There are some brands and cars that frequently end up as punchlines in bad jokes. Nissan Altimas will forever be known as the cars that do 100 mph on donut spares, Kias can easily be stolen by bored teens, British cars break in amusing ways, German cars break in expensive ways, and American cars run like crap forever. You get it.
Matt ended The Morning Dump by asking about the automaker that had a great 2025. NCbrit pulled no punche(line)s:
Jaguar is ending 2025 with higher quality than they began. By not manufacturing anything.
Also, we’re still giggling about the fact that a NYT opinion piece nominated a line from Matt as one of the best sentences of the year. Nsane In The MembraNe:
Man, David’s gone Hollywood AND Matt’s Mr. New York Times now?! Sheeeeeesh. Next thing you know they’re gonna upgrade the Aztek to an R63 AMG and roll up with a lobster wheelbarrow….
Also, there’s a Mitsubishi dealer that doesn’t have any Mitsubishis in its showroom. Andy Individual:
At least that Mitsubishi dealer has Zero in inventory.
And here’s Sissyfoot:
Edwards should sell Mitsubishi mini-splits out of their showroom.
Ranwhenparked illustrates how much the Cybertruck isn’t hitting Tesla’s original expectations:
The Pinto sold over 3 million in 10 years, with a peak of 500k in its best year, so hardly a flop.
Edsel sold 63,000 for 1958, against a target of 200,000, so they hit like 31.5% of the goal
Tesla tooled up to build a minimum of 250,000 Cybertrucks per year, with a published goal of getting production up to 500,000 per year within a few years.
They sold 39,000 in 2024 and about 16,000 in the first 9 months of 2025 and will likely finish the year around 20,000, so, the Cybertruck is technically a worse flop than Edsel.
Jason wrote about the cars that will be dying in 2026. One of those cars, the Nissan Altima, did get a stay of execution, but not from our readers. Dodsworth published an innocent comment that setup a great zinger from DialMforMiata built on the Big Altima Energy stereotype:
Dodsworth: I think I read that the Altima has been given another year?
DialMforMiata: Much like its customer base, it’s currently awaiting the results of an appeal.
I feel bad for laughing at that. Have a great day, everyone!
Used to work for a Toyota dealership. The owner decided to open a sister Mitsubishi dealership even though he couldn’t pronounce Mitsubishi. Folks at the dealership would try to get him to attempt the pronunciation whenever he came around just to see how badly he’d butcher it every time.
It’s hard work being a good straight man. Kudos to DialMforMiata. That was brilliant!
I missed the Mitsubishi minisplit comment. I think it’s a great idea!
Jaguar and Datsun should merge – what could go wrong?
Jagsun!
Datsuar!!
DatJagSun
DatJagSunUar
That sounds like the name of Volkswagen’s next SUV.
After flicking back and forth from post it marked sections in a dog eared Mary Shelley novel: “Nothing. Do it!”
Brit cars are also expensive to repair, sometimes more than German cars, on top of breaking in every random way possible 🙂
My gut tells me Ranwhenparked is being generous with his estimate of 4000 Cybertrucks in 4Q 2025. Hasn’t it been losing sales month-to-month? It’s been speedrunning the PT Cruiser/Hummer H2 curve where everyone who wants one has one and before long anyone who wasn’t sure about wanting one starts being certain they don’t want to be seen in one.
This^^^. Every time I see one I wonder why the driver:owner bought the GD ugly thing. I’m not even sure therapy would help them. It’s obscene, useless, fugly, stupid and ridiculously expensive. When younger when we saw a Firebird with the screaming chicken on the hood we automatically said 3”. I’m going with 2” on the cybermuck
Even when it was revealed initially, with it’s ridiculously unrealistic base price and other insane estimates, it never made sense as a vehicle for, you know, regular people. If you want to sell hundreds of thousands of something, you’re going to need to appeal to someone other than extremely weird nerds. Never mind the (progressing) unraveling of the CEO since the reveal.
Nobody should have believed the 250k annual number. Ever. I certainly didn’t.
That was the ketamine talking when Musk claimed he would sell 250,000 in the first year.
PT Cruiser was actually a useful vehicle, unlike the incEL Camino.
Before GM shut down the Chevy Malibu, someone pointed out that it and the Altima were the last two easy-financing biggish sedans to which I had to add “do you want to look like a state employee on official business, or like somebody who gets surprise visits from one?”
Hahaha, ouch.
Yeah, the response I got on that thread was “if you see a Malibu and an Altima in one driveway, someone’s peeing in a cup and someone else is watching.”
ROFL!!
Yo dawg, I heard you like COTD…
I wanted to draw more attention to the R63 comment but I didn’t want to draw TOO much attention to it because I wanted David to think he came up with the idea of an R63 family car on his own.
What I’m saying is get rid of the CrossCab and any other lingering Autopian vehicles (I think the taxi and the Aztec are already gone?), buy an R63 that needs some love, and throw Adrian a bone with a proper car to drive for once (before lifting it and taking it rallycrossing).
I’ve seen a handful of R63 (back when they were newish) and always thought they were extremely underrated cars. The R Class disappeared from the roads quickler than any car I can think of — I went from seeing 10/day a decade ago to maybe one a YEAR now. If anything, some of the cars that predated the “crossover” moniker suffered from terrible marketing and automatically started their lives with 2 strikes against them.
I’m just hoping the Cybertruck does the same.
I miss my Jag every day.
Still in the shop?
Broken down in the driveway, probably. His daily is small enough he doesn’t hit it on the way out.
sold it when the warranty expired. but man, yeah, really great comfy seats, damn near 400 hp, my kid liked the rear heated seats. i just loved having it.
Maybe you need a better scope on your rifle.
Oh, that’s good! 😀
I hear you can stream it on Paramount.