TTAC's Ten Worst Automobiles Today (TWAT) Award – Coming Down the Home Stretch

Once again, thank you for helping TTAC with our Ten Worst Automobiles Today (TWAT) award. We’ve been most gratified by the number and quality of the nominations. The nomination process will judder to a halt tomorrow at 5pm EST. TTAC’s staff (that’s me) will then begin the arduous process (which may or may not involve the use of dart boards, adult beverages and TV psychics) of paring a list of almost 200 losermobiles down to 20 really bad finalists. We’ll open the voting sometime next week, and announce the winner the following week. Meanwhile, here’s another quick recap.

Here are the top ten most nominated TWATs as of this morning:

Jeep Compass

RF reports that he’s amazed at the quality of the writing from our nominators; he’s offered assignments to five of you so far. (If you’re interested in writing for us, don’t wait for an invitation.) We’re all extremely pleased by the fact that so many long time readers have finally broken radio silence to participate in this effort. We urge you to continue making your voice heard on other issues. By now, we’re a solid community of pistonheads. You’re all welcome.

And you’re all nuts. Again, what’s with the Camry? Finding the most popular car sold in America associated with this group was like finding your Aunt Matilda in the holding cell after a whorehouse raid, guilt or innocence not withstanding. In fact, this topic generated the bulk of yesterday’s discussion. Here are a few representative comments:

The Camry and RL may be boring, soulless appliances, but they are not bad cars. Nor are they particularly ugly. Just forgettable. – Zarba

I’d vote for the Camry because it gets bigger and uglier every generation and it is to cars what Novocain is to gums. – artsy5347

A TWAT is a vehicle that fails to live up to its purpose. If its purpose is to be the most comfortable, reliable, and vanilla way to get from point A to B, then the Camry is no TWAT. – Jeff in Canada

I tested the LE model and found land-yacht handling thresholds (unacceptable for Soccer Moms, don’t even let pistonheads get in the equation), misaligned interior panels, RATTLES, high asking price (24k and it’s a 4-banger?) and one butt ugly design. – Sajeev Mehta

The Camry delivers the boring vehicle that people who buy them want. It’s not a bad car, just a case of giving people what they want. – Claude Dickson

The new one looks eye-poppingly awful from the outside; really really bad; worse than ‘96 Taurus bad. – maxo

The Camry is a soulless drone of a car but it is absolutely flawless piece of machinery made to accomplish what it was designed for: A to B anonymous dependable transportation. You can hardly qualify a best seller that consistently fulfill that niche, forbidding any competition (except the Accord which should then be nominated as well!) a bad car or a TWAT. – rashakor

The reason I feel the Camry is deserving of the nomination is the styling. They have taken what was supposed to be a boring family sedan and attempted to add style to the exterior… It’s like putting a tuxedo on a pig… It looks stupid and makes the pig mad. – BimmerHead

Looks like it’s a hung jury on whether soullessness and bad styling make a car worthy of a TWAT. We would be less than honest if we didn’t admit right from the start that the selection committee will have to consider the effect of a Camry TWAT on this website’s credibility. On one hand, it would certainly fit TTAC’s brand positioning as the nutter in the internet attic. On the other hand, anyone predisposed against our, um, style, would use it as another excuse to dismiss TTAC with the old “anyone with a keyboard can run a website” argument.

Suffice it to say, our first obligation is to the truth. It will probably come down to a single question: would we, the jury, rather gnaw off our hands than wrap them around a Camry’s steering wheel for any length of time? Or something along those lines.

In any case, keep those nominations coming. Remember: the more justifications for a given nomination, the more likely it is to make the top 20. So let’s get those TWATs out in the open for everyone to see.

Since this article was written, we've begun voting on the '06 TWAT awards.

Please click HERE to cast your vote on the final 10. You will be returned to the TTAC home page.