They also featured anti lock brakes. It was a pretty advanced car at the time.
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pure sex on wheelsâŚ
shame theyâre about 100k nowadays.
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Get a load of this, folksâŚ
Apparently Porsche made a prototype for itâs failed attempt at making a compact family car for the Chinese & Indian markets back in '94, which was not to be called a Porsche at all. #Weird
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I dunno, for me itâs just ugly, but not cool. But thatâs just my subjective feeling of it.
Any 90s Saturn. They look like spaceships, and they rival the Civic, Corolla, or Neon in terms of âclapped outâ or âshitboxâ. So sad cash for clunkers made cars like this hard to find.
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I agree, totally. Saturn is underrated, had it as rental car in Fort Lauderdale 1994. In 96 I got a Grand Am that I also liked. Last time in USA was in 07 where I had a Malibu LT that I wanted to buy and take home, but Hertz said no.
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I wouldâve thought Saturns were excluded from cash for clunkers. I think they only took cars that averaged less than 16 MPG.
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Itâs a possibility, I didnât research anything so you could be right on that.
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I almost bought an orange 1999 SC2 5 speed. The only reason I didnât was because they ran it last at the auction and I thought they werenât gonna run it at all. And before that, they pulled out a stickshift Toyota Camry with a V6 and nobody bid on it. So I got it for $400.
Not ugly or generic, but I miss it.
Still, I probably wouldâve enjoyed that Saturn had I bought it. The DOHC 1.9 made decent power, and they were super light thanks to the spaceframe chassis and plastic body panels. I think they were around 2300 lbs. My GK5 Honda Fit, which is very light for modern standards, weighs ~2500 for comparison and the Saturn had a 10-20HP edge. They were very popular in autocross.
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Another car I consider to be more on the âweirdâ side of things is the Ford Probe. Originally planned to replace the Mustang, it instead became a separate model line based on the contemporary Mazda MX-6 after severe backlash among the Mustang faithful, who were displeased at the idea of a FWD V6 coupe replacing and RWD V8 pony car. Production ran from 1988 to 1997, spanning two generations.
Aesthetically, it was a product of its time, especially the second-gen car introduced in 1997 (and even more so in the vibrant colors of the era, including some of the more imaginatively named ones like Boysenberry, a deep, lustrous, metallic purple - the car in the picture above is finished in an equally attractive metallic blue), but even the lesser trims were quite fun to drive - more so than anyone lets on, in fact. Clean examples of the range-topping GT (originally powered by a turbo I4, and later an atmo V6) are surprisingly good value today, but are now rare. In fact, I wished Ford had produced an SHO trim of the second-generation Probe, powered by the Yamaha V6 from the contemporary Taurus SHO - it would have been an absolute cracker to drive, to say the least.
This video shows a detailed history of the Mustang replacement that ultimately wasnât:
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Yeah I kind of liked the Probe too when it was new, but I agree that it wasnât really a worthy Mustang replacement.
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Definitely wasnt a Mustang replacement. Although I would say that the 1st gen probe was to me the more weird/cool one. That thing looked damn near space aged when it first came out. It was a cool ass car, but not a Mustang for sure.
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GM considered a similar thing in the mid-80s with a line of FWD coupes based on the GM-80 platform, but unlike the Probe, those cars remained stillborn:
Supposedly, they were supposed to be lighter and cheaper than the F-Body twins (Camaro/Firebird), when in fact the opposite was true - and as with the Probe, the lack of a V8 option didnât help. The fourth-gen F-Bodies did, however, draw some aesthetic inspiration from those, and like the aborted GM-80 line, they used various plastic materials for some body panels.
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How is it weird? (Because calling it ugly would just be blasphemy 
)
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Oh yeah, those are great looking little cars. They are one of the few retro designs from the era that really work imo.
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Shoulda just kept it as itâs own thing from the beginning. Almost bought an 88 Mazda 626 with the same turbo I4 I think.
And for those GM compacts, did the R&D get used in the Saturns at all? Kinda weird that GM would build ultra light plastic compacts soon, just under a different name.
The whole Saturn range used plastic bodywork for well over a decade, until it became a dumping ground for other vehicles in the GM lineup which didnât have plastic panels.
Also, the DOHC 4- and 6-cylinder engines intended for the GM80 line may have produced a decent amount of power, but they lacked the reliability expected of a pony car engine, unlike the OHV V6s and V8s in use at the time.
in America, Fiat 500s are typically seen as weird and ugly little cars by how much they divot from the usual car look and size in NA, they are also typically shat on in general cause, well, Fiat never had really good reliability records
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