<VV> "Crap Cars"

[Tony Underwood]

At 05:37 hours 12/09/2005, Turbovert at aol.com wrote:
>I just saw an ad for a book called "Crap Cars" by Richard Porter ($14.95 -
>Bloomsbury). Has anyone actually looked at a copy of this book yet?


Makes one wonder... many of the cars that such works of literary 
inspiration actually were rather successful, hardly "crap".


>The ad says that it (rightfully) takes shots at the Chrysler K Series,


An innovative series of vehicles which pioneered US mass production 
compact-car FWD technology...


>Pinto,

Much maligned as a "fire hazard" yet in the history of the cars 
legacy on the highway, since Day-1 until current day, less than 100 
people are documented to have been killed in any Pinto accident as 
the result of anything to do with a fire.

Over twice as many people have burned to death in Mustangs.    Three 
times as many have burned to death in Ford/Merc full-size fleet 
vehicles (Crown Vic/Marquis).    The Pinto was picked on for the same 
reason Corvairs got picked on... it was a popular car and a good 
seller with lots of appeal and there for a good target for activists 
to use so as to make a name for themselves.

I've never seen a Pinto anywhere that ever burned for any reason and 
I've haunted many a junkyard in my day.   I've seen at least 4 Fieros 
that burned up.


>Yugo, etc.,


Don't anybody get me started in on Yugos.   I *know* for a fact that 
they're decent cars that will give god service... IF you treat it 
like a car and not a throw-away object, as so many Yugos were treated.

I own one...  it has 124,000 miles on it, still rock solid and rust 
free, and the original drivetrain is still in excellent shape, uses 
no oil, and will smoke the tires through 1st gear.   It also gets 
almost 40 mpg.   Even the interior has held up well.    The other one 
in the family, purchased new and eventually to accumulate almost 
150,000 miles on it before it was damaged beyond practical repair in 
an accident, also hung in there in spite of the miles and in-town 
driving it was subjected to daily for over 15 years.    The ticket is 
to provide a Yugo with normal maintenance like regular oil changes, 
keep antifreeze in it, timing belt replacement each 30,000 miles, and 
don't treat it like a rental and flog the mortal hell out of it just 
because you can.

Nobody is gonna preach "crapmobile" about Yugos to me; I know better, 
been there done that.


>but I always fear the worst when I see something that might
>include our favorite car.


Again, it's been my experience that those who provide the biggest 
quantity of propaganda about so-called "crap cars" generally have a 
legacy of misused and abused vehicles in their own personal history 
of driving.

Just like the endless string of people who have approached me over 
and over again with tales of disaster and woe regarding Corvairs 
(most of them simply full of sh!t, pardon my language), I do not 
hesitate to inform them of the inaccuracy of their conclusions, 
particularly seeing as how it's almost never that such criticisms are 
actually solicited.   What's more, the majority of the people who 
bitch the loudest never actually owned or even drove any of these 
so-called "crap cars".


>Overall, it looks like it might be a fun read/coffee table book (if you  have
>a coffee table in your workshop), but I would  not support any  author that
>disses the Vair.



...or  a Pinto or a Yugo or a K-Car (which, crap or not, saved 
Chrysler Corporation by being a good value for the money), or likely 
any number of other cars which via retrospect are regarded as "crap" 
by ego driven iconoclasts today, who know only space age tech and 
modern engineering advances and tend to regard yesteryear products by 
a modern standard and relentlessly judge that vintage product by 
those modern standards.

The result is stuff like the crap car books that usually end up on 
the discount sale shelf in the front of Walden Books.    Kinda makes 
one wonder why such books are written in the first place...  so as to 
provide the misanthropes with fuel for the flames, I guess.


tony..    owner of a number of Crap Cars