America's 10 Worst Cars: Chrysler Takes Top 5

Motoring Channel Staff - 29/November/2007

New York, America — This is the time of year in Australia when everyone is talking about the 'best' cars. There are so many best car awards at the moment that it's hard to know what to make of it all.

To give you guys something a little different to consider, we thought we'd take a look at American magazine Forbes 'Automotive Turkeys' which is published each year during North America's Thanksgiving holiday (where the traditional feast is of course turkey).

The most interesting thing about the list is that the top five vehicles are all from Chrysler, which took an absolute beating in Forbes list. GM have a couple of entrants, Ford had one, and Nissan and Hyundai represented the Asian contingent.

The European brands were conspicuously absent.

According to Forbes, one of America's premier business media publishers, there were four criterions for the worst car list which spanned from resale values, to recalls, and crash safety ratings. The four benchmarks were:

Volume and Severity of Recalls (reported by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
Depreciation (Automotive Leasing Guide ratings)
Safety Ratings (based on the NHTSA and Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) crash-test ratings)
Consumer Reports (reliability ratings)

Based on this data, here is the list, with the worst car at number one and the not-so-worst at number 10:

1: Chrysler Sebring
2: Dodge Nitro
3: Jeep Liberty
4: Dodge Caliber R/T AWD
5: Dodge Magnum
6: Ford Crown Victoria
7: Chevrolet Aveo
8: Nissan Quest
9: Hyundai Entourage
10: Pontiac Grand Prix

The Forbes 'Automotive Turkeys' article sought comment from most of the manufacturers on the list and Chrysler, which infamously owns the top five, reportedly responded to the findings by saying that judging a car based on how many times it was recalled was not a "meaningful assessment of a vehicle's performance."

Ford response to the list was to indicate the Crown Victoria is not on sale to the public. It's a fleet vehicle is mainly sold to police and taxi/transport departments because its an inexpensive vehicle.

General Motors seemed to take the findings with candour: "GM is taking positive steps to improve residual values on all of our vehicles," said GM's spokesperson, Debbie Frakes. The #7 model, the Chevy Aveo, is badged as a Holden Barina here in Australia.

America's 10 worst cars make for interesting reading, but what about Australia's 10 worst cars? Would the Falcon and Commodore be on that list, or it would be populated by the lesser knowns, the Mahindras and the SsangYongs? The Nissan Tiida would probably be on the list too. But that's a story for another week...

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