Five '70s Cars That Plain Suck

The 1970s was "a decade of excess mediocrity in so many quarters it's hard to catalog it all," Tony Borroz writes in Wired. But you can start with the cars. Here follow five total flops.

• Ford Mustang Cobra II: "An over-glorified Pinto" that made a "mockery of the venerable Cobra name" and the car "that launched the pony car revolution."
• Mercury Bobcat: Basically a Pinto, but "by porking up the platform by that much, Mercury succeeded at making a bad car even worse."

• AMC Pacer: "The idea was people would buy a small car if it was as wide as a big car. And how did that idea fly? Just run down to your local AMC dealer and ask."
• Chrysler Cordoba: Even Ricardo Montalban couldn't save the "personal luxury coupe" with "fine Corinthian leather" from being a "mediocre car," particularly with the addition of rectangular headlights.
• Chevrolet Chevette: "If there is a God in heaven, the people responsible for this 'car,'" which appears to come from "behind the Iron Curtain," are "roasting on a spit in the hottest corner of hell."

(More Chevrolet stories.)