The 50 Worst Cars of All Time

1976 Aston Martin Lagonda

Aston Martin - the Lagonda
Aubrey Hart / Evening Standard / Getty
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In the disco days of the 1970s, even supercars were cocaine-thin. Meet the Aston Martin Lagonda, a four-door exotic that lived on dinner mints and hot water. Designed by AM penman William Towns — undoubtedly wearing a very large cravat at the time — the Lagonda was as beautiful a car as ever resembled a pencil box. Mechanically, it was a catastrophe, Aston Martin's Dunkirk. The company decided to build the Lagonda with a brace of cutting-edge, computer-driven electronics and cathode-ray displays, which would have been very impressive if any of them ever worked. NASA couldn't have built this car, much less the heirs to Joseph Lucas, the British electronics' famous "Prince of Darkness." Still, I'd kill to have one of these cars, and the O-scope and multi-meter to fix it.

1899-1939

From the Horsey Horseless to the Model T and the Airflow, ten horror stories from the auto industry's earliest days

1940-1959

From the Crosley Hotshot to the Dauphine and the King Midget, ten auto blunders from the '40s and '50s

1960-1974

From the Amphicar to the Pinto and the Gremlin, ten colossal car mistakes from the Vietnam era

1975-1989

From the Trabant to the Lagonda and the De Lorean, the worst cars of the 1980s

1990-Present

From the Prowler to the Explorer and the GM EV1, the worst cars from the past 17 years