1. Ford Pinto
Here we are, the ne plus ultra of bad cars. The Legendary Ford Pinto– folks who have never seen one and weren’t even born when they were in production know that these are bad cars. Some of them even know why, but we’ll offer a refresher course anyway. The Pinto was a compact car that on paper looked pretty good: decent performance, good fuel economy, and a fairly comfortable interior. There was just one problem: rear-end collisions tended to result in the whole thing exploding. Coupled with the scandal around Ford refusing to spend the money to fix the problem in favor of just paying off its victims, there’s a reason that the federal review of the Pinto described it as “unsafe at any speed”–a phrase burned into our collective memory forever. Pun intended.