The worst cars you can buy, right now

Raise your hand if you've ever heard of it. Essentially an insufficiently restyled Rodius, a car introduced to a slack-jawed world over a decade ago. It hasn't aged well. Or got any prettier. Which is an achievement.

Still on sale albeit departing, head bowed. A disastrous attempt to hoodwink Europeans into thinking it would suffice as a mainstream car when it's actually crude and backward, forcing GM into a brand strategy that pushed the Vauxhall Astra up in price to a place it could never comfortably perch. This misjudgement didn't only break Chevy in Europe, but was on course to badly harm Vauxhall-Opel too. It's a once-in-a-lifetime bad car/bad business case synergy of awful.

A £20k hyper-efficient numbers merchant now surpassed by loads of diesel rivals in practically any measurement except urban quietness. The game has moved on.

An outclassed elderly supermini that kicks out 126g/km yet takes 14.4secs to wheeze to 62mph, and it costs more than £10k. Ok, so in real life it's discount Babylon, but every time a punter buys this at list price, the world's sum of karma is irreversibly eroded.

Lamentable to drive - shuddery, messy and as comfortable as a marble mattress. Combine with silly doors, risible looks and poor packaging (managing to be both cramped and bloated), and you have a perfect car to recommend to people you no longer wish to be friends with. It's nearly as laughable as the Coupe. We won't go into that baseball-hatted abomination here, as someone might get punched by accident.

Takes ages to get anywhere because you have to stop all the time, either to get fuel or be searched by the drugs squad. It's also a reverse Tardis, having an interior that bears no resemblance to its block of flats military-bling exterior. And unlike, say, a Land Rover Defender (or even the off-road-capable big-tyred 6x6 version),it has no purpose in life other than annoying us poor people.

Mitsubishi insults Europe with rubbish cars cheapened for Thailand. But, to be fair, it's also an insult to Thais. And it's not just cheap: the Mirage is crap in ways that don't correlate with cost. Why would you do this to yourself when a children's scooter would be both nicer to steer and less harmful to your image?

A Toyota Avensis for triple the money. This is probably controversial...

Not even fast. But with that chassis, maybe a good thing. Is probably referred to exclusively as "the old girl", is only ever taken "for a run" rather than "a drive" and requires a yearly soaking in lanolin. Tally-ho! Straight into a wall.

A people-carrier that's half-heartedly been made to dress up as an off-roader. It's like putting dubz and racing stripes on a G-Wiz. People will laugh, and they'd be quite right to do so.

We want to like a Danish supercar that describes its power output (1,100bhp) as "excessive". But, in our experience, if used to the full potential of its mighty 6.8 super-and-turbocharged V8, the ST1 has a slightly worrying tendency to grenade its clutch and brakes, and then melt. These are less than ideal traits in a car capable of more than 230mph. A car for whom the title Limited Edition is both laudable and literal.

Designed for the value-driven Mexican market, where priorities are different. And, as per the Mirage, probably an insult to them too. And it's not even a real Seat, it's a bloomin' badge-engineered Skoda Rapid, a car built to insult the Russians. Oh, and the Rapid is actually a badge-engineered Volkswagen Santana, a car built to insult the Chinese. Which one assumes is some sort of international bingo.