The Alleged Car: Difference between revisions
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It was cheap. It was easy to buy. Charitably, it can be called a car. Unfortunately, it tops out at about 40 miles per hour (45 if you're going downhill), [[Plot-Driven Breakdown|it breaks down a lot]], you get parking tickets for it ''[[Driving Stick|while it's in drive]]'', and you probably have to special-order replacement parts from overseas, since you're the only one in your time zone who was enough of a sucker to buy one (and cars like this are inevitably foreign, often from countries that [[The Great Politics Mess-Up|no longer exist]] due to civil wars and political turmoil). The only reason it hasn't fallen apart yet is because the rust holds everything in place. Often it has some kind of cute or derogatory nickname. Sometimes a car like this is referred to as a Rolls-Canardley: rolls down one hill, can 'ardly get up the next.
New drivers' first cars tend to be like this, due to not knowing any better,
The polar opposite of the [[Cool Car]]. Often found in [[Injun Country]] and [[Ruritania
The extent to which this is [[Truth in Television]], like many car-related tropes, is largely the [[Trope Breaker|ghost of tropes past]]: it plays off of pre-1980s notions of notoriously unreliable foreign and used cars which tend not to be true today. Also of note, cars that degrade to the state of disrepair often depicted on television would simply not be street-legal in any modern industrial country with an established vehicle safety code. Of course, that doesn't mean [[Who Would Be Stupid Enough...?|there aren't people who still drive them]], [[Eagleland Osmosis|or that such cars are not in use outside the US...]].
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'''Archie''': Some of it dates back to 1926! }}
:: Throughout its [[Long Runner|very long run]], they had to constantly replace the base car as the car starts to become a classic or an an antique -- something that actually had some worth.
* [[Donald Duck|Donald Duck's]] famous 313. In one comic Donald manages to get the car to do 40
* In ''[[Sin City]]'':
** Gail has an unfortunate tendency to saddle Dwight with crappy cars when he's helping her. Once, during ''The Big Fat Kill'' she even forgot to make sure the car had enough gas to get where it was going. A similar car was given to him in ''Family Values''.
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* Brad's perpetually worked-on Chevy Nova in ''[[Luann]]''.
* The 1962 VW Microbus Jeremy and Hector are "restoring" in ''[[Zits]]''. It has wildlife living in the engine compartment and creates its own smokescreen as it drives.
* [[Spider-Man|The Spider-Mobile]]. Unlike most examples on this page, it was actually pretty pimped out...just really uncool in being pointless (Spider-Man neither needs
* Harold Harold's car in ''[[The Tomb of Dracula]]''.
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:: He also mentioned "never [having] driven a car that's aqua."
* [[German Humour|Trabi jokes]]. See the [[Real Life]] section.
* [[Bill Cosby]]'s bit from his 'Why is There Air' album about his first car, a 1942 Dodge he bought for $75, which wouldn't go over 50
* Scott Faulconbridge had a routine where he talked about his car. It was worth about twenty bucks. After he filled it with gas.
* The minivan at the end of ''[[Project X]]'', which is missing two doors and has had most of its paint scorched off. Thomas' parents force him to drive it to school as punishment, though his friends think it looks [[Badass]].
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== Literature ==
* In ''[[The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul]]'' by [[Douglas Adams]], Kate's Citroën 2CV is like this, and is the [[Trope Namer]]
* ''[[Good Omens]]'' loves this trope.
** Newton Pulsifer has a Wasabi. He praises its incredible gas mileage, but tends to gloss over the amount of time it spends being repaired; he also calls it Dick Turpin (after the British highwayman), because "wherever I go, I hold up traffic." At one point it's described as having been designed on that fateful day when Japan stopped copying Western designs and began coming up with their own, during the brief period of paradigm shift, and ended up with not only all the flaws of Western cars, but also some entirely new ones. Aside from the repair time, it also has a voice that recites, in a particularly bad Japanese accent, "Prease to frasten sleat-bert" regardless of whether the seat-belt is fastened, and an airbag system that deploys on dangerous occasions like when you're traveling slowly on a dry straight road but are about to crash because an airbag just deployed into your face. Newton's attempts to convince others to buy one are motivated by the idea that misery loves company.
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** Shadow also ends up buying another vehicle that is painted (poorly) a very ugly shade of purple. It's described as a color that a person would only choose while under the influence of many drugs.
* [[Jasper Fforde]]:
** Played with in ''[[Nursery Crime|The Big Over-Easy]]'', where the protagonist drives a 1970s Austin Allegro that should fit this trope. He replaces it with another one, in showroom condition, in ''[[Nursery Crime|The Fourth Bear]]''
** ''[[Thursday Next]]'' - Thursday's car is old, makes funny noises, came very cheap from a questionable second-hand car lot, and caught her attention because of a time loop in which she saw herself driving it. But she falls in love with it ''anyway'' because it's loudly colored and goes fast.
* ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' has Harry Dresden's Beetle, complete with a cute nickname: [[Shout-Out|The Blue Beetle]]. He can't drive anything else because magic screws up modern technology. Although this is never explicitly stated, it's [[Fridge Logic|possible]] that one of the reasons he's driving a Volkswagen instead of any other random older car is that the engine is farther away from him. Plus, Harry has stated that his mechanic can keep the Beetle running eight or nine days out of ten, which, as far as Harry's [[Walking Techbane]] status goes, makes the mechanic a miracle worker. {{spoiler|Unfortunately, miracles have limits, and being compacted into a small ball is the Beetle's limit...}}
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* In the early ''[[Spenser]]'' detective novels, Spenser drives several of these. The first was a 1968 Chevy convertible in such awful condition that everyone he meets remarks on it. He justifies keeping it by saying that if it gets damaged in the line of duty, he doesn't care all that much. He later wrecks a Subaru somewhere near the Charles River locks. By the 1990s, he's switched to something better, but he still loses cars with some frequency after that, and implies he's never too attached to them.
** Carried over to the TV series; in one instance, Spenser complains that his car was nearly totaled, and Hawke [[Deadpan Snarker|quips]], "that would be redundant."
* In ''[[Wise Blood]]'', Hazel Motes buys an old car for $200.<ref>accounting for inflation, about $1500 in 2011 money</ref>
* [[Ephraim Kishon]] had one, from France BTW. [[I Call It Vera|He called it "Madeleine".]]
* In [[Daniel Pinkwater]]'s ''Yobgorgle: Mystery Monster of Lake Ontario'', one character purchases one during the course of the book. He gets it dirt cheap(less than a hundred dollars), on the condition that he has to wear a chicken suit whenever he drives it.
* Jen from ''[[The Cornersville Trace Mythos|Extraordinary*
* The March 1980 edition of Australian car magazine ''Wheels'' [http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Wheels_magazine/id/1997816 controversially declared] "No Car of the Year" for 1979, with the front cover featuring a giant lemon on four wheels. This prompted Ford Australia to hit back with an advertisement for its then-latest model Falcon, depicting a page full of literal lemons with popular car brands printed on them and declaring, "[[When Life Gives You Lemons|There are times when being a lemon is not a bitter experience at all]]". ''Wheels'' also declared "No Car of the Year" in 1972 and 1986.
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** In the Alaska Special, Tanner's Chevy allegedly had a diesel engine. The fuel gauge even said it "diesel fuel only". It turned out to be a Chevy Small Block. {{spoiler|He still won, and it was the only truck to finish.}}
** The show has had some variation on "get a car for cheap/really cheap/obscenely cheap" as the central premise of an episode several times.
*** Rutledge got a Fiero/Ferrari mash-up kitcar for a "$5000 luxury car" challenge that had a leaking problem and struggled to reach 55
*** The "obscenely cheap" version saw the hosts buying cars for just $500. Adam's puke-and-blood stained taxi cab (Tanner and Rutledge's cars had their fair shares of bodily fluids as well) had what he described as "a several minute delay between steering input and actual turning."
* The short-lived Channel 4 sitcom ''[[Hippies]]'' featured the "Ginkle", an exaggerated parody of the Trabant, which was incapable of driving more than thirty miles before breaking in half.
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Well, I'm gonna tell you 'bout the car that I now own.
Well it doesn't go nowhere, it just stays all alone.'' }}
* Arrogant Worms's song "Car Full of Pain"
* [[Weird Al]] Yankovic's car in "Stop Dragging My Car Around".
* The guys at [[Car Talk]] have been collecting these for some time now. [http://www.shamelesscommerce.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=ROADSONGS Have a look.]
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'''Dan:''' Yes! That's the one! }}
* Stanley Ipkiss's indiscriminate-model clunker, complete with a portable driver's side door, from [[The Mask]].
* On ''[[Re Boot]]'', Bob's car ''never'' works properly. He describes it as a classic, but it's a recurring gag that the thing never
* The ''[[Total Drama Island|Total Drama]]'' series feature several alleged vehicles, though only one of them is a car:
** The Lame-o-sine, complete with an obnoxious set of bull horns on the front.
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== Real Life ==
* Many of the above are based on the Yugo, also known as [[wikipedia:Zastava Koral|the Zastava Koral]], or one of the many Eastern European Cold War era cars that were exported to the West to raise foreign currency; the Yugo was merely the one that was actually sold the most (in the USA), and the first since [[The Sixties]] to make it to the United States, and was thus the best known (in the USA). For Europe the most likely candidate would be the Trabbi, the Skoda or possibly the Wartburg. As a side note, the Yugo, based on its reputation, was voted Worst Car Of The Millennium by [[Car Talk]]. (Truthfully, there have been worse cars. Not many, but they exist. While hardly a stellar machine, the Yugo wasn't a genuine disaster. Its poor reputation is often explained by it being uncaringly treated as a disposable car and ''never'' given even the most basic maintenance, like, say, an oil change.) Jason Vuic, who wrote a book chronicling the history of the Yugo, noted that the Yugo at least passed U.S. safety and emissions tests, meaning it's at least better than the cars that don't get to be imported to the US. Jason Vuic puts down the next entry as being worse...
* The Subaru 360. When it was imported, it had to lose weight to under 1000 pounds. Why? Because then it could be exempt from the safety regulations and be considered a ''motorcycle''! [[Consumer Reports]] labeled it "Not Acceptable"; with its laughably feeble 16
* The [[wikipedia:Citroen 2CV|Citroen 2CV]] - the vehicle which inspired this trope - fits this trope very well in some aspects, though others were averted; mainly, the 2CV was easy and cheap to repair and somewhat more reliable than its competitors, and with all the broken-down and abandoned ones, combined with minimal changes to its design over its production life, made it a good purchase for anyone with a low budget. Still, it did have extreme flaws; early models used a small engine and had doors without locks, so anyone could steal the car simply by ''opening the door and pulling the ignition cord''. It is also remembered for inspiring the term "lemon" ("citron" being the French word for it and obviously resembling the brand's name).
** There was a parody of the famous Citroen "Dancing [[Transformers Generation 1|Transformer]]" ad that featured a
* The Lamborghini Espada. Don't let the maker fool you out on the feeling that it's a [[Cool Car]], because this bull sucked; its glass on the door panels can shatter if knocked in a car park, and the engine starved itself of oil quickly and corrosion sets in, causing electrical faults on the out of control switch placement.
* [http://mongolrally.theadventurists.com/index.php The Mongol Rally] challenges its participants to drive from London to Ulanbataar in The Alleged Car. Cars can be disqualified for having too powerful an engine (though exceptions are made for cars of [[Rule of Funny|"significant comedy value"]], e.g., ice cream trucks).
* And who could forget the [[wikipedia:Trabant|Trabant]], vehicle of "[[But Thou Must!|choice]]" for [[East Germany|East Germans]] before the country collapsed. Affectionately called "Trabbi", it would seem like this car was designed as a Communist backlash against Western
** The engine was a two-stroke, 15-20
** The engine was so weak, they had to resort to plastic instead of metal for the hull. And forget about modern polymers, mind
*** This was also due to a shortage of metal, since East Germany lacked any sources of suitable metals for car bodies or engines, and had to import it. That cost real money, since nobody is as hard-nosed as a Communist when it comes to trade deals.
** Add in the fact that the gas tank was mounted in the cowl ''above the engine'' (and the driver's legs) for additional fun. (the gas "gauge" was ''a sightglass in the dashboard.'') To fill it, you had to open the hood, pour gasoline in the 24-liter fuel tank, pour two-stroke oil, and mix.
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** Another notable example was the Triumph TR7, and not necessarily for reliability reasons. Auto designer Giorgetto Giugiaro — who created the bodywork for iconic cars like the Lotus Esprit, De Lorean DMC-12, Maserati Ghibli and Volkswagen Golf — had a memorable reaction upon seeing Triumph's notoriously ugly TR7 during the 1975 Geneva Motor Show. After viewing the profile of the car, with the sculpted curve running along the side, he took on a puzzled expression, slowly walked around the car and exclaimed in startlement: "My God! They've done it to the other side as well!"
** [http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1658545_1658498_1657839,00.html The below-mentioned Time article] said of the Triumph Stag, which it uses as a representative for British Leyland cars as a whole, "The Stag was lively and fun to drive, as long as it ran. The 3.0-liter Triumph V8 was a monumental failure, an engine that utterly refused to confine its combustion to the internal side. The timing chains broke, the aluminum heads warped like mad, the main bearings would seize and the water pump would poop the bed — ''ka-POW!'' Oh, that piston through the bonnet, that is a spot of bother."
** How bad was British Leyland? Rover's [http://www.carlustblog.com/2008/07/car-lust--sterl.html Sterling 827 SLi] was essentially a license-built version of a mid-80s Honda (Accura) Legend, one of he best-engineered cars of its
** To top it off, BMW purchased British Leyland (by then known as the Rover Group) and reputedly ended up losing billions of dollars in the six years it owned them. Inverted with the Land Rover (sold for a profit) and MINI (kept by BMW and now bigger than ever) divisions, but still played straight with the rest of the Rover Group which was effectively given away for next to nothing.
* There is now a competition devoted to the Alleged Car: the [http://www.24hoursoflemons.com LeMons], a two-day event for cars bought and fixed up for $500 or less, excluding safety equipment. Prizes are awarded to the car with furthest distance on the track before it breaks down completely, the amount of horrible vapors that exude from it, and which one is just plain worst. And for those who are too proud of their beloved Alleged Car (we're looking at ''you'', [[Top Gear|Richard Hammond]]) to smash it up, there's a [http://www.carlustblog.com/2009/08/concours-dlemon.html Concours de LeMons], whose [http://www.concoursdlemons.com/participants.html show categories are worth a read just for laughs].
* The [http://www.carlustblog.com/2009/02/edsel.html Edsel's] gotten a [[Shout-Out]] in everything from ''[[Garfield]]'' to ''[[Destroy All Humans!]]'' as one of the worst cars ever made. Ironically, it apparently wasn't that bad a car (it is said to have roughly the same level of reliability as other American cars of its day), it just was [http://www.carlustblog.com/2009/02/edsel.html marketed wrong, priced wrong, named wrong and, most of all, just plain ugly] [[Your Mileage May Vary|to most people]]. (''The Book of Heroic Failures'' quotes ''Time'' magazine as calling it "a classic case of the wrong car for the wrong market at the wrong time." The book also claims that half the Edsels sold were defective in some way: doors that wouldn't open, trunks that wouldn't shut, push-buttons that wouldn't do anything, etc.)
* In the early 1970s, when the oil crisis forced American manufacturers to crank out small cars or die, the [http://www.carlustblog.com/2010/12/the-chevrolet-vega-what-went-wrong.html Chevy Vega,] AMC Gremlin and [[Every Car Is a Pinto|Ford Pinto]] gave American small cars this reputation: having absolutely ''zero'' experience in building small cars, the American manufacturers, to put it lightly, stumbled ''quite a bit'' in their attempts at building small vehicles, to the extent that the Ford Pinto ''[[Every Car Is a Pinto|would actually explode]] [[Trope Namer|when crashed!]]''. In fact, Ford officials [http://motherjones.com/politics/1977/09/pinto-madness knew perfectly well] that the Pinto's gas tank tended to explode, could have rectified the situation, and ''chose not to'' on the basis of a "cost-benefit analysis" (basically saying "It's cheaper to let people burn to death, wrongful death lawsuits and all, than to change the car"). It's often held up as an example of why punitive damages should be legal in lawsuits. This is why Toyota, Honda and Datsun (now Nissan) became popular in the
** As a further illustration of the incompetence of American auto manufacturers of the time, the exploding gas tank was not a problem until the ''second year'' of production. The first production year automobiles were perfectly safe; which makes sense, since most of the car was by Lotus, with a Ford body dropped on it. It wasn't until 1972, when they started doing everything themselves, that the problems started. Interestingly, the problems that plagued the Pinto did not necessarily translate to the Mercury Bobcat or Ford Mustang 2; both of which were nothing more than a modified Pinto chassis with a different body dropped on top.
* The [http://www.carlustblog.com/2009/02/chevrolet-chevy-citation.html 1980 Chevy Citation] and its Pontiac, Oldsmobile, and Buick derivatives, intended as GM's world-beating answer to the Honda Accord, was instead a world-beating mashup of poor engineering and atrocious build quality. Among its many flaws were over-enthusiastic rear brakes that would lock up and cause an "atomic death-skid" at the slightest provocation. [[Unfortunate Implications|Having the same name as a term for a parking ticket probably didn't help, either.]]
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** The redesigned, front wheel drive 1988 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme was praised by critics upon launch and is considered to be a good car in its own right, but the disastrous "This Is Not Your Father's Oldsmobile" marketing campaign used to launch it was a massive failure that caused sales of the Oldsmobile brand as a whole to crater, leading to the brand's eventual demise in 2004. The 1988 Cutlass is thus considered to be [[Creator Killer|the car that killed Oldsmobile]]. As a result, today they are undesired and valueless.
* The Goggomobil Dart. "If you needed a sudden burst of acceleration, it was best to jump out and run". (A certified lunatic in Germany has fitted [http://www.deutsche-werke.de/goggo2.htm one] with a 9-cylinder, 10-liter radial aircraft engine. It out-accelerates Porsches.)
* The Fiat Ritmo/Strada, which, due to using recycled Soviet steel, was infamous for quickly rusting away. Dunno if any exist anymore, much less working ones. By the way, [[Fun with Acronyms|FIAT]] was often [[
** The Alfasud had similar rust issues despite some decent engineering and design.
* In the fifth season of ''Canada's Worst Driver,'' one nominee for the title bought and drove only these. You can't get much of a car when you'll only spend $300 on it.
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* Thanks to some incidents involving malfunctioning gas pedals, Toyota's cars have started to take on this reputation, putting a huge black mark on their once world-class record for reliability. The nature of the problems has also caused their slogan, "Moving Forward," to become [[Funny Aneurysm Moment|a bit uncomfortable]]. Though [[Only in America]].
* Fords with cruise control have an ongoing issue that causes them to spontaneously combust when sitting idle without being on.
* It would be unfair to call such a classic vehicle as the Volkswagen Beetle an Alleged
* A possible example of the Alleged Personnel Carrier is the Soviet [[Awesome Personnel Carrier|BMP-1]]. A very capable infantry fighting vehicle, it was nimble, amphibious, provided all-around protection for the passnegers and crew, and even had a small cannon in a turret to defend itself (or to hurt the enemy) with. The downside? The troop doors which were for the troops inside the primary means of getting in and out of the vehicle also doubled as one of its sets of fuel tanks. [[Every Car Is a Pinto|If an enemy got behind them...]]
** It had one other fatal flaw as well. The sloped front glacias, acting to deflect projectiles and to act as a bow when crossing water, would allow a normally obsolete tilt-rod mine to tilt with little resistance until it was directly under the BMP, namely right under ''[[Ludicrous Gibs|where the driver sat]]''. Naturally, this left the vehicle a sitting duck and utterly trashed the morale of anyone driving it in an area lousy with these old mines...like Afghanistan.
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*** The company's production process was so inefficient that the cost of building a Bricklin was over three times the price it sold for. ([[You Fail Economics Forever|They probably expected to make it up on volume.]])
** The 1976 Aston Martin Lagonda: A beautiful supercar filled with cutting edge electronics and gadgets that refused to work.
** The [http://www.carlustblog.com/2009/02/cimarron-by-cadillac-19811988.html 1982 Cadillac Cimarron]: An alleged luxury
* The Czechoslovak Velorex company is quite a name in motorcycle sidecars. They also built something that [http://abc.se/~m9805/eastcars/velorex/Velorex_250.jpg might be described as a car], but which is basically a motorcycle sidecar without the motorcycle. If you've looked at the pic and are unsure about what the bodywork is made of: yes, that's actually ''vinyl-coated canvas'' over steel tubing. The frame is attached to what is effectively the rear end of a motorcycle with a 125cc or 250cc two-stroke single-cylinder engine (later models had a 250cc twin) driving the single rear wheel. [[Top Gear|Tiff Needell]] took one for a spin once, and reported, yelling over the din of the engine that "braking is accomplished by writing a letter politely asking to reduce your speed, oh, sometime next week".
* An Alleged Motorcycle is the Chang Jiang [[CJ 750]]: a Chinese copy of a Russian copy of a pre-[[WW 2]] BMW. Using tooling the ''Russians'' considered worn, having by then been in production use for 20 years already. Chang Jiang also builds a copy of the Jawa 353, again using the ''original'' tooling.
* The [http://www.maserati-alfieri.co.uk/alfieri33.htm Chrysler TC by Maserati].
* Arguably one of the most famous examples, the DeLorean DMC-12. Despite the Lotus Esprit inspired design and gullwing doors, the car's production run seemed to be cursed from the word go. To elaborate: the factory was located in Dunmurry (a suburb in Belfast), Northern Ireland (bear in mind that this was in 1978, and it was placed [[The Troubles|right on a religious fault line]]; word is the factory had one entrance for Catholics and one for Protestants). Making matters worse alongside budget over runs, engineering hassles and production delays was the fact that almost all the workers had never had a job in their lives, much less one producing cars. the inevitable quality control problems that resulted from this were so bad that despite each car having a 12-month/20,
* [[Elvis]] fired his gun at his De Tomaso Pantera when it wouldn't start.
* Despite its sleek Italian design, early versions of the Isuzu Piazza had handling that left much to be desired. Later models had Lotus tuning, but not until near the end of its production run.
* The AMC Gremlin and Pacer.
* The Zundapp Janus.
* The Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid is quickly gaining this reputation. [http://fiskerbuzz.com/forums/Thread-Issue-list-after-11-days Owners are reporting a litany of problems], and [http://green.autoblog.com/2012/03/08/fisker-karma-owned-by-consumer-reports-breaks-down/ Consumer Reports had their Karma die on them with only 200 miles on the odometer.] Compounding matters is that the car isn't even all that efficient
* Dave Grohl told on how he and [[Kurt Cobain]] tried to drive from Seattle to Los Angeles (where they'd record [[Nirvana]]'s ''Nevermind'') in Kurt's old car. Throughout the entire journey, the car overheated to the point that needed a pause, making them quit as they just reached Oregon. So they drove back (as Krist Novoselic had rented a van to do the trip), making sure to stop at a quarry to stone the car in anger.
* The early '80's Cadillacs were saddled with the 8-6-4 engine which used a crude cylinder deactivation system, or the [[Genre Killer]] Diesel 350, which left buyers with a choice of buying a car that would leap and shake or one that wouldn't start if it was near freezing temperatures.
* The Reliant Robin can't be easily considered an [[Alleged Car]], because it's hard to classify it ''as'' a car. It has two defining features, one being the fact that it only has three wheels, the single wheel is in the front. The other? Rolling over. One takes a sharp turn in a Reliant Robin at their own risk. It may be the only car in history to roll over 360 degrees from cornering to hard. In the UK, especially [[Oop North]], the Robin became popular as it only required a motorcycle license to operate and thus avoided many taxes that car owners were saddled with. In spite
* Yahoo automotive contributor Tim Cernea has several of these stories, the most tropeworthy being his [http://voices.yahoo.com/the-best-car-ever-owned-11309842.html?cat=27 1965 Ford Falcon Ranchero.] In true handyman fashion, he described the car losing its fuel tank on the highway as "a minor setback".
* The G-Wiz is a very tiny electric car. Ok, technically it is legally a "Heavy Quadbike" in Britain for it's extreme lack of power. It has extremely poor acceleration, you can't use any of the electronics such as the radio, since it will kill the G-Wiz's very small battery life, and basically disintegrates in a crash.
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