Hard-hitting, insightful and full of hyperbolic political tension, Window Shopping returns to YouTube this week with another inspiring challenge. The goal this week was to find examples of cars that, upon a redesign, practically destroyed that brand forever. That’s like, well, how the ’58 Chevy was worse than the ’57. Or how the ’58 Thunderbird pretty much wiped away the awesome of the ’57. But surprisingly, all five of this week’s august panelists picked vehicles of more recent vintage. Cars that sucked—in the recent past.
Beaming in from España is contributor Jonathan Ramsey whose choice hails from an entirely different hemisphere than the one he’s in. Road & Track’s John Pearley Huffman hones in on a major mistake from a company that rarely makes mistakes. Senior editor Joey Capparella finds yet another silver (Actually, it's red—Ed.) Japanese car as his nominee. Second Sub-Assistant to the Plenary of Objective Testing K.C. Colwell picks out one of the great betrayals in the history ovals that are blue. And finally, there’s our moderator, Poobah-elect Tony Quiroga who picks on a marginal car from a marginal manufacturer.
You know you have an hour to kill. So kill it with this exciting—okay, exciting-ish—adventure in arguing about things that don’t matter. Because nihilism is a philosophical dead-end and Window Shopping is the antidote.
John Pearley Huffman has been writing about cars since 1990 and is getting okay at it. Besides Road & Track, his work has appeared in Car and Driver, the New York Times, and more than 100 automotive publications and websites. A graduate of UC Santa Barbara, he still lives near that campus with his wife and two children. He owns a pair of Toyota Tundras and two dogs. He used to have a Nova and a Camaro.
