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Here are a few of our automotive guilty pleasures

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The world is full of cars, and just about as many of them are bad as are good. It's pretty easy to pick which fall into each category after giving them a thorough walkaround and, more important, driving them. But every once in a while, an automobile straddles the line somehow between good and bad — it may be hideously overpriced and therefore a marketplace failure, it may be stupid quick in a straight line but handles like a drunken noodle, or it may have an interior that looks like it was made of a mess of injection-molded Legos. Heck, maybe all three. Yet there's something special about some bad cars that actually makes them likable. The idea for this list came to me while I was browsing classified ads for cars within a few hundred miles of my house. I ran across a few oddballs and shared them with the rest of the team in our online chat room. It turns out several of us have a few automotive guilty pleasures that we're willing to admit to. We'll call a few of 'em out here. Feel free to share some of your own in the comments below. Dodge Neon SRT4 and Caliber SRT4: The Neon was a passably good and plucky little city car when it debuted for the 1995 model year. The Caliber, which replaced the aging Neon and sought to replace its friendly marketing campaign with something more sinister, was panned from the very outset for its cheap interior furnishings, but at least offered some decent utility with its hatchback shape. What the two little front-wheel-drive Dodge models have in common are their rip-roarin' SRT variants, each powered by turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder engines. Known for their propensity to light up their front tires under hard acceleration, the duo were legitimately quick and fun to drive with a fantastic turbo whoosh that called to mind the early days of turbo technology. — Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski  Chevrolet HHR SS: Chevy's HHR SS came out early in my automotive journalism career, and I have fond memories of the press launch (and having dinner with Bob Lutz) that included plenty of tire-smoking hard launches and demonstrations of the manual transmission's no-lift shift feature. The 260-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder was and still is a spunky little engine that makes the retro-inspired HHR a fun little hot rod that works quite well as a fun little daily driver.

Junkyard Gem: 2008 Suzuki Reno

Next time you're hosting a car-trivia night at your local junkyard/bar (hey, such places exist), you might try to stump your guests with a really tough one: What was the last US-market car to be designed entirely by Daewoo prior to the GM takeover? Sure, Americans could buy the Daewoo-badged Lanos, Nubira, and Leganza for a few years in the early 2000s, and the Verona was really just a slightly updated Leganza with Suzuki badges pasted on. The Chevy Aveo/Pontiac G3 was the descendant of the Lanos, but that special Daewoo sauce had been diluted by other GM flavors by the time it hit our shores. I say the answer is the Daewoo Lacetti — yes, that Lacetti — which was sold in the United States as the Suzuki Forenza (in sedan form) and Suzuki Reno (as a hatchback). Here's an example of one of the very last Renos you could buy here, found in a car graveyard near Denver, Colorado. The South Korea-built Reno never made much of an impression on the reviewers at this — or, I'm pretty sure, any — publication, despite having been styled by Giugiaro, though it was very reasonably priced during its 2005-2008 American sales run. My only experience driving the Reno comes from the time I rented one in South Carolina for just $9.98 a day. For that price, I thought it was a perfectly serviceable transportation appliance. Suzuki had been building cars for GM since the first Cultus hit American showrooms as the 1985 Chevrolet Sprint, and ties between the two companies became stronger as the 20th century became the 21st. They joined forces to buy bankrupt Daewoo in 2004, with American Suzuki selling the hastily-rebadged Nubira starting the next year. After a bit of excitement over the promising Suzuki Kizashi, American Suzuki filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and ceased selling cars here the following year. Don't feel too bad for Suzuki, though — in Japan, the company has had years of smash sales success with the Hustler, and of course Suzuki motorcycles and ATVs remain popular here. How much was this little Daewoo when new? With the base five-speed manual transmission, the MSRP on the base '08 Reno was $13,839, or about $19,425 in 2022 dollars. However, this car has the automatic transmission, an $1,100 option ($1,545 now).  You did get air conditioning and an AM/FM stereo in the base '08 Reno. This car has the optional CD player with AUX input. Honda had VTEC and Daewoo had D-TEC.

Regulators consider adding more carmakers to Takata recall

Volkswagen's diesel emissions scandal has been getting a lot of press recently, but the Takata airbag inflator affair could be grabbing headlines again soon. According to Bloomberg, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is contemplating an expansion to the campaign that could add seven automakers to the 12 already affected. They are Jaguar Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Spartan Motors, Suzuki, Tesla, Volvo Trucks, and VW Group. To be clear, there's no recall for any of these automakers, yet. The government is simply asking for a full list of vehicles that each of them have with Takata-supplied inflators containing ammonium nitrate propellant. The agency is concerned this substance could play a roll in the ruptures. "NHTSA is considering not only whether to issue an administrative order that would coordinate the remedy programs associated with the current Takata recalls, but also whether such an order should include expansion of the current recalls," the letters say. All seven can be viewed, here. From a report supplied by Takata, the government already knows that the company supplied 887,055 inflators with ammonium-nitrate propellant to VW and 184,926 of them to Tesla. In an incident during the summer, a side airbag allegedly burst in a 2015 VW Tiguan. In early September, NHTSA put out a revised report that there were 23.4 million inflators to be replaced in 19.2 million vehicles in the US. An earlier accounting from the agency had about 34 million of the parts in 30 million cars. High humidity is still believed to be among the biggest risk factors for the ruptures. Although, if ammonium nitrate also gets the blame, some already recalled models might need to be repaired again. Related Video: