The 10 Most Underrated Cars From the Past 10 Years

It's best to think of it as a Bentley with an Audi price and a VW badge. Most people couldn't get past the juxtaposition of the VW badge—and ironic "people's car" name—and the $94,000 price tag. However, the bevy of finishes and technology that was lifted from VAG's more prestigious brands really gave the driver the sense of piloting something exquisite.

People love the VW GTI, people love the Mini Cooper S, and people love the MazdaSpeed3. Yet, not many people loved the Volvo C30, despite having the same sporty feel, a good amount of power, and a shooting brake bodystyle with a striking all-glass hatch. This is a car that more people really should have considered as a Mini-alternative.

We're not discussing the current XJ-R, which has gotten plenty of attention. We're talking about its predecessor. The XJR looked like something an elderly British banker would drive, but it was powered by a 390hp supercharged V8, making it quite fast. A few years ago we saw a study saying that this was one of the least likely cars to be pulled over, simply because it looks so slow.

The last Pontiac GTO suffered from an uninspiring body, but was, in fact, a roaring monster of a Holden, complete with huge 6.0L V8 that pumped out 400 horses. If this had been in a retro body like the current batch of muscle cars, it would have been a massive success. Interestingly enough, the current Chevy SS might find itself in a similar situation.

The Subaru Legacy sells fairly well, and gearheads like to chatter about the Legacy 2.5GT, but why is there so little love for the most powerful Legacy out there? The 3.0R put 245 horses to the ground courtesy of AWD and a 3.0L boxer six engine. It basically was the sligtly more respectible, mroe luxurious alternative to the WRX.

The only Ford sedan people will talk about is the Fusion. And that's fine and well-deserved. The Fusion is an absolutely handsome vehicle and has all sorts of options that make it a comfortable, accommodating, and fuel-efficient ride. But everybody forgets about its big brother, the Taurus, specifically the SHO. It's about 10 inches bigger, but it also has a 3.5L twin-turbo direct-injection EcoBoos V6 that is good for 365 horses and 350 lb-ft of torque. Not to mention it's an extremely spacious and smooth four-door. Not to mention it's all-wheel drive. Yet, nobody gives it a chance.

The Chrysler Crossfire most gets made fun of for its awkward, toddler-drawing-a-Porsche roofline, and the fact that it was cobbled together from a bunch of leftover parts. The thing is that the parts the SRT-6 was cobbled together from were mostly Mopar and AMG parts, thus rendering it fast enough to be blurry, and therefore cooler-looking. Unfortunately, the interior wasn't too hot either.

Suzuki was depending on this car to rejuvenate its American car sales. It looked decent, handled well, was efficient, and ticked all the boxes it needed to in order to give the Jetta a run for its money. Sadly, nobody in the entire country even knew where a Suzuki dealership was, and the Kizashi flopped, taking the company down with it.

No, the styling of this Lincoln didn't exactly excite, but the format should have. It was a big Lincoln with a V8 in the front powering the wheels in the back. This is the kind of car that made Lincoln great, and, after some initial critical success, it flopped harder than a sumo wrestler after an eight-hour training day.

We all spend too much of our time whining about how the world doesn't have enough rear-wheel drive wagons with a V8 on the internet, and when a company actually makes one, nobody buys it. Shameful.