One of the Worst Cars Ever Made

Kate Stone Lombardi

Word Count 882

They say you never forget your first.

Mine was a 1973 Chevy Vega mini-station wagon. It was tan, with a brown plaid plastic interior. The exterior was squat and featureless. Still, being butt ugly was the least of this car’s issues.

The spring of my senior year in high school, my parents told me that they were giving me a car for my graduation present. They also made it clear that they would not be taking me to college in the fall. I was on my own to move into the freshman dorm.

Though the car seemed an extravagant gift, I soon learned that my choices would be limited. My Dad, a World War II veteran, had several caveats. The car could not be German. Or Japanese. In fact, after he gave it some thought, he pronounced that it could only be American. Further, the car had to be big enough to carry all my gear to school, which ruled out most compacts. Finally, it had to be relatively cheap.

Also, we would not be ordering a vehicle. We would buy one that was already on the lot.

Only two American cars were being sold in the summer of 1974 that were large enough to carry my trunk. Looking back, I’m not clear why we assumed I’d be bringing my old summer camp trunk to college, but it was those dimensions we used as guidelines.

My options were the Chevy Vega and the AMC Gremlin. The Vega was no beauty. But the AMC Gremlin looked like something that had been designed by committee using leftover parts from various other cars. The elongated front was boxy, yet the back sloped down into a bubble, before abruptly cutting off with another vertical drop.

The definition for “gremlin” is “a mischievous sprite” but it is also shorthand for an unexpected mechanical or electrical fault. Great job, marketing department.

There was a third American car that fit the bill: The Ford Pinto. But by 1974, the car, finally recalled for good in 1978, was already gaining a reputation for gas tank explosions when hit from the rear, so that model was ruled out.

The Vega it was. There was exactly one on the lot. (The one with the lovely tan body and brown plastic plaid interior.) The car listed for $2196, but was the previous year’s model, and I’m sure my Dad got a deal.

The Ford Pinto may be legend, but was the Vega a better bet?

“The Chevrolet Vega is remembered as one of General Motors' worst cars, a troublesome rust-bucket prone to gas tank fires and melting engines,” wrote Motor Trend last year, in an article headlined, “Not Even Vega-ly Good: The Woeful Tail of the Chevy Vega.”

In fact, Chevrolet had already recalled half a million Vegas two years before I became a proud owner, because, as Motor Trend explains, “Rear axle shafts could separate from the housing, causing the wheels to literally fall off. Faulty brackets on the single-barrel carb jammed the throttle open. The optional two-barrel engine could backfire violently enough to split the muffler, blowing hot exhaust on the fuel tank and causing it to expand, rupture, and ignite.”

Oh, picky, picky – you wanna live forever?

When MSNBC.com took a reader poll of the worst American car ever made, “the nation’s number one turkey on wheels,” it found, “one name stood head and shoulders above the rest – the Chevy Vega.” That car always makes the top three of any “worst cars ever” list compiled.

The rust, the wheels falling off, the cracking muffler and the melting engine – it’s all true. But I also remember a few other features that made the Chevy Vega a standout in its field:

-The gas pedal tended to sink to the floor and stay there. Flooring the break would slow the car’s acceleration slightly, while producing a hideous grinding noise. But the only way to actually stop the Vega was to lean down – while the car was gaining speed, mind you – and yank the gas pedal up with one hand while steering with the other. I remember performing this maneuver as the car sped towards a red light on a heavily trafficked, icy road.

-Random parts just fell off the car. I’d be driving and I’d hear a clanking sound. I’d check my rearview mirror and see a clunky piece of metal rolling away on the road. Once I was with my friend Sally when this happened. She was incredulous.

“Aren’t you going to stop?” she asked, shocked.

“Oh no,” I replied breezily. “Lots of things fall off this car, and it still runs.”

And it did run – it ran and ran. The body rusted through before that engine gave out. That car would always start. It could be sitting in subfreezing weather outdoors for weeks on end, and the engine would turn over the first time you turned the key. (Now that I think about it, maybe the engine never cooled down.)

Finally, at about seven years old, the Vega conked out. It lived out the end of its life in a field up in the Adirondack Mountains in New York, where it had come to its last halt. That car was useful to the end, ultimately serving as a rusted-out scarecrow.

Kate is a journalist, author and essayist. For 20 years, she was a regular contributor to The New York Times. Kate’s work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Time.com, Good Housekeeping, Readers Digest, AARP’s “The Ethel” and other national publications. She is the author of “THE MAMA’S BOY MYTH” (Avery/Penguin, 2012), a nonfiction book on raising boys.