QOTD: The Most Boring Car of Them All?
Ah yes, boring cars. They’re everywhere. And really they’ve been everywhere in the past. It’s just the nature of the Internet Car Enthusiast to paint a rosier picture than that of reality. His or her tinted spectacles are very cheap, by the way. Just like they’re supposed to be.
But enough about designer frames from Walmart. Tell us about the most boring car you’ve ever encountered.
Of course, “boring” means different things to different people. For youths, perhaps a car with decent infotainment passes the boring bar, even if it’s a snooze to drive. For others, a commuter car isn’t something that falls into any boring or exciting category, it just is. The special breed which is the ICE expects more from their vehicle. More power, more torque, more consumption, more handling. Passion, soul, and various other crap adjectives journalists put into glossy car reviews.
Today we don’t need any of those words, as the cars we seek all lack these characteristics. The boring car pick doesn’t have to be a car you’ve driven recently, either. Just one that sticks out in your mind as especially boring. I don’t really have a boring car to offer you, specifically.
Oh wait — yes, I do. And it’s this, the Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. You’ll be staggered to learn Olds made this very car until 1996 before finally killing it off. It started production in 1981, and had just the minimal amount of visual refreshing and upgrades in equipment and safety to qualify it as car.
I’m not saying it wasn’t reliable — the A-body was decent at that; you can find cockroach examples around today. Nor were they excessive consumers of the gasoline liquids. But never in my life have I driven such a boring car. The steering had no feel, the seats provided no support, and the engine and transmission were only vaguely connected by the idea of a throttle. Put the pedal to the carpet and you accelerated at a single pace. Let off the throttle, and you slowed down. The wheel could provide turns of left or right in an approximate way. I’m saying this as a fan of Oldsmobile, by the way. But that wasn’t a great Oldsmobile, nor a representation of what a car could or should be. It was a piece of car which was just dreadfully boring.
Let’s hear your picks for the most boring thing you’ve ever driven.
[Images: General Motors]
Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.
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1970s Plymouth Valiant or Chevy Chevette Diesel 1980s Chevy Celebrity with the 2.5 Iron Duke 1990s Ford Tempo/Mercury Topaz 4-cylinder auto or Ford Contour that isn't badged SVT 2000s 1997* - 2005 Chevy Malibu 2010s Toyota Yaris (not the Mazda2 Toyota badge job, the "Toyota" Toyota Yaris) or Toyota Prius C
I nominate the Kia Venga. It's the most generic, gutless blob on wheels I've ever owned. I often fail to recognize it on parking lots. So uninspiring it hurts.