Zoom, Zoom: there are no hard and fast rules to this. But the 2004 Prius is the one with all the success and it is an entirely new model. I don’t see how you can disqualify it for being too old.

Who says that the car of the Decade must not have had a nameplate that was in use before. It an entirely new model designed from the ground up to be a hybrid, the first for Toyota. The japan only pre-2000 hybrid was essentially a Vitz with a different drive train.

If they EV1 nameplate was kept and a new Lithium powered EV1 with 200mile range was introduced in 2003, and it stormed the market, would you disqualify it?

Bottom line the 2004 Prius is an all new car, that stormed the market and changed an industry. The reuse of a nameplate doesn’t change that.

1. Gm made this when there was no solid reason to go this direction. CA mandated ZEV? Don’t sell in CA! Done.

2. Never really was SOLD, just leased then returned and destroyed.

3. When has there been a dedicated following, such as they are , to another single vehicle?
Very Grateful Dead like.

4. It hit on a viable solution for where were at right now, waaay before we knew we were going to be here.

The Prius? Come on! Is this TTAC or Condemner Retorts? The Prius is not a car for enthusiast drivers… it’s an appliance to assuage lefty-liberal guilt. And I think those who voted for it are massaging their guilty egos for not buying one. One can only hope they have worthy sins… like harbouring gas-swilling orgasmatron 6.0 LS2 GTO’s in their garages… to atone for.

Not sure if I can ref, but I’ll just butt in.

I ticked the Prius on my virtual ballot because of the time period during which it impacted the marketplace and began to influence the cars that we are likely to drive in the future. That occurred during this decade, and involves the second generation of the car.

The year that it was first invented or launched, or the fact that the first generation was not a sales success, really doesn’t matter if you base it on the yardstick that I have chosen. The focus here is on the time period that it had a broader outcome to the automotive industry, not when the engineers first began the R&D.

It appears you are just trying to be pedantic to disqualify the obvious winner.

Oooh, pedantic, I like that. I think I’ll just be pedantic to everybody this week!

So it still stands. The Prius is it. For the excessively pedantic, it is the NHW20 model.

I drive a Prius. If I lost this one, I’d buy another one. That should tell you how I feel about it. Anyway, I would love to vote for it.

But it IS older than a decade already, so it may be disqualified on that basis. I think we need a referee on this one! Calling Mr. Farago!

No, although the Cordoba is a fine example of what was wrong with Detroit in the seventies, the Vega had it beaten to the market by four years, was exponentially worse, was produced for far longer in its original form, and spawned other variations off the same, hoary platform that lasted until the end of the decade (the Monza deviants).

I know of a first-hand example when a friend ordered a new ‘77 Monza. It was constantly in the shop from the day he got it. He finally traded it in on a new Celica and he’s never bought another domestic vehicle since.

The Mercedes W116 was a fantastic car, but, in my opinion, the Car of the Decade should symbolize, for good or bad, where the automotive industry was headed. It should also be a vehicle that, by the mere mention of its name, recalls that era. It should be influential in design (again, either good or bad), but does not necessarily have to be mechanically advanced.

The Mercedes W116 of the 1970s was good…too good to symbolize that era. It stands out precisely because it went against the grain of what was happening in most of the automotive world at that time.

In my opinion, the Car of the Decade for the 1970s was…the 1975-79 Chrysler Cordoba.

Now, don’t laugh!

It symbolizes everything that was wrong with the 1970s. Originally meant to be a Plymouth, the Cordoba was re-badged as a Chrysler at the last minute to capitalize on that marque’s greater prestige. That netted sales in the short term, but destroyed whatever prestige remained in the Chrysler nameplate. Unfortunately, Chrysler Corporation wasn’t the only domestic auto maker playing this game, as over the next decade Oldsmobile, Buick and even Cadillac and Lincoln would be degraded with cheaper models based on platforms shared with less-prestigious nameplates, as management chased short-term sales results over long-term growth.

This was when the Germans cornered the real prestige market (i.e., those vehicles sold to the truly rich, not middle-class Americans looking for ersatz symbols of the good life).

The car itself was mechanically bland, and sold primarily on the basis of “style,” which consisted of a landau vinyl roof, opera windows, upright grille, cheesy badges made to look like Spanish coins and that infamous leather interior – in other words, features that added nothing to the car’s function or even ultimate value, and were worth less than appearances indicated.

When those features were stripped away, buyers were left with a mundane two-door coupe based on the Mopar intermediate platform that dated back to the early 1960s. All of this was hawked by Ricardo Montalban in endless commercials, which are today remembered as much as the car itself.

Lots of sizzle, but very little steak. Which pretty much sums up what Detroit served us as the 1970s wore on – with a few exceptions, such as the downsized GM and Ford big cars of 1977 and 1979, respectively, and Ford’s Fox-based cars.

I do like those cars (my wife had one when we first dated). But compared with the Taurus, Chrysler Minivans, and the Miata, it was not really much of a transformational vehicle. It was the last RWD mainstream sedan that GM made with any lasting level of success. I will say it probably represents GM’s best work in the midsized market vis-a-vis their competitors over the past 30 years.

It is a good car that deserves a mention. But I just don’t see how it transformed the industry.

Lotus Elise and Ferrari Enzo.

The Elise’s bonded aluminum technology is spreading around the industry and the car itself is the basis for the Tesla roadster – itself a candidate should it actually pan out.

The Enzo is the closest thing to a street legal F1 car that exists today. The Veyron may have more power but the Enzo is a technological tour de force and I’m not usually a big fan of the prancing horse.

guyingognito,

Fender gills predate the E46, there’s nothing new under the automotive styling sun, but you may be right in terms of it being patient zero on the current epidemic. I’m trying to remember if the Ford Super Duty trucks had them before the E46. They’ve spread to the Ford Focus and Jaguar tacked them on to the flanks of the XJ, just because the XK and XF have them.

If you were looking at this nomination from a design perspective you would also have to consider the 1996 – 2000 Chrysler minivans as well. Brock Yates did a fantastic job chronicling that vehicle in the book ‘Critical Path’ and I still think it’s one of the best values in the market today.

I’m just waiting for the ‘enthusiast’ car of the decade thread. An awful lot of grist for that mill.

I always though it looked like an Audi 5000.

I will say that the AXOD transmissions in the Taurus enabled Honda and Toyota to capitalize on the reliability issue. The 1992-1996 Camry in particular transformed the Camry into a premium car in the eyes of consumer. Once they decontented it in 1997, they were perfectly poised to make it an annual best seller.

Consider…

These were the only vehicles made at that time which could last over 20 years given normal driving and routine maintenance. In an automotive world filled with vehicles that were rolling examples of planned obsolescence (even the Japanese models), the Mercedes W116 had a look and build quality that would truly endure over the decades.

You also have to take into account that these vehicles were virtually the only ones that could provide serious horsepower at a time where it was nascent. The 350SE that was in my driveway has over 200 horsepower and is still as easy to drive as most of today’s full-sized sedans. The W116’s were also among the first models in the world to offer ABS, and the diesel models are still among the most coveted in North America. Then we also have the 6.9L that was given fame in the Cannonball Run, but was also possibly the only vehicle of the 1970’s that could be sent to the track and NOT experience dangerous levels of brake fade and chronic overheating.

From my perspective, the Mercedes W116’s were truly engineered like no other car in the world at that time. The Japanese models had yet to really hit their prime with most American car buyers, and most European and American vehicles were simply not very good overall (Porsche and BMW 2002 excepted). I think from a design, engineering and consumer’s perspective, the W116 platform was probably the best representation of what folks aspired to have and truly wanted. In fact no other platform at that time could offer so many qualities to their customers (power, safety, fuel economy, luxury, sport, utility, etc.) as the W116’s.

That’s my vote…

Likewise, all those touting the virtues of vehicles built by BMW (such as the 3-series or MINI) as legitimate contenders for cars of any decade would seem to in the very same camp as the writers who try to say that the Cayenne or WRX are vehicles of this decade.

The very first response by Samir Syed said it best: “Maybe the pistonhead car of the decade, Johnny”. For the majority of the motoring public that have vastly different priorities and needs, other vehicles (like the Prius) are superior. In fact, I know of people that traded 993 Porsches and 3-series BMWs in on Priuses. I suspect they outnumber those that traded a Prius in on a 3-series or Porsche by a large margin.

Seeing that I can’t understand 90% of the things women do, CUVs are in good company ;)

It certainly was all that to American eyes, and I think those original Tauruses are one of the few cars of the ’80s that’s likely to be shown at places like Hershey 10-20 years from now. but check out this old French Panhard

http://www.autohistories.com/panhard-levassor/Panhard_24CT-f.jpg

At the time the Taurus came out, I had a friend who was a woman from our Mother Country, who said of the Taurus that she thought “it looks like a French car.” (She didn’t know one car from the other.)

A lot of people want to sit at SUV height, but in some thing that’s not big, and that is reasonably economical. Hence, I believe, the popularity of the CRV and the RAV4. I think women in particular tend ot like them.

Wikipedia is definitely fallible. Remember, anyone can contribute, and not everyone knows what they are talking about. And unless less than 2,000 lbs is “large and heavy,” they’ve got it wrong on this one. Do a google image search on ‘75, ‘77, or ‘79 corolla, and you’ll see it’s a minuscule car. The steering was incredibly light, lighter than a lot of power steering, but there was no power for this car.

I do think the Civic of that era may have been significantly smaller than the Corolla. In the late ’80s I had a tenant who had a Civic, I don’t know what year, and in fact, I just did a google image search on ‘75 Civic, and got a car that looked like his. But we’re talking “very small” and “even smaller than very small.”

The guy who sold me my Corolla (one of the now former Iraq weapons inspectors, but that’s another story) told me it had gotten 50mpg on the road until his brother borrowed it and towed a trailer (the engine was a 1.2 liter.) I got close to 40mpg on the road, going around 60.

David Holzman: “You sure? My ‘77 weighed less than 2,000 lbs, was tiny–about Yaris size–and cheap.”

From Wikipedia:

“Road & Track was critical of the 1975 Corolla, calling it “large and heavy” and “expensive” compared to the Honda Civic and Datsun B210. They also criticized the “relatively crude rear suspension”, lack of interior space, and poor fuel economy when compared to the VW Rabbit. The base model cost US$ 2711 in 1975, but only the $2989 “deluxe” model had features comparable to the contemporary pack.”