Published: May 28, 2012

Top 5 Most Infamous Cars

Take a look down a very dark road of the automotive past.

It can be easy to confuse famous and infamous. Infamous cars are not icons, revolutionary or regular features on classic TV shows. They are remembered for shocking and terrible events that become associated with that particular model from that point on. Whether the driver was cursed or ill-fated, or rather the car themselves is impossible to say. But history has been made and we run down our picks for the most infamous vehicles of all time.

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Anyone born in the early 80's or earlier will never forget an event that literally captivated the entire world and sent the 1993 White Ford Bronco into the Infamous Cars Hall of Fame (if it exists). In 1994, a squadron of California Highway Patrol cars followed football-star-turned-double-homicide-suspect O.J. Simpson and his friend Al Cowlings, who was driving the white Ford Bronco down Interstate 405 at a blazing speed of 35mph. We all know how it ended for the "The Juice" (O.J.), what you might not know is Ford discontinued the 2-door SUV just two years later, replacing it with the 4-door Expedition.

We have all seen the actual footage and heard all the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Sticking out like a sore thumb that day and long remembered afterwards was the black 1961 Lincoln Continental SS-100-X he and his wife were sitting in. Despite being developed based on requirements and protocols of the Secret Service, parading a world leader around in a slow-moving convertible is definitely not a good idea. The car is now exhibited to the public at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

The Porsche 550 Spyder remains to this day one of the most infamous vehicles ever produced by the German automaker. James Dean, an icon of the 50's with an image of live fast, die young, did just that while driving his 550 Spyder in 1955. The Porsche Dean liked to call "Little Bastard," was one of only 90 produced, and was his third race car. He also owned an MG TD and a Porsche 356. He died after colliding head-on with a 1950 Ford Custom Tudor. The accident was the fault of a 23-year-old student who crossed into Dean's Lane.

If you are looking to start a world war (and we at CarBuzz hope you are not) you have an infamous example to learn from that happened to involve a 1911 Graf & Stift Double Phaeton. One day in 1914 things went terribly wrong when gunshots fired by a Serbian nationalist killed the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, Sophie. Naturally this lit off a political chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I. The next time you happen to be strolling through the streets of Vienna, Austria you can check out the actual car on display in the Museum of Military History.

Moving back to the 1990's, it is impossible to overlook its most infamous car crash which involved Princess Diana and the 1994 Mercedes-Benz S280 she was a backseat passenger in. Trying to shake off the paparazzi through the streets of Paris at speeds reserved for a race track, it all came to a tragic end when the Mercedes-Benz hit a support pillar in the Place de l'Alma underpass.

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