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7. Chrysler K-Car
Another doozy from Chrysler is the K-Car—specifically the Plymouth Reliant and Dodge Aries. These cars became synonymous with the term “cheap” and helped cement Chrysler’s reputation in the 1980s for making junky cars. Conceived of by then-Chrysler head honcho Lee Iacocca as a way to mass market a cheap car that would appeal to John Q. Public and help revive the fortunes of the then-floundering Chrysler, the K-cars did succeed in this goal—selling more than one million units of each model in the first year of production.
And Motor Trend magazine did name the K-car its Car of the Year in 1981. Still, the K-car was nicknamed the ‘Poor Man’s Car’ and gained a reputation for having a raft of problems—from knobs that literally fell off to faulty transmissions and rusted out bodies. A cheap car made cheaply, the K-car has since become part of 1980s nostalgia and automotive folklore—for all the wrong reasons.
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