-
ADD TIME NEWS
- MOBILE APPS
- NEWSLETTERS
The 50 Worst Cars of All Time
On the 50th anniversary of the Ford Edsel, TIME and Dan Neil, Pulitzer Prize-winning automotive critic and syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times, look at the greatest lemons of the automotive industry
1975 Trabant
This is the car that gave Communism a bad name. Powered by a two-stroke pollution generator that maxed out at an ear-splitting 18 hp, the Trabant was a hollow lie of a car constructed of recycled worthlessness (actually, the body was made of a fiberglass-like Duroplast, reinforced with recycled fibers like cotton and wood). A virtual antique when it was designed in the 1950s, the Trabant was East Germany's answer to the VW Beetle a "people's car," as if the people didn't have enough to worry about. Trabants smoked like an Iraqi oil fire, when they ran at all, and often lacked even the most basic of amenities, like brake lights or turn signals. But history has been kind to the Trabi. Thousands of East Germans drove their Trabants over the border when the Wall fell, which made it a kind of automotive liberator. Once across the border, the none-too-sentimental Ostdeutschlanders immediately abandoned their cars. Ich bin Junk!
View the full list for "The 50 Worst Cars of All Time"Latest Lists
Most Popular »
- The '00s: Goodbye (at Last) to the Decade From Hell
- Scientology : The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power
- The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting
- Florida Grapples With Its Deadly Hit-and-Run Car Culture
- Why Ireland Is Running Out of Priests
- Workers of the World vs. China Inc.
- Box Office: New Moon Takes a Hit on The Blind Side
- Germany's Doubts About Afghanistan Grow After Revelations About Air Strike
- The Mammogram Melee: How Much Screening Is Best?
- Energizer Bunnies: Turning Rabbits into Green Fuel
- Scientology : The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power
- Workers of the World vs. China Inc.
- The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting
- The '00s: Goodbye (at Last) to the Decade From Hell
- How Guatemala's Most Beautiful Lake Turned Ugly
- Can Attack Dogs Be Rehabilitated?
- Florida Grapples With Its Deadly Hit-and-Run Car Culture
- If Women Were More Like Men: Why Females Earn Less
- Bible-Belt Catholics
- The True, Peaceful Face Of Islam











RSS