Cars you can’t forgive

Duke said:

DW's '81 Fairmont Futura. With the 6 cyl it was slow; a 4 would have been actually dangerous.

It had a weird thing where it wouldn't take any throttle at all for a while; it took 2 rebuilt carbs to make it stop doing that.

It didn't have a clock.

DW and I have almost the same inseam, but I am 5"-6" taller than she is and have longer arms. With the bench seat in her driving position, I physically couldn't get behind the wheel. On the passenger side I could get in but my forehead was about 2" away from the sun visor.

You blew the horn by pushing in on the end of the turn signal stalk. I mean seriously, who thought that was an even marginally acceptable idea?

 

A 4cyl Fairmont with a manual was the slowest thing I have ever driven, a bike would accelerate faster by far

Aztek....  just thinking about them upsets my stomach.

Pretty sure nobody could beat my '81 Grand Prix with 3.8 liter V6 and highway gears in a slow contest.  It once ran neck and neck with a smokey VW bus full of hippies and weed at a stoplight in some town in Colorado when I decided to challenge them.  That car ran poorly for many years.

The entire Chrysler 2.2 line, because of my month-long experience with a '81 Charger 2.2.  I still think highly of Lee Iacocca, but want nothing to do with that period of Mopars. What a flaming pile of unreliable excrement.

Have not owned one, but the Mach-E with the Mustang badges is an inforgiveable sin of marketing.  Could be the best vehicle ever made, but as a Mustang guy since birth I can't bring myself to even look at that SUV thing.

My 1972 Chevy Vega ruined me for GM products.  It did nothing well.  The interior seems tighter than it should have been.  The vinyls seats would burn your skin in the summer.  No AC, an AM radio and manual transmission, and it only got 22 mpg.  It was a rolling oven.  Naturally the engine went bad and I got the ultimate run around from Chevrolet.  I finally wrote the President of GM a letter and a few weeks later was called by my hometown Chevy dealer to bring the car in.  They did a quick and dirty re-ring and head service which I paid for, but it really needed a new engine.  I drove it a few more years and dumped it when I got a company car.  The infamous rust monster was just starting to show its ugly head and the car had only been driven in snow once and that was before they used salt.  

bludroptop said:

PTSD triggered, 42 years later.

An Audi 100ls, looked just like this one.

It was a beautiful car when it ran properly.  It did so exactly twice during my ownership experience.

Since then I've had more German cars than you can count, but I can't go near an Audi.

I had a white '70 100LS passed to me from Dad.  Wish I still had it but I'm certain it's returned to iron oxide by now...  I'm 6'4" and I could put the driver seat all the way back then sit in the rear and my knees wouldn't even touch the back of the driver seat.  The trunk was larger than my Dad's '76 Coupe de Ville.  

But I guess I should shut up as we're talking about bad cars.  I agree, however, that Audi was an expensive berkleyer to fix, though...

1971 Triumph Stag, but every year of them sucked. I happened onto one in about 1989, so no interwebs(*) to inform that there was a reason that neither I nor my Lotus- and Austin-Healey-owning neighbor had even heard of one. Nor had we heard of a 3L OHC V8 from a company that had a perfectly cromulent alloy V8 at the time. But it drove nicely and sounded good and the top went down and you could actually get 4 people in it so why not for a summer car?

I got almost 4 weeks and upwards of 1500 miles out of it before the forged spaghetti crankshaft and rods let go. Turns out the market for blown-engine Stags was about .... nil, again for good reason.

The car hung around for a few years while I considered different engines and then Went Away to someone even dumber than me.

Newer Tacomas. Bought a 2020, on paper it was a nice truck. Crew cab, long bed, all the options, etc. I hated it. Uncomfortable, felt cheap, just blah. Tried to make it better with wheels, roof rack, etc.  it looked great, still blah. I sold it after 3 months and was glad to see it go. I really wanted to like it, maybe that was the frustration. I think it should have been a nice truck to have, it just wasn't. 

Javelin said:

My C5 Z06 ruined what little respect I had left for GM vehicles. 

The bad thing with those is that every little niggly thing breaks on them.  The lights go dim on the climate control, the battery out gassing causes a vacuum hose to leak leaving the ac coming out the defrost, the clutch is a nightmare to bleed, the active handling ABS module WILL fail.  And of course the dreaded column lock.  But the good thing is that every single failure point has a known fix / hack that usually doesn't require special tools or a ton of money.  A good pair of Corbeaus, decent shifter, set of long tubes and a tune and that is one damn fine automobile.

In reply to spitfirebill :

My mom's parents bought here a 71 vega for her, brand new, in 70. Her stories of ownership are hilarious and terrifying. I think she got rid of it in 77? She stood on the door sill and fell through to the ground. Still has a good scar from that.

In reply to A 401 CJ :

At which point you'd have more money in it than a C6, which is superior in every way and yet also had it's own list of GM idiocy. 

six months of suffering later (fuel tank leak above 3/4, AC, wheel bearings, ball joints, rusty LCA bolts, etc), and we end up with:

berkeley you, EJ253. Right where you eat. And the rest of the Forester too.

Ford Bronco II.  A never ending trail of parts until the 2.9L finally grenaded itself on I-80.  Burn in hades you pile of junk.

Javelin said:

In reply to A 401 CJ :

At which point you'd have more money in it than a C6, which is superior in every way and yet also had it's own list of GM idiocy. 

Uh...not quite 

Fiat 124 Spider aka the "Fiata". berkeley that stupid, sexy, Italian car.

There's a reason why I've never owned a Chrysler product.  It's the 1973 Chrysler Newport that my Dad bought from his parents.  It was an absolute turd.

It had a V8 that was usually missing on a cylinder or three.  It's acceleration was measured on a calender.  The A/C broke, the power everything broke, and it rode like a dingy in the open ocean.  You could land a C130 on the hood or trunk, but the doors were fairly short for the overall length of the car.  Fortunately the transmission E36 M3 the bed before I learned how to drive and it was towed away on a flat bed, hopefully straight to a junk yard to be crushed at 7 years old before some unsuspecting fool bought it.  I can't fully fault Chrysler for the dark beige vinyl roof with beige paint and interior (also vinyl), that was the '70s.  But Chrysler did put it on a lot and sold it for real money.

OHSCrifle said:

1981 Gutless Supreme. 260V8 White. Chrome fake wire wheel hubcaps. Light blue vinyl landau roof. Malaise era special. Was my Grandma's car until I bought it from her. Car couldn't break traction on wet leaves. Gutless.

Perhaps I actually should forgive it because the gutless-ness probably saved teenage me from fiery joyriding death.

I had an 81 and also christened it the “gutless supreme”.  Silver with Rallye wheels and the 3.8 V6.  Getting on to the highway was timed by a calendar.   I swore I’d never own an underpowered car again.

Our fullsize promaster 1500 van. Terrible seating position. The most sensitive eGas pedal made backing up to the trailer difficult. The emergency brake cable and linkage would seize if you left it sitting more than a day. Recalls. Just an overall unpleasant experience.

'82 2 dr. manual Rabbit my 2nd wife had bought new and was making payments on when we got together. I don't have the time to type all the things that made it suck. I sold it (with low miles) for $600.00 to a friend with the understanding that I never see it or hear anything about it, EVER!

In reply to NOT A TA :

My friend joked if the brakes went out on those Rabbits to turn on all the accessories and they will drag the engine down enough to slow it down.

JoeTR6 said:

There's a reason why I've never owned a Chrysler product.  It's the 1973 Chrysler Newport that my Dad bought from his parents.  It was an absolute turd.

It had a V8 that was usually missing on a cylinder or three.  It's acceleration was measured on a calender.  The A/C broke, the power everything broke, and it rode like a dingy in the open ocean.  You could land a C130 on the hood or trunk, but the doors were fairly short for the overall length of the car.  Fortunately the transmission E36 M3 the bed before I learned how to drive and it was towed away on a flat bed, hopefully straight to a junk yard to be crushed at 7 years old before some unsuspecting fool bought it.  I can't fully fault Chrysler for the dark beige vinyl roof with beige paint and interior (also vinyl), that was the '70s.  But Chrysler did put it on a lot and sold it for real money.

Weren't those the ones banned from demo derby because they could eliminate the whole field every time?

A 401 CJ said:

JoeTR6 said:

There's a reason why I've never owned a Chrysler product.  It's the 1973 Chrysler Newport that my Dad bought from his parents.  It was an absolute turd.

It had a V8 that was usually missing on a cylinder or three.  It's acceleration was measured on a calender.  The A/C broke, the power everything broke, and it rode like a dingy in the open ocean.  You could land a C130 on the hood or trunk, but the doors were fairly short for the overall length of the car.  Fortunately the transmission E36 M3 the bed before I learned how to drive and it was towed away on a flat bed, hopefully straight to a junk yard to be crushed at 7 years old before some unsuspecting fool bought it.  I can't fully fault Chrysler for the dark beige vinyl roof with beige paint and interior (also vinyl), that was the '70s.  But Chrysler did put it on a lot and sold it for real money.

Weren't those the ones banned from demo derby because they could eliminate the whole field every time?

Usually it was just the Imperials that were banned.  They made the full-size stuff seem small, light, and agile by comparison.

I worked in a Volvo dealership for the first half of the 80's.  We serviced all imports, and a combination of Audi 5000's and the VW diesel Volvo used has ruined me for that particular group of German cars to this day.  The part about the diesels lasting about a third as long as a red block gas Volvo had a lot to do with it.

Hey,

I ran my Emod Spitfire at Nationals several times in the '90s. One of my competitors ran a German car/Audi repair shop in Cedar Rapids IA.

Really nice guy. We were discussing the Ins/Outs of working that business, when he mentioned that the toughest part of servicing the Audi 100LS model was explaining why he had to replace the exhaust system when the car needed new front brake pads.....(That car has inboard front brakes. You can't get to the brakes w/o removing the exhaust.)

My own story: I bought a 96 Blazer new. It was a worse car than the 73 Vega I bought new....

Sayonara GM

Rog

Streetwiseguy said:

I worked in a Volvo dealership for the first half of the 80's.  We serviced all imports, and a combination of Audi 5000's and the VW diesel Volvo used has ruined me for that particular group of German cars to this day.  The part about the diesels lasting about a third as long as a red block gas Volvo had a lot to do with it.

The VWAG 6 cylinder Diesel in the Volvos made no sense.  Same basic geometry as the VW Diesel fours that ran forever, same engine layout as the Audi fives that also ran forever, but they had a reputation for deciding to just have no compression one day.

The transmissions were good for putting Audi fives in a rear drive car, at least.  I know where there is a Diesel M45(?) and I have enough turbo Audi engine stuff to build a second one.  Seems like a lot of work for the same displacement and output as a redblock, tho.