DriveTimes five

Cars with strange design flaws Some design flaws in cars are massive and dangerous, like the recent General Motors ignition-switch crisis or the fuel tank placement of the Ford Pinto. Most, however, are just annoying and stupid. Today we look at five of t

Pontiac Solstice

The Pontiac Solstice was an undeniably attractive car that was half-baked and disappointing, as you expected from GM in the 2000s. The Solstice coupe took that disappointment even further with its removable roof panel. There was no storage for the panel whatsoever, meaning owners could leave it in place, leave it at home or leave it by the side of the road. Which kind of defeated the purpose of having the thing in the first place. Pontiac tried to make up for it by offering a crappy fabric roof that could be folded away, but it was so awful that most people simply didn’t bother. Buying the Solstice, that is.

Hyundai Veloster

Got a friend or family member you want to either vaguely annoy or permanently damage? Just get them to hop into the back seat of your Veloster. Opening the rear hatch when it’s wet will see a mini-Tsunami of water flood down on top of them, while slamming the hatch shut without warning will cause a minor head injury. Even if you didn’t want to injure them, yelling ‘‘duck!’’ every time you close the tailgate with someone sitting in the rear seat isn’t exactly ideal.

Nissan Xterra

Based on the same platform as the Nissan Pathfinder back when it was a proper off-roader, the US-market Xterra was a big, tough 4X4. A sunroof can be awesome in an off-roader and a roof-rack can be extremely useful when venturing into the unknown. But if you wanted both with the Xterra, you could only use one. That’s right, Nissan managed to design a roof rack for the Xterra that meant you couldn’t actually open the sunroof when it was installed. If you had your heart set on a sunroof in your Xterra, this was a crushing blow. Probably not as bad as driving one, though.

Lincoln MKC

As if being based on the Ford Kuga and promoted by Matthew McConaughey wasn’t a bad enough start for the MKC, the decision to use a bizarre dash-mounted pushbutton gear selector just made it weird. Well, weirder. What made it downright stupid was the placement of the start/ stop button right under the gear selector buttons, making it impossibly easy to turn the car off instead of selecting gears. Which a surprising number of owners actually did, leading Lincoln to recall the MKC and reposition the starter. If you’d just thought about it a bit in the first place, Lincoln…

Saab 9-5

The cupholders in the Saab 9-5 were utterly beautiful in their design and movement. At a push of a tab they unfolded from the dash in an intricate mechanical ballet, arranging themselves with great grace and beauty ready to receive your drink. Unfortunately, they were utterly useless at their job. With only a single thin strip of plastic to support the cup at the bottom and very low sides, anything slightly smaller than the cupholder’s diameter would flop about alarmingly, spilling its contents all over the interior. And the driver.