This question came to me a while back when I was pulling the front end of the Buford T Justice Caprice project apart. Pulling is probably far too strong a word, because it basically fell apart. I had not been easy on the thing over the last few weeks of its life as an unmodified stocker and my violent treatment had put a real hurting on lots of parts that had been minding their own business for the last 200,000 miles before I came along. The 9C1s were obviously built in a very robust manner and most of the cars on the road today wouldn’t last half the distance on the stock parts that ol’ Buford did.
On the opposite end of robust is where today’s question centers. We’re interested in your take on the most dangerous factory built car in history. While the Pinto had a small number of fires that turned into a media firestorm and the Camry’s basically imagined ability to rocket you out of control were both disasters in the media, neither of these cars qualify for this title…in our book anyway.
The Ariel Atom certainly looks like a death trap, a stock VW with 36hp seems like fodder to be squashed by anything else on the road, a Morgan three wheeler actually appears to have been designed to kill people, and a Citroen 2CV would fold up if directly sneezed on. Those are a couple of the ideas we had on this subject, but there’s got to be a ton more worthy candidates in the annals of automotive history. Hell, if you are a fireman, the Prius could be on this list. Don’t hit that cable with the jaws of life, pal!
What is the most dangerous factory built car in history?
