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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.

2016 Chevy Camaro teased as current-gen car prepares to hit 500k sales

Just as Chevrolet prepares to launch the sixth-generation Camaro, the current, fifth-generation car is about to hit a major milestone: 500,000 units sold in the United States. That's impressive, and to celebrate, Chevy has released this video, showing the Camaro Z/28 doing what it does best around a race track. But that's not all there is to see in this video. At the end, Chevy gives us a glimpse at the sixth-generation Camaro, expected to debut in the not-too-distant future. Have a look, and check out Chevy's press blast, below, for more details about the 500k sales mark. Related Video: Fifth-gen Camaro Approaches 500,000 U.S. Sales Production milestone caps five years as America's best-selling performance car DETROIT – Talk about a big family: Chevrolet expects to deliver the 500,000th fifth-generation Camaro in the United States this month. The fifth-generation Camaro has been a runaway success for Chevrolet since it went on sale in August 2009. Camaro sales passed Mustang in 2010, to become America's best-selling performance car – a title Camaro has retained for five consecutive years. In the process, the Camaro has helped bring new buyers to Chevrolet – with 63 percent of retail buyers new to GM. "The fifth-generation Camaro has clearly resonated with both long-time Camaro fans, and first time performance-car buyers," said Todd Christensen, Camaro marketing manager. "That sets the bar high for the next chapter of the car's history." Remarkably, the Camaro continues to gain momentum, even as the fifth-generation Camaro nears the end of production this year. In 2014, Camaro total sales increased 7.1 percent for its second-best year of sales since its introduction.

Chevy Volt sales surge with 2016 model, Nissan Leaf continues Autumn fall

The Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt have been locked in sales combat since they arrived within a short distance of each other way back in 2010, and we continue to follow that fight closely. Though both vehicles approach driving efficiency from a different angle, they each have plugs and owners put a surprisingly similar number of electric miles on them. With the launch of its 2016 model, the Bowtie brand now appears to have the upper hand, clocking in a solidly improved performance for the month of October. According to GM's sales charts, the Chevy Volt made it into the loving embrace of 2,035 buyers last month. That's up a whopping 41 percent over the same period in 2014, and more than a 100 percent improvement from the 949-unit result in September. Now, we don't know how many of these were 2015 models and how many were the all-new 2016 edition. Dealers are, no doubt, incentivized to move the old inventory, and the latest and greatest is still only available in a limited number of states. Breaking out the sad trombones, Nissan recorded a mere 1,238 units moved in October. That's down 52.2 percent from the same month in 2014. That's also nine fewer examples than last month. Despite its recent sales travails, the Leaf still leads the calendar-year-to-date figures by a commanding 14,868 to 11,299 tally. We imagine the Japanese manufacturer is counting on an improvement in the situation once the 2016 model, with its larger, optional 30 kWh battery becomes available. You can compare these two stalwarts with the rest of the green-vehicle field in our By The Numbers post due out tomorrow. Green Chevrolet Nissan Electric Hybrid ev sales hybrid sales volt