History is rife with examples of redesigns and restarts that have either been a cheap knockoff of the original. “New Coke” was maybe the most notorious example. When it was launched Coke already had the #1 share of the Cola market. Pepsi’s “Pepsi Challenge” campaign where people supposedly tried both and preferred Pepsi was a hit at the time and this was Coke’s ham-handed response. For Coke lovers like me the “New” version was too sweet and lacked the acidic bite that Coke Classic had. I was happy when they went back to the original formula.

For my money though the worst redesign in history has to be the late 1970’s Ford Mustang. It’s almost as if the engineers thought to themselves “How can we make a Pinto look sexy?” It neither looked fast or badass and with it’s joke of a 2.3L engine it put out an exciting 89 horsepower… enough to get you from I st to J st in about 2 minutes flat. At least the version I saw while heading to work on 99 this morning in standstill traffic had this exciting fuschia paint job. Vroom.