Survey: Most Under rated Cars of all time

I have always had a soft spot for the AMC Rebel Machine.....dare to be different

 

Kaiser Darrin...

 

Hamb-Burglar, I agree with you on the Rivieras, I had a '70 which was the final year of that basic body design, though nowhere near as pretty as a '66-'67.

I also think Rambler Marlins are underrated, I think they're quite elegant, spacious and with the V8 a pretty decent performer. They're cheap as dirt. I can imagine having a mild custom one.

 

Well if you are gonna talk Marlins then talk about the 66-67 Chargers, they are near clones, 'cept the Dodges came with more than 327 Cubic inches

 

EASY NOW!!!!! Where is my bar of soap!

 

Wasn't he the third husband on "Bewitched"?

 

GM Bubbletops 60-61.I love there stylin.Mike

 

It was a great car for about 18 months. Then stuff started falling off and breaking faster than I could fix it. Shifter linkage fell off shifting into second, clutch cable broke, rack sprung a leak, head gasket started leaking water, evaporaror sprung a leak, and this was all in the second 18 months we had it. When it got traded in on the Honda, tha dealer called the next day and said they had to tow in from in front of the dealedship.

 

"Under Rated"

1970 Pontiac Grand Prix 455 HO
Looks like a cushy personal luxury car but had the full house 455 H.O motor in it.

 

Unless it was a superduty, ala 1973-1974, the Poncho 455 was a slug comapred to soem of the 400's available in 1970. Sorry to say. Cool car though.

 

You just can't beat the Amphicar for versitility!

http://www.amphicar.com/photog.htm

 

2CV, DS, Traction Avant

 

Those Cars are not underrated, they are an acquired taste...

( personally I wouldnt consider any of them, unless I could gut it and build something like this...)

 

They have one of those at the KC Salvation Army donated cars, lot I recall it from my Apartment complex when I first moved here. they wanted 7K for it, it is very original and supposedly ran. But since it was french and pretty wel unknown it never sold. HMM, maybe I should have looked twice at it.

 

this


could look this

 

I always felt like the early Falcon is overlooked as a potential low-buck kustom. Drop it and lose that chunky front bumper and you're rollin' in style.

Whoah! That's peas & carrots right there.

 

muntz jet and 40ish plymouths plus just about anything from1923-1934 that isn't ford

 

61 Comet Best Taillights

 

Pininfarina had nothing to do with them, they were designed by Jean Daninos.

 

1951 Chrysler New Yorker. World's most powerful car with 180HP hemi V8, auto trans, power steering, power brakes, padded dash, tinted glass, power windows. No other car had all these features in 1951 - no Cadillac, Lincoln, Mercedes, Rolls Royce, nobody. First car to offer power steering.
One set a record at Daytona Beach in January 51 just a few days after introduction, fastest car on the beach at 100.13 MPH and the first stock sedan to break 100 since the prewar front drive Cord, and it had a supercharged V8.
1952 models were practically the same except they added air conditioning, first car to offer air as an option except for a handful of experimental prewar Packards.

Another massively under rated car is the 1984 Dodge Caravan minivan. O how boring, everyone has a minivan, well they do now. It is hard to believe but the modern front wheel drive family minivan did not exist before 1984. There was the VW Kombi but it was basically a delivery van with seats.
The Caravan must be the most widely copied and imitated car of the 20th century. It set a world wide trend and put the station wagon out of business.

Speaking of station wagons - the first all steel bodied, passenger car based wagon was the 1949 Plymouth. It set another massive trend, in the fifties station wagons were so popular some pundits felt they would outnumber sedans by 1960. This never happened but they were made by every car manufacturer, except for a few luxury cars like Cadillac and Lincoln.

Chrysler has a lot of forgotten or under rated innovations to their credit. I believe it is because they quickly became standard practice and were imitated by everybody. It is easier to remember cars that looked like breakthroughs but started no trends and led noplace, like the Corvair.

 

man,...this is an old thread......Stude Larks, early 50's Plymouths are cool...

 

Ford Pinto wagons & Vagina wagons (if you're a Shivel-lay guy)
Neither of which are HAMB approved.
6sally6

 

In the Ford lineup I believe the '52-'54 Fords were the redheaded step child up until the past 15 years or so. HRP

 

No love for early '50s Willys Aeros? Unit body construction, light yet powerful with a 161-cubic-inch F-head six and a Borg-Warner overdrive, got around 30 mpg if you were careful, and roomier than Fords or Chevies.

 

Hello,

As a young teen, I was drawn to a Studebaker Hawk. We saw one at the local Studebaker dealer and thought it was one good looking car. Plus, it had one of the only supercharged motors from the factory during this time. We saw a red one and it looked rather good on the showroom floor.

My brother was considering purchasing it for his teenage hot rod and cruising car. We saw the early Studebakers in plenty of Bonneville photos with the lowered stance and race car look. We even saw several at the early drags, but they were not as successful as most others in the stock and gas coupe/sedan classes. But, a new red car with a supercharger? Who would not want to be different, but classy?

When the Hot Rod Magazine article came out, we read every paragraph and pages, what seemed like all 11 pages of that article.

It had a funny name, “Jet stream” supercharger. No, I could not finish the whole article in one sitting. I remember it took me several days of stopping, going to another photo feature car, coming back to read a little more, etc.

But, we still liked those oddball fins and thought the factory wind machines must have told them it was a functional airflow design. Of course, our friends laughed at us when we told them it was a car to be considered for our purchase, cruising and drag racing.

At the drags, they were not quite as fast as could be, but we just thought it was a new car and all. For the street, no fancy mags or chrome reversed wheels, just simple black rims with Moon Discs would do the overall look. At least, it would look fast and in time, we would do our magic on the motor for more power…

Jnaki

So, the option of a new red Studebaker Hawk was not happening. Even if individuality of being a teenager with the only Studebaker on the streets was the option. It just did not work for the hot rod scene. Even with the centrifugal supercharged motor, it did not have the draw.

Over the next several years of cruising in our cars, we did not see a single Studebaker Hawk cruising around any of the teenage drive-in scenarios or down at the beaches. Perhaps, they were not the most popular of any car desired by teenagers. The roots were there, but the styling and name just did not attract buyers like a Ford or Chevy.

One of our favorite streaming series is called "Jack Irish." It takes place down under. For the first season, the Studebaker played an important part of the series. Check out the three seasons as the series has now officially ended. But, there is surprise in season 3.

 

I don't know if it's been said. '36 Plymouth coupes are pretty darn nice. Came close to trading my '40 Ford for one!

 

Though since becoming an Icon, when the L-79 Nova was introduced, many of the big dogs were left wondering "Wtf was that!!??"...
Same with the 'Ramrod' Cutlass a couple years later....

 

1. Citroën 2CV — outside of the places where they were common. The idea is common in America that brilliant design must produce an expensive car, and so many point at the 2CV and laugh at Citroën's spectacular failure to build a 1948 Cadillac, despite that being precisely what they weren't trying to do.

2. 1955-56 Packard.

Now, who can tell me what the Citroën 2CV and the '55-'56 Packard had in common?

 

WAG- both in American Graffiti?