Henry Culvyhouse: My list of crap cars

Mar. 31—It doesn't take much searching to find an article titled "the worst cars ever made."

Without even looking, anyone with rudimentary car knowledge can list off half the entries — the Pinto (blowing up gas tanks), the Vega (aluminum engine blocks that cracked), the Gremlin (honestly, they're dope now), the Edsel (the biggest flop in automotive history), the Chevette (just look at it) and the Aztek (partially rehabilitated by "Breaking Bad").

While most automotive experts can be in agreement on these picks, what about a list of cars I have a gripe with?

Here's my expertise: I'm a shade tree mechanic, I drive and I have some unresolved anger I need to work out on the page.

So here's my V-8 banger of a list of the worst cars of all time, according to Henry Culvyhouse:

The Chevy Corsica (late '80s to early '90s): When I set out to write this list, I consulted a few different people: coworkers, my wife, my friends, my dad. Just about every single one of them brought up the Corsica.

Here's the thing, it's not a bad car per se, but by God it looks terrible through today's lens. Back in its day, it was a normal family sedan. As a kid, you probably slid around in the back seat without any seat belts as you dodged the ash from your father's cigarette. My mother had a Cavalier from that era; it was roughly the same proposition.

I think part of the bad rap it gets is these days you typically see this car on the side U.S. 52 in Ohio, being searched by a K-9 unit.

The Ford Tempo (1993): When I was a kid, my dad's truck was broke down, my mom's car was brokedown and the Ford Taurus we kept as a backup was teetering on the edge of a break down too. My folks scrounged up a little bit of cash and bought a 1993 Ford Tempo for about $500.

For those who don't remember, the Tempo was a mid-sized sedan that ran from 1984 to 1994, as the next size down from the Ford Taurus.

The Tempo was an extremely unconformable car. It had springs in the seats that dug into your back, those sliding shoulder belts that automatically pulled against you when you sat down in the car and probably had a mold issue, because every time I rode in it I had a headache.

As the proud owner of two Tauruses in my day, I can say the only thing that makes a Taurus comfortable is the size. With the Tempo, Ford took away that size, making for a truly uncomfortable car.

But like the Taurus, it would run and run and run — my dad held on to that Tempo for years before selling it to another family for an easy $500.

The Plymouth P.T. Cruiser: In flyover country, USA, the PT Cruiser is like an inherited curse, a blight on the motoring public.

With only nine years of production (and that last run was only a decade ago), at this point nobody buys a PT Cruiser. Either an aunt dies and you get left with it, you're a kid in high school and your dad figures out away to finally dump this hunk of junk, or one just magically appears in your driveway, like an uninvited alley cat.

I was in my 20s when my dad bought a PT Cruiser. It was a heck of deal and only had 27,000 miles on it. He asked me what I thought and I said, "Dad, at the end of the day, it's a PT Cruiser."

But he didn't listen. He wound up having to tear half that engine apart and he had to do a front-end job on the suspension. It became a war of money and time over commonsense, with less than 10,000 additional miles put on it, my dad waved the white flag and sold it to the next sucker.

And that's not to mention how ugly the car is. It looks like a classic coupe that was sculpted from a vat of Hellman's mayonnaise. Bland and unoriginal.

As far as looks go, you can add the Chevy HHR and its derivatives on the list as well.

Modern Pickup Trucks: My great-great grand daddy Francis Perkins once bought some Clydesdale horses to work on the farm, you know, like the ones you see on the Budweiser ads.

A Clydesdale is a work horse, Perkins bought them to plow the fields, pull wagons and do normal things on a circa Depression-era farm.

But when he was those horses, he couldn't bring himself to work them — he just spent his days brushing and brushing them, feeding them and putting bows in their hair. My great-great-grandmother raised Cain and had him sell them, because they weren't making any money.

Today's pickup trucks are like those Clydesdales. They're work horses, but most of them I see don't look like they have a scratch on the bed.

I can understand a big truck if you're a contractor or a farmer or you have fun toys to tow like side-by-sides and bass boats. That's a totally legit and respectable reason to have a pickup truck.

But if you're just picking up at most two or three sheets of drywall a year, the tires have never seen gravel and you need that "crew cab" to get Johnny to soccer practice, congrats Francis, you've got yourself a Clydesdale.

I'd venture to say 75% of today's pickup drivers have really signed onto an overpriced minivan with a bed.

Early 2000s Volkswagen: I'm writing this at the risk of sleeping on the couch, because my wife absolutely loved her VW Bug. But my wife never worked on the thing.

I once had to drop a drive line in order to change out a hub on the car — normally that's a pop off the tire, pull it off and get it done in an afternoon proposition.

Not with that, oh no. See, that would be easy. Volkswagen doesn't want to make it easy; they want to make the car so complicated, you need a master's degree in Volkswagen to work on them. Plus, you better be small and flexible. There's a good bit of contortion that goes into working on a Volkswagen.

Did it run? Yes. Was it comfortable? Yes. Did it look cute? Sure. But Lord help you if something breaks on it.

The Modern SUV: Listen, before you start sending the hate mail, I am the owner of a 2016 Ford Escape. It's not the biggest SUV around (not by a long shot) but it's far from the namesake "Sports Utility Vehicle."

I'd say most SUVs post-2005 (exceptions can be made for the Xterra and the FJ Cruiser) are now little more than raised up station wagons. Like a beagle with a bottomless bag of bacon, they just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

An OJ Simpson Bronco — that was a freaking truck. A 2023 Grand Wagoneer? That's just a station wagon. Can you imagine seeing a Chevy Trailblazer take an off-road trail? The oil pan would get knocked out before you could even flip it.

My Escape is probably as big as my daddy's 1996 Explorer. No lie.

Detroit, are you listening? Can we just have smallish sized cars? Does everything have to be supersized? Can we have an actual Sports Utility Vehicle that can run the trails? Can we have small pickup trucks like the 1990s Ranger or the S-10? Trucks that can haul and actually pass a gas station?

Exceptions can be made for Subaru, which, ironically, is the most station wagon style of all SUVs. Yet they're sporty and with just the slightest lift, entirely serviceable for outdoor expeditions.

Cadillac Cimarron: Look, I could've placed this in my discussion with the Chevy Corsica, but like a good joke, the longer you think about the Cimarron the funnier it gets.

Back in the 1980s, General Motors decided they wanted to release a Cadillac smaller than the Seville, which had sold well since its introduction in the mid-1970s.

So they took the 1980s Cavalier, changed out the emblems and called it a Cadillac.

And sold it for a Cadillac price — a Cavalier for a Caddy price.

My family bought one used in the 1990s. We didn't pay the Cadillac price, but somebody did.

I'd love to meet whoever paid the MSRP on a Cadillac Cavalier, because I have some excellent deals on oceanfront property over in West Virginia I can sell them.

The Cimarron ran just about how you'd expect it — like a Cavalier.

K-Cars: Car executive Lee Iaccoca might be best remembered as the father of the Ford Mustang. He was right on the money with the Mustang, paving the way for the poor man's sports car, a family man's performance vehicle. The Pony Car allows one to retain youth, while accepting responsibility. You can race at the light with junior buckled up in the back.

Iaccoca clearly started slipping when he brought the Pinto to the market place in 1971, then decided to slap a Mustang body on a Pinto frame starting in 1974 and tried to pass that off as something people wanted. Go to a car show and try to find a 1974-to-1979 Mustang. People ain't putting money into those abominations.

But Iaccoca's worst idea probably came in the 1980s, when he floated the K-Car while working at Chrysler. Or it was his best idea — in many ways, the K-Car saved Chrysler.

But it was functionally a terrible car. They were cheap and they broke down accordingly. My dad bought one and kept it running into the early 1990s. He swore off Chrysler products for nearly 25 years, before he had that lapse in judgment with the PT Cruiser.

The K-Car is just a whole fleet of lemons, every one of them. To see one run today is confirmation that there is a God. It's a pure miracle, because there's no way in hell somebody has actually put in the effort to rebuild a K-Car, unless it was the TC Chrysler by Maserati.

I would personally restore one of those, just so I could show future generations that you can take a turd, paint it, gold leaf it, even sprinkle some diamonds on it, but at the end of the day it's still a piece of crap.