Your worst ever car
Discussion
We were discussing this here yesterday, and since we are all of disparate ages (some of us of a "desperate" age) then we'll all have a different tale to tell. Here one story was of a Renault Dauphine which was definitely a "Friday afternoon/Monday morning" car where the engine lasted 20 miles because the dealer hadn't screwed the sump plug in, but my own hate, a car I bought for the family because of its size but which was an absolute nightmare was a Maxi 1500. Gutless, a gearchange that had a mind of its own, a clutch that juddered no matter what you did - I coul go on. So, recount your own nightmares - it might help to share!
Agree with Lowdrag - parents had a 1750 Maxi as with the back seats down you could get several barrels of beer in it or the weeks shop at the cash-n-carry (Mum & Dad had a pub). Horrid thing (the Maxi, not the pub!), position of gears would move between changes plus it was painted "Desert Sand", repulsive!
306 1.4, but it was mostly due to age and mileage that it was awful. Handled well but the 170k gearbox showed its age, it averaged 20 MPG and it leaked all its water within minutes of topping up, never overheated though. Was free and was a temporary car between my Fiesta and 5 Series.
Maserati Biturbo. I owned it for a mercifully short period of time. If you tried to drive it more than about a quarter of a mile all the oil would drop out. But that was ok, because by then you'd have to stop to walk back and pick up all the bits that had fallen off anyway.
Hateful, hateful thing.
Hateful, hateful thing.
Don't think I've ever owned an especially bad car but a few (very much non-classic) hire cars stand out.
Chevy Blazer - such terrible steering feedback that at low speeds you could only tell if the wheel was straight-ahead or 360 left/right by seeing which way the car was going as your hands on the wheel told you nothing.
Chevy Cruze - none of the controls seemed to be in any way connected to the rest of the car, especially the accelerator pedal.
Maybe it's just all run-of-the-mill Chevrolets...
Chevy Blazer - such terrible steering feedback that at low speeds you could only tell if the wheel was straight-ahead or 360 left/right by seeing which way the car was going as your hands on the wheel told you nothing.
Chevy Cruze - none of the controls seemed to be in any way connected to the rest of the car, especially the accelerator pedal.
Maybe it's just all run-of-the-mill Chevrolets...
Edited by //j17 on Thursday 21st January 08:50
Worst car I've ever owned, easy, an brand new Ford seirra! Fully laden car with my family going on holiday and I overtook an tractor as the throttle jammed wide open. At the time we were decending an hill with an sharp right at the bottom. Switching off ignition and no servo- lovely. Had that repaired and within a couple of weeks the battery exploded spraying every thing under the bonnet with battery acid. Fortunately I always checked the oil weekly, so a week later I discovered all the damage. The Ford service manager thought the entire episodes were funny!! If ever I felt like punching somebody very hard on the nose it was that idiot. That was the last Ford I ever purchased new or used.
My first car was a Hillman Husky, the Imp estate. It would only go ~20miles before over heating. Longer trips had to be planned around cooling down spots. But I liked it. It was rather cheaper than my push bike at the time, and rapidly got to the point were it was cheaper than the tool collection I had to keep in the back.
I got assigned a Ford Orion as a company car when I joined a company, it's previous suffer had left and it was on a two year lease. Shortly before its previous keeper had run away, it had had the timing belt go (which was a normal occurrence on those engines). Rather than replace the whole head the lease company had had the minimum amount of work done, only the obviously bent valves had been replaced. So when I started my suffering it would regularly loose valves. When it wasn't doing that then there was a on going problem with the fuel tank. Ford in their wisdom had decided that it was cheaper to run the fuel line in at the top of the tank and then glue it to the inside down to the bottom. Well petrol is a superb solvent and dissolved the glue. Every now and then the line would float up to the top and you'd "run out of petrol" with over half a tank still sloshing about it there. Then the fuel injection system used to pack up. I think at the time I was on first name terms with all the local AA & RAC guys,
"Hi Ken were do you want to go today?"
"A good Ford garage"
"Sorry can't do that, wish I could, but we haven't tried XYZ recently with you car..."
But as bad as mine was, the soon to be Mk2 wife's was worse. Mine wouldn't go, well at least not with any degree of reliability. Hers on the other hand wouldn't stop! These cars had a mechanical form of ABS, much cheaper than the normal electronic type. With hers when the ABS decided to cut the brakes they staid cut - no brakes. Apparently it had always been like that while she had the car (another cast off) but she'd never worked out what was happening, all she knew was that the brakes were S**T. Then one day it did it while I was driving and she mentioned "it does, doesn't yours" to me. It was very easy to induce. But the local Ford garage denied there was a problem. Till the lease companies mechanic demonstrated it ever clearly to them on their forecourt.
OK so we had loads of problems. But...
When they weren't actually not going or not stopping they were total c**p.
A friend had an earlier non injected one which was much nicer. Nicer in just about every way.
These both had terrible torque steer, almost a random steering function, much worse than the mechanically similar XR3i which was bad enough in this respect.
The engine was coarse and noisy and not a touch on the competing Vauxhall unit (which admittidly was an 1800 rather than 1600 unit)
There wasn't enough headroom, I had to drive scrunched up with my head in the sunroof well, cocked to one side. (Oh yes, the other half's sunroof leaked, water would then build up on the sun visor ready to attack you later - or best of all, poor all it's contents into the be-suited lap of the over opinionated service manager at the local dealer
(moral, don't tell a woman she is imagining that her car leaks!))
The seats were very uncomfortable (the earlier ones were good)
The wife got shot of hers when she refused point blank to have it back till they had fixed the brakes and the lease firm threaten to sue the garage
I eventually threatened I would leave the company unless I was found another car till my new Cavalier, which was on order, was available. An older Cavalier turned up 1 hour later as an interim.
Oh and please don't talk about Friday afternoon cars to me. The Mrs has a MB which was I think was built (I use the word advisedly here) over the Christmas break.
I got assigned a Ford Orion as a company car when I joined a company, it's previous suffer had left and it was on a two year lease. Shortly before its previous keeper had run away, it had had the timing belt go (which was a normal occurrence on those engines). Rather than replace the whole head the lease company had had the minimum amount of work done, only the obviously bent valves had been replaced. So when I started my suffering it would regularly loose valves. When it wasn't doing that then there was a on going problem with the fuel tank. Ford in their wisdom had decided that it was cheaper to run the fuel line in at the top of the tank and then glue it to the inside down to the bottom. Well petrol is a superb solvent and dissolved the glue. Every now and then the line would float up to the top and you'd "run out of petrol" with over half a tank still sloshing about it there. Then the fuel injection system used to pack up. I think at the time I was on first name terms with all the local AA & RAC guys,
"Hi Ken were do you want to go today?"
"A good Ford garage"
"Sorry can't do that, wish I could, but we haven't tried XYZ recently with you car..."
But as bad as mine was, the soon to be Mk2 wife's was worse. Mine wouldn't go, well at least not with any degree of reliability. Hers on the other hand wouldn't stop! These cars had a mechanical form of ABS, much cheaper than the normal electronic type. With hers when the ABS decided to cut the brakes they staid cut - no brakes. Apparently it had always been like that while she had the car (another cast off) but she'd never worked out what was happening, all she knew was that the brakes were S**T. Then one day it did it while I was driving and she mentioned "it does, doesn't yours" to me. It was very easy to induce. But the local Ford garage denied there was a problem. Till the lease companies mechanic demonstrated it ever clearly to them on their forecourt.
OK so we had loads of problems. But...
When they weren't actually not going or not stopping they were total c**p.
A friend had an earlier non injected one which was much nicer. Nicer in just about every way.
These both had terrible torque steer, almost a random steering function, much worse than the mechanically similar XR3i which was bad enough in this respect.
The engine was coarse and noisy and not a touch on the competing Vauxhall unit (which admittidly was an 1800 rather than 1600 unit)
There wasn't enough headroom, I had to drive scrunched up with my head in the sunroof well, cocked to one side. (Oh yes, the other half's sunroof leaked, water would then build up on the sun visor ready to attack you later - or best of all, poor all it's contents into the be-suited lap of the over opinionated service manager at the local dealer
(moral, don't tell a woman she is imagining that her car leaks!))The seats were very uncomfortable (the earlier ones were good)
The wife got shot of hers when she refused point blank to have it back till they had fixed the brakes and the lease firm threaten to sue the garage
I eventually threatened I would leave the company unless I was found another car till my new Cavalier, which was on order, was available. An older Cavalier turned up 1 hour later as an interim.
Oh and please don't talk about Friday afternoon cars to me. The Mrs has a MB which was I think was built (I use the word advisedly here) over the Christmas break.
Elderly said:
When I'm bored I will recount the long tale of my wife's 1983 Volvo 345, the story of its eventual part-exchange
(we were going to dump it after just 60K miles) is quite amusing.
Awww....I loved my parents' Volvo 340! It's one of the only cars they ever bought new and it was in a really odd shade of pale metallic green. It was also built like a tank - My Mum spun on oil and crashed it into a brick wall and it barely dented (we were going to dump it after just 60K miles) is quite amusing.
They eventually had to scrap it when the gearbox housing (??) cracked and it cost more to fix than the entire car was worth 
te one. The French were not too keen on the MR2, something to do with the name though.
A911DOM said:
For me it was probably the Mr2 Turbo but thats just because I bought the wrong one Im sure.
Several 'life before your eyes' moments and a new engine later and I happily sold it on to some complete loony and replaced it with the 3.2
Several 'life before your eyes' moments and a new engine later and I happily sold it on to some complete loony and replaced it with the 3.2
For me it was without doubt a high mileage citroen Xantia. Suspension broke on a regular basis, electrics were faulty so the immobiliser kicked in when it was raining, car turned out to have 50k more miles on the clock than the paperwork/speedo suggested (courtesy of a local dealer).
Absolute heap !!
Absolute heap !!
I have never had a car I hated and I've had a lot of cars.
Everyone has done something I've loved at some point.
I've had a few that were a bit boring and a few that were less reliable than I'd like. But I've never had a boring and unreliable one. Maybe I've been lucky but I think it is just that I love cars and driving so even horrific understeer or a leaky roof seem to be fun!
Everyone has done something I've loved at some point.
I've had a few that were a bit boring and a few that were less reliable than I'd like. But I've never had a boring and unreliable one. Maybe I've been lucky but I think it is just that I love cars and driving so even horrific understeer or a leaky roof seem to be fun!
AJAX50 said:
The French were not too keen on the MR2, something to do with the name though.
A911DOM said:
For me it was probably the Mr2 Turbo but thats just because I bought the wrong one Im sure.
Several 'life before your eyes' moments and a new engine later and I happily sold it on to some complete loony and replaced it with the 3.2
Several 'life before your eyes' moments and a new engine later and I happily sold it on to some complete loony and replaced it with the 3.2
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