Citroen Xantia 1.8 petrol

It was a stopgap car as I needed a shed for a 450 mile weekly round trip with work and had just written off my Prelude.

Got the first biggish thing I saw from the local garage for £1500 - it had to go back as the handbrake cable was snapped and the brakes were down to metal on the rear but apart form that, seemed to be ok.

Ran it for three months before the intermittent fault of jumping out of fifth became a full on loss of 5th gear on the motorway, I decided I'd do the rest of the drive(60 miles) in fourth but about 20 minutes down the road a very loud bang/crunching noise combined with some rapid deceleration confirmed the gearbox had seized, cue some panic clutching and hazards to the hard shoulder of the M1.

By now I had 30 or so miles left to go so tried with both hands to pull the box out of fourth, thinking if I could get it in third and slip the clutch I'd get it to go and make it home...

Lots of pulling later, followed by a huge pop and a wobbly linkage confirmed the gearbox was having none of it and I'd snapped the linkages with my monkey fists.

At this point, I called the AA and got out, the only bonus was I could raise the suspension when I got it home to assess the knackeredness of the box and notice a sizeable oil leak.

Somehow I managed to sell the heap to a local garage for £700 for them to fix it and flog on as they had a replacement box but wasn't worth me doing it. At least it was on 40p a mile so the heap just about paid for itself.


Proved to me everything I suspected about French cars though.

This thread isn't good news for VW or Rover is it?

I've suspected as much about VW for a while - You see an awful lot of the old ones still around (Beetle era up to Mk2 Golf), but the newer ones seem to drop out of circulation remarkably quickly.

The guy who sits opposite me at work has a Polo of circa 1996 vintage, which he heroically continues to run, but it's generated the kind of bills I've seen on Ferrari service histories.

I've had nigh on 20 cars or so and by far and away the worst car I have ever owned was the second car I ever owned, when I was 19. I sold my perfectly adequate Citroen AX GT which in itself was woefully unreliable but at least it was fun for a Renault 19 16v which did look the mutts nutts (leather seats, power steering, leccy mirrors) especially at such a relatively young age.

I paid over the odds for the car as I was desperate for one (lesson learned) and this one was in a dealer not too far away. For the asking price I could have been given a 6 month warranty, which I declined and opted to take a discount (another lesson learned).

In the 12 months I had it, it went through; one radiator, three clutch cables, three gearboxes and one ignition module. Expensive stuff, especially as I was a student working my weekends in a sports shop to try and keep the damn thing on the road.

Then there was the handling. It enjoyed going in a straight line so much it did it at every opportunity; straight roads, bends, roundabouts etc.

2007 BMW 525 M Sport Auto with 3k on the clock. Worst riding, no traction, poor reliability, horrible dealers and customer service. The fact that I bought it used, at under 50% of its original sticker price did not soften the blow of how bad Beemers have become. And to make matters worse I had thought I'd upgraded from a Volvo S60 D5, wish I kept the Volvo. Its all Ok now I have a Jag, one of the best cars I have ever owned.

A combination of an old photo of an old photo, and being parked on grass

You're probably right!

Well I think we're back on track a little. No MK4 golf's mentioned in the last few pages! I have to say the XR3 looks fun but it ammuses me that the dad wasn't happy when it turned up, then forked out for a reconditioned engine!

worst car (but weirdly my favourite) was my 2nd car - an Alfa Romeo 156 2.0litre TS,
hopelessly unreliable

I’ve had a considerable number of cars over the years, with the usual mix of good and bad. Mostly the bad ones have been cheap sheds that can’t really be blamed for their tired suspension and knackered interior, but one stands out as being one of the few cars I’ve ever bought new.

The shed in question was a 2000 Mondeo 2.0GLX estate. Not a bad car, you’d think, and as I used to work for Ford and had had numerous Mondeos before on the company scheme, I thought nothing of buying a new one when I left.

I owned it for 10 months, and in that time it needed 2 gearboxes, a new engine management system, the central locking replaced (large parts of it, at any rate) and the instruments swapped out. The brake discs needed to be replaced after about 7000 miles (never did understand that one), and the air-conditioning stopped working (I assumed in my naivety that the pipes just needed sticking back on, but the problem was somewhere in the guts of the heater matrix, apparently, so a lot of dismantling had to go on). I spent more time at the dealer than any man should. To their credit, there was never a problem with loaning me a car, or any quibble with the fact that this was all warranty work, but the car spent 50 days with them in total. Out of a total of about 300 days that I owned it, that’s a pretty impressive record of ineptitude.

Everyone hears of Friday cars/lemons, but I’d never before experienced such a completely rubbish reliability record. To top it all off, it wasn’t a particularly great car – thirstier and slower than the ostensibly identical car it replaced, and even with an exceptionally large Ford discount, I still lost a packet when I sold it.

I’ve never had a Ford since, and I can’t see that changing any time soon.

One of these....



Ex-Demo 1996 P Plate - bought from a crap main stealer in Poole. Had a bunch of suspension, electrical and interior trim issues - dumped after 6 months of ownership for a Mk2 16v which was a much, much better car.