What vehicle did you absolutely loathe driving?

Late 90s Pontiac Grand Am. Someone traded one in at the dealership I worked at in college. What an utter crap car.

It felt like a parody of GM. Terrible to drive, hated looking at it, terrible build quality. Yuck.

In reply to CyberEric :

Hey, it may have been ugly and awful to drive but at least you got to be serenaded by the uninspiring moan of the GM V6 backed with a slushy automatic. 

Over 30 years later and the sound of one of those will still make me scramble in a "crap!, mom's home and i didn't do the laundry!" Panic

The sound those things make during a light throttle 1-2 shift gives the iron Duke powered LLV mail trucks a contender for worst engine sound ever.

Lol at everyone complaining about the Cruze, Cobalt, etc.

You're moaning about the lowest, entry level cars from GM's lowest, entry level brand.

Of course they're crap. 

Nissan Versa with a cvt...

Trent said:

In reply to CyberEric :

...the uninspiring moan...

...The sound those things make during a light throttle 1-2 shift...

For a while this was a big joke in the Lemons community. There are many videos of the race organizers going "buhhhh waahhhhh"

ShawnG said:

Lol at everyone complaining about the Cruze, Cobalt, etc.

You're moaning about the lowest, entry level cars from GM's lowest, entry level brand.

Of course they're crap.

To some extent I agree, but there are other cheap, low end cars that while incredibly basic, are better assembled and not nearly as miserable to live with.  The issue is when you expect all of the shortfalls of a cheap, low-end car, and then it manages to be even worse, especially in ways the manufacturer could have easily avoided. 

In reply to Trent :

Yep, you nailed it. the sound of that V6 downshifting on the freeway and moaning still sticks in my head over 20 years later. I still feel disgusted. 
 

Truly the worst car I have driven, and it's not even close.

In reply to rslifkin :

Seriously. Go drive a Scion xA and it's completely fine, even enjoyable. And I liked the Fiesta I drove once. GM seems to fail to make decent low end cars more than others. 
 

I drove a terrible Opal hatchback of some sort once in Greece that seemed to be on par, and wait, didn't GM have something to do with Opal?

I've got a few that come to mind: 

- 1st Gen Toyota Highlander: The driver's seat and all its adjustments were built for people who are 5ft tall and 100lb. I am not that. With the seat all the way down and back, I was hitting my head off the ceiling and felt like a bully had stuffed me into the thing as punishment for existing.

- MkIV Jetta with the 2.0/5MT: Just a miserable experience overall. Mushy feeling shifter and clutch matched with impercise steering and handling, with a coating of general unreliability on top. And the car was NEW at the time!

- 2013 Nissan Maxima: I really wanted to like this. Initial impressions were great: loved the seats/interior and the 3.5 made great power, and it was great around town even with the CVT. It even handled well. But when you got onto the highway, the rubber band effect and the engine drone killed the whole thing. Good car hampered by that terrible CVT. Oh, what could've been...

- 2018 Subaru WRX: Overall, it was just clunky. From getting into the thing and having to jump the huge gap between the door opening and the seats thanks to the ground effects/sill, to the mushy shifter/clutch feel, to the infotainment system that would go on the fritz at will, it was a half-baked attempt at being a decent car. It never felt fun or fast, and was a chore and exhausting to drive. It felt like every driving input was a negotiation. A far cry from the older ones I was used to. 

 Meanwhile, almost every car I've ever owned has been called out in this thread as being an absolute piece of garbage...

ShawnG said:

Lol at everyone complaining about the Cruze, Cobalt, etc.

You're moaning about the lowest, entry level cars from GM's lowest, entry level brand.

Of course they're crap.

I didn't care for the Cruze, and I know the first gen was a low point for GM, but we had an 06 Cobalt that I thought was pretty inoffensive to drive, but was the most reliable car I've ever owned. 240k with only regular maintenance. It was so hands off that at 160k I realized I'd never changed the air filter. The plugs I bought at the same time ended up in my son's G5 because I never got around to doing them. His G5 went well over 300k, and we'd see the old Cobalt around town for the next few years.

Chevy HHR. This stupid retro-mobile compromised outward visibility so badly that I did not feel safe driving it. I got one as a rental car when I was in San Francisco, and I took it back—it was the first and only rental car I ever returned. The A-pillars are 19" wide, and the roof is lower than a sunshade in the down position. It is truly awful. A tank persicope would have been an improvement. 

In reply to rslifkin :

I could not have said it better myself!

I was a tech at a GM dealership in the '80s.  I drove too many cars that inspired loathing to count.

4cylndrfury said:

20-teens Jeep compass. Was an "upgrade" when renting a car for vacation. It was a penalty box in every conceivable way. I'm not sure if was a CVT or a conventional transmission, but the thing refused to make up its mind about which gear was required to maintain freeway speed. Accelerator inputs at anything above 55 werr useless unless you pushed your foot thru the floor board. At that point, you engaged the flux capacitor and the buzzbox would scream past the redline with wild abandon. Driver position would make a chiropractor blush, and road noise was insane. The best part of this car was giving it back. It was offensive to all the senses.

Dang .. I am (was?) considering one of these as a third car / beater with some level of debris hauling capability, but have yet to drive one.  Then again, it would be a beater ...

Oh, got another one. And how could I forget it!

-2008ish Dodge Avenger: This was quite possibly the worst modern car I've ever driven or had the displeasure to sit in. We had it as a rental for my wife's 2008 Elantra (which was miserable in its own right) after it got hit for an extended period of time. The Elantra was bad, but compared to the Avenger, it was a dream car. Despite being a few feet longer than the Elantra, it was somehow smaller inside and had less trunk space. The seats were especially bad, and hurt to sit in for more than 5 minutes. Everything inside was rigid hard plastic and abrasive to the touch. It drove abysmally; the handling was worse than a worn out farm tractor, and the transmission sort of did transmission things, but extremely lethargically. The best (aka WORST) part was the 4cyl (was it a 2.4L?). At all times, it sounded like the crankcase was full of glass marbles. At full song, we sincerely thought that the internals would become externals, but it was deemed "normal" by the rental company (yes, we brought it back because it sounded broken). The headlights might have well just been stickers, because they did zero to light the road. This was Cerebrus Capital Management's mark on the Chrysler Corporation in a nutshell. God awful. 

To think that Chrysler stuffed a 300hp V6 in these things to "fix it" a few years makes me shudder. This chassis couldn't handle the handful of horsepower the 4 cylinder sleazed out. 300hp is straight up irresponsible. 

ShawnG said:

Lol at everyone complaining about the Cruze, Cobalt, etc.

You're moaning about the lowest, entry level cars from GM's lowest, entry level brand.

Of course they're crap. 

 

I had Chevy Cruze rental cars several times and put several hundred miles on them, and thought they were pretty decent cars.  I found them comfortable and easy to drive, and they got great mileage, although I didn't have the opportunity to test their handling or acceleration.

I will say one thing about the Cobalt: My SIL has one. She's had the thing for at least a decade, maybe more. It just keeps going despite everything that happens to it. It's actually impressive that it's both still shaped like a car here in New England and still doing car things. GM doesn't have anything remotely that affordable and durable anymore. 

Tony Sestito said:

I will say one thing about the Cobalt: My SIL has one. She's had the thing for at least a decade, maybe more. It just keeps going despite everything that happens to it. It's actually impressive that it's both still shaped like a car here in New England and still doing car things. GM doesn't have anything remotely that affordable and durable anymore. 

The Cobalt and the later Cavaliers both always seemed to be a case of "car that lasts longer than anyone wants it to"

In reply to rslifkin :

Ha, yup. This goes for MANY GM cars of that era. The Olds Cutlass Ciera is another one. They will run terribly forever and ever, long after humans disappear from this rock

That reminds me, I had a friend who was given a low mileage late 90's 2 door Cavalier. For some reason, any corner you took over 15mph resulted in the tires squealing for life as if you were a criminal wheeling around a getaway car on CHIPs. We could never figure out why. 

einy (Forum Supporter) said:

4cylndrfury said:

20-teens Jeep compass. Was an "upgrade" when renting a car for vacation. It was a penalty box in every conceivable way. I'm not sure if was a CVT or a conventional transmission, but the thing refused to make up its mind about which gear was required to maintain freeway speed. Accelerator inputs at anything above 55 werr useless unless you pushed your foot thru the floor board. At that point, you engaged the flux capacitor and the buzzbox would scream past the redline with wild abandon. Driver position would make a chiropractor blush, and road noise was insane. The best part of this car was giving it back. It was offensive to all the senses.

Dang .. I am (was?) considering one of these as a third car / beater with some level of debris hauling capability, but have yet to drive one.  Then again, it would be a beater ...

I got a ~2020s Compass Trailhawk as a rental and quite liked it. I hated the lane keeping stuff (it kept subtly yanking the wheel any time I would follow "the line" through a turn) but did figure out how to turn that off. It wasn't exciting or pretty but it was just fine. Also got pretty decent gas mileage; something like 30mpg.

I have frequently had GM Malaise-era yachts - Caddy SDV, Impala wagon, that kind of thing.  I like the big couch/floaty suspension as a quirk.  So it surprised me when I drove a Lincoln Town Car from the square-body era and detested it.  The ergonomics were atrocious.  The dashboard was a mile away, the steering was awful and darty, and the seating position was impossibly unsupportive.

I was excited in the 90s when the new Maxima came out, but the test drive was terrible.  So boring, and terrible ergo.

And I also never understood the love for Mitsubishi Eclipses.  Timing belt tensioners that constantly fail, weak blocks that wear out and burn oil, wet spaghetti shifter feel, and they feel like they weigh 6000 lbs in the twisties.

stuart in mn said:

ShawnG said:

Lol at everyone complaining about the Cruze, Cobalt, etc.

You're moaning about the lowest, entry level cars from GM's lowest, entry level brand.

Of course they're crap. 

 

I had Chevy Cruze rental cars several times and put several hundred miles on them, and thought they were pretty decent cars.  I found them comfortable and easy to drive, and they got great mileage, although I didn't have the opportunity to test their handling or acceleration.

I don't think you understand what a rental car is for...

I had a Ford Contour for a rental and it was probably the most underwhelming POS ever.

As for GM stuff. Everyone loves to hate the GM Tech4 but that engine will run poorly longer than most engines will run at all.

My brother-in-law has a Kia Soul. I want to hate it but I can't. It's a really, really good car. Particularly for someone who can't even check his own tire pressure. 

ShawnG said:

 

You're moaning about the lowest, entry level cars from GM's lowest, entry level brand.

Of course they're crap. 

 

I agree; they were crap...for too many generations of entry level cars from Detroit. 

But thanks to such offerings over a long period of time from the Big 3, the Japanese manufacturers were able to take over the low cost, commuter-family car segment and show the consumer (if not the stubborn Big 3) that an entry level car didn't have to also be a bad car.

So thanks, I guess(?) to the Big 3 for inadvertently making the marketplace better for  their competitors and consumers.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Are you talking about the 3rd Gen (1989-94) or 4th Gen (1995-99) Maxima? I had a 1989, and still to this day, it's my benchmark for a daily driver. I loved that car. My parents had a 1996 GLE for a long time, and while I liked the refined VQ 3.0 over my VG30, I didn't care for the interior as much. It wasn't as comfortable to drive, and moving to the beam axle made it handle worse. 

In reply to Coniglio Rampante :

Exactly.

I've owned too many Corollas over the years to ever want to buy a bottom-of-the-barrel car from any American manufacturer.