What Is The Best American Car Ever Made?

Photo: Dodge

It’s easy to rag on American cars. Build quality was essentially an afterthought until the Japanese showed up, and even today, they can still come up short. But that doesn’t mean all American cars suck. Rag on the durability of the Pontiac Solstice’s materials or poke fun at the Focus’s transmission issues all you want, sure, but can you really say with a straight face that the C8 Corvette Stingray is crap? For less than $70,000? Get out of here with that nonsense.

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But that brings us to the inevitable question: What is the best American car ever made? Maybe it really is the C8 Corvette. Maybe not. That, of course, largely depends on how you define “best.” Is it just your favorite one? Is it the one that’s the most reliable? The one that lasts the longest with the most affordable maintenance and simplest repairs? We could try to come up with a more narrow definition, but where would the fun be in that? Instead, I’d rather you argue among yourselves.

Is the Challenger Hellcat’s awesomeness negated by its interior and focus on straight-line speed over nimble handling? Can the original Mustang be the best even though its performance pales in comparison to other cars you can buy today? Does the Escalade and its hold on luxury SUV buyers even belong in this conversation because it’s a big dumb truck? That is not for me to decide.

But if I had to pick one, I might go with an American car that many would argue is one of the least-American American cars ever made — the Fiesta ST. That thing was just an absolute hoot. So much so that there are plenty of people out there who will tell you they had more fun behind the wheel of the cheaper, less-powerful Fiesta than they did in the Focus ST or Focus RS. It’s just an incredible little hatchback that was tragically murdered because not enough Americans want a subcompact hatchback. But for a brief while, one of the best affordable performance cars in the world came from Ford.