1. 1899 Horsey Horseless
This bizarre vehicle was intended to soothe the nerves of horses that shared the road with automobiles. From the crackpot mind of inventor Uriah Smith of Battle Creek, Michigan, came a buggy with a wooden horse head attached to the front. Hoping that this would cause the buggy to resemble a horse drawn carriage. Smith even recommended that the horse head be hollow and full of fuel, because that wouldn’t be dangerous or anything right? “The live horse would be thinking of another horse,” said Smith,”and before he could discover his error and see that he had been fooled, the strange carriage would be passed.” History isn’t 100% clear on whether or not the Horsey Horseless was ever built or if it was just a pipe dream from a nut job, either way it’s a terrible idea.
2. 1911 Overland OctoAuto
Designer Milton Reeves rejected the general consensus that automobiles only needed four wheels, feeling that six or eight wheels was a better idea. Under the auspice that more wheels would equate to a smoother ride, Reeves began modifying a 1910 Overland. Welding in some parts, adding two more axles and four more guncart-style wheels, Reeves gave birth to the OctoAuto. He displayed the Frankenstein monster of a car proudly at the Indianapolis 500. The OctoAuto measured over 20ft long. Zero orders for this hideous vehicle were made, but Reeves didn’t let that stop him. The following year he tried again with the Sextauto, which was a six wheel, single axle design. As evidenced by the lack of six wheels on normal cars today, the Sextauto was also a flop.
3. 1913 Scripps-Booth Bi-Autogo
The Scripps-Booth Bi-Autogo was a massive 3,200 lb motorcycle with training wheels, a V8 engine, and copper tubing everywhere. This crazy idea is the brainchild of James Scripps-Booth, an heir of the Scripps publishing fortune and a self taught auto engineer. The two-wheeled Bi-Autogo carried the weight of the vehicle on 37-in wooden wheels. When going slow, the driver could lower smaller wheels on outriggers to stabilize the vehicle, preventing it from tipping over. Even for 1913 this was a bizarre vehicle. One good thing that came out of the creation of the Bi-Autogo is the V8 engine. This was the first vehicle to come out of Detroit with a V8 engine in it, making it at least somewhat important to history.4. 1920 Briggs and Stratton Flyer
By time 1920 rolled around we had started to get the hang of building automobiles. Rolls-Royce, Cadillac, and Voisin were all producing luxurious automobiles and pushing forward with technological advancements. On the other end of the spectrum was the Briggs and Stratton Flyer. Compared to other automobiles you could hardly call the Flyer a car, it was pretty much a motorized bench with bicycle tires on it. No body, no suspension, no windshield, and no style, this vehicle was an attempt to make a very cheap automobile. The Flyer was powered by a tiny 2 horsepower engine driving a traction wheel, similar to a boat with an outboard motor. No actual power went to the Flyers axles.
5. 1933 Fuller Dymaxion
Designed by R. Buckminster Fuller, the Fuller Dymaxion was initially conceived as a flying machine. The plan was to install jet engines and inflatable wings, so you could drive it like a car and then inflate the wings and fly away when you want a plane. The wings never became a part of the production model, and without them the Dymaxion looked like a goofy pill rolling down the road. The Dymaxion was a three-wheel vehicle, with a levered A-arm carrying the rear wheel, which swiveled like the tail of an airplane. The first model had a terrible wobble from the rear wheel, the next two built were bigger and heavier, while the third model had a stabilizer fin on the roof. A fatal accident involving the Dymaxion ( due to unknown causes) killed the vehicles chances of public acceptance.
6. 1934 Chrysler/DeSoto Airflow
Truthfully the only reason that the Airflow is labeled as a “worst” car is that it was ahead of its time. The design of the Airflow is similar to cars that were developed in the 50’s. Aerodynamic body, steel subframe, 50-50 weight distribution, and light weight are all features of the Airflow. For whatever reason though, in the 30’s Americans did not get on board with the Airflow’s dramatically different design style. Some of the issue likely was derived from the major problems that plagued the Airflow. It’s never good when an engine falls out of a car. The radical construction techniques used to craft the Airflow had yet to be perfected. Chrysler and Desto tried to restyle later models, but there was no coming back from the bad taste already in the consumers mouths and sales never took off.
7. 1949 Crosley Hotshot
The Crosley Hotshot was the first postwar America sports car, and it was a pile of garbage. The Hotshot was slow, dangerous, and weighed very little for a steel car, clocking in at 1,100 lbs. The Hotshot can be seen in the 1961 driver’s ed video Mechanized Death, where it appears mangled and smashed up. The Hotshot was designed by Powel Crosley Jr., of Cincinnati. Crosley had radio fame, but he wanted to build cars, which he did, poorly. It had CIBA (Cast-Iron Block Assembly) which was average at the time. There was good things too… A Super Sport (Hotshot with doors) won the Efficiency Index at the 1951 LeMans race.
The Renault Dauphine is a french made vehicle that originally was to be named the Corvette. Luckily that name was used for a much better vehicle. The Dauphine was so rickety and the metal used was so paper thin that rust was guaranteed. The design was similar to other cars of the time, it just used low quality materials. Worse than the shoddy construction was the Dauphines performance. It took the drivers of Road and Track 32 seconds to reach 60 mph. That’s slower than even the weakest vehicles sold today. Somehow this super cheap, poorly built vehicle managed to sell over 2 million units around the world. Just goes to show that at the time people would buy any car, just to say that they had a car.
9. 1957 King Midget Model III
In the 50’s, Caud Dry and Dale Orcutt, of Athens, Ohio, decided that they were going to create cars that everyone could afford. They started with the Model I, offering the vehicle as a home-built kit. The kit contained a frame, axles, and sheet metal patterns that needed to be crafted by someone with fabrication skills. Any single-cylinder engine would power the vehicle. It was like a giant do-it yourself model that you could drive down the road after you built it. Somehow they remained in business until the late 60’s, with their crowning achievement being the Model III. The Model III was a folded steel box with a 9 horsepower motor. Thankfully government safety standards caused the King Midget to become nothing more than a memory.
10. 1957 Waterman Aerobile
Waldo Waterman once heard aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss remark how he would like to drive and airplane away from the airfield. After hearing this Waterman went to work and spent years developing the Aerobile. In 1934 he flew a prototype, the “Arrowplane”, which was a high wing monoplane with tricycle wheels. The wings folded against the fuselage when it was on the ground, like an insect’s wings. The fact that the wings folded backwards is terrifying to think about, considering a failure in the air would just fold the wings back and plunge you to your death. Decades later in 1957 Waterman perfected his design, the Aerobile. No one wanted to tempt death by buying one of these machines, so the one working prototype resides in the Smithsonian as the first flying car.
11. 1958 Ford Edsel
The Ford Edsel was doomed once the hype machine surrounding the car got rolling. The marketing department at Ford led everyone to believe the Edsel would be a fantastical car of the future, a plutonium powered scientific wonder. What they delivered was a Mercury. The Edsel wasn’t that bad a car. Sure it looked kinda plain, it drank gas, and it was far too expensive, especially during the 50’s recession, but it wasn’t as bad as it’s made out to be. Some critics blame the Edsel’s failure on the grille,which resembled a vagina. Apparently 50’s America was really phobic about the female nether regions. In truth it was probably a mixture of all of the above as well as the public jumping on the bandwagon with critics.
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