Autoblog's Best and Worst Cars of 2015

Join Scott and Ben as they explore Autoblog's picks for the best and worst cars of 2015 -- some of the results might surprise you.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car Stuff from how stuff works dot Com. Might Welcome
to car Stuff. I'm Scott uh and I'm Ben. I
don't know why I had to double check that briefly,
but it's all true. Ladies and gentlemen, We're joined with
our super producer No No, Lemon's Brown. I like it. Yeah,

(00:23):
And most importantly, folks, you are here, which makes this
another episode of car Stuff. I notice you look at
your your lapel there because you have a name tag on.
Of course, well, you know, the economy being what it is,
kind of a hello, my name is type tag. Yeah.
I used to uh, long time listeners, you'll recall that
I used to have a lot of site gigs as well,

(00:43):
and I picked it back up. One of my New
Year's resolutions is, uh, I'm going to be a professional
meeting attender. So I'm just going to different meetings. There
are other businesses in our office, and it's weird. If
you wear a blazer, you can just walk into places
and sort of nod. Sit at the head of the table,
of course, I try to and then a lot of

(01:04):
hand gestures, a lot of hand gesters. You gotta speak
with your hands. And then you also have to occasionally
the key is to not actually say very much so
that people don't figure out that you don't work there.
You just have to kind of nod, do a hand thing,
but then don't say anything, and then say something that
has an ellipses like leverage. That's a great strategy, and

(01:28):
the fingers well yeah, yeah, that's right. But and then
also the way you can get out of there without
having to make uncomfortable small talk. At the end, you
said an alarm that makes your phone buzz at a
certain time during the meeting, like maybe five minutes after
you arrive. Wait are you doing this too? Yeah, well,
you know, it's a it's a common tactic. I think
you said an alarm. And then you you look at
your phone as if you got a call, and you
kind of hold it the one finger thing and you
walk out. That's you never return. Oh you ghost, You

(01:51):
become a ghost. Yeah, that's right. You leave, You leave
maybe a notebook or something inconsequential there. Of course, you
know something it looks like you're going to come back.
You might even leave your chair eskew. Don't push it
in like you're not coming back or anything, of course,
but I've been oppressed. Yeah good, I've been thinking about this.
You might be one of the best meeting crashers that
I've meeting crashers. That's a little bit less less fun

(02:13):
than a wedding crasher, of course, I don't know. I
only crashed one wedding in my life and it was
super cool. Yeah. Well, I mean I think it really
is cool. I think it's a fun thing to do.
I've kind of I've wandered over to other weddings before
if they're you know, being the receptions are being held
at the same hall or whatever. You know, you've been like,
get out of my house. Who are you people? It's
a common thing. You don't linger too long, I mean,
because you know you'll be found out, but you can

(02:35):
hang out, you know. Yeah, never use your real name.
And I think that, Uh, that's an interesting way to begin,
because we're talking about some of the best and worst things. Uh,
ladies and gentlemen. This is our first recording session of
the new year, and so we thought we would look
back with some help from our friends at auto blog.

(02:58):
Yeah now here. This is something we need to definitely
get out there for sure. Okay, when we say, we're
talking about the best and worst cars. This is this
is really an autoblog list, and you and if you
want to follow along with this, and I encourage you
to do this because it was was pretty clever the
way they did this. They made two separate articles. Uh,
the autoblog reviewers and they get to drive, as they say,

(03:18):
hundreds of vehicles every year. They get lots of stuff.
You and I then we get none of this. So
you know, we've got maybe some limited experience in new vehicles,
you know, friends that drive newer cars than ours, But
by no means here at work do we get our
hands on twenty or twenty sixteen model of your cars
like the guys that autoblog do for these reviews. It's
just not what we do. So that's where we're gonna
follow along with this. Uh this best of and worst

(03:40):
of list, and uh, I gotta be honest with you,
we're gonna save the worst of list for the second half.
And UH, to me comical, Yeah, it's Uh, it's the
most fun part and surprising. That's the That's the other
thing is that there's some real surprises on here. Stuff
that is is eye opening. When you read it about
the manufacturers and the the type of vehicle and what

(04:01):
you get for your money or for you know, this
new vehicle. So I got it all kind of broken
down here and we're gonna start with best as I said,
and I'll do this with both of these. But um,
there's seven vehicles total on the best list, and there
I've got been broken down my manufacturer. Um, these vehicles
appear on the list one time, Volvo, Audie, Tesla, Mazda,

(04:22):
McLaren and then Mercedes Benz appears on the best of
list twice. Now, if you want to break it down
by model year, five of those seven are from the
Steen mile year and two of them come from the
model years. So there really that's a car that was
out in as a model. And the price range this
is this is interesting now, I said McLaren. So you

(04:44):
all can go guest which one you know? Which one?
This is? The price ranges from two d and eighty
eight thousand dollars. And you may be thinking, well, of
course that's going to be on the list, you know,
the best of one of the cars and the best
of list prices in it. Just twenty four and nine
that's M S RP. No way. Yes, under twenty five
th allars for one of the average price for today. Yeah, exactly,
And that's one of the best vehicles that these reviewers

(05:06):
Model blog drove in. Well, let's dive into it, my friends.
All right, so the best of cars and again, so
many of these. But this is the idea, is that
these are vehicles that make the list because they're they're
kind of like the best daily driver type vehicles, the
ones that are the most all around good vehicles, right,
not necessarily excelling in a particular thing like speed or safety.

(05:30):
Not that they're slow and unsafe. I'm just saying they're
all around above average exactly, right, you know, when compared
to those other hundreds of vehicles that they've driven. Now,
and let's see if you can guess some of these
as we go along with the first one, the twenty
six team Mercedes a mg C sixty three. Yes, okay,
so right away we start off with an expensive one,
and they're there. I promise you they're not all this way.

(05:51):
The first two are going to be. But again, these
are not like it's not like a top ten list
where it's you know, there's going to be an ultimate
number one best and ultimate number one worst. These are
just kind of you know, the reviewers idea of you
know where they are. Um, alright, So what they start
out by saying about this one is is that is
a proper Mercedes. And they say it may not go
around the track any faster than an M three, but

(06:12):
in the real world, on real roads, the latest C
class MG is without peers in its class. I think
it's pretty important to say something because it stands out
among other vehicles exactly like or in that same market,
I guess. And this is, by the way, Jeremy Korsnewski
who says this, We'll try to give you the name
of each one if I remember to have each reviewer.
But he says, all of Mercedes been C class models

(06:34):
are endowed with lovely interiors, and that's especially true of
the C sixty three when optioned with the available leather
interior and brown. I think it's called design. Oh is
the name of it or something like that. Um, it's
just a trademark name from Mercedes probably, And uh, previously
it had a six point two leader V eight, but
now it has a four point leader turbo charge unit

(06:55):
in yeah, and it has that was a five hundred
and three horsepower Fimer sixteen computer chalk. So they say that,
you know, if you want the true experience of this vehicle,
you you roll down the windows and you mash the
gas pedal, because that's where you get kind of the
best sound. I suppose, I'll be honestly, I'm not the
biggest fan of the round front styling. Yeah, I agree,
I'm not. I'm not that much of a fan of

(07:16):
that as well. Um, the overall looks a bit, of course,
is an MG so it's gonna be a little bit lower,
a little bit wider appearing because of that that low
stance and the wheels that they put on it, and
the trim packages that it comes with, and you know,
the colors that they have as options. Um, but in
this case they say, what you get what you pay for,
and in this case you're gonna pay boy. M s
r P is right around seventy three thousand, two or
fifty dollars. So that's an expensive one. Now moving on

(07:40):
to the next one, which is the most expensive one
on the list and out of the range of most
people in the in our listening audience, I would guess,
I mean there might be a few out there that
can afford this. I am not one. I don't know.
By you, Ben, I'm guessing probably not. And if you could,
you probably wouldn't do it, because, well, you've said in
the past you're kind of a penny picture, right, I

(08:00):
am too. Don't don't think anything's wrong with that. The
old boy scout, oath, thrifty, brave, clean and reverend. Nothing
wrong with that now. Two reviewers said that they love
this vehicle. It was Alex Kirsten or Kirstein and Greg Migliore,
and both of them said that, you know, out of
all these vehicles, this is probably the one that got
the most attention and when they were out on the
road in it. Yeah. The one thing that's really cool

(08:22):
is Alex says, have you ever driven an Inventador. Let
me tell you what it's like. It's like a roller
coaster that costs four hundred thousand dollars to ride. Too
much and you will be sick, he says. I'm not.
I'm not a supercar guy. But when he drives the
six fifty s he forgets all of that. So the
acceleration is perfect, It's comfortable without coddling you. It's the

(08:46):
best steering he's ever experienced in his life. He said
he rapped up nearly a hundred miles just blasting around
with no particular destination. Oh yeah, and then Greg kind
of furthers that by saying, uh, you know with you know,
all of it combined, the whole experien and the steering,
the engine noise, the wind above head. Because this is
the spider version we're talking about. Um. They said that

(09:06):
it sounds cliche, but you know, it's it's all steared
into your brain. Is like, you know, that's that's the
McLaren experience. That's the general idea behind this whole thing.
And you can imagine. I mean, Ben, you and I
have been to car shows where we've seen these in person.
I've seen the owners and they've got a wide smile
on their face. It seems like all the time, you know,
even just moving it in the parking lot, it looks
like fun. It's good to be king. Man. What a

(09:28):
beautiful car. And we we've got a local Lamborghini dealer
here in town, and I think they sell like they
sell really unique vehicles. They sell Lamborghini. There's lotus. There's
also I'm trying to think what's on the lot there.
Spiker vehicles are on the lot sometimes, which are really rare.
Um of course McLaren's there now. I get to see
these sometimes just outstretching their legs. You know that the

(09:49):
dealers will take them out in a kind of like
a trained fashion, where you'll see seven McLaren's in a row,
where they go out of this big pathway, you know,
like down down the main road, out onto the highway
and then back around back for the dealership. And it's
really impressive. Every single time I see it. It's it's
almost like an impromptu car show or something. But I
love the look at McLaren It's just a beautiful car,
very clean, very purpose built, and and I really like it.

(10:12):
Of course I had three thousand dollars, would I buy it?
I don't. I don't really even know the answer to that.
I'm not sure. It's it's one that we've talked about
many times. Would you if you had the money, would
you even do it? I don't know. I am having
a hard time answering that question. That was as a
long pause. It was a long pause because I'm thinking,

(10:32):
you know, I'm thinking about how amazing it would be
to have it, and then I'm also thinking about maintenance cops.
See okay, well here, Kame, we've talked about this too.
There are somewhat affordable ferraris out there, right, I mean,
if you go back far enough in the right model year,
you can find you know, like the was it the
three o eight model, that's the kind of like magnum
p I. Everybody says that the one, the kind of
magnum p I. Yeah, great, you can find one of

(10:54):
those for dollars or something like that, you know, affordable
sort of for a toy. But then you get into
the point where you have to change that timing belt. Yeah,
and that becomes an enormous expense and and oil changes
and all kinds of stuff like that that you just
don't really think about when you see that initial number.
But it all plays, and it should all play into

(11:14):
your decision. I don't know if it will though. That's
the thing. When I have the cash on hand, that
stuff is gonna fly out the window. Well, here's one
that you won't need a lot of cash on hand
for because it's the next one on our list that
is actually the low end of the scale, right, Yeah,
the two thousand sixteen mons that the next five. Yeah,
I guess I don't know why I'm surprised to see

(11:36):
it on the list, but you know, once I read
the first two, I thought this is gonna be an
all kind of top end to seat sports car type list,
you know, or something similar this one. The m S
r P is twenty four thousand nine dollars are right
around there. And um, the reviewer for this one, the
guy that picked it, his name is Stephen Ewing, and
he was just over and above praising this vehicle, saying

(11:56):
that not only is it the best car that you
drove last year, simply put, this is his favorite car
period ever. Full stop, Yeah, full stop, that's it. I mean,
he says that it's the car that keeps him up
at night checking his bank account balance and and checking
dealer inventories to see if it's available, and uh, he
really thinks about it that much. He said, he's put
over a thousand miles on this car, or on various

(12:17):
different versions of this new Miata, and uh, you know,
above and beyond all those other cars he drove, and
I'm assuming that he got to drive the Mclair and
he got to drive the Mercedes. We talked about earlier
in other vehicles, because that's the way it works, you know,
you passed the vehicles around the office a bit um.
He says. This is a machine that's built by enthusiasts
for enthusiasts in a world where autonomous technology is slowly

(12:38):
taken over, and this car is still remaining like it's
kind of like the analog version. It's still a driver's vehicle.
And that's what he really appreciated about it. And I
can completely understand that we've got a lot of me
outa fans here in h in our car stuff, listening
Audi and they write in with nothing but respect for
the Miles and Miata, all versions of it, a matter

(13:00):
of fact, from generation one all the way through right now.
That's one thing I like about the Miyata community, man,
is that they're not near as divisive so many other groups. Yeah,
you're right right there, all inclusive, and they love to
write in and share pictures with us of of upgrades
or you know, different wheel treatments or whatever they're doing.
It's it's always really interesting. I love I love seeing
the photographs of the Miatas because it seems like they're

(13:23):
they're highly customizable. It seems like people who are into
the Miata are really into the Miata. I mean they're
really big fans, but they take it out for track days,
they drive around town, they have friends that drive miyatas,
they talk about miyatas, they tell us about the latest
kids that are available, you know, for upgrades, you know,
whether it be engine, transmission, shifters, whatever it happens to be.
We get a lot of I guess cars to fan mail,

(13:46):
if you want to put it that way, but a
lot of just kind of checking in type notes that say, hey,
take a look what I just did this weekend. It's
it was so much fun and here's why. But it's
it's really is a it's a tight knit community, I think. Um,
But then again, there's so many of these little tight
knit communities all over the US. I mean, it's it's
really a pretty big following here, uh, speaking big followings.

(14:08):
This takes us to the next one. This one I
expected and predicted would be on the list just because
everybody's gone nuts over Oh sure, yeah, this is the
two thousand sixteen Tesla model s P nine d D.
Now the SP nine D D indicates that that is
UM an upgrade to the battery pack. I believe it
means an extended range. But the s it's of course

(14:30):
the model s P is performance, so that means that
this is the one that will do that with the
mode that they say is that ludicrous mode. UH gets
super fast acceleration, the one that you've seen lots of
videos online about. UM. Here's how that this this reviewer
David Gluckman mentioned. He said, acceleration is the party trick
and range is what you use every day. So you know,

(14:52):
you can you can show off into a few of
these ludicrous launches, I guess if you want to, But
if you're really driving this, you know, to and from
work or to the grocery store or whatever, you're a
little bit more conservative with the with a throttle on
this one. Yeah, And this is something that we talked
about in a previous podcasts that he brings up. He
says he's intrigued with this perspective of it being a
piece of technology. Yeah gadget. Yeah, you can go far

(15:14):
or you can go quick, but you can't do both
on the same charge. As the way he put it,
and I like the way he he kind of balances
these out that way. He's done it a couple of
times here, but again it's a clever, clever way of
saying that, you know, this this two or fifty mile
range thing is possible, but you're not gonna be launching
from every light like like you see in the videos.
But it's a solid vehicle for getting around town. And

(15:35):
of course we've we've had talks about you know, uh,
Tesla in general. I guess you know, they're they're non
dealership or what do you want to call it. Their
their sales model that's completely breaking the mold of what
everybody expects. Direct sales, Yeah, direct sales, that's it. And
um also just I guess the general way that their
founder does things because we hear about something that Ellen
Mosk is doing in the news just about every day.

(15:56):
It seems like there's always news about Tesla Motors every
every single week at minimum. Yeah, maybe week is a
better not every day, but every week it seems like
there's something coming out about this this company or the founder,
you know, other plans outside of the the auto manufacturing
realm that they're playing in, whether it's hyper loop or

(16:16):
you know whatever else they're playing with space exploration well,
here's something that I would spend the money on if
I if I had the chance, Scott, And that's our
next one that Audie R S five. I agree with
Brandon turkis this is probably my favorite that really Yeah,
it's models. It's one of the few models that that
are on the list, in fact, the only two of

(16:37):
those on the list. It ain't broke, don't fix it, Yeah,
that's kind of the idea behind this, right, he says.
And I like the way he starts that he says,
is a weird that the best card rove originally debuted
in and has an engine the first launched a decade ago.
So maybe, but if you take a spin in the
Audi RS five, I'm sure you'll be just as gaga
over it as I am. And uh, the way what

(16:58):
he points out here is that outside of Ford's Moth,
you know the four bus name g T five Leader,
you know the the V eight says, there just isn't
a high reving mass produced V eight quite like out ease.
You know this this four point two Leader high reving
V eight that they've got that they've used for again
a decade in the in these vehicles, it revs up
to a five RPM, which he says, I like this.

(17:20):
He says, it's like hearing James Earl Jones singing. But
as a soprano, I have nothing but good stuff to
do about this one. Well, it's got a seven speed
dual clutch transmission. Um says that, you know, that's kind
of one of these things, is like it feels like
it's it's old school, but in the best way possible,
because the inside has aged really well. It's not that

(17:43):
you know, it's it's completely out of date or anything
like that. Um. He says that it's kind of car
where if you lock it and you walk away from it,
you're you're more apt to take a glance back at it,
you know, when you walk away. And that's one of
the things that I think we've talked about this in
if you have a car that you as you're walking
away from the parking lot, if you if you don't
look back at your car, I don't think you like
your car all that much. Because I always look back

(18:04):
at my car. I always try to see what it
looks like in different light or parked of different angles
or whatever. I consistently do that when I'm when I'm
walking away. I'll look at it from twenty or thirty
ft away, and then maybe even again at fifty ft away.
I almost always do it. I do the same thing
sometimes out of paranoia. I want to make sure no
one's messing with it. Yeah, I ort to make sure
that the lights are flashing to indicate that it is

(18:24):
locking or something. Yeah. But but but I really do
look at it just to see how it looks. I like,
you know, at nighttime, when you pull up to a
gas station there's different lighting there. I like how that looks.
I mean, I think, if you really enjoy the vehicle
that you drive, that's something that you do. And and
that's exactly what he says about this is that you know,
you give it that second glance when you walk away
from it. Now, I want to see what you think
about this next one, the next model year, which is

(18:47):
the Mercedes been C Class. Yes. Yeah, and this one
at m S r P S around about thirty eight
five is right about where the price is on as
the price point and as this reviewer says, his name
is Dan Roth. By the way, Dan says that um,
first of all, it really likes the new interior, said
it's a thing to behold. If that's a that's a

(19:08):
good way to describe it. And he says that now
that Mercedes, I know this is confusing, but now that
Mercedes has the C l A, they can kind of
put some of their lower and stuff in that vehicle
and they can focus more on making the C class,
which again is confusing, I understand, but they can make
it a little bit larger, a little bit more expensive,
and a lot better. Yeah. Yeah, there's there's a little

(19:30):
bit more breathing room. Yeah, and they can say that
it's not it not it never was really a bad car,
but now they can kind of give it the credibility
to live up as it's billing as a like a
smaller S class vehicle in that range. I guess, um,
so you know, nothing but good things to say about
this one. He says, this is how you do a
new model. Really, so makes sense. Now, speaking of new models,

(19:52):
we come to the last of the best cars before
we get to the very entertaining list of worst vehicles
by the way, and this one, and I don't know
if I'm really surprised by the make and model or anything,
but the price point. I had no idea that they
could go up to this expensive the m s r
P on this vehicles between forty nine thousand and up
to sixty five thousand for this vehicle, but you get

(20:14):
a lot of good stuff for that in the sixteen
Volvo x C ninety model. Yes, sixty five grands is
gonna surprise a lot of people. That's with every bell
and all of the whistles, including and I need to
I need to put this up front, including that they
have kind of their own proprietary infotainment center, and I
know that's a funny thing to lead with, but they
have something called the Volvo Census Connect system, which is

(20:37):
kind of like a direct competitor to some of the
other systems to have a whole car play Android Auto,
and that Sensus spelled s E N s U S.
So the thing is Pete Bigelow, who's the journalist writing
about this. He says that the Census Connect is intuitive,
easy and seamless. He thinks it's uh, he thinks it's

(21:00):
like a case test or a leading example of how
to do this proprietary manufacturer created stuff correctly. Yeah, but
there's more to this vehicle than just that mphotainment system.
So the rest of the ex ninety, as he says,
is plush, comfortable, true to the Vobo history. So it's
focused on safety and the it says it's got adaptive
cruise control system, which is the smoothest and most refined

(21:23):
he's ever experienced among all automakers, which is A that's
a that's a pretty uh, that's a pretty big feather
in their cap. I guess to say that because this
guy drives a lot of cars, and he says, with
the possible exception, so there's one exception of Nissan's equally
good adaptive cruise, So he's only saying that it's equally
as good as the Nissan system. Um. Again, still that's
a that's a high mark. He says that Volvo also

(21:45):
places a heavy bet on autonomous technology, which is not well,
it's it's it's arriving, it's coming, it's not too far
away at this point, as we have talked about so
many times on this podcast. Um, but he says it's
it was actually comforting to see how the active lynessists provided,
you know, like these little corrections as he's driving. Um,
it wasn't something that was over intrusive, it wasn't something

(22:07):
that I felt was overstepping its bounds, right exactly, And
now that we have eating our vegetables, right, it's time
the good stuff. Yeah, you know, I find the Worst
of list more entertaining. And there's a couple of qualifiers
to the worst off list, and we'll kind of hustle
through these really and we won't take too long. I'm
gonna try to read as much of these as I

(22:27):
can because they're very comical. Um, okay, go ahead, two
thousand fifty Mercedes bens g l A, Yeah, okay, now
can I can I just say one quick thing before
because it is funny. But they point out, as well
as we have pointed out for about the last three
or four years, that there really aren't a lot of
bad cars out there, like truly bad vehicles like you

(22:47):
know when the When You Go launched during the the
United States, No, not in the old sense, and that
you're gonna probably be pushing these things on from the
deal or anything like that. These just happened to fall
at the bottom end of the scale out of those
hundreds of vehicles they drive, So they're not terrible cars.
But there's a reason that these are on the bad list.
So you mentioned the first one. Yes, I jumped the no, No,
that's all right, that's all right, Mercedes Ben's g l

(23:10):
A to fifty, right. Jeremy Koznevsky says that there are
some things Mercedes does really well. Going cheap is not
one of them. Yeah, that's right. Made me laugh. Well,
going cheap, and I mean, okay, it so cheap for Mercedes.
I mean the base price for one of these is
about thirty two to fifty, so it's not all that cheap.
It falls right in line with the standard sedan price.

(23:32):
But the He says that the g l AS two
fifties two eight horsepower and two pound feet of torque
isn't really enough to get excited about. And it's seventh
speed automatic transmission struggles to serve up the exact ran
amount of acceleration it's drivers calling for, so it's not
responding the way that he thought it would. Worse yet
it's right is rough, somehow, managing to feel both bounty

(23:54):
and jarring at the same time. This is the Mercedes
we're talking about, Ben, Right, and listeners, you will remember
that this is the same guy, the same reviewer who
picked a Mercedes bins as his favorite car drove. Yeah,
so he's not biased against Mercedes by any means, but
he's saying that this is the worst car he drove
all of last year. And that's I mean, that's really
saying something. And these usually boil down to kind of

(24:15):
the the un statement, but he says, uh, he says,
if you're shopping for a new crossover, I want to
stay under forty thousand, do yourself a favor and look elsewhere,
perhaps at your nearest Maza dealership, where you can buy
something absolutely loaded like a c X five for the
same price as a stripped g l A. You surely
enjoy it the driving experience much more if you're willing

(24:36):
to forego the three point badge in this price bracket.
So he's really saying, you're just buying the brand at
this point. Um, And these get more harsh as we
go along here, and starting with the next one BMW
M four convertible. Can you believe that made the list?
I barely can after reading it. This is a seventy
two thousand five vehicle, so you would think that this

(24:58):
would not be bad. And can I just take one
moment to take a sidebar out here before I read
this This is why it's so critical to read as
much as you possibly can about any vehicle you're gonna buy,
Because when you read stuff like this, and this is
somebody who is a seasoned veteran of of reviewing vehicles,
the name is Michael Austin works at auto blog. When

(25:19):
you read stuff like this and you realize, like, well,
this person is driven a lot of vehicles and this
one is the worst one that the drove last year,
you might think twice about plunking down seventy two five
for a BMW convertible next time. This is this M four.
So here's what he says about this one. He says,
under the skin, the latest BMW M three M four
is just as specialist previous versions, but too bad you
can't tell by driving it. Yeah, yeah, there's some other

(25:44):
classic lines here. I don't begrudge the convertible models existence.
I'm not even going to read the rest. Well, yeah,
he says. He says that you know BMWs M cars,
even the more plush recent models used to give you
goose bumps just pulling out of the driveway. But this one, um,
it just was like it's, as he says, video game
numb there's synthesized engine noise. Uh that sounds like something Yeah.

(26:06):
Well yeah, but and we do hade a whole episode
on that too, fake exhaust. I mean, it's your car,
he says. It sounds like something that comes from the
nineteen eighties era Yamaha keyboard. And he says, and by
the way, BMW's are not the whopper. I like to
wait put that because I don't want it my way
through endless custom settings. I want the car the way
engineers decided was the best way. That's the way it
should be. Yeah, that's a pretty good point, and some

(26:29):
people won't agree with it, but I totally see what
he says. Yeah, and he's also saying, you know, I
I truly do you know again, this is Michael's talking,
but he says, I truly do hate that kind of
old mantra that you know, the old car was better.
You know, I don't like to say that, but but
in this case, it's absolutely true. He says. It's not
that the M four convertible isn't as good as the
car that came before it, it's just simply not good. Yeah,

(26:49):
can you believe that? I mean that was his eye
opening I guess. I mean really, when you look at
the vehicle and you see them all around you on
the road, or at least we do here in Atlanta,
it's a it's a big import market and expensive. Yeah, yeah,
too expensive. Here's here's another one that's oh boy, this
one's got some bad reviews. This one is from Brandon Turkis. Yeah,
this is the two thousand and sixteen Mitsubishi Outlander, and

(27:13):
it's uh, you know, I'll say this. I've said it before.
I think Outlander is a dumb name for a car,
right in the name that they would call someone new
to town in a in a fictional thing. It's a
it's a relatively low on the price list as well.
It's not the lowest one on our list. Yeah, this
is a This is priced at dollars and at the

(27:33):
midsized crossover vehicle. You can think of the other cars
in the in the division or the group, the Pilot,
the Durango, the Explorer, Santa Fe, things like that, so
you can get a picture of what it's competing against.
The thing is that's the problem. It's what it's competing against. Right.
This is a very very cutthroat part of the car market.
Now the vehicle market. Yeah, that size crossovers. Yeah, every

(27:56):
vehicle is this segment, according to Brandon Turkey, is better
to drive every single one. The V six, he says
in the Outlander is underpowered, unpleasant and unrefined. It's thirsty,
it requires premium fuel, the rides disconnected, the seats are uncomfortable.
But he does give it one compliment, ben Well, sort
of an underhanded compliment. I guess he says, this new

(28:18):
Outlander would have been a great vehicle in two thousands,
six thousands, six Can you believe that? So's he's comparing
this to a vehicle that at this point would be
ten years old. So it's more that they he's saying
that it's just late to the game. Yeah it is,
I mean, and one good thing that it really one
of the good things about it is that it is
a seven passenger vehicle, which is tough to find in

(28:40):
that segment, and the in the mid sized crossover segment,
there's there's a bigger size that it's more common. But
that's really about the only good thing they had to
say about the Missubishi Outlander. And I guess you can
pile on the Missubishi. Sure, So I understand why they
do it. Now here's the um. This is the low
end of our price range. Uh. This next vehicle is
the Scion I M, and that's priced at eighteen sixty

(29:04):
m s r P. The thing about this one is timing.
Is everything right place, wrong time? David Gluckman says, there's
nothing particularly terrible about the Scion I M. It just
arrived at the worst possible time, specifically launched right alongside
the Scion I A sedan. Yeah. Now here's the idea
is that Sion decided to sell a version of the

(29:25):
mod the two, which was called the I A, which
they thought was a smart move, and they chose to
rebadge a euro market R s A spelled a U
R I s UM as its hatchback sidekick. And the
thing is, he says, I think we all would have
preferred to get the MASA two hatchback with a Scion
badge instead of what we got here. One more quote

(29:46):
everything the I A excels at good steering, clean interior design,
a nice manual transmission okay styling apart from the catfish
mouth upfront highlights where the I M falls flat. Yeah.
So the thing is that there's like this mental comparison
that you do. You know, it's like when it arrived
in the marketplace on its own, it might have been
a decent vehicle that might have not landed on the

(30:08):
Worst of list, But once you compare it to what's
already there, that's the problem. And that's exactly what happened
with this one. So too bad for Scion on that one,
because they have some other quality product as well out there,
and you know, stuff that didn't make it to the
Worst of list, stuff that didn't make it to the
Best of list, but kind of middle of the road.
Can I just read part of this next one, of
course you can. You know BMW's tagline the Ultimate driving Machine. Well,

(30:32):
this isn't it. This isn't the ultimate anything machine. Maybe
the ultimate stupidity machine, maybe Stephen doing onmw X four. Yeah,
the ultimate stupidity machine. Wow, that's pretty harsh. A lot
of these are harsh, and you know, there's a lot
of humor spread throughout this list as well as you'll

(30:53):
find if you read the whole thing, you'll you'll understand
what we're talking about. But um, Stephen also goes on
to say that, you know, BMW is will focused on
chasing niche markets. These days, it's moving farther and farther
away from actually making good driver's cars. Now, that's what
BMW is known for. They're they're so focused on making,
you know, driver's vehicles. We've we've definitely talked about that

(31:13):
in the past with the m Vehicle podcast that we did.
This is one that comes in at forty four thousand,
seven hundred dollars UM. It's an expensive vehicle, this this
X four. Again, it's a it looks like it's I
guess it'd be a small crossover vehicle, right, mid midsized
crossover maybe four door UM, kind of taller on the
on the scale, I guess. I don't know how to

(31:33):
better put that. But it's oh my gosh. They said
the X four is a perfect example of what they're
doing wrong, and it looks bad. It drives like crap,
it is very little interior space, and is less functional
than a cheaper offering like the three series sport Wagon
or X three. There's literally no reason to buy the
X four over any other BMW or anything else in

(31:54):
its class as a matter of fact, so again, read
these reviews before you buy. A new car, because if
you have just put down nearly forty five thousand or
fifty thousand dollars for this BMW X four and uh,
you might have got a bad vehicle. No, I'm bad comparatively, right, Yeah.
I gotta say though on this next one, man, I

(32:16):
I feel a little bit of what's they called confirmation bias,
Like you have a little bit of prejudice against U.
Lexus historically really a little bit. Okay, they had some
hits and some missus. Okay, I kind of agree with you.
This is a miss the sixteen Lexus g X four six.
Oh yeah, now this is a big one, okay, And

(32:36):
again above fifty dollars M s r P. It's right
around fifty one. As this reviewer Pat Bigelow says, Lexus
alleges a pursuit of perfection in its marketing slogan slogan,
but the brand new g X four sixty counts as
a blight upon that claim. So I definitely doesn't match
up to exactly what you say. In fact, it's an
all around disappointment. I didn't expect the big suv feel

(33:00):
uh to feel like a sports car, but at three
one horse power and three or twenty nine pound of
few tork were sorely lacking and made for a frustrating
experience in pretty much every driving condition. That's saying a lot,
it sure is. And then he says, at the price,
you think the options would include standard luxury features like
adaptive cruise control, power rear gait, but those features standard

(33:22):
in many cars at half the price were absent here.
And if you think you're gonna get fuel economy out
of something like this, because that's something that you might
think like we're trading off, you know, it's it's not
this powerful performance for economy, it's going to have better economy, right,
Well that's not the case, he says. The g X
for six he achieved a pitiful eighteen and a half
milesburg gallon during my seven days with it, and then
included almost entirely highway driving. So if you're getting eighteen

(33:47):
and a half milesburg gallon average and something that you
know you're expecting much much higher because I think the
e p A estimate of the claims were a little
bit higher on that, maybe up to like twenty I
think UM. But he wasn't getting anywhere near that UM,
And he also says that it only accepts premium fuel,
which I find is a situation that a lot of
new car owners are dealing with right now because of

(34:08):
they have real high compression ratings. They're they're trying to
machine things so tight and and may you make do
with smaller engines the compression ratings are much much higher,
and they have to do. They have to have premium
fuel in order to make them work correctly. The window
sticker on this vehicle says that you're going to spend
about five thousand, five dollars more in fuel over five
years compared to the average new vehicles, so you're paying

(34:29):
for that as well. I mean, it's just it gets
to be, you know, where, where's the jumping off point?
Then on the side, Uh, that's not for me, that's
not the car fuel. That's not even the worst because
Pete says that for eight percent of my time with
the car, I received a no signal message in the
satellite radio, even though I had no problems around the
same route to my actual car, and the card numerous

(34:52):
problems detecting the key fop. And he couldn't figure out
why that would be super frustrating because you would be
in the vehicle, or you know, make just approaching the vehicle,
it wouldn't recognize you and you wouldn't be able to
start the vehicle. So, uh, that's a huge problem. That
it is a major problem. But he said there was
no apparent rhyme or reason any of this. And he says,
there are plenty of vehicles that offer better technology, better entertainment,

(35:14):
and better luxury at half the price. And here's yeah,
don't call it a comeback, but somebody won a dubious
honor of appearing on this list. Oh yeah, that's right. Okay.
So Mitsubishi, as we said before, you know, they're piling
on it. But they say it's easy to pile on.
But but there's a reason they've got a couple of
bad products out there, at least in comparison to the

(35:38):
other vehicles they drove. Maybe that's a better, a more
fair way to say it, ladies and gentlemen. The Mitsubishi
Outlander Sport. So we added sport to the Outlander and
it didn't make any difference. So this is the nineteen thousand,
five five dollar M s R. P. Outlanders Sport from
And oh my gosh, they say in this in this group,

(36:00):
in this SUD division, it's definitely subpar. It doesn't stack
up to everything else in the UM in the group.
And again they say it's it's harsh riding UM. The
enfoltainment system is just bad. They say that they think
it looks kind of good. It's a it's a nice
looking vehicle, but it's in a very competitive segment. Yeah,
that's the problem. And that's that's what Greg Migliore said.

(36:21):
And there's another one and Dan Roth also picks this
isn't the worst and said that, you know, you think that,
you know, it would be kind of an open and
shut case for a company like Mitsubishi to offer something
like a compact crossover vehicle because that's kind of the
way you get into the market. You know, everybody can
offer something like that and be competitive. But again, everybody
offers something like that, and that's the problem that it

(36:43):
is very competitive. The problem is the Outliner Sport is
just no good. It just doesn't have UM what it
takes to claw ahead of the competition. The price range.
I guess it starts around twenty, but really the price
and it says you can you can go all the
way up to about thirty dollars for this thing. And
you know, Dan says that thirty grand buys a whole

(37:03):
lot of excellent crossovers where you don't have to suffer
with a CVT or an infot infotainment system. That UM
one that he says made him raise his fist and anger.
That's frustrating. It was, But he says, you know, it's
a tough segment to be end to begin with, you know,
and we said so many times competitions fierce in the segment,
but the Outlander is on a ten year old platform

(37:25):
and it just makes it even worse. They just can't
keep up. That's the problem. They keep trying, and uh, listeners,
you'll notice that quite a few of the criticisms come
not necessarily because the car is inherently bad. It's just
not up to snuff in comparison. Yeah, and again, I
feel like we have to keep coming back to that.
It's just that all these cars that are on the

(37:46):
road right now, there's really nothing bad. He can't make
a bad decision right now, there's really all these cars
are gonna last you a hundred thousand miles at least
two hundred three hundred thousands, not out of the question.
If you do routine maintenance, you know even more. Of course, uh,
we we've so many times on our podcast said really
just do the research and find what you want, because
you can kind of fine tune this, you know, based

(38:06):
on with so many different shopping tools out there, you
can find tune it based on price, are based on options,
are based on um, you know, your power train needs,
are based on hauling needs or whatever. There's so many
options out there, and they're all really good choices. They're
solid choices. And you and I briefly mentioned we didn't
talk about it yet, but we we just briefly said
a lot of this is due to what will complain

(38:29):
about as well to the government regulations, some of the
some of the ideas that you know, every car now
has to have ABS, every car now has to have
stability control, a lot of that. I mean, sure, everybody
hats to say, like the government's regulating what you're what
you're doing, or what you're getting, but to be honest,
it's making some pretty darn good automobiles, or at least
reliable automobiles available to us. And speaking of the opposite

(38:54):
of reliable automobiles, one more left well, I don't know
about rely. It is reliable. I mean, when we can't
say anything to a reliability, we can speak to reliability,
but we can say, um that it's sort of it's
getting long in the tooth. Maybe that's maybe the best
way to say. That's what we can say. You know what,
You're right, it is reliable, but it might be towards
the end of its school every days. Yeah, I think
maybe the cycles over for this one. Yndai Genesis Coup. Okay,

(39:18):
this is a car that we've praised in the past.
I don't have a problem with it. No, I don't either.
I still don't have a problem with the looks or
anything like that. But here here's the problem this car,
as we talked about in our Pony Car episode, and
we had a Christian commit and talk with us one
of our first and only guests really on on our show.
Even we had a pony car discussion here on car stuff,
and one of the cars that we brought up as

(39:39):
being in the Pony Car segment was this Hyndai Genesis
Coup and that sparked a little bit of controversy. But
they do claim that it is in that group, and
the problem is that the Camaro and Mustang, which are
also in that group among other vehicles, is also the
challenger now of course too, but the Genesis has just
simply not kept up with the rest of the group.
The other cars have refined themselves, they've tweaked them, they've

(40:00):
improved them in some way that makes them just far
better versions of themselves, but the Genesis has remained stagnant. Yes,
relatively stagnant, I mean comparatively, that's a better way to
say comparatively. Um So, well, the others are far far
better versions of themselves. Um And despite having all the
theoretical components of a legitimate middle ground kind of between

(40:24):
muscle and imports sports coupe vehicle. As as Alex Kirsten says,
this one simply just doesn't doesn't keep up with the
other three, which is a crying shame. Yeah. But also
maybe in future years the Genesis coup will return, updated,
will be born. There's a possibility. But right now, what
what Alex says is that there's kind of like a

(40:45):
vague and unsatisfying manual uh that compares poorly to the
better units in the Ford and Chevy. So that's one
knock against them. The steering is, yeah, there's the V
six power vasic power that lacks the punch compared to
the other vehicles. Um, the steerings and numb which they
say is you know cardinal sin for a sports car course, well,
not a sports car, I guess a pony car. And

(41:06):
I think it's interesting that you know that Alex notes that,
you know, if there were updates to this one, that
it would be competitive in that segment. You know, if
if they would just do the minimum I guess at
this point, if they if they would offer a lightning package,
you know, like like like lighter weight components to add
onto this vehicle, or if a stiffening package you know
that would do would improve the suspension, something like that.
Maybe even some turbos for the basics, or you know,

(41:29):
let's just go out here, let's offer a V eight option.
But but the turbos thing is probably a better solution
for kind of a midgrange effort or as I think
they call it, a sophomore sophomore effort, something in between,
you know, like just just upgrade what's there and make
it more competitive. But they're just not doing it. They're
kind of letting it hang out on the line to
dry at this point. That's my own words. By the way,

(41:51):
I just think that's what's happening. It's like it's, uh,
everybody else is just surpassing it. Yeah, I get left
in the dust. Yeah, and you know this list, I
mean really, if you read uh the list you know
the worst cars we drove this year from Audel blog
and the best of as well, you're gonna find that.
You know, there's a lot more to it than what
we've mentioned here. We just kind of like the funny points,
I guess, you know, some of the standout lines. Yeah,

(42:12):
and we want to hear what you think. What are
some of the worst cars in your opinion? Yeah, we
have some listeners. We have a we have one listener
that gets to drive future product. Yeah that's so cool. So,
you know, untotally unbadged doesn't even know what they are,
but like he might write in and with us with
some photos and some descriptions say, I don't know it
for sure, but I think I'm driving the g T

(42:33):
I R version right now. But he's not positive of that.
You know, it could be, but he's got some really
interesting on the road stories and you know, um and
I'd love to hear uh kind of Europeans about you know,
some some later model vehicles, you know, the ones from
sixteen that you own, cars that you know you bought
within a certain expectation and you're find that maybe it's
not all that you thought it would be, like my
wife's g Brennigate, or maybe you're pleasantly surprised. Yeah, that's right.

(42:56):
Maybe you know, like the Mazda m X five Miata,
you know, maybe you bought it not you of course
you probably knew what to expect, but you might not
have thought that this would be the greatest car you've
ever owned, as that one reviewer mentioned, Yeah, let us
know what you think. You can find us on Facebook
and Twitter as we as we do say and you
know our Facebook is doing pretty well. Mentioned that earlier.
There's some really neat stuff you guys that Scott's posting

(43:19):
on there that doesn't make it to the air, but
is is worth checking out. Shut Ben. I appreciate the compliment,
but maybe check out Ben's stuff on Twitter, because Ben
typically handles the Twitter and uh, and I plaud what
you do there as well. Well. Thanks Scott, I appreciate that,
which reminds me. If you want to check out any
podcast we've ever done, visit our website car Stuff Show

(43:40):
dot com. And if you have a suggestion for something
we should cover in the future, or want to help
us pile on to making fun of the midsupisi Outlander, yeah,
you can do that. You could do that, or you
can tell us the best car oh yeah, the best
car too. Yeah, And the best way to do that
is right to us directly. We are car stuff at
how stuff Work dot com and I gotta get out

(44:01):
of here because it's a taco night at home. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is that
how stuff Works dot com. Let us know what you think,
send an email to podcast and how stuff Works dot com.