Driving the “Worst Car Ever Built” (2015)

https://jalopnik.com/what-its-like-to-drive-the-worst-car-ever-built-1735448480

by smacktoward • 9 years ago

121 65 9 years ago

lqet• 9 years ago

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...

mhd• 9 years ago

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.

digi_owl5• 9 years ago

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.

Someone• 9 years ago

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)

tyingq6• 9 years ago

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.

megaman22• 9 years ago

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.

jacquesm2• 9 years ago

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.

bluedino• 9 years ago

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

digi_owl5• 9 years ago

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

usrusr• 9 years ago

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.

mcguire• 9 years ago

That's how Alumacraft got started in the US.

burger_moon• 9 years ago

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.

walshemj4• 9 years ago

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

tyingq6• 9 years ago

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

ryguytilidie• 9 years ago

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.

tyingq6• 9 years ago

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.

dsfyu404ed4• 9 years ago

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.

pkamb• 9 years ago

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

"N8R H8R", "NESPEED", etc.

moxious• 9 years ago

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.

baron816• 9 years ago

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.

notahacker• 9 years ago

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-...

atomical• 9 years ago

1999 Oldsmobile Alero

It had major engine problems and they were repetitive.

neves• 9 years ago

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:-)

bitL2• 9 years ago

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 ;-)

chubot• 9 years ago

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.

bitL2• 9 years ago

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...

dm319• 9 years ago

Bit like shooting the moon in hearts.

apozem2• 9 years ago

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.

Joeboy• 9 years ago

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.

fspeech• 9 years ago

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.

dilap• 9 years ago

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...

katastic• 9 years ago

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.

jedrek• 9 years ago

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

mikestew• 9 years ago

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

walshemj4• 9 years ago

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

gerdesj• 9 years ago

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.

hexane360• 9 years ago

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

trentmb• 9 years ago

Is that the car from mr bean?

Edit: yep

digi_owl5• 9 years ago

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...

Driving the “Worst Car Ever Built” (2015)

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