Are Bad Cars Still Made?

Today more than ever it seems that the automotive market has grown out of the realm of producing anything that can be considered a bad car. It used to be that there were some cars on the market that were truly terrible in nature and could only be enjoyed by those who hadn’t thought to buy anything else, but now we have cars that are built correctly, checked over for proper fit and are as reliable as you can have on any road in the world. In fact, now more than ever, if a car breaks down or shows signs of weakness it’s probably because the owner didn’t keep up with scheduled maintenance or one small part needs to be fixed to take care of the issue.

Part of the charm of an unreliable car that you could purchase in the past was typically the fact that you would enjoy some great driving in between regular repair shop visits, but these weren’t necessarily bad cars. The bad cars were those that seemed to be put together in such a way that you could take them apart with your hands or you just couldn’t enjoy driving them on the road.

Some of the worst cars we’ve seen ever made included the Chevrolet Cavalier (which had other iterations from the various GM brands at the time); the Ford Probe and the Chrysler New Yorker are all examples of cars that shouldn’t have been made. The upstart from GM, Saturn even offered us cars that were easy enough to take apart that the host in the video below admits to trying to see how many pieces of the dashboard he could pull apart before he reached his destination. Thankfully these cars are all gone and mostly what we have today is a lineup of cars that are good and then better than good.

Why don’t we have bad cars anymore? Part of the reason is because the industry has learned how to make cars and developed materials and technology that assist in the building of cars. Another is the fact that we’ve had so many bad cars in the past; the entire market was able to learn from these cars and begin to offer vehicles that are substantially better than anything we’ve had as an entire market before. We rely on our cars to get us where we need to go and with so many people being mechanically inept, it’s important for vehicles to be better than ever.

Is it a bad thing we don’t have any bad cars left? Of course it’s not a bad thing, no automaker wants to put out a dud on the market and we still have some that are sales duds, but for the most part the cars we see on the dealer lots are all good cars that can serve the purpose you need, just some can do this better than others. Enjoy this video and the fact that the market has improved and evolved to a point where we don’t have to worry about buying a bad car any longer.