What are the worst Fords?

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What are the worst Fords?
Tony Davis
June 24, 2011

Well come on, we had to follow up the Holden one.

If we stick only to Fords sold in Australia, herewith is the starting point for pistols at dawn.

Capri roadster It might have worked if Mazda - which Ford partly owned - didn't do everything better. The MX-5 was from the heart, the Capri from the parts bin. The styling was questionable, the build quality ghastly, the handling Laser-like and, if the Capri had a soul, that would have leaked, too.


Festiva A little piece of nastiness imported from Kia of South Korea. It was based on the superseded Mazda 121, presumably on a day the photocopier wasn't working properly.

25th Anniversary Falcon GT You know when the legendary and much-loved band get back together and they're all bald and one of them has a walking cane and the singer has been replaced because he died of congestive heart failure a decade earlier? That's what this 1992 effort brought to mind. There were afterthought bits stuck on everywhere and the stated 200kW output was nothing if not optimistic.

Landau This was a lard-nosed version of the Falcon Hardtop with squared-off side openings and a vinyl roof to hide ugly welds. Sales were slow, so was it. In case anyone mistook this fat, heavy and ponderous machine for a sports car, the American term ''personal coupe'' was adopted.

Cortina TC The four-cylinder was merely dull, the six-cylinder was downright spiteful. It combined Falcon economy with Cortina interior space, plus Ford of England fit-and-finish and Olympic-standard understeer. The cabin had a habit of filling with fumes. Look at what the Japanese were doing in the early 1970s and it's obvious why the Cortina wasn't long for this world.

Falcon AU If the buck-toothed, cross-eyed frontal treatment and droopy tail weren't enough, the build quality was grotesque. Ford quickly put a spoiler on the back and the ute grille on the front to disguise a basic shape that was wronger than wrong. Cleaning up the other glitches took longer.

Laser KH Can't remember this one, can you? The pudgy, designed-for-America version of the Laser was forgettable but for its extravagantly inset wheels, apparently to allow fitment of chains in snowy climes. Great.

Corsair A rebadged 1986 Nissan Pintara, possibly sold with the logic that if you give a skin disease a different name, it might become desirable. Fortunately only a few hundred people were fooled.

Falcon EA As with the later AU, it was a major model change that went badly. Very badly. Build quality was lamentable, even by 1988 standards, and it had a live rear axle, a three-speed auto and the standard engine fitment was a 3.2-litre six that just couldn't be bothered.

Taurus Just how did they think this droopy, alf-melted, ovoid American had a place Down Under? The only joy was that it reminded us what the Falcon would look like if the Americans had it all their way.

Fairlane AU This bulky ''towncar'' stumbled on to the stage in 1999 and the same sheet metal was still up there in 2007. By that time, the only takers were cabbies paying not a lot more than Falcon money. Ford's great success of the 1960s and '70s had been run completely into the ground.

Anglia Ford is often very adventurous with its small cars (think Ka) and it sometimes works. This be-finned small car from 1959, though, didn't. Even the name suggests angles, of which the car had far too many, and none of them pleasant.

Mustang It appeared in Ford dealerships briefly in 2001, was converted in Australia to right-hand-drive and priced from $85,000. Yep, $85,000 for a car that was crude, pudgy, cramped, full of cheap plastics, none-too-quick and dodgy in the handling stakes. When someone paid full price, Ford rang a bell and held a little ceremony.

So, there. No arguments with any of that, are there?

Go to drive.com.au/vote to have your say.