If you’re working on a big Hollywood movie with a budget that rivals the food bills for third world dictators who rule starving nations, the cars in your movie had better be super bad-ass. We’re not paying $9.50 a ticket to have something remind us that we came to the theater in a used lime green Datsun that creates more aggravating noises than a Kiss tribute band. These are the cars that should have been towed off the set, and sold as scrap metal long before they started shooting.
10. The Volkswagen Beetle from The Love Bug movies
It’s hard to understand why anyone would want to keep Herbie hanging around their garage for longer than a minute. It’s a Volkswagen Beetle, a car reserved for people who have no money or style and yet have to be somewhere, and it’s got a mind of its own. So not only is it an ugly and useless car; but it also has its own free will. Being totally subservient was the one good quality of every car ever made and that includes the Pinto. The low acceleration and horsepower of this vehicle wouldn’t be able to win the kind of races Herbie keeps winning in real life, whether it had free will or not. It’s a ’63 Volkswagen Type 1, so even if you won the Winston Cup with it, you wouldn’t even want to be seen crossing the finish line in it.
9. The Tow Truck from Cars
Now imagine that same car; a car that’s ugly and worn out with a mind of its own, and has the voice of Larry the Cable Guy. No insurance company in the world would ask for less than $3,500 a month because chances are, the driver would want to crash it into every telephone pole on the way home from the dealership just to get it to shut the hell up.
8. The Oldsmobile Silhouette from Get Shorty
It may be the Cadillac of minivans, but in my book, it’s the Rolls Royce of sucky cars. No gangster ever looks cool in a minivan. If the FBI’s special organized crime task force wanted to break up the Gotti crime family back in the 80s, they should have gotten some of their low level operatives to drive around in Oldsmobile Silhouettes. Not only would they have been laughed away by everyone they ever extorted, but their poor safety rating from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety would have also thinned out some of their numbers.
7. The Ford Econoline from Dumb and Dumber
Just about anything with the word “econo” in the title is bound to suck. It’s designed to be made as cheaply as possible so it will cost as little money as possible. Which also means it’s bound to be hideous, fragile and clunky. Now dress the thing up to look like a giant sheepdog and see if that redhead in Aspen will want to be seen in the same state with you.
6. The Ford LTD Family Truckster from Vacation
All family vacations are hell. You never get to go anywhere fun and it’s always something educational. You have to visit relatives who will never go out of their way to contact you unless they need money or a kidney. You have to cram your entire family and everything you’ve ever owned into a car that can barely seat four people comfortably. And to top it all off, the whole thing is puke green. It’s the car that invented carsickness.
