What are the famous design failure cars?

[Galane]

Originally Posted by niky

It's a callback to what a former editor called it, which got him banned from pressers by Subaru.

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I would hope I'd know what it looks like by now, after three children, but I could be wrong!

[taredog]

Originally Posted by All Darc

It's a fictional car, but it's incredible weird, and bring memories of laughs in childhood :

More thread drift.
Whoever did it did a great job making a Ford product look GMish. The squeak that developed during the trip was also very GM from my experience. Fords may have had that squeak too.
Station Wagons I have driven:
1956 Ford 2 door station wagon 312 4bbl Fordomatic mileage-I didn’t care then
1965 Chevy Impala 327 4bbl Powerglide mileage low 20s if you kept the secondaries closed
1968 Chevy Caprice 327 4bbl TurboHydro 400 mileage low 20s if the quadrajet secondaries were kept reigned in
1970 Chrysler Town&Country 440 4bbl TourqueFlight mileage dismal but I never got to drive it much
1965 Ford Turnier 1200cc V4 4 on the tree mileage high 20s
1966 Pontiac Tempest 230 OHV 1bbl Super Turbine 300 (powerglide) mileage didn’t last long enough to check it
1972 Ford Country Sedan 302 2bbl SelectShift mileage (didn’t care, USAF vehicle, what a boat to drive in Germany)
OK, famous design failure cars. DMC-12. Good idea, too pricey, bad publicity. Tucker 48. Lots of great ideas. Never got it right, forced to quit trying. Chevrolet Corvair. GM was getting it right, bad publicity killed it. Ever try to change the fan belt on one of these things?

[All Darc]

A bit of subject change.

In a TED-X video, a speaker said that the chance of die in a plane today it's 99% less than in the 70's. I know safety get quite better, and I would believe if he had said 80% or even 90% less likely to die in airplane. But 99% ????

Can somebody confirm it?

And how car safety and airplane safety compares from 70's to today ?

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by All Darc

And how car safety and airplane safety compares from 70's to today ?

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by taredog

Chevrolet Corvair. GM was getting it right, bad publicity killed it. Ever try to change the fan belt on one of these things?

Until the added extra pulley, they would spontaneously change themselves.

[Galane]

Anyone ever do an electric fan conversion on a Corvair?

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Until the added extra pulley, they would spontaneously change themselves.

There were always four pulleys. What they added later was a belt guide on the idler pulley that looked like a shoe and prevented the belt from rising up out of it's groove. They also changed the cooling fan from stamped steel to lighter cast magnesium so quick inertia changes didn't upset the belt so much. Another thing that helped reduce inertial loading was switching from those heavy-arsed generators to conventional alternators.

My 'Vair threw it's belt only once and it was probably my fault for not tensioning it properly. Changing the belt is easy-peasy, especially vs fwd cars.

Yes, there is a Corvair e-fan: http://www.corvairspecialties.com/streetfankit.html

[wdb]

In keeping with the original spam---errr, topic, I kinda hate to add this one but it does fit the description. I really like them, even owned one for a while. But they cost almost twice as much as their compadres on the Subie showroom floor, and the automatic transmission was panned as the only choice even before it suffered premature failure. Even now they're one of the least appreciated 'classic' JDM machines.

[freebeard]

I like 'em. There was one for sale in Cedar Flat, and I was tempted. For sale because it was "too fast".

I like the bubble top. It looks like a candidate for a transmission or drivetrain swap.

[Galane]

Originally Posted by wdb

In keeping with the original spam---errr, topic, I kinda hate to add this one but it does fit the description. I really like them, even owned one for a while. But they cost almost twice as much as their compadres on the Subie showroom floor, and the automatic transmission was panned as the only choice even before it suffered premature failure. Even now they're one of the least appreciated 'classic' JDM machines.

AFAIK the Subaru SVX was the only mass market passenger vehicle with windows where only part of them rolled down. (The Lamborghini Countach was hardly "mass market".)
Likely also the only one where to change half the spark plugs the engine has to be unbolted from its mounts and jacked up a bit. I liked the looks of the XT Coupe test mule they built for SVX drivetrain development. It wasn't at all crude. It had big fender flares and they cut holes in the hood for the strut tower tops, covered by large bumps. All the additions were done in the slightly rounded edge angular style of the XT Coupe. Saw a spy photo of it in a car magazine circa 1990, so good luck finding pics online.

Though the XT looks like an aerodynamics nightmare, it had a drag coefficient less than many of its curvy contemporaries. .29 A Brief History of the Wonder Wedge