A steering wheel can make or break a car. Just ask anyone who’s tried to make a three-point turn in a yoke-equipped Tesla. Your seat aside, it’s the only constant point of contact with the car, it’s the tool you use to keep your ride out of the trees, and a great one can have a more profound effect on your well being than years of meditation and yoga, studies probably say.
And a great wheel is even more important on a performance car than a regular one. An epic wheel might not add true road feel, but it’ll do its best to convince you otherwise. And of course it will look awesome. Or at least it should. But it’s amazing how many carmakers have got it wrong over the years, fitting ugly airbag wheels or placing the spokes so the rims weren’t comfortable to hold. Check out this rogues’ gallery of woeful wheels from icons including Porsche and Ferrari, then leave a comment and let us know about the ones we missed.
Ferrari F355
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Airbags have a lot to answer for when it comes to lame steering wheels. Just look at the ugly four-spoke thing that replaced the pretty three-spoke wheels on Ferraris like the F355. Fortunately, airbag technology has come a long way in the past two decades.
BMW M5
At least Ferrari still gave you a proper center badge. When BMW junked its fantastic three-spoke M-sport wheels on the M3 and M5, the plain four-spokers that replaced them looked like they’d been designed for a 518i taxi.
Aston Martin Virage
The last Aston conceived before Ford took the reins in ’93, the Virage started life with a pretty nasty two-spoke wheel that suddenly looked a whole lot more elegant when Uncle Henry’s execs told them to swap it for this balloon-filled one from the Ford parts bin.
Chevrolet Camaro Z28
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By the late 1960s every U.S. automaker was spending money to build performance versions of their cars. But not all of them splashed out on a steering wheel fit for a car that could smoke a Ferrari in the quarter mile. While Pontiac outfitted its hot Firebird Formula 400 and Trans Ams with a small sporty three-spoke wheel, Chevy couldn’t offer its Camaro Z28 buyers anything better than a terrible two-spoke rim with an optional fake wood center trim.
Ford Mustang Boss 302
But Ford was no better. Even the mighty Boss 302 Mustang came standard with a horrible two-spoke wheel that would have been right at home on your granny’s Maverick. Fortunately, a sportier three-spoke was only an option tick away.
Ford Taurus SHO
Fast forward two decades and it didn’t look like Ford had learned much. The Blue Oval teamed up with Yamaha to squeeze a then-impressive 220 hp from its hot Taurus SHO sports sedan, spending enough on the chassis to make sure those front wheel could cope. Shame it didn’t put enough thought into the wheel inside the car.
Chevrolet Corvette C4
The ’84-’96 C4 Corvette had a few weird wheels, though we kind of like the two-spoke job fitted to the early cars. It’s definitely preferable to this abomination perched on the top of the steering column of C4 Corvettes during the car’s last two years on sale, including the ZR1. See also almost every 1990s Camaro.
Porsche 911 2.7
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Porsche’s ’73 911 Carrera RS is one of the coolest sports cars ever, so how did end up with one of the least cool steering wheels?
Things got even worse for regular 911s the following year when Porsche put a giant pad over the wheel, supposedly in preparation for an airbag that it never even got.
Datsun 280 ZX
Nothing underlines the Datsun Z’s 1970s slide from svelte sports car to corpulent cruiser more than the plastic hoop of poop hovering in front of the 280 ZX’s dashboard. Even the Turbo model, the major selling point of the S30-series Z, got the same tragic two-spoke wheel.
Renault 5 Turbo 1
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Yeah, we know these first-gen mid-engined Renault 5 Turbos have a really cool interior, and the bizarre asymmetric steering wheel contributes to that funkiness, so you could argue it doesn’t count as lame. But with a spoke on one side and not even a thumb notch on the other, we can’t believe it’s anything less than terrible to use unless you plan to drive everywhere with your left arm draped over the side of the door.
What cars do you think should be named and shamed for crimes against steering wheel design?