Here are a few of our automotive guilty pleasures

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The world is full of cars, and just about as many of them are bad as are good. It's pretty easy to pick which fall into each category after giving them a thorough walkaround and, more important, driving them. But every once in a while, an automobile straddles the line somehow between good and bad — it may be hideously overpriced and therefore a marketplace failure, it may be stupid quick in a straight line but handles like a drunken noodle, or it may have an interior that looks like it was made of a mess of injection-molded Legos. Heck, maybe all three.

Yet there's something special about some bad cars that actually makes them likable. The idea for this list came to me while I was browsing classified ads for cars within a few hundred miles of my house. I ran across a few oddballs and shared them with the rest of the team in our online chat room. It turns out several of us have a few automotive guilty pleasures that we're willing to admit to. We'll call a few of 'em out here. Feel free to share some of your own in the comments below.

Dodge Neon SRT4 and Caliber SRT4: The Neon was a passably good and plucky little city car when it debuted for the 1995 model year. The Caliber, which replaced the aging Neon and sought to replace its friendly marketing campaign with something more sinister, was panned from the very outset for its cheap interior furnishings, but at least offered some decent utility with its hatchback shape. What the two little front-wheel-drive Dodge models have in common are their rip-roarin' SRT variants, each powered by turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder engines. Known for their propensity to light up their front tires under hard acceleration, the duo were legitimately quick and fun to drive with a fantastic turbo whoosh that called to mind the early days of turbo technology. — Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski

Chevrolet HHR SS: Chevy's HHR SS came out early in my automotive journalism career, and I have fond memories of the press launch (and having dinner with Bob Lutz) that included plenty of tire-smoking hard launches and demonstrations of the manual transmission's no-lift shift feature. The 260-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder was and still is a spunky little engine that makes the retro-inspired HHR a fun little hot rod that works quite well as a fun little daily driver. — Korzeniewski

Chevrolet Malibu Maxx SS: I actually briefly cross-shopped the Malibu Maxx SS before I ultimately bought my 2006 Mazda6. I ended up buying the right car, but I wonder if maybe the Malibu would have made for a better story. — Associate Editor Byron Hurd

I've only driven a Malibu Maxx SS once or twice, but what stands out in my memory about the experience is just how easy it was to smoke the front tires in the thing. Granted, that doesn't make the 'Bu a good car. But for a guilty pleasure list? Sure, why not. — Korzeniewski

Cadillac ELR: The Cadillac ELR was General Motors' attempt to take the high-tech hybrid electric powertrain of the Chevy Volt and slip it into something a whole heck of a lot slinkier. I happen to think that the ELR is one of the best-looking vehicles to wear Caddy's Art and Science design philosophy. Our own Green Editor John Snyder agrees, with the caveat that he doesn't feel "guilty" for liking the ELR one bit. Pro tip: If you're shopping for an ELR, try to score a 2016 model, which gained some power over the 2014 edition (2015 was skipped since there were so many unsold '14s on dealership lots). — Korzeniewski

Pontiac GTO: I come back to this one pretty often as a "might be nice" type purchase, but never come around to actually buying a GTO. One day, my ADD will probably compel me to take it more seriously, but for now it's squarely in "maybe" territory. — Hurd

The most recent generation of GTO is a true guilty pleasure. It’s the car I would have driven in 2005, as I’ve said previously. A key reason: the V8. First 5.7 liters then the LS2 6.0 for the ‘05 model — this thing could move. It was a performance coupe with the name and the specs to match in an era when there weren’t many that had either. Four-hundred horsepower and 400 lb-ft of torque? That holds up pretty well today, and in 2005-06 that was spectacular. The guilty pleasure element? Well, all of that power going to the rear wheels wasn’t great for the environment, and this small two-door burned 18 mpg in the city and 23 mpg on the highway, which isn’t actually terrible. So feel guilty, but not that guilty, if you can get your hands on the GTO. -— Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore