Bonus: Unpublished 10 Worst List

10 Worst

1.] Chrysler Sebring
There are many things I would rather be driving than a Chrysler Sebring. For example, a ox-drawn dung cart.
Besides being uglier than botched botox, the Sebring has no personality, a rough engine, an flimsy plastic interior like the inside of a chocolate box, and steering which feels like it's communicating with the front wheels by Morse code. Or possibly carrier pigeon.
Worst of all, the Sebring was touted as the successor to the flawed-but-interesting Chrysler 300C, which is a little bit like Ice Cube's change from scary West Coast gangsta rapper into boring cuddly star of straight-to-DVD family movies.

2.] Saturn Ion
Some people have mourned the passing of Saturn. Well, both of you can lay the blame for the company's failure on this excrable econobox. The Ion took Saturn's reputation for making quirky, fuel-efficient automobiles with dent-resistant doors and blasted it from orbit with a beam of pure, concentrated ugly.
The plastic interior in the sluggish, unreliable Ion is of such a poor quality, it makes the previously mentioned Sebring look like Versailles, and the rest of the car is alternately boring or goofy-looking. Good riddance.

3.] BMW 7-Series
Early on, the BMW 7-series was like a Saville Row tailored suit: reserved, stylish, and projecting a sense of wealth and affluence. Then, a man named Chris Bangle came along and ruined everything.
Channeling the pure evil of the Dark Side of designing, Bangle turned the business suit into something Flavor Flav wouldn't wear. It took years for the horrible “Bangle Butt” to wear off, with its weirdly raised trunk lid.
Also complicating things was BMW's abysmal iDrive system, which auto-journos quickly renamed iDriveYouCrazy. Yes, using a single mouse-like controller for all vehicle functions is great, but not when changing the radio station requires a trip through twelve submenus and a skill-testing question.

4.] Pontiac Aztek
I almost feel sorry for the poor Pontiac Aztek. Yes, it's ugly and slow and horrible, but it's like the ugly duckling, always getting picked on; always the butt of jokes.
On the other hand, it is really, really, really ugly, and the only way it's turning into a swan is if someone melts down all that plastic body cladding and pours it into a mold.

5.] Pontiac Sunfire
Is it any wonder they don't make Pontiac anymore? Like a hamfisted and myopic plastic surgeon, GM's “sporty and fun” division seems to take a perfectly bland, slow and unreliable Chevrolet product, and “improve” it by adding non-functional vents, spoilers and other plastic bits. But that's not important.
What is important is that the Sunfire was coarse, ugly, plasticky and uncomfortable, and received a crash-test rating of Certain Death. Do not want.

6.] The Jaguar X-Type
Jaguar may have built itself a reputation over the years for supreme excellence in the field of unreliability, but at least they were also luxurious. When you did get the Jag to run, it purred and roared, and the interiors were lovely places to wait and have a nice hot thermos of tea while you waited for the tow truck.
Then along came the X-Type Jaguar, the Jag that mewed. Everybody knew that a cheap Jaguar was a bad idea, especially with Ford at the helm. No matter, the businesspersons scoffed at the dissidents and cheerfully steered the HMS Jag towards Bankruptcy Rock by releasing a slow, cramped and shoddy product, which didn't sell.

7.] Ford Focus
I'm talking strictly about '05 and up here, as the Focus of the early part of the decade was not that bad. Sharing a lot of its DNA with the Euro version, the Focus was nippy, fun-to-drive, and nearly reliable.
But then those same businesspeople stuck their noses in, preventing the next Focus from being a twin to its European cousin (which, incidentally, sells like pannekoekens overseas) and instead choosing to make the North American Focus, bigger, fatter, and slower. Just like us.

8.] Dodge Caliber / Jeep Compass
Believe it or not, these are the same cars, and they are both deeply, deeply terrible. The Caliber is boring and unreliable, and manages the trick of being a reverse Tardis: huge on the outside, cramped on the inside. It also has acceleration times normally associated with plate tectonics, unless you buy the SRT4 version, which will try to kill you with torque steer.
The Compass takes all these excellent features and adds a facegraft to make it look like a Jeep. It should not be possible to buy a front-wheel drive Jeep that gets stuck if someone spills a Big Gulp on the road, but the management at Chrysler thinks that's what you want.

9.] Kia Amanti
Every well-designed car has a “face”. Just look at the mischievous headlights and grille of a Mini Cooper to get an idea of its playful nature and fun-to-drive qualities. The Kia Amanti looks like a Koala Bear with brain damage.
It's also quite expensive, unless you were to work out the per-pound price, which is the only way the 4100 lb curb weight is helpful. It's a big flobbery idiot of a car, and an embarrassment next to some of the highly improved products Kia's been putting out lately.

10.] Hummer H3
Ever notice how a lot of cars on this list are made by companies who've either disappeared or been sold off? There's a good reason for that.
Witness Hummer, the company that's a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick to Mother Nature's face. All three models are pretty bad, although the H1 is at least fairly unpretentious, but the crown of anti-excellence has to go to the H3. Visibility is poor. Fuel economy is poor. Power and acceleration are poor. You will be poor if you buy one, because the resale is poor. Just terrible.