You know what never fails to piss me off? Hacky lists of “worst cars ever.” We’ve addressed this dollop of bird scat on humanity’s cultural tapestry before here on the photon-pages of the Autopian, but this time I’d like to share a period-accurate bit of unbiased reporting that should be a good reminder of why these lists are such crap. I have for you a pair of 1970s-era car reviews from our old pal Bob Mayer, of the TV station WTVJ in Miami, Florida. One is for the AMC Pacer, a car that shows up in far, far too many of these stupid “worst car” lists, and the other, the Mercury Zephyr, shows up in almost none of these lists and is, let’s be honest, barely remembered at all, good or bad.
All I ask is that you watch the reviews of both of these cars, and then take a moment to decide if perhaps you need to re-think some things in your life.
First, let’s start with a review of a car that pretty much nobody would make fun of you for having owned, a 1978 Mercury Zephyr:
Wow. What a pile of crap! Dirt specs in the paint! The trunk lid wasn’t put on right! The glove box wasn’t installed properly, and the rattling inside sounds kind of like the drum solo from In the Air Tonight. All of this for $5,735, which comes to about $26,700 today. So, you get an anonymous, forgettable design, boring enough that photos of this car could likely be used as an emergency anesthetic in field medicine situations, and it’s built like crap.
Again, this is not a car that shows up on anyone’s “worst car” list.
Okay, now watch the AMC Pacer review from 1975, and you may as well note that the Zephyr enjoyed about three years of advancements in the automotive design and manufacturing fields when it was reviewed:
I can’t speak for you, but I just watched what seems to be a quite positive review of a new car! It wasn’t perfect – there’s that rear seat trim issue, and the radio had some static, but overall this review describes a small car with a novel, unique design that allowed for a surprising amount of room, all with a rattle-free driving experience, unlike some other cars I could mention. All this at a tested price of $5,332 (about $24,800 in modern-times money).
So, the Pacer gets comparable MPG, more interesting design, better quality and build, all for about $2,500 less. And somehow it’s the one on the lists of crap cars? Come on. I suspect most of the reason is that small-minded people have trouble accepting the Pacer’s zaftig, space-age fishbowl looks, and for that I squarely blame them, and if they want to drive a Zephyr, which has all of the grace of a lunchbox, then have at it.
Look, I’m not telling you what to think. Bob Mayer is, and I’m pretty sure he prefers the AMC Pacer over the Mercury Zephyr.
I’ve owned a bunch of Pacers. They’re wonderful cars. Being in the fishbowl is a unique experience and they’re pleasant to drive. They did have some issues like everything else built in the Malaise era. The exhaust manifolds would crack and they all leaked power steering fluid because they had to use soft engine mounts when they shoved the six in there and pretty soon after leaving the factory the motor would start to “rest” on the steering rack. Also, the interior plastic was made of vampire skin. Otherwise, though, solid, cool cars.
My mom’s first car was a Fairmont. It was such a miserable piece of crap that she still hates Ford to this day. It’s been 45 years! You know a car sucks when you still detest the company that built your first car 45 years later.
My sister’s first car was a 79 fairmont SW she got second hand from my grandmother in 1982. It too was a miserable piece of crap. It had a habit of nearly stalling while making a left onto a particularly busy road on the way to school every day.
Yep, my mom got the ’79 Fairmont from her sister, who had bought it a year prior. Her sister wanted something else (clearly) but didn’t want to admit it was a piece of crap. If I remember correctly she said it was dead and off the road by ’83.
I’d have trouble forgiving a sibling who dumped a steaming pile of Fairmont on me.
Every one of those lists loves to pick on the Mustang II. I’ve owned three, having bought my first when I was 17, and I just sold my third one this year (I’m 38). For 21 consecutive years of my life I have owned at least one of them, know them inside and out, and can tell you, from genuine experience, that there’s nothing wrong with the things that wasn’t wrong with every other car of the 1970s (I’ve also owned two Ford Capri Mk2s, a ’75 Chevy C10, and a ’75 Thunderbird). There was also a lot right with them (IFS, front subframe isolation, rack-and-pinion steering, seat comfort, ergonomics) that the majority of other cars built in the 1970s were nowhere as good at. But it makes for an easy target for the morons that consume these lists from clickbait Facebook ads.
My parents each drove one of that Zephyr’s sister cars, a 1979 Ford Fairmont Futura and a 1982 Ford Granada L. They were absolutely archaic shitboxes compared to a Mustang II. The ancient 3.3/200ci inline 6 that powered each made roughly the same horsepower and torque as the 2.3L/140ci inline 4 in my 1974 Mustang II, while burning more fuel. The interior fit-and-finish, ergonomics, and comfort were worse, and these were BIGGER cars that were engineered later! The ride was awful in comparison (how do you make cars with rear coil springs ride worse than one with leaf springs?), and the handling? Yuck.
The thing is, people are hardly ever rational about cars. If they were, everyone but Toyota and Honda would’ve gone out of business long ago, coal rolling would’ve never been a thing, and the Ford Mustang would’ve never been a hit in 1964, seeing as objectively, it was a less useful Falcon. If you made a rational list about the cars of the 70s that sucked, it would be full of the really crappy sedans of the era from the Big 3, not the handful of cars that had any character or technological advancement.
I’ve owned two Mustang IIs and I enjoyed them both. I also owned a ’78 Zephyr wagon (as my first car), and I enjoyed it too. At some point in the 90s I had a ’79 Mustang, and other than its looks it was pretty indistinguishable from the Zephyr. Both were automatics with 302 V8s, both ran great and handled okay, and I never had any complaints about either except for the finicky 2700VV carburetor on the Zephyr which you really couldn’t mess with if you wanted to pass smog. But even though the Mustang IIs were an older design than the Fox cars, they really were more comfortable and stylish, and would have been more fun to drive if they too had had V8s. (My ’76 had a V6 and the ’77 had the 2.3L four.) My Zephyr had none of the fit and finish issues shown in the review, and though it was a snooze to look at, it was incredibly useful and versatile. Hey, if a pencil-neck dweeb like me could lose his virginity in the back of a Zephyr wagon (and I did, most thoroughly), then it simply cannot be a bad car.
Yeah at least the Fairmonts have had a bit of a renaissance lately thanks to them being built on the Fox platform so you can do Mustang things to them. They’re good sleeper car platforms at the very least.
I knew people who owned Fairmonts. They were basic cars and nothing to get excited about. Most bought them used because they were cheap and they traded up within a year or two.
The few people I knew who owned Pacers never complained.
The reason the Zephyr (and Fairmont) never appears on “Worst Car” lists is that its sole quality was invisibility. It never appeared anywhere.
Wayne’s World rehabilitated the public image of the Pacer, but they were shyte cars. This is not to say that the Zephyr was not shyte .. it was too.
BUT: The Pacer was a compromised design -intended for a Wankel, it got an antique 6 that was heavy and not fuel efficient and so big that changing the rear spark plugs (something you did about once a year in those days) was almost impossible because they were under the dash. It got shoehorned into the design at the last second after GM canceled the (promised to AMC) engine. All they had was a boat anchor and so that’s what the Pacer got.
Next the Pacer was victim of its own popularity… they expected to sell 80,000 and sold 140,000 the first year. This meant that problems like the electronic ignition that failed a lot didn’t get fixed during the production year because there wasn’t time to change anything. Then there was the drop in quality that comes from building them literally day and night as fast as you can. Lots of quality problems.
Finally, the plastics used in the interior couldn’t take all the UV light from those amazing windows. It shrunk, and then crumbled…
So the car was okay for the testers except for the gas mileage but they got early not slapped together cars and they didn’t keep them for a year or two which was what it took for the design and materials problems to show up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcl98aBRkD8&t=813s
Note: 1974 was the year of the oil shock and the Pacer was getting 16 MPG -meanwhile the Honda Civic was the most fuel-efficient car in the country (28mpg in the city; 42mpg on the highway),
Who else remembers when Consumer Reports listed “sample defects” as part of the boilerplate copy in their reviews? Meaning assembly issues were so prevalent for so long, that it was just an accepted part of the process. (In CR parlance it would read: “We counted 15 sample defects in our Mercury Zephyr, including: A misaligned instrument panel, a loosely-fitted air vent, a non-functioning dome light…” etc. etc.)
The fact that they no longer do this speaks volumes about how good cars are today…something that I think many people take for granted. Personally, I have never been delivered a car that had any sort of assembly defect such as what CR used to report.
Neighbor of mine had just a couple minor defects in his LTD Wagon, but one big defect, the morons at Ford didn’t put any oil in the differential, was kind of major.
How else is it supposed to be found on road dead?
CR should review the Vinfast VF8 and that paragraph would return.
Never had a Pacer (but always liked the look). Never had a Zephyr but I did have a Fairmont. Was a POS. It struggled to get to 60 MPH, which was probably good, because it was pretty frightening at 55 – just felt like it would rattle itself apart. Granted, this one was used, but it was probably one of the worst cars I’ve ever owned. I doubt slapping a Mercury badge on it made it any better.
Counterpoint: I had a Zephyr with the 6. Aside from a transmission front seal failure which was covered under warranty it was just fine.
That said when that lease was up I chose, instead, an ’82 Supra which ws objectively better.
Bob Mayer was pure gold. And it sounds like the Pacer was too. Also, the only good Mercury’s came before 1972. After that, pureed malaise.
I liked my ’72 Merc Marquis 2dr Hardtop, but it sure was down on power from the ones two years older. The big Mercs got downsized for the 1973s, so the next Ford in line was an ’75 Elite So much ‘Personal Luxury’ in that barge. Was a better deal than the big Mercs, or the Big Cougar.
Was crazy how often you got new cars back then. I did keep my ’70 Torino for 30 years, though.
How could anyone hate on a car as iconic as the Mirthmobile?
You don’t get on a worst cars list unless I have owned one. Or at the very least, had to drive one.
AMC sort of got lucky in that their workers could no longer afford beer, or if they could, would return the empties for deposit. Nothing got left in the door cavities.
Having grown up in Kenosha, I can assure you they could afford beer. The factories were surrounded by bars. They were just drinking draft beer instead of bottled.
As a prior Hornet and Javelin owner i will go Pacer over Zephyr anyday. Maybe the zephyr doesnt get on worst list is noone remembers it.
A lot of these hacky lists confuse objectively bad vehicles with marketing flops and unfairly lump them together. There was nothing really wrong with the Pontiak Aztek or Edsel other than questionable styling choices which resulted in lower sales than anticipated, but that alone doesn’t make it a bad car. In fact time has proven that the Aztek concept would probably do pretty well today.
Also I’m guessing those were dirt specks in the paint, not dirt specs. Quality wasn’t job 1 for Ford back then but I doubt they actually required dirt in the paint 🙂
The Edsel did have many quality problems: https://www.hagerty.com/media/car-profiles/ford-edsel-floundered/
Also a lot of problems not related to the car itself, but to say “nothing was wrong” is a bit of an overstatement.
Yeah, its fine to say there was nothing wrong with the fundamental design, since it was conventional mid 1950s stuff, but Ford really did have serious quality control issues with Edsels, mainly related to their plants’ lack of ability to properly build multiple models on the same line – really probably comes down to insufficient employee training and too fast line speeds to accommodate the extra operations, as well as poor inventory management of required parts.
Whether build quality on the 1958 Edsels was really worse than 1957/1958 ChryslerCorp products, I can’t say, since those Forward Look cars had a lot of issues, to put it mildly, but consumers and the media were certainly inclined to give more of a pass to long-established brands with generally good quality records that just had a recent hiccup, vs an entirely new, unproven brand that started off on the wrong foot immediately. At any rate, the serious quality issues didn’t seem to recur on the ’59 or ’60 Edsels, but, by then, everyone, including Ford, had moved on and stopped caring. But, build quality was not the primary reason for the brand’s failure, just a contributing factor.
I went to visit my aunt when I was about 12 years old, and her new husband had a ’58 Edsel Ranger with a big V8 and push-button transmission (with the buttons on the steering wheel). It was like a spaceship.
I think its biggest sin was that it was way ahead of its time–most of the coolest innovations didn’t become standard until 60 years after Ford ditched the model.
Of course, the grownup me knows about the quality control issues. My parents and all their friends were all of the opinion that the Edsels were mass-produced lemons.
Yeah, Edsel’s were beautiful cars! (The grill wasn’t that bad to me- it’s unique) & they are on worst lists= stupid. Another reason they failed was because of the recession back then
Late 70’s Foxbody trivia..if I recall correctly a 4 cylinder Fairmont engine bay was set up so you drop a V8 in it, whereas you needed more modifications to do that in a 6. Which is how a friend and I wound up Frankensteining a Mustang GT V8 and stick into a 79 2-door Fairmont sport couple, that had to be around 1985, sadly we never quite got all the bugs out to have it running smoothly and we sold it for what we put into it, I saw it about a year later on the street in a close by town.
Not quite, the engine bay was the same regardless of engine but the inline-6 used a specific subframe. If you want to swap a V8 into an I-6 car the subframes are easily swapped or you can use Ford truck engine mounts with the I-6 subframe.
Prob moot, since we don’t know what options went into the as-tested prices, but it looks like you used the same inflation coefficient (4.65x) to get today’s equivalent prices on these cars. i was only a kid at the time, but as much as grown-ups groused about stagflation in the ’70s (hello 20% mortgages rates), i would think it should the 1975 Pacer coefficient should be higher than the 1978 Zephyr coefficient. Might not make the base model pricing equivalent, but the as-tested pricing in current dollars might actually be the same between the models.
The Malaise Era,was a dark time and many cars were mediocre even by 90s standards. Most “crap car” lists are lazy clickbait based more on prejudice and rumor than reality. The Pacer was ambitious in concept, since AMC originally planned a rotary engine, distinctive and sadly the butt of many jokes. The Zephyr is the forgtten Fox body, and I had to look that up since I had it confused with the even more risible Monarch. Of the pair the Fox was less well built but potentially better. The two door with optional suspension a six and 4 on the floor was an alternative Mustang, while the Pacer remained a bulbous Gremlin since AMC couldn’t afford a new platform after tooling up the body.
Since I can’t find “edit” I will note that either car is an order of magnitude better than a Dodge Aspen.
Former Volare owner, can confirm.
When are you guys going to snag an interview with Bob Mayer? As far as Google knows, he’s alive and well.
All these videos they’re linking to are from his YouTube channel, he’s been uploading his personal archives
To be fair, Ford did finally get the Fox platform straightened out, and built some iconic cars from it. But those old Fairmonts and Zephyrs… woof.
I’ve often wondered what budget-compromised cars like the Pacer would have been like if the engineers had been able to do what they actually wanted. Would have been an even more lopsided comparison, I imagine.
People eat food with their eyes… I think the same holds true with cars.
I’m biased, but not surprised. My 81 AMC Jeep CJ-5 mechanically is solid, fun, and seems to be reliable after I went through it winter after buying it in September. I did find it has two runs in the factory paint… I’m not surprised by the orange peel. AMC did have the lowest defect rate of the American cars, unfortunately, they were a bit too ahead of their time.
Almost all malaise era cars sucked. People remember the Pacer and Gremlin because they were weird.
I think that is my grandma’s old Zephyr. She bought it used to keep as a car for her summer house in Michigan around ’85 and it was fine for use three months out of the year. Basic with just an automatic and A/C. If I knew then, what I know now, I would have figured a way to get it when I turned 16 to do a host of Fox body mods. Instead she traded it in for an ’85 Mercury Lynx in ’88 and I ended up getting THAT POS when I turned 16. Ugh.
I guessed correctly! I’ve never driven a Pacer, but I’ve always thought they were cool little cars, if a bit weird looking. But our family owned a 1975 Ford Granada (close enough) and it was a miserable pile of garbage.
The Granada was based on the Falcon platfom… a once-good platform then slapped together to peak Malaise-era (lack of) quality standards… and tarted-up with styling that was also peak Malaise-era.
The Fox platform was a fine replacement for the Falcon and its descendants. Even with its initial teething and early quality problems, the Fairmont/Zephyr turned out to be good, if rather basic, cars. A lot of the early problems were just endemic to the lingering state of the Big Three automakers’ assembly quality of the time.
AMC tended to have better build quality than the other US automakers in the darkest years of the industry – still not great, compared to say, the Japanese or West Germans, just not as bad on average as the rest of the industry. Their small size, also-ran status, constant financial problems, and, by the mid/late 1970s, advancing age of their vehicle platforms gave them a bad image, but you were definitely better off with a Pacer or Gremlin than with, say, a Pinto or Vega. A Toyota or Datsun was a smarter buy still, but that sort of thing just wasn’t done in certain parts of the country yet.
to be fair, most of the cars built between 1974 and 1984 were pretty terrible. but that was the era.