Driving the “Worst Car Ever Built” (2015) | Hacker News Reader

Driving the “Worst Car Ever Built” (2015)

jalopnik.com

121 pointssmacktoward65 comments

One of the universities I was attending had a policy that when you get all answers on a multiple-choice test wrong, you get an A, because the probability of that happening by chance is impossibly low. Seems like 1951 Hoffmann is an example of that attitude ;-)

Ha interesting. OK taking this a bit too seriously -- it seems like there should be a better reward than that.

Suppose you actually know all the answers on the test, and you know you know them. You have two choices:

1) Mark them all correctly

2) Mark them all incorrectly, based on your knowledge of the correct answers

There's no incentive for doing #2, because you get an A either way. But if they offered a better reward, like being able to skip the next test with an automatic A, then #2 would look appealing.

It was more like a badge of honor. When you looked at the results of an exam, it was a few As, then a bit more Bs, then bit more Cs etc. then a huge number of Fs (fail) and at the very bottom were 1-2 As of those crazy people that took the "all wrong" option. It was the most difficult university of one of EU countries, so those exams weren't trivial and designed to kick most students out. When you got such an "inverse A", it was something to brag about in a pub later as just one correct answer would make you fail the exam...

Bit like shooting the moon in hearts.

Reminds me of an interview I saw with one of the co-authors of "The Disaster Artist," the book about the making of "The Room," a famously terrible movie. He said that was what made "The Room" so fascinating - it's rare to find a creative work where every single decision was wrong.

That's overstating it IMO - The Room's production values are pretty adequate. The sets are OK, the sound's decently recorded, it has a proper soundtrack by a real composer, the camera's mostly in focus and properly exposed etc. There are plenty of shitty DSLR films with equally bizarre dialogue, terrible acting, flawed structure etc but the unique joy of The Room is that the decent-ish production values sucker you into thinking you're watching a "real" film.

Similarly, this automobile is well built despite having every design decision be wrong. There's some distinction between the architecture and the craftmanship - a poorly crafted and poorly architected anything is just a pile of rubble, but a well crafted thing with poor architecture is fascinatingly bizarre.

Great point. You don't see issues with basic filmmaking like with "Birdemic" - inconsistent audio levels, etc.

This does not seem like a viable scheme in typical multiple choice tests. In a typical test question, there are often (almost always?) obvious non-answers, so it is significantly easier to guess what is wrong than to guess what is right. When you make a multiple choice test question with, say, 4 choices, it is actually hard to make all 4 choices look reasonable.

I guess the deterrent to taking advantage of such a strategy is the risk involved. You are wiped out if you miss just one. So you have to be supremely confident or a real gambler to knowingly adopt such a strategy.

I had a history class that offered this for the multiple-choice section of exams. I was tempted to do it, but never dared, because there was always a question or two I didn't know and would've been guessing at the wrong answer...

Aluminium isn’t the first material I think of for cars, certainly not for ones built in Germany shortly after World War Two.

Because of that, I wonder whether this is a one-of (google gives me https://www.lanemotormuseum.org/collection/cars/item/hoffman..., which agrees with that) and that coachwork is recycled from an airplane, just as the front axle seems to be recycled from a kubelwagen (https://ww2db.com/vehicle_spec.php?q=359)

The Ford F150 truck is now aluminum. Somewhat notable since it's their best selling vehicle...not just best selling truck. There's still a fair amount of debate on whether it was a good idea to move to aluminum.

The new ones crumple like a coke can if you touch them against anything. I'm not a fan, as expensive as bodywork is these days, and with how much more irritating aluminum is to work with for your average shade-tree mechanic.

It did cut about 700lbs off the vehicle, which (in part) took them from 17/23 mpg in 2014 to 19/26 mpg today.

I can see the dilemma they have trying to keep up with CAFE standards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Average_Fuel_Economy...

I couple of years ago, I crashed an old Datsun/Nissan truck into a dirt bank going about 30-40 km/h (20-30 mph). It had some damage, but nothing that couldn't be straightened out with a crowbar, and it did need a new radiator.

Try that with a modern car, and it would've been totaled, or at least cost a small fortune to get fixed. Upon saying that, if I crashed the truck going 100 km/g (60 mph), I would have probably died. So even though more modern cars don't stand up to low speed crashes so well, they reduce fatalities a lot.

nearly everything people find 'wrong' with modern cars is done for passenger and pedestrian safety.

even the phone integration and annoyingly bad electronic gadgets and infotainment software are designed to get you to put down your phone when driving, or be more aware of your surroundings.

remember, the alternative is nearly everyone staring at their phones while driving, and the obvious fallout from that (people still do it, of course, hence the physical safety features).

this is the reality that car designers must deal with and a point that is totally lost on the majority of people who complain about 'new cars'. if they could sell you a 1200 pound tin can death-trap with insufficient power and torque, they would, and we'd buy it, because it gets 120mpg and costs $5000.

Actual bumpers are not a safety issue. Car companies simply make more money by selling body panels at high markup after every minor accident.

for you to say something like "bumpers aren't a safety issue" pretty much discredits you immediately, but i'll answer anyway, for posterity.

"actual bumpers" are quite likely the single most extensively regulated pedestrian- and collision-related safety part. there's extensive legislation about their design and characteristics.

car companies exist to make money, yes, but they operate within a global framework of strict regulation.

Feel free to look for an actual regulation that prevents ridged bumpers with shock absorbers. You will not find it and in fact many vehicles are sold that can have a 5MPH collision without significant harm.

The reasons for this is people can walk into solid objects at 5MPH without significant harm.

PS: Feel free to start with: 49 CFR Part 58

i have no idea what you're trying to say, because you keep making typos in critical words.

and in fact many vehicles are sold that can have a 5MPH collision without significant harm.

...or at least used to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_(car)#Stringency_reduce...

Probably referring to the disappearance of external bumpers that could be cheaply replaced after an accident, or even a reasonable diy project.

The bumpers today are underneath body panels, so a even a light accident isn't cheap or easy to fix.

My guess is they don't exist anymore for several reasons. Style, aerodynamics, etc.

You know what they say about metrics and targets.

The OEMs make you sit deep in every car because that's how you get a 5-star rating. Then a bunch of people back over pedestrians and kids because in the real world more people will be put in a situation like that than will be in a high speed side impact.

Now the .gov mandates back up cameras...

Implying nobody was backing over kids in older cars?

What you describe sounds like a reasonable iterative process of identifying what’s likely to kill people and making it safer.

It was far less common when your typical vehicle had a smaller rear blind spot than a T-72

There's a direct trade-off between safety and visibility.

They were crap in steel, I would be very surprised if they are any better in aluminum. I had one of these while I lived in Canada (longbox, 3 seater cab) and before the warranty ran out the support strut of the gearbox and the associated welds gave out. Ford refused to fix it because the vehicle was not rated 'heavy duty'. The heaviest we ever hauled in it was a load of firewood.

Welding aluminum properly is a lot harder than welding steel and aluminum is also a lot less forgiving than steel when it comes to constructing cars out of it.

I never bought a Ford after that wonderful, and I'm still amazed that they would not stand behind their product, good luck to anybody that buys an F150 made of aluminum.

weight is probably a driving factor. When you save 100-150 pounds of weight by using some aluminium parts you can use this weight elsewhere. Not sure I am right. Just thinking.

Ford cut 700lbs off the F150 by going to aluminum. Not to use it elsewhere, but to improve fuel economy.

As long as we’re getting into anecdotal evidence. I’ve driven an F150 as a personal vehicle and ran it pretty heavily(80 MPH over steep passes, firewood hauling, heavy trailers, off-road on farm, etc) and haven’t had any problems. I’ve also used ford’s heavy duty trucks in construction and haven’t had problems.

It’s important to remember that Ford is a large company and with enough vechicles you are bound to have cases where they don’t meet standards. Without a statistically significant dataset it’s hard to make a judgement whether one manufacturer is more reliable than another.

x2. My anecdotal evidence is that 0% of the vehicle I have beat the living shit out of have been trouble prone in any way.

I don't mind them having a production issue every now and then. I do expect them to correct those issues free of charge.

The F150 has been aluminum for three years, and the body of the F250 is now also made of aluminum.

The classic F250 was very solidly built. I have a 1985 Ford Bronco, which is an F250 chassis with a different body and was built to comply with the 5MPH bumper standard in effect for a few years. It was once rear-ended while stopped by a SamTrans passenger van. The SamTrans van front end crumpled properly, leaving its nose on the pavement. The Bronco had a bent trailer connector and a broken license plate lamp housing.

12MPG, though.

And they even had to add weights in strategic locations to give the impression it still had a steel frame...

All the aluminium from discarded aircraft (and there were a lot more than Luftwaffe could fuel or staff) had to go somewhere... E.g. many bicycles built in the 1950ies had aluminium rims, which would a few years later disappear from the market except for the most high end racing bikes, not to make a mainstream comeback for decades. For a while, even kitchen utensils were hard to get in anything but aluminium. The recycling economy that was developed in wartime scarcity was never completely abandoned in later years.

That's how Alumacraft got started in the US.

During World War II there was a shortage of copper in the US so generators were wound with aluminum instead because it was more plentiful. Perhaps it's a similar thing with steel vs aluminum availability.

It parts of the uk the last mile of phone lines was done in AL when copper was really expensive. Milton Keyes famously has this of course this means that ADSL didn't work

Edited to change AU to AL

If I had gold wires I sure as heck would rip them out, darn the DSL signal.

oops a senior moment there AL not AU

I have heard of train lines getting switched because the copper ones would constantly get stolen...

the wiring beside the tracks absolutely you quite often get delays due to some one trying to rip out coper - the dumb criminals try and rip fibre out

Yeah i recall reading about some eastern European nation that lost their net connection for some time because some elderly lady dug up their fiber while looking for copper.

It has competition. Here's a video (Spanish) of a man showing off his custom car made famous by "you know the car that you used to draw as a child? It exists" memes

http://elcomercio.pe/ruedas-tuercas/internacional/recuerdas-...

I am curious: is the Hoffmann who built this car in any way connected to the Hoffmann Werke in Lintorf? In other words, was it a prototype built by this company?

Wikipedia [1] lists the "Hoffmann Autokabine 250" (literally "Hoffmann Car Booth 250", which sounds exactly as ridiculous in German as in English) as the only car to ever come out of the Hoffmann-Werke. If you google the "Autokabine 250", you will find images of the 1951 Hoffmann, but it looked in fact like [2].

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoffmann-Werke_Lintorf

[2] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5c/30/cb/5c30cb93f8a007e1e896...

Well, Hoffmann is a common enough name, and this seems to be a unique product made by a Mr. Michael Hoffmann from Munich.

Which makes this the second-worst pimped-out faux-motorcycle designed in Munich.

It seems to fit a bit too well to be a coincidence.

The article talked about the car having a ILO engine, same as was used on the motorcycles mentioned in the Wikipedia article.

All in all i do believe this was an Auto-Kabine.

The whole engine and back wheel setup reminds me of an outboard motor on a boat for some reason.

Similarly the linear gears thing reminds me of a motorcycle, something that makes sense given that the engine is a two stroke.

Seem to me like much of the car is a minimalist "make do" kind of thing. Like the way the windows are raised and lowered, or how the door is stopped from opening too wide by a simple chain.

So likely what we are looking at is a car made out of leftover parts from war time equipment. The back end of a motorcycle, the body plates of a aircraft, an so on.

And heh, feeding "ilo motorcycle" into ddg brings up a certain wikipedia article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoffmann_%28motorcycle%29

And some way down that article there is talk about a microcar with a "suicide door" on the right side as the entry point...

Surprised Ralph Nader and "Unsafe at any Speed" wasn't mentioned.

The Chevy Corvair should probably be a contender for worst car ever built.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed

Perhaps you missed the part in the video where the flimsy fuel hose is flapping around right next to the movable rear axle? I know the corvair is bad, but this car sounds way worse.

Only one of these was ever built. That makes it less interesting to me. I'm sure there were other one off builds that have been awful.

See: everything Top Gear's production team built.

If they'd made the Corvair more a better performing drivers car and you could actually bench race it's numbers with that of a Porsche nobody would have complained.

It's as much about expectations as it is results.

The cottage industry of Corvair vanity plates is one of my favorite corners of the collectible car hobby.

"N8R H8R", "NESPEED", etc.

This is a good exercise too to point out all of the tiny little elements of car UX which you just expect to be right. Things like, placement of the sideview mirror in such a way as you can see the mirror, and not placing it behind a pillar that blocks the view.

When UX is right, sometimes it blends into the background and disappears, just lets you use the object. You don't really know what's right about car UX until you see it done badly, then all of those things you took for granted really pop out.

Anyone calling this thing the worst car ever built has not seen the Robin Reliant - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliant_Robin

I doubt there were many Hoffmanns built but the RR was rather popular here.

That said, I think you will find rather a lot of Brits with a deep fondness for the RR, which probably says more about Britishness (of a certain age) than anything else.

Obligatory Top Gear review: https://youtu.be/QQh56geU0X8

Is that the car from mr bean?

Edit: yep

I don't man... have they ever driven one of my Chryslers?

I joke but after (being under) four or five Chryslers, everyone in my family treats it like a four-letter-word and will never buy one again.

If they're so bad, why did you have 4 or 5 of them?

I’ve owned three Fiats, with the first being just as unreliable as the next two. Some of us are just slow that way.

Excellent.

The video is very good, the presenter explains why the car is terrible, pointing each one of the terrible design decisions.

It looks like some software projects I've worked on:-)

I’ve posted this video here before. Definitely one of my most favorite things on the internet. It gets funnier every time I watch it.

At least it has the right layout for a three wheeler as opposed to the reliant robin

1999 Oldsmobile Alero

It had major engine problems and they were repetitive.

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