Buying a new car should feel exciting, but automotive history is littered with vehicles that turned that excitement into regret. From rust buckets and fire hazards to overpriced badge jobs and three wheeled oddities, the cars below earned their spot through a mix of bad engineering, worse styling, and tone deaf marketing. Read on for a tour of the lemons that drivers, mechanics, and critics have never quite forgiven.
The 2003 Chevy SSR Tried Hard To Be A Sport Truck
The Chevrolet SSR, short for Super Sport Roadster, rolled into showrooms in 2003 wearing a retro hot rod silhouette and a folding hardtop. It looked the part, but the experience underneath rarely matched. Early models packed a 5.3 liter V8 that had to haul nearly 4,800 pounds, and zero to sixty times stretched past seven seconds, which felt slow next to its aggressive styling. A heavier price tag than a Corvette did not help either. Chevrolet swapped in the LS2 V8 for 2005, yet sales never recovered, and production ended after the 2006 model year with widely reported totals near 24,000 units. The SSR is remembered as a styling exercise that forgot to be quick.