Car of the Year Revisionism, 1995 Edition: If Not the Cirrus, What?
There’s a nice comfortable cushion of years between the present and the 1970 and 1976 Motor Trend Cars of the Year, which gave our discussions about What Might Have Been a certain detachment. Today’s Car of the Year Revisionism discussion, however, takes as its subject a car that’s still with us in large numbers.
The Cirrus wasn’t exactly a smash hit (unless you count sales to rental-car companies), and it hasn’t left a deep impression in our minds. Perhaps MT might have made a better choice… and here’s your chance to look back with 16 years of hindsight and make some suggestions. If you’d like to include imports for the sake of argument, do so; the Maxima was the Import COTY for ’95. So, what’s it gonna be? The Neon? The Accent? The Aurora? The VAZ-21099?
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
More by Murilee Martin
Latest Car Reviews
Read moreLatest Product Reviews
Read moreRecent Comments
- SCE to AUX Range only matters if you need more of it - just like towing capacity in trucks.I have a short-range EV and still manage to put 1000 miles/month on it, because the car is perfectly suited to my use case.There is no such thing as one-size-fits all with vehicles.
- Doug brockman There will be many many people living in apartments without dedicated charging facilities in future who will need personal vehicles to get to work and school and for whom mass transit will be an annoying inconvenience
- Jeff Self driving cars are not ready for prime time.
- Lichtronamo Watch as the non-us based automakers shift more production to Mexico in the future.
- 28-Cars-Later " Electrek recently dug around in Tesla’s online parts catalog and found that the windshield costs a whopping $1,900 to replace.To be fair, that’s around what a Mercedes S-Class or Rivian windshield costs, but the Tesla’s glass is unique because of its shape. It’s also worth noting that most insurance plans have glass replacement options that can make the repair a low- or zero-cost issue. "Now I understand why my insurance is so high despite no claims for years and about 7,500 annual miles between three cars.
Comments
Join the conversation
So what's with the epidemic of head gasket failures? Is it due to Purchasing's parsimony or Engineering's incompetence? Can't blame it on the UAW. And evidently, Management just doesn't give a damn what goes out the door.
Design is completely subjective but I can't understand how anyone can find this car even remotely "beautiful". It's the typical bland and uninspired design that most American cars of that period had to my eyes.