Dishonorable Mention: The 10 Most Embarrassing Award Winners in Automotive History- Yahoo! Autos Article Page Here and now, in vivid HTML, Car and Driver formally apologizes for naming the Renault Alliance to the 1983 10 Best Cars list. For the last 26 years, it’s been gnawing at our collective gut like a shame-induced ulcer. The car was trash. We should have known that back then, and it’s taken us too long to confess our grievous mistake. Let this frank admission be the start of our penance. It’s not the only blemish on our record, and we’re not the only publication to recognize a few stinkers with its highest honor. The history of automotive journalism has seen flaming piles of poo named “Car of the Year†even as they attract product liability lawsuits by the acre-foot and hunks of crud honored as “All-Stars†at the very moment buyers are seeking reimbursement under lemon laws. It’s always a risk making judgments based on the initial exposure to a car, and sometimes a vehicle’s ultimate crappiness only reveals itself with the fullness of time. We’re all subject to hype for something that seems new, different, and maybe even better, and in this business, we all feel the crushing pressure to be timely, amusing, and authoritative. Being wrong is always a risk. Still, here are ten award winners for which somebody needs to apologize...
I agree with them all except the Ford Contour. The Contour was and is an excellent car. It has been very popular in Europe as the Mondeo. The Contour just didn't fit into Ford's US model lineup since it was smaller than a Escort but almost as expensive as a Taurus. Being a better car an either wasn't good enough to get Americans to buy it. A decade after it left the US market the Mondeo will be back. The CD3 platform shared by the Mazda 6, Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan, Lincoln MKZ, Ford Edge and Lincoln MKX will be replaced by the next generation Mondeo CD4 platform in 2012.
Those auto-mags have not taken reliability into consideration when they chose XXX Car of The Year, 10 Best or All-Star (or whatever). Whether they should or should not, it is up for debate. However, consumers/readers should take that into consideration since they are the ones actually pay for the vehicles, not the auto-mag reviewers.
Sounds like GM apologizing for lack luster quality. How many new lackluster vehicle purchases does it take to loose the trust of a customer? I wonder how customers were lost by the auto companies and Car & Driver over these vehicles.
I'm glad to see that they admitted and apologized for their past mistakes, but it's difficult for anyone to accept an apology unless they say "We promise to be more careful in the future." There was no mention of the future. And with a resume of TEN mistakes in 26 years (there's only ONE car of the year), this doesn't look very good! If they're not going to say they're going to be more careful in the future, then all this article effectively does is say "We made TEN mistakes out of 26!" period. And....why are you telling your subscribers that? I have to laugh at the 1980 Chevy Citation. Good luck getting insurance for that. "What kind of vehicle?" "A citation." "Huh? A misdemeanor or an infraction?" "A CITATION!" "I'm sorry sir. How many citations did you say you have?" Hahaha!
They forgot to mention that one of the criteria was (is?) how many subscriptions the winner is buying. To paraphrase the Guv: "This is golden. I'm not giving away "Car of the Year" for nothing."
actually that mondeo proved to be horrible car, you can get it now almost for free and nobody is buying them i was car shopping with friend and he decided to rather pay for used focus more, than get newer mondeo for less, as quality reports were so bad
The Mondeo was sold in the US as the Contour from 1994 to 2000. We only got the first generation. If the Mondeo is such a horrible car why was Ford able to sell 300,000 a year in Europe? Why has Ford sold more than 1 million total in the UK alone and the Mondeo has been the best selling vehicle in class since 2001 in the UK? Granted the latest generations have not been as popular as the first generation but they are still selling 150,000 a year. Of course the Focus has also been a very good selling model for Ford Europe. It has been the UK's best selling car since 1998.
Didn't a version of the second generation Mondeo come to North America as the Merkur, with a 170 hp turbo on board? It lasted maybe a year or two and was dropped like a hot potato for lack of sales.
Similar story but different vehicles. Merkur vehicles were sold in the US from 1985 to 1989. The Merkur XR4i was based on the Ford Sierra and sold from 1985 to 1989. The Merkur Scorpio was sold from 1988 to 1989 and was based on the European version of the Ford Granada. They were sold in select Lincoln dealerships as an entry level luxury car. The Mondeo started production in 1993 and the US got the Mondeo based Contour from 1994 to 2000. The European Mondeo is on the 4th generation: Mk1 - 1993 to 1996 Mk2 - 1996 to 2000 MK3 - 2000 to 2007 MK4 - 2007 to present It will be interesting to see if Ford is successful their plans to bring the European Fiesta, Focus, and Mondeo to the US in 2011-2012. Personally I think they will do OK because they are replacing almost their entire US car line with the European versions. In the past they have tried to fit one European model into the US lineup.
I'm not aware of any quality issues with the current Mondeo, particularly. Ford have improved quality a lot in recent years. Ford's problem now is that a lot of people have either downsized to the smaller car - since all the cars keep growing from generation to generation, this is not really a surprise - or have switched to SUVs or MPVs (minivans). The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders Motor Industry Facts report (for early 2008) shows that the market share of 'upper medium' sized cars (Mondeo, Vectra, BMW 3 Series, Prius) dropped from 24.5% in 2002 to 16.1% in 2007. Superminis (Fiesta, Corsa, new Mini, Yaris) rose from 25.2% to 32.1%. 'Lower Medium' (Focus, Astra, BMW 1 Series, Auris) went from 33.4% to 30%. SUVs went up from 4.4% to 7.3% and MPVs from 2.1% to 6.0%. Ford of Europe no longer has an 'executive' class car. The Scorpio was phased out in 1998.
Last years COTY was the Mazda CX9. I found the drivers position to be cramped and over crowded. I have seen reports that owners gave it a really low rating too. So much for COTY.
we are not talking about "current" mondeo, which is too new to get reliability reports on. But about older gen which was sold in USA as well as Mercury, and was indeed horrible vehicle. In germany, you can find same year mondeo and focus, with focus having less equipment, and mondeo will be cheaper. In 2008 What Car? survey, Ford was rated 9th brand with 3/5 stars for reliabilty overall.. not bad but not stellar either. And a lot better than what was happening 10 years ago.
mmm yes I am curious about it. The Mondeo seemed to be quite solid and the new one looks fantastic. I haven't heard much about it. I have seen it a few times on Fifth Gear. Hmm, maybe now's the time to also fess up to the fact that a BMW 3 series won over the Lexus IS due to a miscalculation of the points (faulty addition) as well as the fact that the 3 Series had many warning lights come on during the test.
See I'm curious. In that article, they state "The Prius is entertaining from behind the wheel, too. At the test track, we measured a 0-to-60-mph time of 9.8 seconds." Toyota says 9.8 sec for the new one, 1 second faster than the current one. Now as far as I know, the current one is rated at 10.3 or 10.5. Should we expect that it'll nail it below 9.5 sec?
I recently read a report from Edmunds that their 0-60 mph test involved some small gap that is not measured. They claimed drag racers use this gap and it provides a fraction of a second reduction in 0-60 time. Understand that I'm not advocating this but reporting something I remember reading. 2009 Nissan GT-R Full Test Actually, here is the article: How We Test Cars and Trucks Bob Wilson
