We’re having an archaic Commodore PET computer pick a random page from the 2005 book, The World’s Worst Cars, written by Craig Cheetham, and then we’re going to defend and redeem the car shown on that page, because I maintain that Mr.Cheetham has created a book not of The World’s Worst Cars, as the title claims, but rather of some of the World’s More Interesting Cars. Most of the cars in this book – perhaps all – do not deserve to be trapped in between the covers of this deceitful tome. And I’m going to redeem them, one by one. So let’s go.
Let’s start like we always do, by keying in this simple BASIC program to pick a random number between 1 and 317, the number of pages in the book.
I don’t have a working cassette recorder for the PET, so I have to type it in every time. It’s okay, it’s just two lines:
Okay! Page 92! What do we have on page 92?
Oh, wow. This is an interesting one! An Excalibur! A peculiar car, sure, and one designed to appeal to a really, really specific niche, but a worst car? No, no no no. It’s not. Whatever you think of Excaliburs, I don’t think they qualify to be “worst” cars. Sorry, Craig, but we gotta do this again.
The Excalibur SSK is, as you can tell by looking at it and then noting its years of production (1964 to 1981) an interesting car. It’s quite deliberately designed to look like an anachronism, and specifically like an anachronism that’s known as the 1928 Mercedes-Benz SSK:
The Excalibur story starts at, interestingly, Studebaker, sometime around 1963, which also just happens to be the last year that Mercedes-Benz vehicles in America were sold through Studebaker-Packard dealerships. It also involves Brooks Stevens (mis-spelled in The World’s Worst Cars as “Brook”), the man who designed the Jeep Wagoneer, among many other cars. Studebaker came to Stevens looking for some exciting concept cars to show at the upcoming auto shows. Steven’s idea was to make a sort of “neo-classic” car, not unlike what Virgil Exner was doing around this time, too. Stevens wanted something with the look, drama, and presence of an old, powerful car like the Benz SSK, but with modern running gear.
Studebaker sent Stevens the chassis from a Lark convertible, complete with a 290 cubic inch/4.7-liter V8 making about 290 horsepower. This chonk of an engine was moved back over two feet in the chassis, putting the driver right about in the place where the back seat was in the original Lark.
The original car, known then as the Studebaker SS, looked incredible. Unfortunately, three days before the opening of the New York Auto Show, Studebaker chickened out, saying that they didn’t want to confuse people into thinking they’d be actually making, you know, cool cars. The organizer of the show took pity on Stevens and found him a corner by a hot dog stand to show the car, where it got incredible interest. This helped to get things going with Excalibur as an independent marque, well, that and a switch to Chevrolet motors, since one of their first showrooms was in the General Motors building.
The Corvette-powered early Excaliburs, being quite light and lean, were fast cars that performed very well. They did get bigger, with a four-seater coming in 1966, and then a lengthening in 1970 and a Series III that was slightly bigger in 1975. Eventually, the Excaliburs got heavier and thanks to malaise-era smogged engines, lost power. That, along with three-speed automatics took away a lot of the performance appeal of the later Excaliburs, but they all still had that look.
The earlier ones are purer, no question. You can look at a Series 1 from 1967, and it really does feel like an SSK on somewhat wider tires:
(photo: Hyman Ltd)
Compare that to a later one from 1975 and you can see that the cars were bulking up and getting more and more kitchy as opposed to classic:
I do like the use of VW Beetle turn indicators and taillights; in fact, you could make the argument that the Excalibur, built in Milwaukee, was the first American car to have Amber rear indicators, gaining them in 1973, one year before the Ford Mustang II brought them to market.
(photo: Beverly Hills Car Club)
So, yeah, these things were faintly ridiculous, but who cares? They were fun! If some rich dude came rolling up in a white Excalibur with his shirt open to his navel and enough gold chains around his neck to keep a rampaging stallion at bay, you knew you were in for a good time. Plus, Phyllis Freaking Diller had one and was a big fan!
Is Craig trying to tell us that Phyllis Diller would drive one of the Worst Cars in the World? Get your head out of your ass, Greg.
Sure, these got a bit silly. Fine. Honestly, the world needs more exuberant silly overdone madness like the Excalibur. These were not boring cars, and they absolutely achieved their mission of providing a classic, long-gone look combined with modern drivetrain technology. They were expensive, sure, and absolutely not for everyone. But not one bit of the Excalibur justifies its inclusion in a “worst of” book.
Once again, Craig, you’re wrong. Everyone, grab your copy of The World’s Worst Cars and tear out page 92.
‘World’s Worst Cars’ Book Redemption: Skoda Estelle
‘World’s Worst Cars’ Book Redemption: Oldsmobile Toronado
‘World’s Worst Cars’ Book Redemption: NSU Ro80
I do believe the Series I’s were the fastest American production car on sale when they were first released.
Until today, I had no idea that the first-generation Excalibur existed and that it was so… NOT-nausea-inducing? It looks positively tasteful compared to later generations, almost like a car that a real human being might want to drive.
The earliest, purest Excaliburs deserve to be heralded as classics.
Nah… the Excalibur deserves to be in that book. The early ones looked okay-ish. But the later ones were all fromage and deserved to be sent to the crusher.
Phillis Diller? The star of How To Have A Moneymaking Garage Sale? By God, if there’s a better endorsement for one of these, I sure can’t think of it.
Jokes asside, I like/dislike this one. It’s certainly interesting, but the fact that they ended up bloated with 3 speed GM auto pits me off.
when i was a kid, i’d sometimes see a cream-colored series III in the public garage of the RenCen. It took tackiness to heights unknown, and this was peak Donna Summers-Bee Gees-Kiss-Big Time Wrestling era. In my mind it was the emblem of Disco. Of course, now hearing one of those songs in a sound track makes me nostalgic. At least they aren’t BJ Thomas.
I think Jason should show up to meets in one of these as the official Autopian Mid-Atlantic corporate vehicle.
I mean this as a compliment.
Ghastly device for the terminally tasteless. The people who bought these thought televisions in wooden cabinets were the height of sophistication. And probably had carpet in the bathroom.
I’d Lemons Rally the hell out of one in a heartbeat, though.
Yep — Those were the marketing-inspired tastes of the average Yank in the 60s and 70s.
Today it’s ridiculously over-wrought styling on impractically large pickups and SUVs.
And they’re “inspired” by marketing to have the thinnest (to the point of being impossible to repair) TV’s hung on the walls of rooms that are barren expanses of light gray or white. And depressingly gray fake wood flooring everywhere, including the bathroom.
We haven’t improved. Not one bit.
Don’t forget the framed Instagram inspiration quotes and ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ cushions.
Adrian doesn’t like these? Color me flabbergasted.
Didn’t everyone back then have carpet in the bathroom? Hell, my grandmother had a carpeted toilet seat cover to match
If it’s a V8, why there are only 3 exhaust outlets on each side?
A Ford flathead V8 only has 6 exhaust tubes. Imagine it has that engine.
Because the Mercedes SSK only had 3. I doubt those exhaust tubes (not pipes) are real.
A friend of my father was a car nut. Had a Sunbeam Tiger, 3 wheel Morgan, Issetta, and a series 1 Excalibur. The roomiest one was the tiger. The fastest was the Excalibur. He would give any of us kids rides in his cars. Adults tended to look down on his collection while us kids saw them for what they were, fun.
Not my choices, but he sounds rad.
As a kid, I thought the Excalibur was not “authentic” enough. Now that I’m (a lot) older, it’s live and let live.
Exactly how I feel about these cars!!
Yup… live and let live… right after sending all those later Excaliburs to the crusher… LOL
OK, some of the cars in this series might qualify as, at least, pretty damn bad. Not the Excalibur, though. These are just way too fun. It’s uncommon for me to see one these days, but they always grab my eye (in a good way) when I do.
Loving this series…honestly I look forward to reading it every day! That said, at some point, that random number generator is bound to pick an actual bad car, right? Not having read the book, ol’ Craig has to be correct about at least one car, right?
Not while Torch is piloting this ship. For a man who had his aorta explode he is still the most optimistic person that I can think of.
Early Excaliburs are very cool! But I would need to change the rear fenders to own one. The way they don’t cover the front of the wheel really really annoys me.
In an inspired bit of car-casting, in the 1986 film Ruthless People, Danny DeVito’s character drove an Excalibur!
http://imcdb.org/vehicle_472566-Excalibur-Series-IV-Roadster-1980.html
The inept kidnappers with hearts of gold drove a split-screen VW bus which came in handy when they nabbed Bette Midler’s character:
http://imcdb.org/vehicle_472568-Volkswagen-Station-Wagon-Typ-2-1964.html
My mind labeled these a bad joke, then you come up with ” The Corvette-powered early Excaliburs, being quite light and lean, were fast cars that performed very well.” and now think, just throw in a modern 6 speed manual, and you got yourself a super 7 !
Later ones still a joke.
The very first Excaliburs were reportedly great cars to drive.
I heard from people who should know when I was at CalArts that Phyllis Diller’s Excalibur ownership and *very* enthusiastic driving style where the inspiration for Cruella Deville in 101 Dalmatians.
Jason I know you are a Beetle and a tail light lover, but those tails don’t work for me on that late model version. But even more so, I think the long sloped front fenders, but with no backs on them, look terrible. I really like the look of the series 1 though. And with an SBC in them, you could easily drop in a modern powertrain to make this thing absolutely terrifying and fun.
Yeah, even though plenty of vintage cars have plain mudguards like that, it just doesn’t look right on the Excalibur. Part of me thinks it’s because you can see the external exhaust pipes behind it-on other cars those go into the fender and exit discreetly elsewhere
Of course the real reason he chose this one is because of the SuperBeetle taillights.
(They were the most visible rear lights VW had made at that point.)
Excaliburs weren’t even the worst neoclassic cars, that would maybe be the Tiffany coupes in the ’80s that did absolutely nothing to disguise the fact that they were Cougars with a nose job
And the early ones weren’t even the worst SSK replicas, either, given all those Gazelles running around with chrome plated aluminum foil grilles and plywood framed fiberglass bodies
Counterpoint to the Phyllis Diller ownership point: there’s an episode of the Rockford Files where Jim’s hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold friend Rita tries to give him one. The look on his face says it all.
Jason I am LOVING this series. Each car has been super interesting, and makes for a fun read when I’m supposed to be working.
Another page gone. I liked these but with 3 people in the family hard to justify.