Hey Readers; Tell Us About Your TWATs

Some time ago in TTACs history, the site held an award for the poorest choices in the automobile kingdom. We called it the Ten Worst Automobiles Today – or, the TWATs, for short. It’s been almost 4 years since the TWATs were last run, but for 2012, they’re back.

Conventional wisdom has it that it’s pretty hard to buy a bad car nowadays. In 2008, that wasn’t the case. But 4 years on, the crop of cars has undeniably gotten much better. Boring may be the operative word, but it’s hard to find a truly wretched vehicle for sale.

Rather than handing down the gospel from on high, like every other auto site, we’re opening up the floor to you, the readers, to nominate cars for the TWAT awards.

Rules will be similar to the Farago era. We are still tweaking the rules for this year’s competition, but here are the old rules, for reference.

1. Any car or light truck offered for sale as a new vehicle in the U.S. between January 1 and today is eligible for nomination. I know those of you in Canada and other countries feel left out, but we have to draw the line somewhere to keep this under control. It doesn’t matter who built it or where, just that it’s sold legally in the States.

2. All nominations have to be justified. That doesn’t mean just saying it’s a POS car. Tell us WHY it’s a POS car. Nominations may be deleted unceremoniously and without warning for any of the following reasons: insufficient justification, excessive verbosity or pontification, foul language or patent absurdity.

3. All nominations must meet TTAC’s house rules on flaming or trolling (i.e., don’t). Offensive comments about other readers will be summarily deleted and the writer could be banned from TTAC. However, offensive observations about the nominees are encouraged.

4. Blatantly badge-engineered siblings can be nominated jointly if they all suck equally (see winner #8 above). Platform mates can be nominated separately, but may be combined at the whim of the editor for the final vote.

5. If we can wake them up long enough, TTAC’s writers will select finalists from the nominees, give or take a few. The number of times a vehicle is nominated is irrelevant so don’t waste the pixels on typing “me too.”

6. Readers will vote via an electronic survey on the finalists to determine America’s Ten Worst Vehicles. Multiple voting ain’t kosher so don’t even try.

7. Nominations begin today and will continue until midnight EDT, Sunday December 8, with the 20 finalists presented for voting a few days afterwards. The winners will be announced whenever we get around to it. We have nothing to give the winners but our disdain, so the winning manufacturers will find out about it like everyone else.

How do you decide what crapmoblies are worthy of your attention?

– Styling so bad it could even make Stevie Wonder look the other way.

– A market misfit that makes you wonder what the product planners were smoking, drinking, shooting up or otherwise self-administering.

– Engineering malpractice that makes the vehicle practically undrivable or so bland you wouldn’t want to drive it.

– Something that you can’t quite put your finger on but gives you the urge to regurge anytime you think about it.

So now it’s in your court. Make your nominations below and tell us which ones you think are really deserving of being named one of TTAC’s Ten Worst Vehicles.

Following the poll, our editors will chime in with some of their own choices, and Murilee will present his list of most wretched rental cars.