haha, my grandmother had a lightning yellow pacer back in the day...

The legendary Pacer

And then there were the small cars that were just plain weird.

The late, great American Motors Corporation didn't have a monopoly on these but produced some winners, including the Gremlin and that masterpiece seemingly made of Pyrex, the Pacer.

Frequently named among the worst designs of all time, the AMC Pacer was wide, slow and a gas hog. The ubiquitous curving glass windows and the under-powered air conditioning made for unpleasant summertime driving. ("t was like being an ant under a mean kid's magnifying glass," wrote a Time magazine critic.)

Still, not surprisingly, even Pacers have their adherents. Jeff Puras, a descendant of AMC employees and a former resident of Kenosha, Wis. (home of AMC), picked up a semi-abandoned Pacer station wagon from a Norcross parking lot recently to add to his AMC collection (which includes a '68 AMX and a '79 Spirit).

In some ways it was kind of a sympathy purchase. Certainly, Puras, 61, who these days builds race cars out of carbon fiber for Elan Motorsports in Braselton, is an unlikely champion of this rolling fishbowl.

And he's not unaware of its goofy reputation. "We're just glad Pontiac came out with the Aztek," he said, "so there's an uglier car out there."