I agree with some of his choices but his reasoning is pretty terrible. For example, the Ford Explorer might well be considered "worst" for mainstreaming SUVs, but it mainstreamed SUVs by being a quantum leap ahead of the "utility vehicles" it evolved from. Before the Explorer there was the Bronco (going back to 1967) and Bronco II (going back to 1985). The Explorer used a compact truck chassis (not an F150 chassis as claimed) and didn't have the terrible twinbeam front suspension of the Bronco II. It also had four doors, allowing a family access to the category without requiring them to buy a Suburban (available since 1976). Pick on the Explorer for the type of vehicle it is all you want, but recognize that it became ubiquitous because it was actually a damn nice ride for the price.

The rest of his choices are arbitrary and ill-informed. The SVX, for example, was actually an exceptional little car, largely hindered by the lack of a manual transmission option. Subaru sold it as a sport-luxury vehicle to replace the XT-6 and it did that quite nicely. The design was actually licenced from Ford, who put it up at the Detroit Auto Show in 1986 as the Ford Probe VI (?) concept car. They, in turn, cribbed the window-within-a-window idea from any number of racers and exotics; Vectors had them, Lamborghinis had them, other less notable vehicles had them. The buying public wasn't in the mood primarily because the guys who were willing to put up with windows like that wanted a stick, not a slushbox.

In some cases he's just mean. The Pinto, despite having a bad rep, was no better or worse a car than its contemporary, the Chevy Vega. And as far as PR disasters that ended up being meaningless, what about Audi's misadventures in the '80s and Toyota's misadventures two years ago, both shamelessly rigged by 60 Minutes? Pintos simply weren't that dangerous, and since pretty much any American car of that vintage was similarly sucky, singling out the Pinto is lazy and not particularly insightful.

Listing cars like the Bricklin also shows the scatter-shot and asinine approach of the author. Realistically speaking, the Bricklin wasn't any more of a piece of shit than the DeLorean, but Robert Zemeckis didn't put one in a movie.

Finally, he picks and chooses his facts as he sees fit. Corvairs were about as dangerous as the Porsche 911s of the time for the exact same reason - they had lots of oversteer and were tail-heavy and if you grew up driving Bel Airs, they would surprise you. Every car had an "entymologist's" steering column at the time, but not every car got witch-hunted by Ralph Nader. Finally, the 65-69 Corvair answered pretty much every bitch Nader had (not all of mine; their fan belt arrangement was f'ing terrible) and is still widely acknowledged as one of Detroit's more interesting designs (compare and contrast with, say, the Fiero).

If I had to guess, the author is cribbing heavily from this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Lemons-Worlds-Worst-Timothy-Jacobs/pro...

...which was given to me long ago as a gift, and sucks in the exact same directions as this man's article.