Henry's Bloopers

In honor of Ford's 100th anniversary, a list of the carmaker's worst models. My only quibble: where's the 1978 Mustang King Cobra II?

Comments

[TomHynes]

Do they have to be cars? What about the DIVAD?

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m247.htm

[JAT]

I’d forgotten what a dud the old Yorkie was.

[twistedmerkin]

Jeff, the 1974-1978 Mustang Cobra II WAS a pinto.

[Anonymous]

Is it me, or does the article keep reloading in perpetuity? I click stop and it won’t. Have to click the back button several times to get back to Reason.

[Jim]

An interesting insight into how you can become the victim of your own success…. the Pinto has become widely recognized for the gas tank fires when all the other small cars exhibited the same design flaw. Same thing happened to Isuzu with the tippy Trooper (all sport utes are more likely to roll over because they have higher centers of gravity), and to Chrysler with the minivan doors that opened in crashes.

I have some personal insight into that last one… I used to work for the guy that had the misfortune of being in charge of the hardware on that car when the lawsuits started. Most cars on the road were suseptible to the same problem but Chrysler had sold so many minivans that there was a larger absolute number of them that had failed in crashes than any other car on the road. Chrysler did its own testing and found that they didn’t actually have the weakest latch in the market. Volvo (yes the ‘safety’ car) had the worst liftgate latch. Go figure.

[Jim]

BTW lest Volvo cars (which is owned now by Ford) wants to track me down and beat me senseless for saying that, they have much better latches now. All US cars with some type of passenger compartment accessible liftgate (station wagons and sport utes) now have to have their liftgate latches meet the same strength requirements as their side door latches.

[Brian]

Nice, your only Quibble is where’s the mustang King Cobra? and you proceed to post a picture of a 78 Cobra II?? Let me guess you want to argue horsepower numbers, or chime in it’s a rebadged pinto. Look at the HP numbers for any car in the 70’s, furthermore, it was on the leading edge of handling with the independent front suspension.

[Garrett]

Dude the 1978 Mustang King Cobra is a frickin pimp of a car, I love it and I’m getting one as soon as I can get some cash