Artic Boy's American Motors Site will take you on a nostalgic ride back to the not-so-golden days of U.S. automotive design, a time when Detroit's Big 3 were reeling from a twin-barreled assault by the Mideast Oil Crisis and Japanese imports that were cheaper, more reliable, and got better gas mileage than their American rivals. Sound familiar?

AMC fought back...sort of...by producing two of the the ugliest subcompacts that have ever stalled out along a highway: the Pacer (AKA The Aquarium) and the Gremlin (AKA The Shoe). Driving either one of these lemons back in my old neighborhood was a virtual guarantee that you weren't going to score with the ladies.

Ford and Chevy also came up with their own subcompacts, the Vega and the Pinto. You all remember what happened when a Pinto got rear-ended, right? I actually owned a Vega for a year or two; it burned a quart of oil every week and smelled like wet dog inside. I finally traded it for my mom's Volkswagen. Poor Mom.

The first subcompact in America, the Nash Metropolitan, was designed in the U.S. and built by Austin Motors in the U.K. It was in production from 1953 until 1963 and has become a classic cult-car. I first became aware of them through reading Zippy the Pinhead.