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50 Worst Cars of All Time
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Good Lord, I hope not! That Neon 2.0 can be traced back to the old 2.2 that first debuted in the 1981 Aries/Reliant! :surprise: Although to its benefit, it was designed by the same guy who did the Slant six, so it was at least fairly simple, easy to service, and cheap to fix (at least, the older 2.2/2.5...dunno about the more recent 2.0/2.4 variants)
The 1.6 engine I was thinking of is the Tritec engine built by Chrysler in Brazil, which was used in non-US market PT Cruiser. I wonder if it was also used on non-USA Neons?
This stunning recommendation comes from Ward's Auto:
"“It was a very old-fashioned engine, cast iron and only one camshaft but four valves per cylinder, so there is no flexibility on valve train. This engine was just a very cheap engine, but also not very effective on function, performance and fuel efficiency.”
Incidentally, Chrysler sold Neons in Brazil. I saw a first generation Neon in a Chrysler showroom in Rio, and it actually had a leather interior. I don't know which engine(s) the Brazilian Neons had, but maybe that 1.6 was the base engine.
If my memory serves me right, BMW teamed up with Peugeot for the current generation MINI engine.
BMW prides itself on, and in fact has built its reputation on, its engines. The shift to the Peugeot-sourced engine was a vast improvement.
The early base MINI with the 1.6 Brazil engine + a CVT transmission is not a car you want to own.
A shame..as others have pointed out, they were nice little cars.
I drove several 9rental cars0, and they handled well and had planty of power.
I can't remember the last time I saw a Neon coupe.
Andre, as our undisputed in house Mopar expert, what do you think about the '02 and later Neons?
I don't think they're too bad, although there are some details I don't like. If Chrysler had thrown a few more bucks into the interior, and let you get power rear windows (if you ordered power, you only got it for the front, rear windows were still crank!), and started offering a 4-speed automatic earlier on, I think it would have been a much more competitive car.
I was always impressed by the interior room of the Neon...both generations. The seats in something like a Corolla or Civic might have been better designed, but the best-designed seats in the world are useless if you don't have enough room!
A few years back, one of my friends had a Neon for a rental when his Crown Vic was in the shop. He was griping about how small and cheap it felt, but to be fair, when you have a bias towards bigger cars, MOST little cars are going to feel cheap to you. And his bias is worse than mine! Still, I rode around some in it with him and another friend, and thought it was okay.
If I needed a small, cheap car and found one at a decent price, I wouldn't be ashamed of it...even though there are better things out there.
I know back years ago when aftermarket performance parts for MINIs were way too expensive some of the hi-po neon components would work on the MINI. You could use the upgraded mopar performance coil packs for example on a MINI no problem.
I bet a SC 1.6 from a MINI would fit in a Neon no problem. Would be a hot, hot car too.
Imagine an ACR Neon with that motor, a smaller pulley, a big front mount intercooler and ignition upgrades would net you over 200 hp.
I guess I'm in the minority, but my 1998 Dodge Neon (just turned 111,000 miles yesterday) has held up pretty well and has been a surprisingly reliable car for me. I've had it for 6 years now and haven't had any problems with it (other than the cruise control not working).
It is a cheap car, for sure, but it's fun to drive, peppy, and has a design that has aged pretty well, imo (can't say the same for the second generation). I still see a fair number of them on the road.
My experience with Neons is all allegorical, I don't think I've ever even ridden in one. I do have a friend who bought an earlier variety when she first married (1997 or so) and I do know her head gasket went out pretty quickly, though I don't know if it happened during or after the warranty period.
Cavaliers and Sunfires, while not exactly desirable, seem to hold up OK mechanically (like I said, I see them constantly), or maybe they're just cheap to fix? The same doesn't hold true with the bodies or interiors, most look like crap, although part of that may be due to what I'll refer to as Cheap Car Syndrome: they're more likely to be owned by young families with kids, uninsured (or unable to pay deductibles), and less likely to be babied in the first place, or repaired if something is damaged (there's a Cobalt on the next block that probably still has a payment book, but also has had a huge dent next to its front door for the past year or two).
The daughter's boyfriend has a bright yellow Neon that looks to be in great shape. Well, cosmetically anyway - can't vouch for it mechanically though.
As for those Cavaliers and Sunfires, from what I've heard, they actually are pretty reliable...it's just that they annoy you along the way with a bad ride, squeaks and rattles, bad seat comfort, minor things breaking off, etc. But the drivetrains are reliable enough that you'll put up with the car long after many other cars have bit the dust.
I wonder...how do old Ford Focuses hold up, in comparison? I know when the 2000 came out, it quickly reached the ranks of the 1980 Citation and 1976 Aspen/Volare as most recalled car in history. But a lot of recalls doesn't always mean an unreliable car, provided the cars were fixed properly. Also, the Focus seemed like a car that got improved alot along the way, with increased attention to quality and details, so even if the first year or two might've been bad, they got better in later years.
I remember the electrical issue would make the car stall at random times, especially when pulling up to lights etc. Whatever it was, it was fixed.
I see a lot of old Escorts on the road.
He spent his honeymoon in a garage in Sparks, NV replacing the engine and transmission with a wrecked police car's engine and tranny. Then it was OK.
After our family grew out of the Corvair, it was replaced by a '67 Ford Country Sedan 390 & that was one of the best wagons we ever had.
My first car was a 66 Galaxie with a 390-4...this was in the early 90s, the car looked excellent but man that carb drove me insane. Guzzled gas like nothing I have ever seen, terribly cold blooded, either ran rich or lean...made me a FI convert.
Kind of a shame she didn't hold on to that one, as I would've loved to have had something like that! But, as a junior in high school, how was she to know that one day she'd get married and have a son who would ultimately grow up to have a fascination with these Forward Look beasts?
But, alas, I didn't reach driving age until 1986. I'm sure that '57 Plymouth would've been shot by then unless it had been kept garaged and lovingly maintained. And if she kept my father away from it. He had her '66 Catalina convertible pretty ragged out by 1972!
Six years old seems barely broken-in to me now, in most cases.
Lemko, I'm think the base V-8 in '66 Fords would have been that 289 you mentioned (available in at least a couple variations; I think the 302 debuted for '68), and the next step up would have been a 390 2-barrel (351s didn't come along til maybe '69 or '70, IIRC) and going up from there (390 four-barrel, and a couple 428s).
I remember when my car got hit, the first thing I thought about was the grille being bent up, as mine was virtually flawless. The car wa ruined, but the grille hit my mind first.
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I don't think the 301 in general had a bad reputation. However, the '57 Plymouth was wildly popular, more than Chrysler had anticipated, so they were slapping the things together as quickly as possible to keep up with demand. As a result, normally-reliable components such as the engine and the Torqueflite transmission were slapped together faster as well, ensuring a higher failure rate. A 301 is just one size of the generic Mopar smallblock "A" engine. Other sizes were the 277, 318, and 326 (1959 Dodge only). Mopar also offered a 325 that was used in 1957 DeSoto Firesweeps and '57-58 Dodges, but I think it was a different engine.
Further up the ranks, while Dodge, DeSoto, Chrysler, and Imperial were all strong sellers in 1957, they also sold on smaller volume, so they weren't quite as rushed. My DeSoto has a 341-2bbl Hemi. They were heavy, took up a lot of space, and were expensive to build and somewhat complicated for the time, but generally reliable, and gave good hp and economy considering their displacement.
Part of this isn't really the car's "fault"---in those days styling was vibrant, wacky and irrational, and some cars were put together in such a way as to invite immediate destruction from water intrusion, salt, etc. Some had little "traps" behind the wheels, perfect for accumulating road debris. Others had moldings that acted as little dams and catch-alls for water. Some had such body flex or bizarre curvatures, that water easily got behind front and rear windshield seals.
Funny thing, the 289 Fairlane my dad had didn't have any problems like that.
The 302 was a good little engine but it had a weakness---stretching timing chains.
Probably the crappiest Ford ever made after WWII was the 60 Falcon with the 144 cid 6 in it. That made a VW feel like a Bentley Mulsanne. GM entered the crappy car race with the Vega, but Chrysler just couldn't make that bad a car. The early '60s Rambler American was another contender. I can still remember that the labels on the instrument panel were actually water-based decals like you got on model airplanes. AND they had flathead 6s and rubber floor mats. In their defense, they were CHEAP to buy.
Hey, my fintail has rubber floormats, and it wasn't even a cheap car!
It's funny...the Valiant had the shortest wheelbase of those early Big-Three compacts...106.5" versus 108" for the Corvair and something like 109.5 for the Falcon. Yet the Valiant almost feels midsized to me, while there's no denying the other two are compacts.
I have a feeling those old 108" Ramblers would have also been classified as midsized cars, had there been such a term in the 50's.
In 1961, if I wanted a small car, I think I might have been swayed by the Olds F-85. I think all of GM's "senior" compacts looked good that year, but there's just something about the F-85 that appeals to me.
I forgot about the Lark. Clunky thing, but later ones were fun with a V8 and 4-speed.
I had a '65 Valiant with a 4-speed. I liked that car.
Yeah it did, but at the time the typical 1961 buyer didn't know that. So if I were buying a car like that back then, I probably would have bought one, have it melt down, and then get so fed up that I swore off GM forever!
On that note, I know sometimes we fantasize about being able to go back in time and buy some of these cars when they were new, but sometimes, that might not be a good thing. For example, as much as I love the '57 DeSoto, I could see it if I was living back then, buying one for the styling, having it be nothing but trouble for me, and irritating me enough that I'd never buy another Mopar! And today I'd be a bitter old man on these message boards, griping about what a piece of junk that thing was!