Worst Pace Cars at the Indy 500
Worst Pace Cars at the Indy 500! We previously listed our five favorite Indy 500 pace cars. But you knew we just had to have a list of the five worst too, right? These are cars that make you scratch your head and say why. In fact, they make you wake up in the middle of the night and scream WHY? So here we go.
#5 2003 Chevrolet SSR
Okay by definition a pace car should be a car, but the SSR was a short term experiment from Chevy with a truck/convertible/car. It didn’t last long in the showroom (from 2002-2006) and it didn’t hack it as a pace “car”.
#4 1998 Chevrolet Corvette
We could live with the Corvette as a choice. After all, there have been fourteen Corvette’s selected as pace cars for the Indy 500. And the Radar Blue (but looks purple) paint job grows on you over time. But those yellow wheels, sheesh. Plus the color blind designers carried over the yellow trim into the interior. While the color combination may be horrid, somebody must love these Corvettes. GM sold over 1,100 of these Corvettes. You often see them for sale at the car auctions. Perhaps the sellers got new glasses and realized what they actually looked like?
#3 1962 Lark Daytona
To be honest, we did not remember that Studebaker’s Lark came as a convertible, but it still looks ugly. This was a last minute substitution from Studebaker. Originally the groundbreaking Avanti was the expected pace car, but production problems delayed the arrival. So the Lark came in as a last minute substitute. At least it had a V8 with a four barrel carburetor that produced 225 horses.
#2 1938 Hudson 112
Hudson’s have seen a revival since the “Cars” movie franchise, but the 112 model was a boat that was more boastful about the spaciousness than performance. The 112 referred to its wheelbase and Indy databases indicate the 0-60 mph for this convertible was (yawn) 35 seconds.
And finally, our selection for worst Indy 500 pace car goes to.
#1 1981 Buick Regal
They had to chop the top to make it look like a convertible, but they must have been drunk when they did it. The styling is all off and the paint scheme of silver with black and red accents makes our eyes hurt. The showroom versions came with a meager 110 Horsepower V6.
So there you have it, Fuel Curve’s list of the worst pace cars at the Indy 500. Do you have another unliked candidate? Share it with us.
