Not to start a debate - but I had a 1989 Plymouth Horizon and it was great. Sold it when it has 153,000 miles and it only ever needed an alternator. If you’d said Chevrolet Chevette/Pontiac 1000, I could have agreed with that, though.
My brother had a Plymouth Horizon as his first car. I seem to recall it dying some horrific mechanical death one day.
Re. the Pontiac T1000: I just saw one get described on the ep. they're running right now as I read that (Card Game Pauline, if anyone's seen it yet).
A good friend of mine had a Horizon that met a similar fate, so maybe I was just lucky.
Of course, my family replaced a Chevette with the Horizon (!) so it was a low bar to cross.
Maybe they got better. All I know is by 1985, I had to put one foot on the brake and one on the accelerator when stopping to avoid it stalling out. It was around 72,000 miles at that point. My father had let me have that Horizon, and unfortunately bought a 1984 model, which started dying at a similar juncture.
Cars in that era were different than now.
Consumer Reports pointed out in a recent report that it's very unusual for true lemons to make it to the market. And the expectations are different; it used to be after getting a car over 100,000 miles anything after that was a bonus, but that bar is now a lot higher.
(I drive a rustbucket 2002 Nissan Sentra with about 162,000 miles and the Check Engine light always on due to an electronics issue, so my expectations are low.)
Were there any cars on
Wheel of Fortune that were considered particularly bad?