Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I consider the Pacer to be the worst US car design ever.  It got poor fuel economy for its size, it added width instead of length which is not very useful, it handled abominably, it accelerated glacially, it was very heavy with all that glass, and it was ugly.

It was worse than the Mustang II, which was at least a glorified Pinto.

the Pinto and the Vega were horrid

Probably not. Cars are designed by computers for optimal wind tunnel performance, to reduce gas mileage and meet CAFE standards.

Unless tail fins reduce drag, I don't think they'll be seen again unless we find some completely free and clean and unlimited energy source.

Counterpoint:

Unless tail fins reduce drag, I don't think they'll be seen again unless we find some completely free and clean and unlimited energy source.

Hmm, if only.....

I actually liked the lines on my '83 Fox body.  It wasn't anything like the beautiful versions of the 60s, but I certainly considered it to be much better than this:

That's a '73 model.
In February 1968, Semon "Bunkie" Knudsen resigned as Executive VP of GM to become President of FOMOCO.  He brought with him a guy named Larry Shinoda who had been working with Chevy performance cars, especially Corvettes.  A lot of what became the '63 Corvette were Shinoda's design concepts, and he designed the "Mako Shark" show car that eventually morphed into the '68 Corvette.
So Knudsen and Shinoda came to Ford and the '69-70 Mustangs were already set.  Shinoda was able to create the Boss 302 both as a racecar and a street model, filling the holes for fake scoops up and forward of the rear wheel openings in the process.  But Knudsen had bigger, more luxurious things in mind for the Mustang and the '71-73 Mustangs were the result.  It had an inch-longer wheelbase, but it seemed like it was a foot longer and a thousand pounds heavier.  But there was virtually no more interior room than in previous models.
Knudsen ran afoul of internal Ford politics (and Lee Iacocca) and was fired in Sep 1969.  But the big, fat, boatlike Mustangs were already set in stone for production starting in the late spring of 1970.
Whether that thing was better or worse than a Mustang II is just a pick-your-poison argument, IMO.
There was one good performance model amongst all those boats--the 1971 Boss 351.  They didn't make very many of them.  They are collector's items now.


Car and Driver did a review of the Boss 351, even as it was already being canceled, and their test car was yellow, so I still see a yellow one in my head if I think about them.

Wort car designed? Sure, but it wasn't pawned off as the latest version of a muscle car classic.

That's not to say it didn't suck in a truly epic sense. It did. And it's in the pantheon of all that was wrong with 1970s car design for sure. Different kinds of abominations, I suppose.

Slightly back on topic. When I was a teenager, the Karmann Ghia was still around in significant numbers--not huge--but enough that they were fun looking oddities. They didn't drive sporty, but they looked sporty, and that was enough for me. Not too surprising for someone who salivates over the '55 MB SL.

Karmann Ghias remind me of this C/D cover story.  If you can't read it, it says "The Last Porsche Speedster is . . . a Karmann Ghia."

my first car, but with the small block 300 hp 350, not the 396





the oil coolers in the hood were not functional

Wondered what that '69 Z would fetch today?Prolly not much after I drove and worked on it