[Tigers] FW: Complete List - The 50 Worst Cars of All Time - TIME

[Marc James Small]

At 04:53 PM 9/10/2007, Stu Brennan wrote:
 >How bad were early Japanese cars?  I was at the New York Auto show, '71
 >maybe '72, when it was at that convention center that was (IIRC) right
 >at the SW corner of Central Park.  Same place that the Lincoln Center
 >Jazz venue is now?

Uh?  Early Japanese cars in the US were in the
late 1950's.  By 1971, the Japanese had pretty
well figured out the US market and kenw that if
they made a car on which the rear-view mirror
would stay in place for 75,000 miles, they would
be regarded as winners.  The Japanese were given
an incredible and unanticipated boost in 1973
when the Germans were forced to abandon the "four
to the dollar" Bundesmark -- it immediately went
to forty cents -- and this crashed Volkswagen,
the other quality inexpensive breed at the time,
while forcing BMW to move to its current luxury mode.

Lists such as this are essentially silly.  You
have to determine the criteria in use.  Take
CONSUMER REPORTS:  their standards are for
reliable, dull, suburban people-movers.  Go back
and reread their reviews from the 1960's and
1970's and learn how a review can be cooked to
accommodate Middle America and its meaningless virtues.

Marc


msmall at aya.yale.edu
Cha robh b`s fir gun ghr`s fir!