The Car Nerd with Jason Hassett

Fiat Multipla: The Ugliest Car Ever Made Was a Masterpiece

In 1999, the Museum of Modern Art put a Fiat Multipla on display beside the General Motors EV1 and the Toyota Prius.Top Gear named it Car of the Year.They also called it

Toyota GT-ONE: The Boldest Con in Racing History

In 1998, Toyota arrived at Le Mans with a car that barely pretended to be a road car.The rules said GT1 cars had to be homologated for the road.They also had to have lugg

Audi TT: The Greatest Volkswagen Golf Ever Built

In the mid-1990s, Audi took a sports car proposal to Porsche. Porsche passed. Audi built it anyway. Underneath, the new TT shared its basic architecture with the Volks

Volvo 850 BTCC: Why Volvo Raced an Estate in the BTCC

In late 1993, a Swedish race shop arrived at Volvo’s factory in Gothenburg to collect a bare 850 bodyshell. They wanted a saloon. The production line was building estat

Lada: The Soviet Car That Outsold Honda

In October 1974, a convoy of Soviet cars arrived at a former RAF nuclear missile base in East Yorkshire.Twelve years earlier, three American-controlled Thor missiles had

McLaren F1: The Record Even Bugatti COULDN'T Beat

In 1988, four men from McLaren were stuck in an airport after the Italian Grand Prix when a conversation began that would change road cars forever. McLaren dominated For

Jaguar X-Type: The Greatest Ford Mondeo Ever Built

In 2001, Jaguar launched the car that was supposed to transform the company. Ford had spent billions rebuilding Jaguar, but the brand was still selling nowhere near enou

BMW E30 M3: Mercedes Accidentally Created the BMW M3

In 1983, Mercedes built a car that BMW couldn’t answer.The 190E 2.3-16 had a Cosworth-developed cylinder head, sixteen valves, and a set of world endurance records before

Renault Clio V6: The Worst Renault Clio Ever Built

In 2001, Renault built a hatchback that could barely outrun the hatchback it was based on.The doors were standard Clio. So was the roofline, tailgate and badge.But the ba

Metro 6R4: The Failed Metro That Created a Supercar

Group B Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlRHygh59386nA5Cost2pUW4p3OkNMlK7 In 1984, British journalists watched a rally car charge toward them on a cinem

Lancia 037: How Lancia Beat Audi With a Slower Car

Group B Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlRHygh59386nA5Cost2pUW4p3OkNMlK7In January 1983, high in the mountains above Monte Carlo, men working for Lancia

Noble M12: The £45,000 Car That Humiliated Porsche

In the summer of 2000, evo magazine strapped timing equipment to a British sports car almost nobody had heard of.It hit 60 mph in 4.1 seconds and 100 mph in 10.2—beating

Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution: How 22-Years of Failure Built an Icon

In 1974, a four-door Japanese family saloon entered the most destructive rally on Earth.The East African Safari Rally covered roughly six thousand kilometres of flooded p

Alfa Romeo 166: The Most Miserable Car Ever Built

In 2009, Glass’s Guide examined more than six thousand three-year-old cars in Britain to find which had lost their owners the most money.Second, third and fourth place we

Smart Car: The Most Expensive Mercedes Ever Made

In 1993, the man who saved the Swiss watch industry decided to reinvent the car. Nicolas Hayek imagined a cheap, colourful electric runabout that people could personalise

Ford RS200: The Fastest Failure in Racing History

Group B Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlRHygh59386nA5Cost2pUW4p3OkNMlK7In the Ford RS200, the engine sits behind the driver—but the gearbox sits ahead

Reliant Robin: The Car Built to Dodge the Taxman

In 1972, a Grand Prix engineer who tuned Formula One cars for Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart sat down to design a cheap runabout for people who couldn't afford a real car

1992 Suburu Impreza: The Car that Saved Suburu

In 1993, Subaru was on the brink of collapse, burdened by crashing sales and oddball engineering. But out of this desperation emerged a compact, turbocharged blue-and-yel

Austin Montego: The Masterpiece that Killed the British Car Industry

The Austin Montego didn't just challenge the survival of British Leyland; it stood as a fascinating, flawed monument to the desperate final years of Britain’s state-owned

Lancia Delta S4: The Car that Ended Group B

Group B Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlRHygh59386nA5Cost2pUW4p3OkNMlK7The Lancia Delta S4 didn't just challenge the visual and physical limits of rall