Jesse Singer articles

Chrysler spent a full year designing it, another 15 months building it and a small fortune turning an almost impossible sketch into a fully functioning car. It was supposed to be the company’s most dramatic glimpse of the future. But the public never got to see it...

For eight years, Mike searched for another version of the car he had once driven. The hunt stretched on so long that finding the right one began to look increasingly unlikely. Until his wife made sure the car came home.

The rental car has four wheels, an automatic transmission and a cupholder roughly the size of a thimble. How different could driving it really be? Very different. Some completely ordinary American driving habits are prohibited across large parts of Europe, and “but everyone does that back home” is not much of a defense.

Car companies in the 80s were willing to try almost anything. Some of those ideas were brilliant. Others were strange, complicated, or so unreliable that owners probably wished they had stuck with roll-up windows. Do you remember these?

Winning Motor Trend Car of the Year was a big deal. Sometimes, they really had. Other times, they picked a car that began rusting before the magazine reached the recycling bin.

Nostalgia has a funny way of sanding down the rough edges. The car that stranded you twice and rattled at every stoplight somehow becomes “the most fun car I ever owned” 20 years later. Do you miss any of these?

Every year had a car dealers could barely keep in stock—and another they seemingly could not move with a tow truck. These are the biggest winners and most memorable flops from 31 years of U.S. passenger-car sales, excluding pickups and SUVs.

The 90s gave us some unforgettable cars. The Mustang. The Viper. The Supra. But it also gave us a bunch of vehicles that seemed to disappear the second the decade ended. Some were weird. Some were actually pretty good. And some were so forgettable that seeing one today feels like spotting a payphone in the wild. Let's see how many you actually remember.

These were the cars Baby Boomer men saw in magazines, dealer windows, driveways, and movies and immediately started acting weird. They lowered their voices. They stared too long. They suddenly knew what “body lines” meant.