Worse built car you have ever owned
Discussion
Aston Martin V8 Vantage Roadster - bought at 8 months old with only 1,100 miles. in the 5 months I owned it, the dealer had it back 8 times and barely fixed any of the problems it had. Not sure if it was typical but for a car that expensive the build quality was shocking as was the attitude of the dealer.
Lots of things from a fault opening petrol cap (quite important although there was a manual workaround - but for that you needed to carry the manual which wouldn't fit in the glove compartment), to constantly squeaking suspension, to a clutch and throttle so mismatched stalling was a very regular occurrence (this was apparently a feature)......
I fortunately sold it for more than I paid and have vowed never to have another Aston......
Lots of things from a fault opening petrol cap (quite important although there was a manual workaround - but for that you needed to carry the manual which wouldn't fit in the glove compartment), to constantly squeaking suspension, to a clutch and throttle so mismatched stalling was a very regular occurrence (this was apparently a feature)......
I fortunately sold it for more than I paid and have vowed never to have another Aston......
66mpg said:
My Alfasud had an unusual failing in the build: the seats had a repeating TI in red on black fabric across the centres of the squabs and backrests. One panel had been sewn in upside down. Nothing I could do about it as I bought the car when it was 10 years old with 110k miles on it.
Brilliant random piece of Alfa quality control.The worst is the 2009 Vauxhall Astra..nice engine, weird manual gearbox but worked fine..
The build quality was very strange... the doors just don't make that nice 'clunk' sound and everything felt very tinny.
The other extreme was my 2009 Ford Fiesta. It looked really nice and aesthetically was a nice car..
The gearbox was made from chocolate and it had a habit of mixing up 1st and reverse gear so it became dangerous 4 months into ownership.. really disappointing.
The best built car i will ever own is my 1993 Mercedes W140 S500. It took someone five hours to install parking sensors as the interior trim was so well stuck together. I can leave it parked outside in a winter for six months and providing the battery is charged it will fire straight up every time.
The build quality was very strange... the doors just don't make that nice 'clunk' sound and everything felt very tinny.
The other extreme was my 2009 Ford Fiesta. It looked really nice and aesthetically was a nice car..
The gearbox was made from chocolate and it had a habit of mixing up 1st and reverse gear so it became dangerous 4 months into ownership.. really disappointing.
The best built car i will ever own is my 1993 Mercedes W140 S500. It took someone five hours to install parking sensors as the interior trim was so well stuck together. I can leave it parked outside in a winter for six months and providing the battery is charged it will fire straight up every time.
Mid 80s VW GolfE-reg, awful thing, never ran right, a 1976 Ford 1600 Sport, 4 years old in 1980 the top of the front suspension struts were rotten and had to have a plate welded both sides, also the bottom of the doors were rotten, the gearbox went but other than that it drove alright.
2006 Vauxhall Vectra Estate, 150bhp Diesel 'Design' spec, best car on the company car list at the time. Proved to be utterly awful. Went quite well and handled quite flat, even looked OK with some nice 18" wheels, but everything internally broke, snapped, or just fell off. And the turbo went pop twice. One comedy moment which my kids still laugh about was when the gear knob came off mid-corner on holiday. They remember the spot 14 years later. Dont think I went 4 weeks without the electric tailgate throwing a tantrum and packing up. Kept it 18 months, managed to secure an 'upgrade' to a basic 1.8 Audi A4 with no toys. Never again.
obscene said:
Edmor said:
BMW E46 for me.... only way to stop anything from falling off was not to touch them.. even air vents
Reckon you got a Friday afternoon car. Most reliable vehicle I've owned and still own. a Dutton Phaeton. It is well documented as being one of the worst designs of kit cars, but mine was an especially badly made version (I bought it 25 years old as the gazillionth owner, and the donor car was 15-20 years older still). The 2.0 pinto was sealed using bathroom silicone, the electrics had no waterproofing, the exhaust was "located" rather than attached. But these were serviceable items; more pressing issues were the shoddy 1" box "chassis" that not only laid up by eye instead of measured and was visibly crooked, had been welded with some kind of marzipan and DUCK TAPED together. The chassis featured no triangulation for strength, and worse, the rear beams didn't even fasten to any metal - just hung out 3 feet from the last weld point so the whole rear was flopping about. The bit that really got me was the seatbelt mount that fastened through a single glass layer of fibreglass! Utter heap. Fun and cheap, and I sold it for what I paid for it. But an utter heap.
Alfa Romeo 155 Q4. Bought 2 years, and ran it for 3 years. Yes, I'm a fool for buying it and a bigger fool for keeping it after the warranty ran out.
The repair bills during the 3 years that I had the car amounted to more than it cost me to buy. I'm struggling to think of something that didn't break.
A few of its more notable incidents:
- endless electrical gremlins
- 2 x top end rebuilds
- transmission exploded, requiring a new gearbox and diffs
- sump replaced after the plug thread stripped during a standard service
- passenger seat reclining mechanism failed
- three CV joints replaced. First one physically broke whilst driving at about 10 mph
- ABS sensors were treated as a consumable item
- turbo disintegrated, thankfully only on the exhaust side
The repair bills during the 3 years that I had the car amounted to more than it cost me to buy. I'm struggling to think of something that didn't break.
A few of its more notable incidents:
- endless electrical gremlins
- 2 x top end rebuilds
- transmission exploded, requiring a new gearbox and diffs
- sump replaced after the plug thread stripped during a standard service
- passenger seat reclining mechanism failed
- three CV joints replaced. First one physically broke whilst driving at about 10 mph
- ABS sensors were treated as a consumable item
- turbo disintegrated, thankfully only on the exhaust side
Streps said:
The worst is the 2009 Vauxhall Astra..nice engine, weird manual gearbox but worked fine..
The build quality was very strange... the doors just don't make that nice 'clunk' sound and everything felt very tinny.
The other extreme was my 2009 Ford Fiesta. It looked really nice and aesthetically was a nice car..
The gearbox was made from chocolate and it had a habit of mixing up 1st and reverse gear so it became dangerous 4 months into ownership.. really disappointing.
The best built car i will ever own is my 1993 Mercedes W140 S500. It took someone five hours to install parking sensors as the interior trim was so well stuck together. I can leave it parked outside in a winter for six months and providing the battery is charged it will fire straight up every time.
Best built i had was lexus ls400, impeccable build quality, supremely reliable and entirely faultless. Everything worked. Everything. It was 15 years old when I bought it, paint was like new, wood like new, seats like sofas, engine was refinement personified. The build quality was very strange... the doors just don't make that nice 'clunk' sound and everything felt very tinny.
The other extreme was my 2009 Ford Fiesta. It looked really nice and aesthetically was a nice car..
The gearbox was made from chocolate and it had a habit of mixing up 1st and reverse gear so it became dangerous 4 months into ownership.. really disappointing.
The best built car i will ever own is my 1993 Mercedes W140 S500. It took someone five hours to install parking sensors as the interior trim was so well stuck together. I can leave it parked outside in a winter for six months and providing the battery is charged it will fire straight up every time.
I'm surprised to hear about various Hondas. I had three S2000s in a row from 2001 until 2012 and they were all perfectly assembled, reliable and great to drive. I only crashed two of them and only wrote off one.
Worst built was a brand-new Escort Cabriolet that I owned from 1984 until 1985. Built by Karmann, it leaked, the body seemed to have little structural rigidity and annoying little bits of trim fell off almost weekly. But I loved it.
On a trip to LA in 1989 I got through three Mustang 5.0s in three weeks. Appalling build quality and reliability. They were all rented from The Luxury Line...
Worst built was a brand-new Escort Cabriolet that I owned from 1984 until 1985. Built by Karmann, it leaked, the body seemed to have little structural rigidity and annoying little bits of trim fell off almost weekly. But I loved it.
On a trip to LA in 1989 I got through three Mustang 5.0s in three weeks. Appalling build quality and reliability. They were all rented from The Luxury Line...
Fiat Punto many years ago. The horn got fixed at every garage visit and never lasted more than a week, I used to keep a stock of headlight bulbs in the glove box as I was always getting stopped for a headlight out, etc. Yes officer, I know about it, here's my bulb just need some daylight to fit it tomorrow...
The plastics were cheap but it was a cheap car but in terms of build quality, the Fiat was a lot worse than other cheap cars I had in the past.
The plastics were cheap but it was a cheap car but in terms of build quality, the Fiat was a lot worse than other cheap cars I had in the past.
Range Rover 4.4 V8.
During the course of the 2 years I owned it the thing worked perfectly perhaps for 2 days. The other 720 ish days it was either in the garage or on its way there or broken down somewhere. At very best it was being driven with about 3 active faults.
This is not an exaggeration.
During the course of the 2 years I owned it the thing worked perfectly perhaps for 2 days. The other 720 ish days it was either in the garage or on its way there or broken down somewhere. At very best it was being driven with about 3 active faults.
This is not an exaggeration.
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