Yep - they were disappointed at how they couldn't make it tip over, so they added weight to the sides/top to encourage tipping. "Crappy old car was kind of ok, actually." wouldn't have garnered many clicks.
We had a Brat. The rear seats were removed and presto, a great little pickup. Reliable Subaru engineering and great mileage made it the most popular vehicle in the family fleet. Your assessment is ridiculous.
My brother had a Brat, not that great. To this day it’s sitting behind the family barn. He went from driving the Brat to a Toyota pickup up and was much happier with the reliability and durability.
Well, I mean the DeLorean was in fact slow, and took quite awhile to get up to speed. But it was very interesting as a car. If only the DeLorean Motor Company stayed around longer... We could have seen a Twin Turbo DeLorean, and more!
@@DalekPratt1963 yeah .. my Aunt had one. I was pretty young and got to ride in it a couple times. He used the wrong power plant in it for sure but that was due in part to the big 3 not dealing with him for engines. It would have been interesting to see what a Porsche power plant would do for it.
@@DalekPratt1963 No, you were correct. They only came with V6's, that were developed for the car by a joint venture between Renault & Volvo from what I read.
I owned a 74 Chevy stepside 4x4 it got stuck tried getting pulled out by a ford 4x4 it got stuck also. A guy with a Subaru Brat showed up and pulled both trucks out separately. But it was truly a humbling and embarrassing moment
Been there, a few big guys to hump the brat out of the mud, a long chain to get the big 4x4s out, sit in the back seats, drink beer and watch three tow trucks drag the monster truck out.
First car was a 78 brat, 4 on the fly, reliable as a brick, chicks liked it, good mileage, light enough to muscle out of mud where big 4x4 trucks needed a tow truck. The only problem was no leg room. I loved that little truck. Ps, the seats are easily removable.
My late father could pretty much afford any car he wanted in the 60s and beyond, but after my little brother bought his second BRAT whilst in college, he began to enjoy and realize the fun-to-drive, and economy it offered. It was an indestructible little truck that would go anywhere! I could park my antique Porsche, and grab the keys to that funky little truck, and it would never disappoint!
I wouldn't say any of these qualify as "the worst of the '80s", and some of them, like the Brat and the Fiero, are actually quite good! Also, the Pacer is really a car of the '70s.
damn... I came down to say the same EXACT thing! The Brat and Fiero aren't "bad"... and the Pacer was from the 70's! ...and a LOT of Pacers were sold and loved by tons of people!
1) the robin was fine. The tipping over by topgear was staged by adding weight to the top+sides. 2) Yeah, it sucked. But whoever bought them didn't care about $. Just a niche status symbol. 3) Yugo - yup. Belongs on this list. 4) BRAT - nothing wrong with it. Great and useful vehicle. 5) Fiero - belongs on the list for quality/reliability issues, but it was a really fun-to-drive car at a great price-point. 6) AMC Pacer - It wasn't really an 80s car. It was OK (as a wider/bigger domestic alternative to Vega/Pinto) in the 70s. 7) Citicar - It was what it was. A covered golf cart (shrug). 8) Citroen Visa - never heard of it. 9) Cimarron - belongs on this list. 10) DMC-12 - belongs on this list. Others I would suggest: Renault Alliance (poor quality), Chevy Citation (most recalled vehicle of all time)
The Visa was pretty popular in Danmark - but it was a crappy car. However - I had a female collegue, she was (still is?) gorgeous. She drove a little Visa. Err unrelated, I know. But she was HOT.
I worked in forestry here in the UK in 1983-84. We had a couple of those Subaru pick-up trucks. They were great! Cheap as chips, reliable and went like stink.
@ThoseWonderYears you're right, cannot possibly think of a better way to tell all the ladies "Hey there baby! I Can't Get it up Anymore" .....lol yeah even the most beautiful woman's completely safe accepting a ride from the even the most sketchy guy driving one of those
When I was a teenager my buddies and I scored a pony keg, the only way we could get it out to the country was to strap it into the passenger seat disguised as a passenger while everyone else rode in the back, good times.
The Citroën Visa. This is in the wrong list. It was quite popular in the UK and a good seller in France. Admittedly the Sr1 pig nose didn't last long. It was a love or hate it car. But the Visa Sr2 was well regarded by the motoring press. And set new levels of comfort to small cars. Performance wasn't bad and handling was incredibly surefooted even in the snow.
You know how to hot-wire this thing? Zeus : Of course I can, I'm an electrician. Only problem is... [Zeus starts the ignition with his pliers] Zeus : it takes too *****' long.
We have, basically, a Private junkyard at our place, and we had a Blue AMC Pacer that was probably in an accident before it came to us. I say this because the hood was a dented mess and the windows were shattered. We ended up selling it to someone, and I haven’t seen it since. I have no idea where it is now, and what condition it’s in. I kinda liked that little fishbowl of a car. And did you know that, not only did Subaru make a cartruck, but so did Ford, Chevy, And GMC? The Ford one was called a Ranchero, the Chevy one was called an El Camino, and the GMC one was called a Sprint. We had a Ranchero, which was sold, and we had a Running and driving Sprint, which was also sold.
@ThoseWonderYears let's see... I am admittedly biased in favor of the DMC being counted as a success considering what John started with. He was set to head up GM but was considered too radical. So he brought some of the the finest designers and engineers the world had to offer. Pininfarina (designers of Ferrari), Lotus, etc. Sure, the engine that ended up in the production vehicle wasn't the best. But other engines were considered, including a rotary, and the potential was there. I prefer to tell people that the DeLorean was so far into the future, it was waiting for the engine technology to catch up lol. As far as a company failure, yes, it did fail. But one needs to look at the totality of what was going on during this time period. The factory was located in a war zone. There was ample amounts of political unrest. The economy hadn't recovered from the 70s and coke was just hitting the streets. And then there was the big trial alleging John DeLorean of coke smuggling. The trial lasted 2 weeks and John never took the stand in his own defense. He was acquitted on all charges. Could the company have survived if John's name hadn't been dragged through the mud? Or if certain people/ countries actually made good on their word? Quite possibly. The new DeLorean company seems to be doing fine. Now for my replacement for the DMC. I (humbly lol) present for your discernment, the 1988 Pontiac Lemans fwd. Words can't go into describing why this car belongs on the list, which is a good thing because I used them all up making my case on the DMC.
Common to ALL Vehicles on this list, and all others, is still a problem today. Shoddy production coupled with low quality control. OLD Vehicles are WORTH more.
I've heard nothing but great things about the BRAT and the Fiero which sold very well in a lot of markets esp on the EAST COAST. NOW the reasoning in why the AMC PACER was an ODD BALL was it had a LOT OF GLASS like looking into an FISH BOWL & as for the DMC it was famous cause the late Johnny Carson brought one of the 1st ones
You hit all kinds of 80’s awful, but I have one in mind. I’m almost positive the Fiero was supposed to be an American version of the Fiat X/19. The Fiat was was cheap,lean, always broken, but sort of sporty. The Fiero was fatter, heavier, American, and tended to catch fire. I hate both of them. Spoken as a former Italian sports car technician. 🙂
The Brat wasn't that bad, a buddy had one and it was a blast to drive and reliable. The Pacer was a car from the 70's that actually ended in 1980. The Pontiac Fiero was way ahead of it's time, it was "Too Sporty" for the average person, and "Not Sporty Enough" for the Driving Enthusiasts, with some engine and suspension tuning the V6 version was very nice. Most Cars of the 80's were junk anyway, too much Smog Control, no Computers for Engine Management, old inefficient Engine designs, plastic everything inside and out and Cars assembled by Union Workers that hated their job.
Thank you for the correction. I appreciate the insights you shared about the Brat, Pacer, and Pontiac Fiero. Your perspective on the cars from the '80s provides valuable context and understanding. Thanks again!
Sorry to say, but strange selection here. OK, in some of them I get it. But you often show the wrong cars too. i.e. what has a Daihatsu Charade got to do with a Cadillac Cimarron? The one I disagree most ist the Citroen Visa. Yes it was a bit quirky, but that is Citroen for you and I don’t rate it as a bad thing. I have never heard of reliability issues and what’s most, the groupB rally car was not the Trophée but the 1000 Pistes that combined a small engine with light weight and 4x4, a brilliant idea for not so wealthy drivers. This Visa was so efficient, it turned into a giant killer, it won rallies outright on national level and it came i.e. 8th overall on the Rallye Monte Carlo along with other top10 finishes at World Championship level against competition with triple the power. And maybe most remarkable of all, already in 1983 Citroen entered the FWD sister Visa Chrono at the rocky, super rough WRC Acropolis Rally, they entered 3 cars and finished 9th, 10th, 11th overall, so again it was efficient and indeed reliable. Sorry, in this case it really is totally beyond me how you can call that a bad car? Right the opposite is the case, it was a secret marvel!
You can tell the quality of a video when the subject is a Reliant Robin, but the first car shown is a Reliant Regal! Top gear is not a factual program, it is entertainment. Living in the UK midlands, I have seen many old Reliants knocking about, some I've seen driven really enthusiastically, I have yet to see one not on all three wheels!
I don't have any beef against Fieros. I thought they were very attractive. But i bet if you put a v6 engine in there (that is IF you can fit it), it may not have been on this list.
I thought it was a Citroën GSA,not a Visa in several of the clips And the Reliant Robins were unstable but Top Gear had to weight one side of the car to get it to tip over.. i dont think a lot of research goes into these videos.
the topgear segment on the robin was faked .they found it harder than they thought to roll them thats why they don't actually show the point the cars go over.the brat as they were called in the states only had the seats in the back in america ,elsewhere they were quite popular ,in britain farmers loved them and in austrailia they were one of many similar designs.
I still remember, I think it was in Consumer Reports, the evaluators said the customer considering a Yugo would be better off buying a good used car for the exact same amount they'd spend for a Yugo.
What idiot put the Subaru Brat (or Brumby as we call it in Australia) on that list? It's one of the most practical cars ever made incl. it's hi/lo 4WD! Never came with rear seats over here.
Only they don't break down, I've gone through over a dozen vehicles since then, most reliable vehicle I've ever seen, If one dropped into my lap at a decent price, I would buy it in a heartbeat
Some of the problems with the '80s cars in the U.S. were that too many people were still accustomed to cars of the 1960s and early 70s with room and V8 power. Since alot of these brontosauruses were still roaming the wild tests by CAFE showed that even with upgraded "modern " safety features like airbags, their conclusion was that "statistically no modern saftey feature makes up for mass in a colision, even without wearing a seatbelt" also, manufacturers were severly struggling with meeting new emmissions regs. The computer systems of the time were unreliable, and old designs had to be nutted so bad on power that Chevrolet didn't even sell a crovette in 1983 because performance would be so dismal. One car that should be included is the 1980s "crossfire injected" camaro Z28. They were slow when they ran right which wasn't often, and I can tell you that even with the proper analyzers keeping one driving today is almost impossible. Some were brought back to the factory and had a 4bbl carb installed and ran much better. I am glad you didn't include the Chrysler K cars. I am a mopar guy but back then, we were still driving our 440s in big mopars and it was a shock to get in one when you had a '73 newport with a hopped up 440 six pack You drag raced and pulled trailers with! when they came out we said K stood for Kan't but, the turbo cars were fairly quick, and I have since owned a few that had 300,000 plus miles on them. My neighbor got over 600,000 and only replaced a motor mount. The car finally rusted off of the engine! Our friend had a 6cyl Fiero, i thought it was a cool looking car, but it was a real PITA to work on compared to earlier cars and did suffer a small fire. The Ford escort was better than it should have been, and the Rangers were almost indestructible. The Jeep 4.0 was great also.
Chevrolet introduced the 84 Corvette in 83. Had nothing to do with what you said. The other issue relating to the corvette production was getting the new plant in Bowling Green Kentucky running while closing the St. Louis plant.
In Australia we really got one of these vehicles although l have seen three De L'Oréal but maybe the same DeLorean three times and l know there a couple of Aston Martin Legondas in Australia but we did get the Subaru Brat called the Brumby in Australia without the two seats in the back that is highly illegal and it was a well accepted small one after all we got the Suzuki Mighty Boy and the Datsun 1200 ute now worth a lot of money also we got the Proton Jumbuck ute a slighter bigger ute and there is a local second car yard has one for sale
The Reliant Robin used in Top Gear had its suspension altered for comedic timing. I was a passenger in a Reliant Super Van in 1978, being driven quite fast over a humped back bridge near my home in north London. My brother was following behind on his motorbike at the time, and he told me the van had leaped over the bridge. I never felt as if I was in danger. Just aload of old rubbish put about by people who don't know what they are talking about! At a later time Top Gear took 3 BL cars including the wonderful Rover SD1, on which the rear door fell off. Funny that it was still attached on the car until Clarkson drove it. Me thinks someone removed the bolts.
Brat was & still is one of the best little haul about that was front wheel & four wheel hi-low range great off roader beach buggy open road even ((really a subaru gl sedan chassis)) all the hunter"s in maine are hunting for them to this day love those buggies & you would too if ever you drove or owned one -_-
The Reliant Robin could have benefitted from a giant horizontal spinning flywheel to prevent rollovers, but then it would only steer only in one direction (same as flywheel).
What does Citroen GS have to do with Citroen Visa, you put them in same clip ??? Visa dont have a pneumatic suspention, another class...And Visa is good for her time, don't talk nonsense... and there are none on the roads, not because of quality, but because they have not been produced for almost forty years, for God's sake .
Subaru Brat (“Brumby” in Australia) is a great little ute! There have been some with the driveline of the WRX Impreza in them. That makes it even better.
It's interesting that this genius equates poor sales with being one of the 10 worst cars of the 1980s. Certainly the Yugo was one of the worst cars of the 1980s (or any other decade), however, mediocre it was not. To save the owner of this channel the difficulty of looking up the meaning (I'm sure he cares about accuracy) mediocre means "of only moderate quality; not very good" according to the Oxford dictionary. It comes from medium, in the middle, etc. That is not very good and not very bad. The Yugo was sensationally bad. A mediocre team would be one that is halfway back in the pack in standings. Not at the bottom and not at the top. The following were not terrible cars, certainly not among the 10 worst of the 1980s: (1) The AMC Pacer (1975 to 1980) was an odd looking, too wide, too heavy economy car that was miles ahead of its Chevrolet rival, the Vega (ceased production in 1977), and probably better than the Ford Pinto. The Pacer had the legendary Jeep straight six motor straight out of the Jeep CJ. AMC was known for good build quality (remember this was before Chrysler bought AMC and sullied the AMC name with its own) which meant it stood out as quite good in the 1980s. (2) The Subaru Brat was actually a very good car with Subaru engineering and build quality. Although a case could be made for it being unattractive, that's personal taste, not quality. (3) The Cadillac Cimmaron was a very nice Chevrolet Cavalier which was a mediocre car (see above explanation of the meaning of mediocre) but it certainly wasn't one of the 10 worst cars of the 1980s. It was over priced but it was no more of a badge engineering sleight of hand than any other American car of the time. During the 1980s the Oldsmobile 98, the Buick Electra 225, and the Cadillac were all pretty much the same car with different badges and trim. This practice was rampant all through General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler. Here are some candidates for the top 10 worst cards of the 1980s that actually earned that designation with terrible build quality and reliability (I'm including foreign makes since this channel did): (1) Every Fiat built during the 1980s. (2) Every Renault built during that decade. (3) Every Chrysler product (Plymouth, Dodge, Chrysler, and Imperial) with the K-car carrying the automotive crap banner high for Chrysler. (4) Mitsubishi cars. Bad cars and even worse parts availability. (5) Any General Motors car with the Oldsmobile diesel motor, which was based on the excellent Oldsmobile 350 gasoline engine, modified to accept diesel fuel but not to withstand the higher stresses from burning diesel fuel. All GM divisions made this disastrous engine available in their big cars. With the exception of Mercedes Benz, the 1980s were not good years for most automobile manufacturers. Mercedes built the best cars in the world right on up until they hooked up with Chrysler which did great damage to their reputation. The 123 bodied Mercedes Benz diesel cars and the S Class cars with the straight six gasoline and diesels (except the 350 SD diesels which were bad engines) were universally acclaimed as the best cars in the world by knowledgeable automotive people. With the Chrysler merger, Mercedes Benz ceded that title over to Toyota with Honda applying constant pressure on Toyota, competing for that crown.
@@NYCS19339 I had a W116 diesel, a W123 diesel, two 6 cylinder gasoline W126's (nearly perfect cars), and an R107 with the 3.8 liter V8 which already had the dual timing chain conversion thus avoiding the small V8's tendency to break catastrophically in a decidedly unfunny way. The fit and finish on all these cars was incredibly tight and uniform. In the early two thousands, I bought a new two-door Mercedes 230 CK hatchback with a supercharged four cylinder and a six-speed manual transmission. I traded it eight months later after a 1200 miles in two days trip took me about four days to recover because of the harshest ride I'd ever experienced in a car. It rivaled a 1985 Jeep CJ7 I bought new and traded in six months.
This list is pure nonsense. The Brat, the Fiero, the Pacer and the Cimarron among the worst 10 cars of the 1980s? Are you serious? This video should be renamed "10 cars of the 1980s that didn't always live up to its expectations, but really weren't that terrible from an objective point of view." Here's a tip. Next time you make a video about bad cars from the 1980s, start your research in the eastern European communist countries at the time. For example, the Trabant is a strong contender.
In the mid 1980's I went to Spain and they had a Spanish made car named "SEAT" ( PRONOUNCED "SAY - YAHT" ) that was apparently not fit to import into the U.S. .
your research does need work. The Manual transmission on the cimmaron wasnt an option it was standard and the only transmission for the first year or two
