QOTD: What's Your Favorite Automotive Outcast?

Yesterday, we featured an edition of Buy/Drive/Burn pitting three excellent Japanese sports cars against one another. All three were prime time, heavy hitters in their segment, and all three are remembered fondly for various reasons by the Internet Car People.

But some people thought there was a fly in the ointment — a big one. Hence today’s question.

It seemed fairly obvious to me that the correct Japanese sports car trio for 1995 was indeed the Toyota Supra, Mazda RX-7, and Nissan 300ZX. “Yes, this is good,” I said to myself. But after the article went live for an hour or so, there was an audible grumble from commenters both at TTAC and on Twitter.

These dissenting voices declared I’d made a fatal flaw in the trio. Said flaw was including the Nissan 300ZX rather than the Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 (the cabrio’s already a Rare Ride). The Mitsubishi, they argued, was more a star than the Nissan ever was, and more a competitor to the Toyota and Mazda.

And that’s fine! Here in The American States, people are entitled to their incorrect opinions and feels. It helps us maintain an interesting and colorful discourse about cars. While I can appreciate the looks and general technical prowess of the 3000GT, I can also appreciate that it was vaguely assembled out of chocolate box plastics, and was de-contented consistently throughout its life.

It was also a heavy pig, and front-drive in all versions where it wasn’t all-wheel drive (ie – most of them). The 3000GT also morphed slightly into the equally chunky and FWD Dodge Stealth. A 3000GT was most assuredly the outcast; the oddball choice against the others.

Here’s your chance to get more of these off your chest. What other outcast, afterthought-then-forgot sort of cars do you love? Which ones get you going, even though buyers left them alone when they were new?

[Image: seller]