Ford Pinto

Ford Pinto

The Ford Pinto. We couldn’t have started this list with a better example of a bad car even if we tried to. Ignoring the terrible design, weak performance and lack of luxury for a moment, the Pinto’s biggest drawback was that it tended to catch on fire during low speed rear-end collisions. In what is one of the most infamous settlements, the Ford Pinto Memo, Ford had to shell out $50 million for the victims and their families. They then subsequently had to spend another $121 million on reinforcing the car’s rear end. Talk about a disaster.