A car you instantly regretted buying
Discussion
GM182 said:
Most disappointing was probably my recent 996 c4s cabriolet. Hard ride, not really that fast, lots of niggles plus wishbones, alternator, ill fitting RMS needing to be done twice. Never gelled but kept it a year in the hope that I would fall for it but never did.
Not the first 996 that's cropped up in this thread.
A car I was hoping to buy with my bonus on my next rotation home. I just keep hearing they're crap. TBH I've never even been in one but stories like this make me thing about getting a massive wafty 4x4 instead.
1998 SL500 (so short a time did I own it I don't list in my profile)
Lots of photos exchanged and details with the owner. Not the cheapest or most expensive, transferred a 500 pound deposit and went up to collect it (3 hours on train).
Car was at the station and not the immaculate example I was promised or what appeared in the photos. Decided that cosmetic really and to go through paperwork before handing over the money.
Noticed the air con was not blowing cold when I was assured that it was fine (a potential big problem). Off to Kwikfit and they regassed it. Spoke to the technician on the side and was told it was completely and utterly empty - should have listened to the voice in my head at this point.
Went for a drive and was not able to get it past 40mph - in retrospect it appeared he was carefully choosing the roads.
Full MB service history, all receipts so handed over the remainder of the 6500 purchase price and off I drove.
Even as I handed over the cash I was thinking "walk away". Pull onto motorway, accelerate and chug chug - would not go past 50mph. Call him back and get the "never happened before" but he agreed to meet me at MB dealer (which was closing at 1pm) since they had serviced the car two days before.
Service rep was great and pulls out the service history for the last service. All pages matched except one - they had an additional page with "Car will not accelerate past 50mph, suspected XYZ and cost to fix". Guess what page was not in the receipt that the owner showed me.
MB politely said they were not getting involved (which was fine) so he paid for them to put on the ramp - they do various code reset and say may be a battery. Off we go to buy a battery - installed by another place then back to the dealer "All fine, see!" I am told as we are driving so I take a turn. Accelerate to past 50mph and chug chug with the Christmas tree lights on the dash.
Pull back to the MB dealer (about to close now) and they put back on the ramp. They also now point out the missing front indicator which as it turns out has fallen off somewhere!
Seller and I have a chat. Since clearly misrepresented as to the condition, any 'buyer beware/private sale' nonsense was not going to wash. He asked what I wanted to do so I said 'let's rewind everything to when I arrived, you see what needs to be fixed and then we can look at sale in the future' - would have been happy simply to lose the deposit but got all of it back.
Lesson for me - always take a nice long test drive and up to motorway speeds too. If the seller does not agree, then walk.
Lots of photos exchanged and details with the owner. Not the cheapest or most expensive, transferred a 500 pound deposit and went up to collect it (3 hours on train).
Car was at the station and not the immaculate example I was promised or what appeared in the photos. Decided that cosmetic really and to go through paperwork before handing over the money.
Noticed the air con was not blowing cold when I was assured that it was fine (a potential big problem). Off to Kwikfit and they regassed it. Spoke to the technician on the side and was told it was completely and utterly empty - should have listened to the voice in my head at this point.
Went for a drive and was not able to get it past 40mph - in retrospect it appeared he was carefully choosing the roads.
Full MB service history, all receipts so handed over the remainder of the 6500 purchase price and off I drove.
Even as I handed over the cash I was thinking "walk away". Pull onto motorway, accelerate and chug chug - would not go past 50mph. Call him back and get the "never happened before" but he agreed to meet me at MB dealer (which was closing at 1pm) since they had serviced the car two days before.
Service rep was great and pulls out the service history for the last service. All pages matched except one - they had an additional page with "Car will not accelerate past 50mph, suspected XYZ and cost to fix". Guess what page was not in the receipt that the owner showed me.
MB politely said they were not getting involved (which was fine) so he paid for them to put on the ramp - they do various code reset and say may be a battery. Off we go to buy a battery - installed by another place then back to the dealer "All fine, see!" I am told as we are driving so I take a turn. Accelerate to past 50mph and chug chug with the Christmas tree lights on the dash.
Pull back to the MB dealer (about to close now) and they put back on the ramp. They also now point out the missing front indicator which as it turns out has fallen off somewhere!
Seller and I have a chat. Since clearly misrepresented as to the condition, any 'buyer beware/private sale' nonsense was not going to wash. He asked what I wanted to do so I said 'let's rewind everything to when I arrived, you see what needs to be fixed and then we can look at sale in the future' - would have been happy simply to lose the deposit but got all of it back.
Lesson for me - always take a nice long test drive and up to motorway speeds too. If the seller does not agree, then walk.
Mistrale said:
Rover 216 1.6SE!
Had an Mg Metro but needed something a bit more suited to long journeys. Bought it at a post new-reg sale at a main dealer without driving it - the deal was a 'buy before close today' offer........
For those that can't remember, this was the 'first' rover 200 - a Honda Ballade re badged. Thing is, I wanted the 213 with a Honda engine. I got the 216 with a triumph(?) sourced engine.
At the first roundabout I knew it was a bad move as it wallowed and under steered around it. Half way through my first 'long' journey, there was a 'pop' and clouds of oil smoke. One very hot engine and oil everywhere...
It got no better and a few months later, I traded it for a new Fiesta 1.6s.......which was barely an improvement, but at least under warranty!
Years ago I had to do some work in the Longbridge assembly plant to do some consultancy work for a supply contractor (I had to enter the plant under an assumed identity so that the unions wouldn't down tools straight away for having a 'non-union' person on the floor!)Had an Mg Metro but needed something a bit more suited to long journeys. Bought it at a post new-reg sale at a main dealer without driving it - the deal was a 'buy before close today' offer........
For those that can't remember, this was the 'first' rover 200 - a Honda Ballade re badged. Thing is, I wanted the 213 with a Honda engine. I got the 216 with a triumph(?) sourced engine.
At the first roundabout I knew it was a bad move as it wallowed and under steered around it. Half way through my first 'long' journey, there was a 'pop' and clouds of oil smoke. One very hot engine and oil everywhere...
It got no better and a few months later, I traded it for a new Fiesta 1.6s.......which was barely an improvement, but at least under warranty!
I saw the supposedly same Rover and Honda cars rolling off the end of the assembly line. There were japanese quality control guys all over the place watching over the cars with the Honda badges and these cars went straight off to the showrooms to be sold. The equivalent Rover cars also rolled off the assembly line, but were invariably driven (and in many instances pushed) to a huge shed around the corner to be fixed. Directly off the end of the assembly line. I sh!t you not.
Mini Counyrtman 2.0 diesel S. Bought it on the 50/50 finance deal and thought it would be good daily hack and family run about.. Really liked the styling and quality. But, even being a BMW engine it was rubbish, noisy, unrefined and very average fuel economy. The biggest problem was the road noise above 55 mph so it was useless on a motorway journey. Could wait to get rid of it after year.
JD2329 said:
E39 530i... ...rough, drone like engine...
If an M54 is running rough, there's something wrong with it. Short of a gas turbine, you won't find a smoother engine. My 520i has been an utter joy and a complete b
king pain in the arse in the six or seven years I've had it. Smooth as cream, that lovely howl past 6000rpm, goes amazingly well for 102bhp/ton, throttle response is absolutely instantaneous, the gearbox is lovely, the ride is good (though pretty firm), handles bloody well for a 1680kg wagon. However - valve stem oil seals - nuff said - wrote off the original engine because it was misfiring all over the place. Replacement unit is fine, touch wood.Also bought a 535i last October, unseen on eBay, £595, took the train down to Totnes, up the South Devon Railway to Buckfastleigh, bus to Ashburton... got a lift from the town centre. Never test drove it, and it was dark and raining by the time I saw the car. I must have been mad. Evidently, though, someone decided I needed a bit of luck, because, two minor dramas with a pressure hose and a window regulator in January aside, it's been utterly dependable, solid as a rock, and the seats are far better than those in the 520i. The one niggle is the cheap s
te components they've used for the windscreen washers, which are always pulling apart, meaning I get screenwash all over the engine rather than the windscreen. There's also pipework and a reservoir for an intense wash thing (all wired up too) which doesn't connect to the jets themselves, nothing for them to connect to. All rather bewildering.As for the bad - well, my E46 318i Touring (pre-facelift 1.9 4-pot) was a total pain in the arse. Dreadful ride, sod all suspension travel, handled well enough but couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding below 30mph. 118bhp plus 1440kg did not make for rapid progress. Sod all torque and low-geared 5-speed (plus horrendous road noise) made it the most wearisome motorway car I've had in a very long time. I wanted something bigger but my wife was used to Peugeot 205s, so my pleas for an older E39 528i or a Lamborghini Espada (which in those days were also in the £20k bracket) fell on deaf ears. It was also easily the most unreliable heap of junk I've ever had. Throughout the time I had it, there was a persistent coolant leak, which my Italian independent local kept fixing using Fiat parts, only for the BMW dealer to bin said Fiat parts and make the leak re-occur... it was always breaking springs, too (but then the E39s are prone to that too). Ended up being written off - hit from behind by a school teacher in a VW Polo, talking on her phone, doing 40mph while I was static, propelling the E46 (despite its handbrake being on) several car-lengths into the back of a Peugeot 406. Oddly, the rear end looked undamaged, but it turned out the whole thing had been skewed slightly, the offside rear door was too close to its shutface... so that was the end of that. Then spent a month in an insurance company F11 520d, which had a very good 8-speed autobox and excellent windscreen washers, but which was otherwise an utterly irredeemable horror.
Previously? Well, the Mk2 Capri 1600 that I had before my Rover P6 was a complete and utter heap of junk. I was actually glad to have it nicked and torched. Had a couple of Mk3 Cortinas as well - my own 1600 and my late father's 2000 (which I broke for parts). Really shockingly bad cars, much inferior to the rusty but otherwise rather lovely Mk2 Humber Sceptre I learned on.
And then, my Rover. Rust killed it in the end, alas - but, apart from it breaking a layshaft on reverse gear, it was totally reliable, had power and torque to spare for what was not a heavy car (1270kg if memory serves), made a lovely beery woofle, very quiet on the motorway, rode and handled brilliantly (albeit with comical body roll when really pushed), gripped far better than old-tech 185-section tyres had any right to, and it had the best seats of any car ever in the history of cars. If I had a heated and dehumidified garage, I'd have another one in a heartbeat. For a car designed in the late 1950s, it was so far ahead of its time, even in the 80s it could put a lot of new machinery to shame. In fact, it could teach today's carmakers a thing or two about ride, handling and steering feel, and cabin ergonomics. The one daily annoyance was that the clutch was very underassisted - it was not a pleasant thing in stop-start traffic jams. Oh, and the gearbox took the same heavy mineral oil as the engine, and until warmed through, would stay locked in whatever gear it had been left in previously. Lumenition "opto-electronic" ignition solved the need to go over the points all the time, an Austin 1100 header tank and pressure hose off the top of the radiator solved the thing's habit of chucking coolant overboard when starting, and the SU carburettors weren't that bad to tune. Luckily, I had a mobile mechanic in those days who knew how to get the best out of that engine and it always ran beautifully when he'd been over it. Again, it was one of these mad impulse shed purchases, but I got eight years' daily use out of it and loved it.
Peugeot 206 GTI....instantly regretted buying it after finding it unreliable and leaked water through the drivers door...if that wasn't enough when I sold it, the dealer told me it had been involved in a accident and had an extensive repair to the rear drivers side quarter. I brought it brand from a Peugeot main dealer!!!
that put me off any french cars and this dealer group for life.
that put me off any french cars and this dealer group for life.
howertings said:
Mistrale said:
Rover 216 1.6SE!
Had an Mg Metro but needed something a bit more suited to long journeys. Bought it at a post new-reg sale at a main dealer without driving it - the deal was a 'buy before close today' offer........
For those that can't remember, this was the 'first' rover 200 - a Honda Ballade re badged. Thing is, I wanted the 213 with a Honda engine. I got the 216 with a triumph(?) sourced engine.
At the first roundabout I knew it was a bad move as it wallowed and under steered around it. Half way through my first 'long' journey, there was a 'pop' and clouds of oil smoke. One very hot engine and oil everywhere...
It got no better and a few months later, I traded it for a new Fiesta 1.6s.......which was barely an improvement, but at least under warranty!
Years ago I had to do some work in the Longbridge assembly plant to do some consultancy work for a supply contractor (I had to enter the plant under an assumed identity so that the unions wouldn't down tools straight away for having a 'non-union' person on the floor!)Had an Mg Metro but needed something a bit more suited to long journeys. Bought it at a post new-reg sale at a main dealer without driving it - the deal was a 'buy before close today' offer........
For those that can't remember, this was the 'first' rover 200 - a Honda Ballade re badged. Thing is, I wanted the 213 with a Honda engine. I got the 216 with a triumph(?) sourced engine.
At the first roundabout I knew it was a bad move as it wallowed and under steered around it. Half way through my first 'long' journey, there was a 'pop' and clouds of oil smoke. One very hot engine and oil everywhere...
It got no better and a few months later, I traded it for a new Fiesta 1.6s.......which was barely an improvement, but at least under warranty!
I saw the supposedly same Rover and Honda cars rolling off the end of the assembly line. There were japanese quality control guys all over the place watching over the cars with the Honda badges and these cars went straight off to the showrooms to be sold. The equivalent Rover cars also rolled off the assembly line, but were invariably driven (and in many instances pushed) to a huge shed around the corner to be fixed. Directly off the end of the assembly line. I sh!t you not.
The Rover 416Gti that I had next year was the only car I've ever had with zero defects - in 46k miles. Night and day improvement in construction, but some of the fittings were not nearly as nice to the touch as the old school SE.
My first car - a Mini estate from 1969 - was a wreck. Awful rot in most panels, transplant engine with uncertain pedigree but appetite for speedo cables and loose gear mech. Kept overheating and blowing the connector tube in the head (cheap repair but annoying). At £135 it got me to work for ten months before failing the MoT, and getting £50 off a work colleague to take it. So not too regrettable.
GM182 said:
Alfa gtv coupe. Busso engine was superb sounding but needing a new clutch and two weeks later an alternator that was between the engine and bulkhead necessitating an engine drop was painful on a £1500 car. Only kept it for 6 months.
See, I've always found this weird. Buy car, lots goes wrong with it, pay lots of money to fix it then get rid of it! Surely after it's gone wrong and been fixed is the ideal time to hang on to it? At least you made the next owner's life easier and cheaper! I bought an Accord Type R once, my gearbox had just popped on my Prelude (for the second time) and I spotted the ATR for sale about 100 miles away.
Me, My grandad and my mate jumped in the car and got up there about 7pm as the sun was fading, looked around the car, had a quick drive and handed over the money..... Then we got to the end of the road and it started misfiring really badly.
I drove the car back to the bloke, said I wasn't happy and he gave me my money back and we drove away again.
I regretted buying it as soon as it started misfiring, but luckily the guy (who I reckon knew there was an issue!) just gave me the cash back!
Me, My grandad and my mate jumped in the car and got up there about 7pm as the sun was fading, looked around the car, had a quick drive and handed over the money..... Then we got to the end of the road and it started misfiring really badly.
I drove the car back to the bloke, said I wasn't happy and he gave me my money back and we drove away again.
I regretted buying it as soon as it started misfiring, but luckily the guy (who I reckon knew there was an issue!) just gave me the cash back!
Bought a Discovery 1 300TDI - as i wanted something with lots of space and to go offroad with. was alright on the test drive up an A road, but as soon as i got it home realised it was crap. Engine was really noisy and rough, car wobbled allover the road at the slightest hint of a bump. I thought it would be bad onroad, and i thought i would be able to put up with it, but i really couldnt - the whole car was a bit crap. Was a bit of an impulse buy and instantly regretted it.
Ali_T said:
GM182 said:
Alfa gtv coupe. Busso engine was superb sounding but needing a new clutch and two weeks later an alternator that was between the engine and bulkhead necessitating an engine drop was painful on a £1500 car. Only kept it for 6 months.
See, I've always found this weird. Buy car, lots goes wrong with it, pay lots of money to fix it then get rid of it! Surely after it's gone wrong and been fixed is the ideal time to hang on to it? At least you made the next owner's life easier and cheaper! joe1145 said:
Bought a Discovery 1 300TDI - as i wanted something with lots of space and to go offroad with. was alright on the test drive up an A road, but as soon as i got it home realised it was crap. Engine was really noisy and rough, car wobbled allover the road at the slightest hint of a bump. I thought it would be bad onroad, and i thought i would be able to put up with it, but i really couldnt - the whole car was a bit crap. Was a bit of an impulse buy and instantly regretted it.
The V8 Discovery was a far nicer thing - but it always just seemed like a cheapened Range Rover to me.Bladedancer said:
JuanEl said:
C32 AMG - purchased the week before our first child arrived only to discover a few weeks later that the buggy and a weeks shopping dont fit in the boot.
Then I ordered a new Mini Cooper S last November only to find out a week before it was delivered that we were expecting our second! This was remedied by the purchase of an E55 AMG wagon (lesson learned!!
)
You learned a lesson and purchased a W210/pre-facelift W211? I do hope it works for you...Then I ordered a new Mini Cooper S last November only to find out a week before it was delivered that we were expecting our second! This was remedied by the purchase of an E55 AMG wagon (lesson learned!!
) RoverP6B said:
joe1145 said:
Bought a Discovery 1 300TDI - as i wanted something with lots of space and to go offroad with. was alright on the test drive up an A road, but as soon as i got it home realised it was crap. Engine was really noisy and rough, car wobbled allover the road at the slightest hint of a bump. I thought it would be bad onroad, and i thought i would be able to put up with it, but i really couldnt - the whole car was a bit crap. Was a bit of an impulse buy and instantly regretted it.
The V8 Discovery was a far nicer thing - but it always just seemed like a cheapened Range Rover to me.Also the disco felt about 10 years newer as its interior was far more 90's than the RR plus the disco had 2 sunroofs!!
Both were awesome cars though, and very capable - did many miles in both and they never broke down.
We test drove a diesel disco - and quickly realised (literally in the first 1/4 mile of the north circ) it was s
t so bought the v8 instead - HR Owen had both available at the time.Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff