it illegal for sale in Mexico and other countries with stricter emissions laws.
97[[/folder]]
98
99[[folder:Asia]]
100!!China
101* The Xiali [=TJ7100=], based on the third-generation Daihatsu Charade, was one of the first Chinese cars to enter the market. It wasn't reliable at all, and yet [[LongRunner remained in production for two decades]] without any major changes.
102* The Jiangnan TT, based on the second-generation Suzuki Alto, is another early Chinese car. It is so bad that people have joked that the car was built for driving on sidewalks.
103* The Shuanghuan SCEO is a Chinese HummerDinger that's a ShoddyKnockoffProduct of not one but two SUV models; the exterior styling is copied from the BMW X5, while the headlights and interior styling are cribbed from the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado. German auto magazine ''Auto Bild'' was so appalled, they [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPCAbsVvf0k blew it up.]]
104* The Brilliance [=BS6=] gained a reputation in Europe as a death trap after a catastrophic result in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak-qVkW888k a crash test performed in Germany]] showed the passenger compartment being fatally compromised in an offside front impact.
105* The Jiangling Landwind was the first Chinese car to be offered on the German market. Much like the Brilliance [=BS6=], the [[ShoddyKnockoffProduct Isuzu MU/Opel Frontera knockoff]] gained quite some infamy when it crumbled like a cardboard box in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8EGbuc4DXY a nigh-memetic ADAC crash test]], not to mention that it had only one measly airbag despite being introduced in the mid-2000s. It didn't fare any better when [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bDsgz2Jmz8 the TÜV crash-tested it]].
106
107!!India
108* Indian urbanites think this of the Hindustan Ambassador, which is designed for rural India. It is spacious (comfortably seating up to eight people), hardy, and responsive to PercussiveMaintenance. It's also old-school, being a licensed reproduction of the Morris Oxford (which was first produced in 1953). But it's very inefficient and impractical for a crowded Indian city, and it's seen as hopelessly rustic. It did lead to a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No26JKQKZNE viral ad for a Peugeot 206]] where a young Indian man is shown abusing an Ambassador (including getting an elephant to sit on it) for the purpose of sculpting it into a 206 (even funnier when you realize that [[HilariousInHindsight Peugeot bought Ambassador in 2017]]).
109* The Reva G-Wiz is nominally a very tiny electric car. Legally, it's technically a "[[InsistentTerminology heavy quadbike]]", which allows it to avoid regulations for real cars; to get there, it had to be ridiculously underpowered. It has extremely poor acceleration and top speed, limiting its use to the city exclusively. It has a very short battery life, which gets even shorter if you use electronics such as the radio. And worst of all, it has the collision durability of a wet cardboard box, which led to at least one British owner being killed in a collision that she would have walked away from if the car had conformed to normal regulations. ''Series/TopGear'' was so disgusted with it that the presenters [[StartMyOwn decided to make]] their own electric car, the ''clearly''-awful "Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust" (as described in the Live-Action TV section).
110* The Tata Nano is designed to be the world's cheapest car, and [[GoneHorriblyRight boy is it ever]]. It has a tiny, cramped interior, a two-cylinder engine, no airbags, no power steering, and no air conditioning - which, in India's climate, is a real problem. The rear hatch doesn't open; you can only access the engine or the trunk from ''inside'' the car. It did succeed at one of its initial goals, which is to transport six people more safely than a motorbike. As Aging Wheels points out in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfWgQxhKHok his review,]] the Nano was a flawed concept from the start - in its home country of India, having a car of any kind is seen as a luxury, and which car you drive is seen as a symbol of status. In that regard, having a Tata Nano, the cheapest mass-produced car available, sends a very clear message: you're poor.
111
112!!Japan
113* The Subaru 360 is one of the earliest kei cars, but it was so light and underpowered that it could more accurately be considered a heavy motorcycle - and indeed, that's how it was imported (with the help of Malcolm Bricklin, who apparently never found a car he [[HonestJohnsDealership didn't think he could sell]]). It had a laughable 16 hp engine, which made it more likely than not to stall while trying to climb a hill. It was so unsafe in a collision that the [[BannedInChina U.S. banned it]] from import. Given that the 360 was intended for relatively tame environments where people didn't drive like crazy, this isn't surprising.
114* The Isuzu Piazza, despite its sleek Italian design, left much to be desired. In particular, it rode on a chassis copied from the humble Gemini economy car, and it had the handling to match. Later models with Lotus tuning couldn't save the production run. (The Australian Holden Piazza and the Canadian Asuna Sunfire had the same issues.)
115* The Datsun B-210, a 1970s tiny car, sold well given that it always started and used less fuel - crucial during the oil crisis. But it was ugly, fragile, and slow. Music/DaveGrohl told about how he rode in Music/KurtCobain's B-210 from UsefulNotes/{{Seattle}} to UsefulNotes/LosAngeles (to record Music/{{Nirvana}}'s ''Music/{{Nevermind|Album}}'') - or tried to, because the car's engine overheated so much that they had to give up at the UsefulNotes/{{Oregon}} border. They rented a van to complete the trip, but not before stoning the car in anger. It's also derided in Music/IceCube's "No Vaseline", where he insults fellow former Music/{{NWA}} member MC Ren for having owned one: "Don't front, MC Ren/I remember when you drove a B-210/Broke as a motherfuckin' joke..."
116* Mazda has a history of turning otherwise-serviceable cars into Alleged Cars through bad applications of rotary engines. Its obsession with the things nearly killed the company in the 1970s.
117** The FD-series third-generation RX-7 is an otherwise CoolCar whose reliability is ruined by its rotary engine. Mazda developed a sequential turbo setup to improve engine response, but it came at the expense of frequent overheating. Many owners have swapped out the turbo setup or even the entire engine (the Chevrolet Small-Block V8 is the most common replacement). The car also had an odd quirk that changing the fuel filter required disassembling the rear suspension.
118** The Roadpacer was a full-size Holden Premier sedan with a Mazda rotary engine, meant to [[LoopholeAbuse bypass Japan's laws at the time]] on cars with larger engines. This left the engine severely lacking in power and torque for such a big car, leading to awful acceleration and worse fuel efficiency than a big-block version of the same car.
119** The [[NoExportForYou U.S.-only]] Rotary Pickup was a variant of the B-series pickup truck line with a rotary engine. Unfortunately, the low torque of the rotary engine made it completely unsuited for the type of work pickup trucks are normally used for. The result was a compact truck that had the fuel economy of a full-size truck, the reliability of a rotary-engine car, and the upsides of neither.
120** The Parkway Rotary 26 was a rotary-powered ''bus'', and again the engine just couldn't deliver the torque to power such a huge vehicle. It was particularly bad at driving up hills, which made it poorly suited to the particularly mountainous Japan.
121* Nissan, starting in the 2000s, developed a reputation for ruining otherwise serviceable cars with shoddy continuously variable transmissions, which not only make the car less drivable but also have a tendency for failing prematurely ''and'' being impossible to repair (you need to replace or rebuild them, which can cost upwards of $5,000). They had to up their warranty on those cars to 120,000 miles. Nissan has always had the reputation of being the "cheaper" of the big Japanese brands, but they usually at least came with a modicum of reliability, and this more or less wrecked its reputation, especially as their models from the late 2010s onwards have been seen as very cheaply made and difficult to handle.[[note]]''Car and Driver'', when looking for something positive to say in its [[https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/comparison-test/a15100620/2016-chevrolet-cruze-vs-2016-honda-civic-2017-hyundai-elantra-2016-mazda-3-2016-nissan-sentra-comparison-test/ review]] of the 2016 Sentra, could only come up with "[[DamnedByFaintPraise faster than walking, keeps the rain off you]]" and said that "the single most thrilling thing about [it] is its tendency to kick its rear end out under braking."[[/note]] In the US, the Nissan Sentra compact and Altima midsize sedan have acquired [[AmericansHateTingle a "ghetto" reputation]] as a result, seen as the cars that people buy (typically used from a rental fleet) because they couldn't afford anything else, and (much like the Yugo) treating them like dirt ''because'' they see Nissans as cheap, disposable cars. Most Nissan enthusiasts [[https://web.archive.org/web/20200116100810/https://www.chicagotribune.com/autos/sns-nyt-nissan-rapid-decline-20200115-mmiqicy3r5ag3i6sesxdjhmqea-story.html blame]] the cost-cutting on ruthless ex-CEO Carlos Ghosn, brought in from outside Japan to cut through Japanese corporate culture and turn Nissan into [[CuttingCorners a model of efficiency]], and then smuggling himself ''out'' of Japan to escape [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn#Arrest_in_Tokyo_and_subsequent_Nissan_investigation charges of embezzlement]] from the company.
122* The Isuzu DMAX V6 diesel engine, used by Opel, Renault, and Saab between 2002-07, is notorious for its inefficient cooling which will probably require a total rebuild somewhere between 100,000 and 130,000 miles. It also has problems with expensive fuel injector failures.
123* Honda's black eye is the GS-R and Type-R models of the Integra. Both were designed with sophisticated, powerful, efficient, and durable 1.8L naturally-aspirated inline-fours that redlined with mean piston speeds comparable to an F1 engine. Both were also prone to leaky main seals and ate oil.
124
125!!Malaysia
126* Proton cars have gained a not-so-glowing reputation for their questionable build quality on their earlier cars, using thinner-gauge steel and lacking basic safety features such as airbags and ABS. This led them to be branded as "Milo tins", a term often used for shoddy workmanship done by unscrupulous body shops in Malaysia (based on thin tin cans of Milo, a popular powdered chocolate malt drink). And while Proton has since made it a point to make their cars safer and more competitive, the stigma still persists.
127** This is made worse that they actually used an engine design that Lotus designed but ''did not put into production'' when they bought Lotus out. The alleged engine, called the [=CamPro=] engine, was used in several Proton cars between the late 2000s and mid-2010s. The reason the engine was rejected by Lotus executives became very clear to those who have driven a Proton car that is powered by it - it not only has a dreadful acceleration curve, but is also a fuel guzzler.
128* While not as bad as Proton, Perodua cars are also often criticized for lacking originality and looking like bad copycats of Japanese economy cars (there being a tech-sharing initiative between Perodua and Daihatsu certainly isn’t helping) in addition to being severely ''underpowered'' and underperforming due to the use of laughable 650cc engines in the lower end models, and their top of the line model topped off with a sorry 850cc engine. The claim that it is extremely economical on fuel is offset when driving on hilly terrains like the Genting and Cameron Highlands area, which saw the low-powered engine suffer and strain itself. And to top it all off, the monopolizing satellite provider's response to the infamous episode of ''Series/TopGear'' where a Kelisa got obliterated only caused more controversy. They also decided to name one of their models the ''Axia'' which is intended to be a play on the word ''Asia'' in XtremeKoolLetterz, but unfortunately happens to be pronounced similarly to the word ''airhead'' in the Hokkien Chinese dialect, resulting in mockery from the Hokkien Chinese community in Malaysia.
129
130!!North Korea
131* The Pyeonghwa Hwiparam, the best the country's pathetic automotive industry could muster. It's a rebadged [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Siena Fiat Siena]], which was a subpar car to start with. Then it was made in North Korea with worn-out tools, outdated manufacturing processes, cheap materials, poorly-trained workers, and almost no quality control. Its sole purpose was to give Kim Jong-un [[ShoddyKnockoffProduct something to wave in the faces]] of the filthy capitalists across the border who make nice Hyundais.
132
133!!Russia / Soviet Union
134* The classic Lada 1200 was not a bad car when it was introduced in 1970, being essentially a modified Fiat 124. But it quickly gained this reputation because ''(a)'' it was still based on a Fiat, ''(b)'' it had horrible fuel economy and handling, ''(c)'' Soviet production lines lacked any real quality control, and ''(d)'' thanks to production quotas and such, it received practically no updates or redesigns until the fall of the Soviet Union (and beyond, as production continued until 2012). Most export versions were considered disposable Communist cars, and it was treated as such - except [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff in Finland]], where they were impressed with its ability to start even in the [[ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman coldest weather]]. And like a BMW, it came with a complete toolkit - which, unlike a BMW, could be used without invalidating the warranty.
135* While Lada is often fondly remembered in Russia and Finland, Moskvitch is not. Moskvitch was simply a badly-designed and shoddily-built jalopy prone to break when least expected, and it was awful to drive. A common initialism joke stated "''Manages Only Seventy Kilometres, Vehicle Is Then Completely Halted''".
136
137!!South Korea
138* Early Hyundais had a terrible reputation. The Excel in particular quickly gained a reputation as a shitbox that was cheap but would fall apart at the slightest provocation. This gave Korean cars in general a bad reputation, and even later, better cars had trouble with this because owners ''[[SelfFulfillingProphecy treated]]'' [[SelfFulfillingProphecy them like Alleged Cars]]. Later Hyundais were better - except the 2011 Sonata, whose legendarily defective engine would seize regularly and without warning, leading to a class-action lawsuit in 2015.
139* The first-generation [=SsangYong=] Rodius, despite using some Mercedes internals thanks to a tech-sharing partnership, had serious quality issues and poor handling. This would have been enough to make it an Alleged Car were it not for its ugly and truly bizarre appearance. Designer Ken Greenley was aiming to evoke the aesthetics of a luxury yacht, which may be why ''Series/{{Top Gear|UK}}'' decided to convert one into an actual boat called the "[[https://www.boatinternational.com/yachts/editorial-features/ssangyacht-top-gear-boat--33341 Ssangyacht]]". The company relented and opted for a more conventional look with the second generation.
140%%* The 2006-11 Kia Magentis, an export version of the Kia Optima sedan sold in Europe, was criticized by ''Series/TopGear'' magazine's SpinOff ''Top Gear New Car Buyer's Guide'' from 2007-08 for having an interior that was highly plasticky and felt like it was about to fall apart; they even compared it to being as flimsy as a plastic bag at the time and gave it a two-star out of five rating. They also said that a Ford Mondeo, at £4,000 more, was better, even though, incidentally, the Kia was generally more reliable (but at this point during the TurnOfTheMillennium, Kia didn't ''quite'' have the reputation for reliability it would get in TheNew10s, so ''Top Gear'' did have a point about the Mondeo being more reliable). [[NoExportForYou This didn't apply to versions sold in the United States, Canada, Australia, or South Africa, incidentally]], where this trope was [[InvertedTrope inverted]] and it was seen as a CoolCar for those who didn't want a Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic ([[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff in South Africa]]) or as an alternative to the Toyota Camry/Honda Accord in the United States and Canada. This version wasn't ''ugly'', but it was average-looking.
141[[/folder]]
142
143[[folder:Australia]]
144Australians can be [[SeriousBusiness fickle about their cars]], which can be partly attributed to the [[LandDownUnder harsh outback conditions]] these cars are often driven in. There's a reason that Australian car magazine ''Wheels'' has, on multiple occasions, [[https://www.wheelsmag.com.au/car-of-the-year/1601/wheels-car-of-the-year-2016-fast-facts refused to award a "Car of the Year"]]. If you don't impress the Australians, you're not going to last long.
145
146* The Goggomobil Dart. "If you needed a sudden burst of acceleration, it was best to jump out and run." The only decent version was made by a certified lunatic in Germany, who fitted [[http://www.deutsche-werke.de/goggo2.htm one]] with a 9-cylinder, 10-liter radial aircraft engine. It out-accelerates Porsches.
147* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holden_Camira Holden Camira]] was based on GM's "J-car", but had a litany of unique problems, such as smoking engines, insufficient drainage holes in the doors, poor paint quality, and lack of adequate fan cooling (which, in Australia's bloody hot climate, is a real problem). Its reputation was so awful that Holden's New Zealand division pulled it from the market after just two years and reused the Camira name for a rebadged Isuzu Aska.
148* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeta_(automobile) Lightburn Zeta]] is a bizarre attempt at a Mini (which wound up quickly getting the boot once the actual Mini hit the market). Its maker was best known for whitegoods and designed the car accordingly, which is why it had "the kind of bug eyes you'd normally find in some dark corner of the fish market." Despite being ''shaped'' roughly like a wagon, it had no cargo bay door, so you could only load it by opening the side door and removing the seats (which was amazingly touted as a feature rather than a bug). Like most micro-cars of the era, it was woefully underpowered. It could not be reversed without cutting the engine and restarting the car ''backwards''. Its variant [[http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/ce03418b1ca1aa1d0baecf58d568918c?width=1024 the Sports]] was even worse, being more akin to a quadbike; it had no doors, weighed 400kg, and had 15.5kW of power, which could allegedly get you up to 120km/h (not that you'd want to try it). Both cars would be illegal to bring to market today (and the Sports' headlamps were too low to even satisfy some states' laws at the time).
149* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyland_P76 Leyland P76]] was too big, poorly made, draughty, had a design flaw in the exhaust system that tended to make the carpet smoulder, and had a choice of engines between one that just wasn't powerful enough and one that was but tended to cook itself. It also had the misfortune of coming out just as motorists were switching to smaller cars in the wake of the OPEC oil embargo. But you could stow a whole 44-gallon drum in the boot!
150%%* Ford's 1988 EA Falcon fell apart in running, due to poor-quality production from being rushed into the showroom. It was expensive for the customer to buy and expensive for Ford Australia to fix.
151%%** Similar issues bedevilled the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Capri_(Australia) Ford Capri]] roadster (not related to the 1969-86 European sports car) which came out during the same period.
152* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holden_Dealer_Team Holden HDT Director]] was the brainchild of racing legend Peter Brock, who wanted to market a new special-edition Holden Commodore. He went to the Holden Dealer Team, which handled special editions, but they were reluctant to agree. This was because he had found some charlatan who sold him on a wire-and-crystal device known as an "Energy Polarizer", which was intended to increase the car's performance and efficiency by [[TechnoBabble aligning all the vehicle's molecules]]. HDT discovered that the Energy Polarizer predictably did nothing, and the car also had some weird panelling done in poor-quality GRP instead of the final product. Brock ditched it in favour of importing and upgrading Lada Samaras, cheap Russian shitboxes which ended up costing him more in the long run.
153* Some Asian cars were made in Australia, but due to Australian laws at the time, they had to contain a certain amount of Australian components. This led to some poor products, even when compared to their Asian-built counterparts which weren't all that great to begin with:
154** The Nissan Pintara was a revamp of the Bluebird, which was obsolete, clumsy, and dull. It wasn't any ''worse'', but it wasn't any better either, and nobody bothered to buy it.
155** The Toyota Corona Starfire 79 was originally a horribly dull Japanese car that could have been spat out of a vending machine on a distant world in some corporate UsedFuture setting. Its Australian version used the Holden Starfire engine (aka the "Misfire"), used only in the not-too-successful Sunbird and which the Holden people were a little too eager to dump on their Japanese partners. This made the car now terribly unreliable.
156** The Holden Piazza works the other way around, based on the obsolete Isuzu Piazza (already listed in Japan's section), which became the most expensive Holden-badged product when released. Its dashboard looked [[{{Zeerust}} dated quickly]] with its digital instruments and loose, rattly collection of pods and binnacles; it had a turbo engine in an old chassis that couldn't handle it, making it hard to drive; and it had a poor ride, rattled, and didn't improve upon upgrading to the S version.
157* The Valiant VH Hardtop from Chrysler Australia was trying to do the same job as the much-vaunted Valiant Charger. It cost much more, had a much larger footprint, was heavier, more cramped inside, not very well-equipped, ugly, impractical, noisy, and slow.
158* Gray and Harper's [[http://www.allcarindex.com/main-index/car-make-details/Australia-Edith/ Edith]] of 1952 had a cartoonish appearance, 250kg Gross Vehicle Mass, a garden tool engine which could give it a 50mpg rate of fuel consumption (which isn't that impressive when big Aussie sixes could do better than 30mpg), and a single rear wheel. It appeared to be as well-developed as a 10-year-old's go-kart project.
159* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Country_Buggy Volkswagen Country Buggy]] (aka the "Thing") was the company's attempt to try and bolster interest in the flagging Beetle in Australia. It was supposed to be an evolution of the UsefulNotes/WorldWarII-era Kubelwagen, even having the assistance of an engineer who worked on the original. The aim was to make a stripped-out rear-wheel-drive Beetle which could still "go anywhere" because the engine was mounted over the drive axle (which doesn't make sense) and was also amphibious, for whatever reason. It still had to use Beetle parts for logistical reasons. The end result looked like it had been designed by aliens who only knew what a car was from a dictionary description. The amphibious feature was quietly dropped on request from headquarters in Germany - so quietly that a motor magazine tried to test it without realizing it had been removed and ended up sinking it very decisively.
160** Although it was a flop in Australia, it was better received in the Philippines in the 1970s. Given that the Philippines' roads were even worse than Australia's even to this day, the Country Buggy is a God-send for the Filipino drivers; the local Volkswagen affiliate later made Country Buggies and they sold them like hotcakes. It helps that the Country Buggy is relatively easy to build in a Third World country like the Philippines, and easy to modify and repair too.
161* The Australian arm of BMC was AlwaysSecondBest to its main rival Holden, but it tried some odd things during its lifespan:
162** The Austin Freeway was poorly engineered and suffered from dodgy, improvised production. Holden sold more of its equivalents in a week than BMC did in a year. BMC did introduce what they thought would be a killer feature: a map of Australia in the middle of the steering wheel.
163** The Austin [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Kimberley X6]] had an okay ride and handling, but looked so ''dull''. It had an inline 6 engine stuffed in the wrong way, necessitating an extra electric fan; 2.2L, and was front-wheel-drive, available in a 76kW version named the Tasman, or the 86kW Kimberly, which lacked the low-range torque that made Australian sixes easier to drive, and devoured fuel, such that it was no cheaper to run even though it was smaller and more cramped than its competitors. It had poor seating, wipers that didn't wipe the entire screen, controls for accessory functions that often didn't work, and poor ergonomics and quality, with "thumping suspension" and "heavy kicking steering".
164[[/folder]]
165
166[[folder:Europe]]
167!!Czech Republic
168* Škoda unfairly gained this reputation with its dated 1970s-80s models, the 120 series and the 130 series. Both sets were leagues better than other Eastern Bloc brands, with rear-engined, rear-wheel-drive designs giving them snappy, Porsche-like handling, but the constant government meddling with redesigning the vehicles meant that the cars all had "poor man's vehicle" reputations, especially in the United Kingdom. The worst part of the 120 and 130 lines wasn't the handling, but the fact that both sets had their coolant radiators in the nose, meaning that they needed more coolant, and the cars could overheat if the coolant lines suffered airlock, a very nasty problem to have without a proper auto mechanic in the neighborhood. That said, British working-class motorists were actually proud to drive and maintain their Škoda cars, even if they were technologically outdated, since they functioned better in Winter than most native British cars bought by more affluent subjects. As it turns out, most of Škoda's poor reputation in Britain was due to the fact that motorist press overemphasized their handling problems (only encountered at high speeds), low price tags, and their "communist-produced" simple nature. After Communism fell, Škoda was bought out by Volkswagen Group because of the latter's interest in Czech aluminum casting processes and now makes very much modern cars on par with anything produced by Volkswagen's main factories, but the company remembers its tarnished Cold War reputation and aggressively advertises the current lines with the tagline "[[WeDontSuckAnymore It's a Škoda, honest.]]"
169* The Czechoslovak company Velorex is a respected name in motorcycle sidecars. They also built something that [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velorex might be described as a car]], but which is basically a motorcycle sidecar without the motorcycle. It's vinyl-coated canvas over steel tubing. The frame is attached to what is effectively the rear end of a motorcycle with a 125cc or 250cc two-stroke single-cylinder engine driving the single rear wheel. ''Series/TopGearUK''[='s=] Andy Wilman took one for a spin once and reported (yelling over the din of the engine) that "braking is accomplished by writing a letter politely asking to reduce your speed, oh, sometime next week". Years later, in a segment focusing on Communist-made cars, Wilman's colleague Creator/JeremyClarkson described the Velorex car as looking like "somebody's crashed a motorcycle into the back of a cow".
170
171!!Finland
172* The Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid quickly gained this reputation. [[http://fiskerbuzz.com/forums/Thread-Issue-list-after-11-days Owners reported a litany of problems]], and [[http://green.autoblog.com/2012/03/08/fisker-karma-owned-by-consumer-reports-breaks-down/ Consumer Reports had their Karma die on them with only 200 miles on the odometer.]] It's not spacious, in spite of its swoopy body. It's not fast, requiring over seven seconds to go from 0-60mph in pure electric mode. And it's not even that efficient: it only gets 30 mpg on electric, 20 mpg on gas, and about 60 mpg equivalent; for comparison, the Chevy Volt gets 90 mpg equivalent. It was enough to send Fisker into bankruptcy; they were bought out by the Wanxiang Group in China, who relaunched the car as the Karma Revero.
173
174!!France
175* The Alpine A106 was supposed to be an attractive, sporty, compact coupe. Beneath the sleek body, however, it used the same tiny, humdrum engine as the 4CV that it was based on, resulting in an ultra-cheap rust magnet that went from 0-60 in ''32 seconds''.
176* The second-generation Renault Laguna was outfitted with a lot of optional cutting-edge tech, including GPS, hands-free entry, a state-of-the-art de-pollution system, and a power tailgate. Unfortunately, the tech rarely worked like it was supposed to. Lights would go on and off, it would have trouble starting, and the de-pollution system would fail and generate a lot of smoke.
177* The Renault Avantime was, for all intents and purposes, France's version of the Pontiac Aztek. It was originally conceived when Renault started manufacturing their popular and long-running Espace minivan in-house rather than at Matra. In an attempt to fill the resulting void in the market, the latter company decided to create a luxury coupe on the same platform as the old Espace, retaining the height of the original minivan. The result was widely ridiculed in the French automotive press for appearing tall and ungainly. Styling issues aside, the Avantime was also criticized for its lack of interior space, as it had only been designed to hold four people with the fifth being a squeeze. The combination of terrible styling and lack of functionality caused the Avantime to flop hard, with less than 8,600 units sold, bankrupting Matra in the process. Strangely, it's beloved by the folks at ''Series/TopGear''.
178* The 1975 Acoma Mini Comtesse was a three-wheeled car [[LoopholeAbuse designed to qualify for a law meant for mopeds]]. It has one seat, a weak 50cc engine (the maximum allowed by the law), has a maximum speed of about 10 mph, and it looks vaguely like a porta-potty. While it lacks such basic features like a radio or a seat belt, it tries to make up for it with a pedal so you can theoretically make the vehicle move with your foot, and two extra suspended wheels to prevent the vehicle from tipping over. At the very least, you could have driven it without a license.
179
180!!Germany
181* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant Trabant]] is a legendary UsefulNotes/{{East German|y}} car known for three things: barely functioning, selling in big numbers anyway because it was the only means of private transportation for most East Germans, and being the subject of [[GermanHumour an entire subgenre of "Trabi jokes"]].
182** The body was made of low-quality plastic due to a shortage of metal. The East Germans had found a clever way to recycle cotton garment factory waste into a cellulose-based polymer called "Duroplast". This meant that you never needed to wash a Trabi because the rain could do it just fine, and no amount of scrubbing would do any better.
183** It had a two-stroke, 15-20 horsepower, half-liter in-line 2-cylinder engine. Its fuel efficiency was 34 mpg, its top speed was around 70 mph, and it took a ''minute'' to go from 0-60 mph. After reunification, many Trabants got a second lease on life by having their engines replaced; engines from motorcycles like the Suzuki Hayabusa are frequently used because they're compact enough to fit in the engine bay yet powerful enough to give a huge boost in performance.
184** The gas tank was mounted in the cowl above the engine - and the driver's legs, meaning any major frontal accident could be catastrophic. You filled it by opening the hood, pouring gasoline in the fuel tank, pouring in two-stroke oil, and mixing it by shaking the car. In some places in the Eastern Bloc, you didn't ''have'' to do that, but you did have to find a petrol station that offered the special mixture. There was no gas gauge, but there was a ''sight glass in the dashboard''.
185** The electrical dynamo would fall out so often that the owner's manual contained instructions for replacing it. In any event, dealerships and automobile workshops were uncommon in East Germany, so you were on your own anyway.
186** Production capacity at the factories was so poor that used Trabants would sell for more money than new ones by dint of actually being available. Car dealerships would also sometimes be willing to sell one in exchange for a new pair of Western blue jeans. The government didn't want to spend valuable foreign currency to get technological advances for it. And by the time production ended, the tooling had more than doubled its expected lifetime, meaning late-model Trabants had severely flawed and unreliable fit and finish. After reunification, you could get a Trabant for as little as ''50 cents'', and many were simply abandoned on the spot whenever they broke down.
187** What ''good'' was a Trabant? It was better than other Eastern Bloc brands. Thanks to GermanicEfficiency, it was surprisingly safe (other than the gas tank thing). And it handled so well that it could even beat out some pricey Western brands in obstacle avoidance tests (including the infamous "elk test" that the Mercedes A-class failed). And they were thus actually pretty useful, which is all you need out of your car and more than you can say for some of the other entries on this page.
188* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wartburg_(car) Wartburg]] was basically the only other option to the Trabant in East Germany. It had an extra cylinder on the Trabant, it was made from a polymer so soft that livestock could ''eat'' your car, and the only reason its flaws weren't fatal was that the motor had only seven moving parts.
189** Fun fact: for a while, the Wartburg was produced by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisenacher_Motorenwerk a marque (EMW)]] which sounded like "BMW" with the SerialNumbersFiledOff (right down to the logo, which was round and quadripartite with four arrows and two alternated colours, but one was red instead of white) which, before the actual BMW sued, actually called itself "BMW" (the factory where the car was produced was indeed, before World War II, owned by the actual BMW, and was in fact where they started their car production, but it had fallen into Soviet hands, which later handed it to the East Germans. The actual BMW would never see the factory again, as it was bought out by Opel after privatization who, like in the sad case of many former East German industries, would dismantle it).
190* The Volkswagen Beetle is one of the best-selling and most iconic cars in all of automotive history and was a reliable all-purpose light car, but the models made in the first few years after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII were pretty mediocre quality-wise. Before the war, the Beetle was so reliable and hardy that it was used as the basis for the Kubelwagen, a "Nazi Jeep" that could handle both the heat of North Africa and the sub-zero of Russia. But when the war ended, so did the war machine, and the factories - which had been bombed to pieces during the war - were left with poor-quality parts, worn-out tooling, and demoralized and exhausted workers. As such, late-1940s model Beetles had a crashbox transmission, hand-operated windshield wipers, no cabin heater, semaphore flags for turn signals, no fuel gauge (you just switched to a two-litre backup tank when the engine started to cough), hand-crank starters, and upholstery glued on with a smelly fish-based adhesive. They barely lasted 30,000 km before the engines gave up. Fortunately for Volkswagen, things got better relatively quickly.
191* Shortly after UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, the Rumpler aircraft company came out with the Tropfenwagen, a car whose coefficient of air resistance wouldn't be equaled for 50 years. Unfortunately, the engine was poorly designed and prone to overheating, and it didn't have a trunk (meaning luggage could only go on the roof). It wound up being used as a taxi in Berlin, and several were burned in ''Film/{{Metropolis}}'' because they were dirt cheap and looked futuristic. Only two have survived to this day.
192* The NSU [=Ro80=] was comfortable, good-looking, and very advanced. Unfortunately, it had a Wankel rotary engine, and the versions fitted to early cars tended to fail after only 15,000-30,000 miles. A redesign of the tip seals eventually solved the problem, but the cost of frequent repairs during the guarantee period bankrupted NSU, causing them to be taken over by VW-Audi (who promptly used some NSU designs in development as their first conventionally front-engined and water-cooled VW models).
193* Narrowly averted by the Audi TT, which required a hasty recall and some modifications to correct a nasty habit of rolling if the driver took a sharp turn at motorway speeds. They corrected it [[GoneHorriblyRight just a bit too well]], though, as the production [=TTs=] got a bit sluggish in steering afterwards, and enthusiasts had no more of the original suspension parts to retrofit as they had been sent to scrap metal.
194* Volkswagen's TDI has slowly gotten this reputation. Its big upside, the relatively low emissions, [[NoFairCheating was shot down]] when it was discovered that [[http://www.forbes.com/sites/jimgorzelany/2015/09/23/dieselgate-what-vw-tdi-owners-should-know/ Volkswagen had rigged the car to pass emissions tests]]. And its other big upside, being fun to drive, was spoiled by engine problems. The first series of TDI engines was notorious for shoddy pump injectors, this being a new technology back then - replacements cost $6,000, and there were at least four per engine.
195%%Why though?* Volkswagen is also the manufacturer of the Touareg, a car that has held the ''Consumer Reports'' "Most Unreliable Car" title for the biggest amount of consecutive years.
196* The [[http://jalopnik.com/what-its-like-to-drive-the-worst-car-ever-built-1735448480 Hoffmann]] was a small two-stroke metal egg made shortly after the war. It's a weird paradox of surprisingly good build quality combined with just about every design decision being the absolute worst one that could be made.
197* BMW, despite being one of the best-regarded car brands in the world, has lately picked up a reputation for making good cars that break easily and are a nightmare to maintain.
198** When BMW bought the Mini brand for a ContinuityReboot, Mini drivers now had to pay BMW prices for a car whose parts would break on a monthly basis. Plastic pieces in the engine were particularly prone to breaking and causing catastrophic failures. This got BMW [[https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/mini.html a ton of complaints]].
199** The subframe of the E46 3-Series is a [[https://www.bimmerworld.com/About-Us/E46-Rear-Subframe-Floor-Reinforcement-Install/ known Achilles heel]], prompting aftermarket manufacturers to come up with a weld-on reinforcement plate to rectify the issue.
200** In many more recent [=BMWs=], not only do the batteries wear down more often than they need to, but you can't even replace it yourself - which you can do in pretty much any other production car on the market. You need to [[https://ilikekillnerds.com/2015/10/replacing-a-bmw-battery/ register the new battery]] with BMW before you can use it. If you really want to do it yourself, you can end-around this with a [[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01H825MV4/ $20 OBD adapter]], a USB cable, and an Android smartphone with a [[https://mhdtuning.com/mhd-flasher/ special app]].
201** The 2020 model Toyota Supra was a joint venture between Toyota and BMW. The news that it would share the same platform with the BMW Z4 lead to disgruntlement from Toyota fans who feared that it would be just as annoying and expensive to maintain.
202* Even Mercedes-Benz cannot stay free of problems. The most notorious of them:
203** The 300 SLR racing car of the 1950s caused [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1955_Le_Mans_disaster one of the most catastrophic crashes in the history of auto racing]] (see the Racing section).
204** The [=W115=] "Slash-Eight" was a big step forward in technology for Mercedes-Benz, not only but also with regards to safety features. However, it got rather infamous for two reasons, both of which were carried over to at least the early [=W123=], and none of which was its rather conservative Paul Bracq design.
205*** The "Slash-Eight" gained a reputation of being a rust bucket. The reason was that, besides modern anti-corrosion measures still being unknown, Mercedes-Benz made them out of way sub-standard metal imported from UsefulNotes/EastGermany which probably wanted to get rid of it. This issue hit particularly hard because Mercedes-Benz was considered a premium manufacturer amongst premium manufacturers and was renowned for the build quality if their cars.
206*** The diesel engines were famous for being downright indestructible, but the cars they sat in became infamous as "wandering dunes". The 200 D had [=55bhp=] in a one-and-a-half-ton car with the aerodynamics of an office block and a maximum speed of [=130kph=] ([=81mph=]). 220 D ([=60bhp=]) and 240 D ([=65bhp=]) weren't much better. Only the 240 D 3.0 ([=80bhp=]) had a somewhat decent performance, but it was introduced very late in the production run, and it's a sought-after rarity nowadays.
207** Between 1993-96, they introduced biodegradable wiring, which seems really cool and eco-friendly - until you realise that the electrics are designed to essentially self-destruct (not to mention rodents like to eat it). Replacing the main wiring harness is possible, but expensive and labour-intensive.
208** In the late 1990s, Mercedes decided to save on rustproofing. Nowadays, if you buy a Mercedes from that time period, you should be prepared for a lot of corrosion, including perforative corrosion. [[GoneHorriblyRight Well, it worked, didn't it?]]
209** The early version of the 2.1 diesel engine was notorious for its awful fuel injectors. Sometimes it took only a few hundred kilometres before they needed replacements. After a few months, Mercedes decided to replace all the injectors with reworked ones free of charge.
210** Mercedes produced the Smart Fortwo, which is notorious for its quirky semi-automatic gearbox and subpar fuel consumption, due to a safety-cell body that has decent crash ratings but means the car is a good bit heavier than one would expect of a little two-seater. The fact that the front and rear tires are of different sizes can also complicate matters, as it's hard to carry a spare.
211** The earliest A-Class [[MemeticMutation infamously]] flipped during an "elk test" [[note]](a test of a vehicle's ability to avoid suddenly appearing obstacles; the "elk" of the test is the animal that Americans and Canadians call "[[CallARabbitASmeerp moose]]")[[/note]] by Swedish automobile publication ''Teknikens Värld''. Mercedes recalled the car and modified the suspension as well as adding electronic stability control.
212** The 1998-2005 Mercedes-Benz M-Class was an okay car, but reliability was poor even on the specialist AMG models, with oil leaks being a major problem, and the V8 engine was excessively thirsty, even for an off-roader like this during the TurnOfTheMillennium. The rare Mercedes-Benz [=ML500=] Inspiration, an uber-luxo version produced between September 2002 and February 2004, was praised for good equipment levels, but it still suffered the same fate as the rest of the range. Also, interiors were noted for not being very durable after 5-10 years. By 2006, however, the range seemed to be better built in its second generation.
213* The 1.0, 1.6, and 2.0 Ford Ecoboost engines are very lacking in durability. Mechanics estimate their lifespan at about 125,000 miles.
214* Just like Mercedes-Benz a few years earlier, Volkswagen ended up with shoddy [[UsefulNotes/EastGermany East German]] sheet metal in The70s which affected all Volkswagen and Audi models of the era. Now, that was also when both Volkswagen and Audi completely renewed their model portfolio, and especially Volkswagen introduced the four new models Polo, Golf, Scirocco, and Passat. Add to this that rust-proofing didn't go significantly beyond paint, not to mention the copious amounts of salt dumped onto German streets each winter, and many car owners not washing their cars before spring because it wasn't worth it anyway. Many a first-generation Golf crumbled away beyond rescue within less than three years, and the first-generation Scirocco is also sometimes referred to as "Scirosto".
215
216!!Italy
217* Lamborghini is rightfully known for making {{Cool Car}}s, but the Espada was anything but. The glass in the door panels was so fragile, it could shatter if someone just bumped into the car. The engine would consistently starve itself of oil. Body corrosion would set in quickly, causing electrical faults to all the switches, which had a goofy placement layout as well. Proof that anyone who isn't careful can build an Alleged Car. And although Lamborghini's logo is a bull, ''espada'' is the Spanish term for the sword used to kill bulls after bullfights.
218* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maserati_Biturbo Maserati Biturbo]] series almost buried the brand by the end of The80s. It was a ''huge'' reach downmarket, an attempt for the supercar maker to build, for the first time, a car that would be used every day (rather than as a rich guy's toy). They proved that they had no idea what they were doing:
219** The timing belt had to be changed every 30,000 miles, which required the removal of the ''entire front section'' of the car; bumper, grill, radiator, intercoolers, fuel system, fuel and air ducts, and plenty of small parts. Once a year.
220** The valves had to be adjusted every 30,000 miles. The engine had to be ''removed from the car'' for this. Of course, you were changing the timing belt anyway, so you might as well.
221** The front wheel bearings were so poorly-made, they had to be changed [[RuleOfThree once a year]].
222** Coolant leaked regularly into the oil, at least until they fixed it in 1984. And it leaked oil like a sieve.
223** It was rear wheel-driven, yet too light in the rear, and it snapped accordingly in tight turns.
224** The [[SchizoTech printed circuit board fuse box]] had a tendency to melt for no reason whatsoever, leaving the car with no electrics running.
225* Fiat earned a reputation for making cheap, tiny, unreliable cars such that "[[FunWithAcronyms FIAT]]" was said to stand for "Fix it again, Tony" or "Failure in Automotive Technology". Most of their cars were notorious for using a lightweight, high-carbon steel in their unibody construction, making them so prone to rusting that ''Car & Driver'' called them "biodegradable". They had an even worse reputation in the U.S. and Northern Europe with more exposure to snow. The Ritmo/Strada used Soviet steel that was heavily recycled and not zinc-plated; as such, the car was infamous for rusting quickly. Very few even exist anymore, much less function. Similar rust issues plagued the early Alfa Romeo Alfasud models.
226* During the mid-1980s, Alfa Romeo partnered with Nissan to produce the Arna, which ended up having the worst of both worlds: the dubious build quality of Alfa Romeo and the frumpy design of the Nissan Pulsar. This, coupled with the Alfasud's rust issues and frequent industrial disputes, led to uninterrupted losses for Alfa Romeo between 1973 and 1986, when it was bought out by arch-rival FIAT.
227* Lancia was a once-respected manufacturer [[CreatorKiller whose reputation was permanently marred]] by two Alleged Cars, the Beta and Gamma. The Beta had a severe rusting problem to the point of many having to be scrapped. The Gamma's engine overheated very easily and had severe handling problems, and that wasn't even the worst problem with that model. Lancia's engineers decided to [[https://jalopnik.com/meet-the-car-with-an-engine-you-could-destroy-by-turnin-1846536488 use one of the engine's two camshafts to drive the power steering pump.]] Especially in early models, if you started the car with the steering wheel on full lock, or even cranked the wheel enough when you pulled out of a parking spot, the cam belt could break, destroying your engine valves. The fastback version of the Gamma also had a [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking a weirdly overengineered rear window design]]. All of this forced the brand to pull out of the United Kingdom and other right-hand drive markets in 1995, among other things, in spite of strong comebacks with the Delta and Thema models. Later on, attempts to rebadge the Chrysler Voyager and 300 as Lancias for the European market - courtesy of the Fiat-Chrysler joint venture - failed to convince buyers. As of 2022, Lancia only produces one model, the Ypsilon supermini, and it is sold only in Italy, but Stellantis has announced plans to introduce new models and reintroduce the marque to foreign markets starting in 2024.
228
229!!The Netherlands
230* DAF, a well-known maker of heavy transport trucks, decided to diversify into passenger cars in the late 1950s. The resulting DAF 600 was a decidedly quirky offering. It had a continuously variable transmission, enabling it to drive backwards just as fast as forwards and it could out-accelerate most contemporary cars from a standing stop. Unfortunately, modest engine power, terrible-to-bland styling, and automatic-only gearbox meant it gained a reputation as an uncool car fit only for budget buyers and old folks. Though it arguably sold well, the high development costs were never recouped, and DAF ultimately decided to go back to building trucks.
231
232!!Poland
233* The Tarpan 237D and 239D were 1980s Polish diesel trucks created in response to a petrol shortage in Poland. Tarpan solved the shortage by taking its pickup truck and swapped out its dedicated diesel engine with a tractor engine. The final product had 3 cylinders, 2.5 litres of engine displacement, 42 horsepower, and a 52-mph top speed. Noise was also an issue; there is an urban legend of a guy who did three hours of highway driving in a diesel Tarpan and ended up half-deaf. Even the low fuel consumption (33 mpg) and being, well, a car in a Communist country weren't enough to cover the flaws.
234* The Fiat 126p, better known in Poland as the ''Maluch'' (which translates to "toddler" or "baby"), was a licensed version of the Fiat 126 made in Poland since 1973. The only problem was that it was intended to be a car that would be affordable to a typical Polish family. Yes, a barely 10-foot-long hatchback-bodied "family car", which resulted in many, many holiday road trips which saw the compact vehicle horribly overloaded (with some passengers riding on the roof). The car's acceleration performance was rather lackluster by modern standards as it was designed for European suburban living, not racing. Build quality simply sucked too. They kept making it until 2000, even as build quality declined; at least it was cheap, with the price being an equivalent of a current $2,500, at the time one of the cheapest cars you could buy in the world. When Fiats made for export in Poland replaced the Italian-made ones in 1980, the Germans, who were the first to get the new model, deemed them all faulty. Its only positive contributions to the world are [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5BvRRXfzV8 this fancy Fiat 126p]] that resulted from Creator/TomHanks getting his picture in one for laughs and WebVideo/DankPods buying one to fix up for some reason.
235* The FSO Syrena started production in 1955, and at the time it wasn't a bad car aside from unreliable drive joints. But production continued until 1983, by which time the Syrena was hilariously outdated and badly built. By the 2000s, you could get a running one for as low as 50 PLZ, which is about $15 in today's money.
236
237!!Romania
238* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citroën_Axel Oltcit/Citroen Axel]] was a paradoxical endeavor of a car. It was very high-tech for the time, with a four-wheel independent suspension with torsion bars, an air-cooled flat engine, and a highly efficient braking system. It was extremely lightweight and very maneuverable. Unfortunately, it was made in The80s in Romania, when practically ''everything'' was rationed, and the Communists insisted that everything be as cheap as possible. This led to a car whose brake rotors wore themselves thin and cracked, whose bodywork could rust to flakes, whose ignition system would absorb water and stall the car, and whose carburetor would mis-adjust and draw fuel like crazy. The few that survived into the 1990s would be [[VindicatedByHistory fixed by enthusiasts]] and can now [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=854x39CqT8U compete against Lamborghinis.]]
239
240!!Serbia / Yugoslavia
241* The export version of the Zastava Koral, better known as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugo Yugo]], is the Hollywood benchmark for the Alleged Car. It was considered the epitome of the tiny, inefficient, undrivable Eastern European car. It was ''better'' than most other cars from the region; Americans are familiar with it because it was pretty much the only such car that could actually pass safety and emissions tests and be ''allowed'' to be imported and sold for so long. It was treated as a cheap, disposable car and rarely properly maintained, exacerbating its poor reputation, and it didn't help that it came from [[UsefulNotes/{{Yugoslavia}} a country]] that [[BalkanizeMe ceased to exist by the 1990s]]. To add insult to injury, the factory was bombed during the Kosovo War in 1999, as it was also producing weapons. On its reputation alone, ''Radio/CarTalk'' rated it "Worst Car of the Millennium". The car was marketed in the US by Malcolm Bricklin, the same who brought the Subaru 360 to the US and created the Bricklin [=SV1=].
242
243!!Turkey
244* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devrim Devrim]], the first Turkish-produced car, had this reputation despite not really deserving it; in particular, its first test drive by then-President Cemal Gürsel was a disaster because they forgot to fill the gas tank, and it very publicly stopped after only 100 meters. This caused the press and the public to think of it as an Alleged Car, and it never sold well.
245
246!!Ukraine
247* Within Ukraine, the most famous Alleged Car is the Zaporozhych [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saporoshez_ZAZ_965_A.JPG ZAZ-965]], an ultra-compact inspired by the Fiat 600. It wasn't a bad car ''per se'', but it was incredibly small and cheap even for a Soviet car. Because it was a Soviet car, no one cared about performance, speed, or handling, and things kept falling off. But being a Soviet car also meant that it could take some level of abuse and be fixed with PercussiveMaintenance. Even in East Germany, the only redeeming quality of a "Saporosch" over a Trabant was that it was readily available instead of receiving it 12 years after placing the order. And due to its off-road qualities, its owners were considered rustic.
248
249!!United Kingdom
250* The 1976 Aston Martin Lagonda was a beautiful luxury sedan filled with cutting-edge electronics and gadgets, [[AwesomeButImpractical all of which refused to work]]. It got worse with later models, specifically the Series 3 from 1986-90, which initially replaced the BoringButPractical 7-segment displays of the early models with power-hungry CRT monitors.
251* The Austin Allegro is one of the most famous British examples of an Alleged Car. It was widely derided on its launch for its odd styling[[note]](the original styling proposal by Harris Mann featured a sleek, wedge-like design similar to the Austin Princess, but internal company politics forced the designers to reuse the engine and heating system from the Morris Marina, making it impossible to incorporate the low bonnet line as envisaged and giving the end result its rotund appearance)[[/note]] (such as the quirky square steering wheel, known as a "[[InsistentTerminology quartic]]") and numerous design problems, which were very much the result of a myriad of issues with British Leyland - including chaotic industrial relations, behind-the-times management, obsolete engineering and the fact that its various brands (Austin, Morris, Rover, Triumph, etc.) operated in silos. [[WeAreStrugglingTogether The internal rivalry]] ''within the Austin brand'' led to the outright-idiotic decision to make the car a saloon (sedan), even though ''the body was hatchback-shaped'' as the contemporary Austin Maxi was already being marketed as a hatchback and somehow had exclusive rights to that design feature. Richard Porter once wrote that "the only bit of the Allegro they got even vaguely right was the rust-proofing", HilariousInHindsight considering that Allegros are now well-known for having rust problems. The Allegro's issues were so widely publicized that British Leyland actually created new training videos (most notably "The Quality Connection") for its workers to show them how to put cars together better than they were currently doing. The ''Daily Telegraph'' [[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/2730673/Model-ideas-some-highs-and-lows.html?image=2 wrote]] that "the most charitable explanation for how this car entered production is that it was part of a successful Communist plot to destroy Britain's motor industry". Going further, in the Series 3 finale of ''Series/TheGrandTour'', Creator/RichardHammond stated that in his childhood in Birmingham, he had the misfortune to have a father who owned an Allegro instead of a Ford Cortina (which the fathers of Hammond's co-presenters Creator/JeremyClarkson and Creator/JamesMay had). He even smashed up an Allegro with a baseball bat as a result.
252* British Leyland's other attempt at a 1970s small family car, the Morris Marina, was just as bad - although unlike the Allegro, the Marina was ''never intended'' to be visually innovative or particularly interesting (by the 1970s, BL was trying to introduce distinctions between its various brands, the result being that conservative, traditionally-engineered cars were marketed under the Morris name, while Austins tended to be more adventurous - from an innovations perspective at any rate). One of the many cost-cutting measures that affected the Marina's development was that the front suspension was largely derived from the Morris Minor, the car it was intended to replace (and which had first rolled off the production line in 1948). Very few examples survive today, a fact attributable not just to the Marina's general crappiness (and poor rust-proofing) but also because for a time the one thing going for it was its status as a "donor" car - Marinas could easily be stripped for parts to aid in the restoring of more popular models (the 1275cc engine, for example, could easily be fitted into an MG Midget or a Triumph Spitfire). You only have to see ''Top Gear''[='s=] RunningGag about the Marina to know how awful the car truly is. James May has stated that at least one Marina should be preserved for all time, as a warning to future generations.
253* British Leyland had yet another massive failure with the Rover [=SD1=], but this one really hurts because with just a little bit more effort it could've been a really good car. With a body that looked somewhat like a Ferrari California but with enough space in the back for the kids, married to the stalwart Rover V8 engine so beloved of the British off-roading and muscle-car communities, the [=SD1=] looked slick, had some oomph, and could've been a real contender, but the depressingly familiar Leyland hallmarks of terrible build quality and endless strikes stymied it. You just couldn't get your hands on one, and when you finally did there'd be bits of trim falling off it and the paint would have quite obvious runs that had never been fixed. In spite of its rather stunning exterior, the same could not be said of the interior which was adorned with a typically horrible 70s colour pallette (think vomit yellow, brown, and orange). It was also not devoid of bone-headed design flaws: for example, instead of designing two dashboards for left- and right-hand-drive markets, they simply made it modular and symmetrical, with the instrument binnacle being bolted to the side appropriate for the market the car was going to be sold in. That might have seemed like a good idea on paper, but in practice this meant that there was a hole on the passenger side dashboard where the steering column would have gone had the car been sold in a different market, which would be poorly disguised with a ventilation duct. This vent looked hideous and precluded the installation of a proper glove box.
254* The Reliant Robin can't easily be considered an Alleged Car, because it's hard to classify it ''as'' a car. It has two defining features: it has three wheels with a single wheel in front, and it rolls over a lot. It may be the only car in history to roll over 360 degrees from turning too hard. In the UK, it was officially classified as a motorcycle and only required a motorcycle licence, which made it more popular, especially OopNorth. The Robin became something of an icon in British pop culture due to this.
255** The blue van in ''Series/MrBean'' and the yellow van in ''Series/OnlyFoolsAndHorses'' are commonly mistaken for Robins, but are actually [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliant_Regal Reliant Regals]] - the Regal being the Robin's van equivalent. They share the same characteristics, including the frequent rolling. The closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games had a Regal in it, though it didn't tip over - it [[StuffBlowingUp exploded]], a nod to both ''Only Fools and Horses'' (the thing was recognisably done up in "Trotters Independent Traders" livery) and ''[[Film/TheItalianJob1969 The Italian Job]]'' (after the explosion, Creator/MichaelCaine's famous line "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!" was played on the PA system).
256** Somehow, this didn't stop ''Top Gear'' from turning one into a space shuttle. Predictably, it rolled over in mid-flight, crashed, ''and'' exploded.
257** ''VideoGame/{{Forza}} Horizon 4'' had a field day with the supervan during the insurance claim missions. First, the one available in-game has crude training wheels bolted to the front corner panels to keep it upright. Then the entire trip to the test site is basically listing the vehicle's reputation and flaws. Finally, after taking the thing off a massive jump, it proves so lightweight the insurance adjuster manages to deny a claim about [[NoodleIncident crashing one into a church roof]] by stating that [[RefugeInAudacity the events as claimed would have made the car hit the belfry instead]].
258* The Rootes Group, once a major British carmaker, came unstuck in the 1960s with the Hillman Imp, an outdated, poorly built rust bucket put together by an inexperienced workforce recruited mainly from the idled shipbuilding industry. It single-handedly led to the company's takeover by Chrysler and subsequent long-term decline.
259** Chrysler didn't fare much better, as they then rolled out the Hillman Avenger in North America as [[http://www.carlustblog.com/2012/06/plymouth-cricket.html the 1971-73 Plymouth Cricket]]. It also featured poor workmanship and tendency to rust like crazy. To add insult to injury to the Chrysler-Plymouth dealers, the Dodge sales channel got the far better Mitsubishi-sourced Colt.
260* From 1948-78, the National Health Service leased to the disabled what were basically Reliant Robins but even smaller, commonly known as "spaz chariots". Various companies produced these, including [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invacar Invacar]] and AC Cars (the very same who produced the AC Cobra sports car [[MarketBasedTitle sold as the Shelby Cobra in the States]]), but they all shared common features such as the "Ministry Blue" colour scheme, dubious styling, and being rather unsafe to use on public roads, to the point the NHS recalled and scrapped the ones they still owned in 2003 (some examples still exist in the hands of private owners). AC Cars in particular, while still producing UpdatedRerelease Cobras today, [[CreatorBacklash has removed any mentions of the spaz chariots from their history sites]].
261* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_Industries Lucas Industries]] was a major subcontractor for several British auto manufacturers, including British Leyland. They had a spotty reputation for building nearly non-functional electrical components, even in otherwise-nice British sports cars; enthusiasts called the company founder "the Prince of Darkness".[[note]]Incidentally enough, the company was also based in Birmingham where the founding members of the heavy metal band Music/BlackSabbath grew up in, one of them Music/OzzyOsbourne who adopted the same nickname as part of his stage image. Both Ozzy and his mother were former Lucas Industries employees.[[/note]] British cars also tended to have electrical circuits without fuses, so if something in the electrics went wrong, there was nothing to protect the system and it was now a fire risk. Their electronics were particularly unreliable in harsh climates, a major factor in British cars' bad reputation in Scandinavia. It's so legendary that when Lane Pryce of ''Series/MadMen'' tries to use his brand-new Jaguar to [[spoiler:commit suicide by running the exhaust into the cabin]], everyone got the joke when the car wouldn't start.
262* While the third-generation Vauxhall Viva performed reliably in its own market, it quickly gained notoriety in North America for its disastrous attempted export it to Canada through GM in The70s. GM called it the "Firenza" and marketed it as a "tough little fun car". But it was downright dangerous with brake failures, accelerator pedals getting stuck, total steering failure, parts falling off, and engine fires. GM tried to salvage the car's reputation by driving four Firenzas from Halifax to UsefulNotes/{{Vancouver}} in the dead of Winter in order to demonstrate that they were ideal for cold, tough Canadian conditions; even though the cars had been modified with block heaters for the trip (which GM claimed they didn't have), two of them still had trouble starting and [[EveryCarIsAPinto one of them caught fire]]. When GM tried to cover this up, they got fined for false advertising. The car was the subject of Canada's first-ever class-action lawsuit and lasted two years before it was withdrawn, having utterly destroyed the already-shaky reputation of British manufacturing in Canada in the process. To quote the Canadian car magazine ''[[http://www.autofocus.ca/news-events/features/the-firenza-fiasco-is-the-canadian-nader-corvair-affair-you-never-heard-about Autofocus]]'', who referred to the car as "Canada's equivalent to the Nader-Corvair affair":
263-->''On May 14, 1973, three days after the [Ministry of Transport] closed its investigation, the Dissatisfied Firenza Owners Association in Ottawa staged a 32-car protest outside of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill. Two of the Firenzas caught fire [[EpicFail during the protest]].''
264* The Jaguar X-Type was effectively Britain's version of the Cadillac Cimarron in the sense that it was little more than a barely-modified Ford Mondeo with the front end of a Jaguar bolted on. Not too many people were impressed by it, though [[https://jalopnik.com/why-youre-wrong-about-the-jaguar-x-type-1788638563 it does have its defenders]].
265* The 1999-2007 Jaguar S-Type was effectively Britain's version of the Chrysler PT Cruiser. While initially praised for its comfortable ride and performance, its retro styling, inspired by the classic 1960s S-Type, aged very poorly and soon invited unfavourable comparisons to the Rover 75, whose design also employed a retro style but in what many considered a less forced and more organic manner. ''Series/TopGear''[='s=] James May was especially critical of the S-Type, describing the styling, particularly the radiator grille, as "goppingly awful" and saying that it pandered to common stereotypes of British culture held in America and Germany, whose markets he believed it was primarily designed to appeal to.
266* While the Triumph [=TR7=] was, generally speaking, an okay vehicle, it suffered from some questionable styling choices. It was originally designed to be a roadster, but was initially only available with an oddly-shaped permanent roof due to fears that proposed new safety regulations in the U.S. - its intended market - would effectively prohibit the sale of convertibles there. Said regulations also required the addition of a clunky 5mph bumper to the front fascia, which proved impossible to integrate harmoniously with the rest of the car's thin wedge-like aesthetic. [[note]](A popular UrbanLegend states that legendary automotive designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, when examining a [=TR7=] at a car show, looked disapprovingly at the odd lines these features caused, then walked to the passenger's side and commented "My god, they did it to the other side, too!")[[/note]] Early models also suffered from severe quality control problems due to the internal issues affecting British Leyland at the time. Quality improved considerably when production was moved to the Canley plant in Coventry, and later Solihull, but it wasn't enough to save the [=TR7=]'s reputation, and it was ultimately withdrawn from the market in 1981, with Triumph itself folding three years later. [[LegacyCharacter The reborn Triumph brand now exclusively sells motorcycles afterwards, and never looked back]].
267[[/folder]]
268
269[[folder:Racing]]
270* The [[https://web.archive.org/web/20111211124209/http://www.f1rejects.com/teams/andreamoda/profile.html Andrea Moda]] and the [[https://web.archive.org/web/20120204035237/http://f1rejects.com/teams/life/profile.html Life]] cars from the 1990s rarely made it beyond the end of the pitlane. One of the Moda's unfortunate pilots was Perry [=McCarthy=] (aka the first [[Series/TopGearUK Stig]]), who posed for photographers in a faux-triumphal pose next to its silent form when it ground to a halt after a few hundred metres. The Life was a repurposed Formula 3000 chassis with a W12 engine instead of the conventional V8/10/12 (which wouldn't even fit inside the chassis, as proven when they tried to go back to basics in their dying moments), and was usually about ''20'' seconds off the pace. Needless to say, both their entries were a sham from start to finish.
271* Despite decent pace, a supposedly huge budget, and 1997 driver's champion Jacques Villeneuve on their side, British American Racing had a disastrous debut season in 1999. The car had frequent technical issues; both drivers could only finish twice and retired six times. Villeneuve in particular was forced to retire from 12 of the 16 races. BAR was the only team not to have scored any points that season when both Arrows and Minardi had finished with one point each, their best result being just shy of that - a seventh place from Mika Salo (who, later that same season, would cover for an injured Michael Schumacher at Ferrari) in San Marino.
272* In 1997, the [[https://web.archive.org/web/20120530120304/http://f1rejects.com/teams/lola/profile.html Lola]] team attempted to enter the scene with sponsorship from [=MasterCard=]. They expected to get their cars ready for the 1998 season, and so work had to begin in 1996, but ExecutiveMeddling from [=MasterCard=] resulted in the cars being rushed out of the garage for the immediately following year. Thus, while a respected livery maker for other categories, Lola had to make do with a couple of largely untested, ineffective cars that had no hope of reaching the 107% qualifying cutoff. The constructor folded right after their first entry, while [=MasterCard=] got off the fiasco scot-free. At Melbourne, both Sospiri and Rosset did not qualify, as they were respectively 11.6 and 12.7 seconds off the pace.
273* Penske Racing had a long and glorious history of success in [=IndyCar=], but in 1995 they came up with a real lemon in the Penske PC-24. The year after Penske's race team practically lapped the field in the 1994 Indianapolis 500 with a Mercedes-Benz 500I engine [[LoopholeAbuse that exploited some gaps in USAC's rulebook]], they seemed sure to be top contenders the following year. But deprived of their advantage, they also got saddled with the PC-24 - an ill-handling chassis coupled with an underpowered engine that was incapable of the high speeds and precision control Indy demanded. Within the first week and without even attempting to qualify for the 1995 Indy 500 in them, both Penske drivers (Al Unser Jr. and Emerson Fittipaldi) had abandoned their rides for either year-old Penskes or Lolas that were loaned from another team. Unser failed to qualify, and Fittipaldi was bumped from the field, shutting Penske out of the race for the first time in 30 years.
274* The Mercedes-Benz [[FragileSpeedster 300 SLR]] performed well in the 1955 World Sportscar Championship season, but it had a flawed braking system ([[AwesomeButImpractical oversized drum brakes]] with [[JustPlaneWrong a wind brake spoiler]]). It's best known for causing the worst crash in the history of the UsefulNotes/TwentyFourHoursOfLeMans, when it flew off the track during a crash and cartwheeled through a spectator's enclosure before catching fire, ultimately causing the deaths of at least 84 people, including the driver. This forced Mercedes-Benz to withdraw their entire racing program immediately and not return until The80s.
275** A big reason for the high death toll (putting aside the fact that the only thing separating the track from the crowd was a low mound of dirt)[[note]](the modern catch fence was invented because of this disaster)[[/note]] was the car's magnesium body, chosen because magnesium is lighter than steel. Unfortunately, it burns at incredibly high temperatures once on fire. Also, attempting to douse a magnesium fire with water causes a chemical reaction that produces explosive hydrogen gas which then ignites and throws shards of superheated metal around, ''spreading'' the blaze instead of putting it out. Whether the fire crews didn't know not to use water on magnesium fires or didn't know the car wasn't steel to begin with is still up for debate.
276* The Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR/LM enjoyed decent success in 1990s sports car racing, winning the first two manufacturers' championships in the now-defunct FIA GT championship. Its follow-up, the CLR, was much worse. Despite performing decently in testing, its debut at the 1999 24 Hours of Le Mans revealed some rather serious aerodynamic issues when the car suddenly lifted straight into the air and somersaulted off the track. Understandably, that was the car's only competitive appearance.
277* The [[WackyRacing 24 Hours]] [[http://www.24hoursoflemons.com/ of LeMons]] ''(sic)'' involves racing an entire ''field'' of Alleged Cars for between 14 and 24 hours over two days. The car must have a net value of $500 at the time of the race, not counting the cost of safety equipment. You can sell parts of the car to "lower" its value. If you exceed the value, you're charged one penalty lap for every $10 over, so you effectively can't win by spending money. They're willing to waive those rules for [[WhatAPieceOfJunk sufficiently awesome cars]], though they will also handicap anything that looks like it's going to be too advanced for the field. In [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness the beginning]], officials were even allowed to make random superficial modifications during the race itself purely for [[ItAmusedMe their own amusement]]. As you can tell, nobody takes the race itself seriously, and you can get prizes for being the ''least'' likely to finish the race. The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undie_500 Undie 500]] is a similar rally held in UsefulNotes/NewZealand.
278* The entire point of the sport known as ''Jokamiehenluokka'' in Finnish and ''Folkrace'' in Swedish is rallycross in cars like this (albeit with racing safety gear). To ensure that nobody starts putting up any "sleeper" cars with expensive mods, all participating cars (minus the mandatory safety gear) are put up for sale after the race at a set price between $500 and $1,500 US, and refusing to sell is cause for immediate revocation of competition license.
279%%Not an example - he fixed it! But maybe there's more to it than is obvious.* In 2010, a self-taught mechanic and racing driver named Bill Caswell bought a [[https://jalopnik.com/5497042/how-a-500-craigslist-car-beat-400k-rally-racers 1991 BMW on Craigslist for $500]], taught himself how to add an FIA-certified roll cage, and brought it to Mexico to race against professional rally drivers with cars worth over $400,000. Despite having almost no budget and doing all the ''very'' regular repair work himself and with a friend, [[WhatAPieceOfJunk he came in]] '''[[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome third]]'''.
280* The [[https://racer.com/2022/05/26/retro-the-wild-tale-of-1982s-eagle-aviation-flyer-indycar/ Eagle Aircraft Flyer]] is a disastrous mess of a car that tried unsuccessfully to qualify for the 1982 Indianapolis 500 and is probably the greatest Alleged Car of that race's long history. This was well into the era of aerodynamics - when racing designers understood that aerofoils and shaped undersides creating "ground effect" low pressure would give cars much higher downforce and thus cornering speeds. Yet bizarrely, this car, made by a light aircraft company, did not have either. It was also weirdly long, sticking the driver right at the front and the engine far in the rear, making it unwieldy as well as slow, and so slapdash that some parts of the body were made from plywood. The team was so badly run that the driver had to take charge, desperately paying for a rear wing to be made up and fixed on before the whole project was abandoned. Needless to say, the ''Flyer'' did not qualify for the race.
281* The White ''Triplex'' was a 1920s attempt to set a world speed record and designed to do that [[CripplingOverspecialization and nothing else]]. It had three aircraft piston engines, giving the Triplex an engine capacity of ''81 litres'' (the average modern fast car has three). It also had four wheels and a steering column. And it had a spot for the driver in the middle, where he would be bombarded with noise and heat. And that was about it - there was no transmission, no gearbox, and no aerodynamics other than a bluff triangular nose. The record keepers doubted that it ''was'' a "car" and asked if it could go in reverse - and the builders responded by hitching a detachable third axle that could slowly drag the car backwards, and that satisfied them. And amazingly, this lash-up ''did'' set a world record in 1928, going over 200 mph in the hands of Indianapolis champion driver Ray Keech, who [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere promptly declined]] to drive it again. A different (and less experienced) driver tried to use it a year later and the whole thing crashed, taking him and two bystanders with it.
282* The Citroën C3 WRC gained a rather dubious reputation with both fans and drivers of the UsefulNotes/WorldRallyChampionship for its poor handling and occasional mechanical issues. In Germany and in Catalunya, Esapekka Lappi was forced to retire due to terminal engine failure, and Sébastien Ogier's C3 sustained a power steering pump issue which not only forced him to retire but which ended his championship reign. Ogier's wife [[https://sport.delfi.ee/news/auto/wrc/ogier-naine-soimas-sotsiaalmeedias-citroeni-kuidas-te-istutate-maailmameistri-sellisesse-autosse-shitroen?id=87869763 lashed out]] at Citroën on Twitter (and deleted the tweet, not that [[StreisandEffect it helped]]), and Ogier himself put it simply: "I cannot drive this car."
283* The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buick_Indy_V6_engine Buick Indy V6]] is perhaps open-wheel racing's most legendary GlassCannon. Introduced in 1982 as a cost-effective engine option for the increasingly-expensive [[UsefulNotes/IndyCar CART series]], it became known for being a V6 engine that could produce even more horsepower and torque than the V8 engines that dominated the series, but failed to catch on mainly due to one reason-- ''horrible'' reliability. While they would perform well during practice and qualifying sessions, they would inevitably and quickly blow under extended racing conditions. This ended up limiting their usage to small race teams that only ran the Indianapolis 500, as the big teams preferred to stick with the much more reliable Ford-Cosworth, Chevrolet, and other V8 engines instead. While Buick managed to solve the reliability problems somewhat by the early [=1990s=], resulting in a lot more Buick-powered cars managing to complete the 500 and the engine seeing more use outside Indianapolis, it never managed to completely shake the reputation it had gained over the past decade. It would officially lose manufacturer support in 1993 and continued without the Buick badge as the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buick/Menard_V6_Indy_engine Menard Indy V6]]; it would see use in the more cash-strapped IRL, but shared its predecessor's tendency for failures and blowups.
284[[/folder]]

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