Hey, that guy who just builds rocket cars and drives them out in the desert is the perfect embodiment of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I nominate him for Secretary of Transportation.

Even the Panther was good for a bit over 60 MPH in reverse (and in testing by Car & Driver, a Town Car was only like half a second slower going 0-60 in reverse than going forward).

It’s still a terrible idea for a teen compared to something equally attainable like a sub-20yo Volvo C70/Saab 9-3/VW Eos, if they’re dead set on a convertible.

As a tool for engine braking in hilly areas, I see a bit of merit. On the other hand, the sport mode in a Corolla hatch rental I used doing the fake shifts was horribly stupid when it could’ve just kept the revs closer to the power band at all times.

I have a soft spot for these (although the later 5-spokes are cooler, and neither interior is great, being either stuck in the 80's or anodyne and too 90's GM), and your options for cheap 4-seat convertible are mostly these, Sebrings (I also like, although the Olds is probably less hassle), or the odd SN95 Mustang. NP.

Unlimited is absolutely unlimited, but the fine print also states a conventional rental can’t be used for renumeration, so at a minimum, the renter probably deserves to end up on a Do Not Rent list.

Would you ride a Royal Enfield Flying Michael Balzary?

Why not both sides?

It has wood trim, and that orange is spiritually brown.

Never* had a fun car, just never had the time or money (or enough of both at the same time) to go beyond something sensible. Even my motorcycle (an ancient 250 Rebel) is about as boring as it gets. Staring down 40 (a bit over a year to that), so the mid-life crisis might hit hard in the next couple years.

The Model T I can at least sort of see - it wasn’t popular because it was good, it was popular because it was common and cheap, more or less from the start (absolutely makes it important and influential though). Furthermore, the Model T was wildly outdated by the time it was discontinued, so not good *by the standards…

No smoking toddlers? THANKS OBAMA

Take your pick of British roadster - for a country with often middling, cool weather, they built a lot of cars meant to be driven through winding country roads with no roof, which sounds exactly on mission for an autumn drive.

As a bonus, the MGB could even be had with an interior colour called Autumn Leaf. I got to…

Isn’t it (left to right) Citroen SM, 80's Maserati Quattroporte, Maserati Gran Turismo, late BMW 2002, today’s XJS?

It’s a product of the 70's. Of course it needed two ashtrays. The better question is why the back seats, however small, did not also get ashtrays (or even the rear parcel shelf on the earlier 2-seat XJ-S convertibles).

I haven’t looked into it, but I thought a lot of the problems were early teething issues (after all, the Slant 6, LA V8, and 727 Torqueflite were all fundamentally solid powertrain bits) that got rectified later in production (but don’t quote me on that).

Late 70's A-bodies (Olds Cutlass and the like). I also had a college professor who worked for GM at the time, and ~30 years later was still ranting about the idiocy of making a hatchback shaped car that wasn’t a hatchback (I believe the window thing factored into his rants as well).

My experience with Chevettes is with them as 20yo beaters, but even in the rust belt, they’d take a bunch of negligence, abuse, and the absolute bare minimum of maintenance. I’m not sure exactly how much mileage was on the fleet of pizza delivery cars I drove, but they were all past the ~250k kms where the odometer…

I feel like to reach the standard of worst, it’s got to simultaneously be an unpleasant car to drive, and horrendously unreliable. While the Mustang II is by no means a great car, it’s mostly considered bad because it’s wildly different from a ‘70 Boss 429, but it made sense at the time.

The first thing that comes to…

Shelby Dodge Lancer