What was your WORST car ever?

I'm not enjoying my '93 Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX much. When it runs, it's a lot of fun. Very quick and lots of fun to toss about in the snow, and the engine itself hasn't failed to start or run. It hunts for idle a little when cold, but otherwise runs good for a 20 year old car with 175K on the clock. Of course, the tuning potential is massive.

However, this particular Eclipse is a leaky rustbucket. I've spent well more than the car is worth having the exhaust manifold and gasket, oil filter housing and associated sensors, and every hard oil and coolant line under the hood replaced because it was leaking lots of oil and coolant. The radiator itself seems to cool OK, but it is in need of replacement. The power steering puked up all of its fluid on the parking lot at work. And the clutch is toast.

The DSM's body is so rusty I'm concerned it will not pass its next safety inspection. All of the brake and fuel lines are rusting away to nearly nothing and will need replacement soon. I am considering tracking down a replacement DSM/Galant VR-4 shell to do a drivetrain swap so all that money I threw at the engine doesn't go to waste. However, part of me just wants to say "to hell with it," and sell the DSM for parts or scrap and buy something made this millennium for a winter beater. I already have one car that's been waiting for a swap for two years now (FC RX-7 n/a-to-turbo conversion), I don't think I can handle two.

Please not I don't hate ALL DSMs, just THIS one.

93 mkiv supra

96 audi cab

both caused me tons of grief, although I'd like to have another Supra....not a lemon this time.

Tie: 87 VW Jetta GLI and 88 MB 300E. The Jetta had lowering springs and handled great, but I lived in a rural part of the state at the time and it needed a trip to the VW shop an hour away at least every other month, at $350 or so a pop. This was in the early 90s. I traded it for a 91 Maxima SE that I still wish I'd kept.

The Benz was the same as the vee-dub, in the shop all the time. Looking back, its repair needs weren't so much out of line, but the parts prices were so steep I sold it. The buyer was a technician at a MBZ shop in Gainesville who was thrilled to get such a clean example. At least he got a discount on parts. :)

Merkur Scorpio.

Electric system straight from hell powered by an A4LD backed Grenada V6. MF'ing TEVES brakes.

Run, don't walk.

1971 Volvo 142... with those DAMN emissions SU carbs!!!

Shudder, my 1992 Taurus SHO. The catalytic convertors caught on fire the day I bought it in my apartment's parking lot, nearly burned it and the neighbor's boat to the ground (I got to spend all night cleaning up dry chem!) Sitting at work one day the electronics freaked out and made the doors lock and unlock by themselves for an hour. Driving cross-country I hit a bird, with the windshield. Then when my step dad took it from Seattle to Tahoe to store it while I was overseas, the wiper motor quit in a huge rainstorm. The week I had it back I slid down an icy driveway into the tail of my Chief's wife's SUV. Luckily I didn't do any damage to her rig, but the hitch destroyed the nose of my car. A week after fixing it my GF (now wife) plowed the back end of a trashed Subaru wagon that resulted in a massive lawsuit that took 5 years to clear up. As I was driving it home from the repair shop a little old lady ran a red light and t-boned me. The night after getting it back from that repair, the friends we went out to dinner with backed into it leaving the restaurant. I finally traded it in to a used car lot after 3rd gear assploded. A year later we are shopping at the same dealer and it's still there! A year after that my Dad gets a call from the city of Seattle claiming that I'm about to go to jail. Apparently the dealer sold it to another dealer at an auction, that dealer didn't transfer the title, and then it was promptly used in a drug run , police chase, and finally abandoned on city property. I forwarded all of my trade-in info to the DOL and they nailed dealer #1 to the wall. Even now, years and years later, none of this is remotely funny. That car was cursed.

(Mine was NOT this cool)

Great car when it ran, but it had a NASTY habbit of loosing spark and leaving my wife stranded every few months (it would only do this when several miles from home). It also would "fix" its self whenever I tried to diagnose it. I threw parts at it for awhile, but finally gave up after 10 months and sold it at a $500 loss to some poor sap who thought it was an easy fix despite my full disclosure.

I've had a Mazda Protege, Taurus Wagon, 350z, and now a WRX.

My worst car ever? The 350z.

I assume I now need to explain myself, lol. The Mazda Protege i BEAT THE E36 M3 out of that car even rear ended someone and threw it off of a off ramp. Car always worked, always was fine, required no maintenance. Just hammered the hood back down so i could close it and it ran.

The Taurus I bought for $100. Car spewed dark exhaust which my neighbor fixed for free. After that it was perfect, no issues. Crashed it in the snow, like the mazda it still ran fixed it at a pick a part getting a new bumper which had shattered. Sold it for $1000. Profit :)

The 350z at first was good. Then I got a CEL which started a nightmare. The car would go into limp mode, couldn't fix it myself, took it to a Nissan mechanic. Nobody could ever figure out what was wrong it was suggested to me that someone modded the ecu (unlikely) and that the computer would need to be replaced and was quoted an obscene price. This was after I had already dumped 100s of my hours into it then insane amount to a mechanic who said the car had more electrical problems than an old VW. Sold it for $7500 used as down payment for my WRX. Without a doubt the worst car I owned this 350z. The electrical problems go past than the engine on that, had all kinds of troubles with window motors and lights as well which I resolved on my own. I knew nothing about electricals then unfortunately.

Probably will be the only one here to say my worst car is a 350z, lol.

Audi Fox. Had it one whole month, which was about 30 days too long.

Made every buyers mistake possible on that one.

Owned an 84 Chevy cavalier. It was reliable, but slow and hateful. When I was done with it I gave it to my mom who nicknamed it " the bomb".

I owned a 71 cj5 that was broken more than it ran, but yet I loved it. I'll type more when I'm on a computer.

That would be a tie between a 1997 Mercury Villager and current 2000 Sierra.

'91 Dodge Shadow. Bad bad bad super slow POS.

Easy. 84 Rabbit diesel. In 21 years of commuting, it was the only car to ever leave me stranded, and it did it 6 times.

One year on vacation, after I gave a thorough going over, it lost the muffler, then the whole exhaust, blew the oil pressure sender unit apart, destroyed an almost new alternator belt, and blew a heater hose.

All in one day.

When we got home from our camping trip, the center hub ripped out of the clutch on the highway. In the few years that I owned it, I can't think of something that didn't go wrong with it.

1965 Volkswagen beetle. I paid six dollars for it back in the 80's.

One of it's unique features was the throttle cable was too short and dumping the clutch would automatically open the throttle.

In reply to RexSeven:

Funny because if this had been a BEST car thread, my old 93 Eagle Talon would be at least in the top 2. 260K when I sold it, just needed a quart of oil a month. Although I did have to replace the engine almost the very day I paid off the loan...

1987 Sentra 1.6 a/t 4 door silver

Slow. Painfully slow. Nissan sold a bunch of these and I can't understand why.

1987 Sentra. 1.6 a/t 4 door white

lower mileage version of the silver one. Still slooooow.

wearymicrobe wrote: I still own it. I wish it a quick and painful demise with hopefully no humans involved.

Must be the brand or something cause while the jury is still out, the FRS is leading the pack at this point. Affectionately known as the "Remon" by my wife.

I wish I could put into words how something so good can be so annoying to the point of making me take the wife's versa on errands rather than the FRS.

I once owned a 2.8L Bronco II

/thread

Audi 100ls

When it was running well, it was a pretty nice car. I experienced that phenomenon exactly once during my ownership. The only car I've ever owned that the shop demanded payment in advance before they would work on it.

30 years later and I still wince at the thought. The only good news is that it cured me of EVER considering another Audi.

Fiat X1/9. Bought a '79 model in 1986. Paid $3,000. In one year put another $1,500 in repairs. The last time it stranded me, one year later, I traded in on a brand new 1987 Toyota Corolla FX16 GT-S and was glad to see the X1/9 go. The dealer offered me $1,300 on trade. Reverse kept popping out as I back it into a parking space. The salesmen then came out and placed a lemon law sticker on the window. It was fun the drive when you could drive it.

Still have the FX16.

In reply to bludroptop:

That is a pretty sexy sedan though... what sort of problems? The kind that can be fixed by an LS swap?

96 Chevy Blazer. Worse than any of my 3 Vegas.....

The worst car I've owned was not purchased by me, or under my supervision. The wife's 1997 Rav4. Biggest. Pile. Of. E36 M3. Ever.

The car would eat cats every 15-20k miles. The rear diff was destroyed by 90k (when we traded it in). Caught on fire while I was driving it (cat got so hot it caught the plastic "guard" on fire in about 10 blocks of stop-n-go driving). ECU was toast. Struts/shocks were all toast at 70k miles.

2012 subaru wrx hatch. Followed by a 2004 Aveo. I've expressed my discontent with Subaru enough on this forum so I'll spare you all the agony.

The Aveo was ex-fiances that she wanted (hey it was cheap). Timing belt went at 60k miles and was a pain to replace. At least Chevy/Daewoo didn't deny how craptacular it was unlike Subaru.

Mid 90's vintage Pontiac Grand Am. It wasn't that it was horrible at anything, it just wasn't good at anything. It was ugly, slow, had crappy gas mileage, had a ride quality that was at the same time harsh/choppy and still completely disconnected from the road, and lots of fiddly problems. It did save my wife's bacon in a nasty accident. Had it been allowed to die at that point, it would probably be fondly remembered. But insurance decided the "fix" it, after which it added various squeeks, rattles, alignment issues and randomly occurring warning lights. We ended up selling it cheap, really cheap, just to get rid of it.