4. Chevrolet Corvette C3
The oil crisis in the 1970s hit American automakers hard, mostly because they weren’t used to having to reign in much of anything. While Japanese and even European brands enjoyed the changing market landscape, legendary nameplates such as the Corvette suffered greatly.
Most embarrassing was the 1978-1980 C3. Even though it packed an impressively large 5.7-liter V-8 engine, engineers managed to only coax about 180 to 190 horsepower from it. That’s that kind of power that one would expect from a Honda Civic with a 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine, which is truly laughable. This was a dark time for American muscle, which had been neutered and set out to pasture. Thankfully this isn’t the case today.
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