What was your WORST car ever?

Ashyukun wrote: I've thankfully been quite fortunate with cars myself- and also likely owned a LOT less than most of you have at least to date. I think the worst car I've dealt with though would likely have to be my parents' 1984 (I believe...) Renault Alliance. I don't care how many awards it won or what Car & Driver said, that car was a BITCH to drive by the time I got to drive it in the early 90's. It retains the record for the most obnoxious clutch I've ever had to drive- though ironically since it's the clutch I had to LEARN on, everything else since has been a piece of cake..

Well, in a hot car like that, you really only use the clutch to take off and to park, so it's really not that bad.

Worst car is a toss up between the '84 Audi Quattro that never ran right a day in it's life (always electrical) and the POS Pontiac Sunfire that my wife wanted because it was cute (three water pumps in 80k miles, etc).

Feedyurhed wrote: Hey there fellow Vega hater, we are kindred spirits now. Once you have owned and/or driven a Vega and lived to tell about you are in select group like we climbed Mt. Everest together or lifted the flag on Iwo Jima. There are so few of us that survived. See you at next years meeting!!

LOL

crankwalk wrote:

Feedyurhed wrote: Hey there fellow Vega hater, we are kindred spirits now. Once you have owned and/or driven a Vega and lived to tell about you are in select group like we climbed Mt. Everest together or lifted the flag on Iwo Jima. There are so few of us that survived. See you at next years meeting!!

LOL

My dad will be there! He had a Vega. He doesn't talk about it much. From all of the Vega horror stories I have heard, I don't blame him.

SilverFleet wrote:

mazdeuce wrote:

SilverFleet wrote: My Trans Am has had more problems, and has almost killed me a few times, but that car is over 30 years old and was formerly owned by a guy that exclusively wore teal mesh tank tops, so I don't fault it.

This.....this right here is funny. My kids asked me what I was laughing at and I struggled to explain why teal mesh tank tops are hilarious.

Don't worry, I have pictures. I'll post some up later.

As promised...

EDIT... I found my old CarDomain site. Oh man...

Teal Mesh Tank Top Dude

No real hateful cars here, then again I'm still in single digits of cars owned.

$500 80s something Buick LeSabre. Leaked water when it rained, front passenger window would fall randomly while driving. One time the passenger door opened during a slow turn, surprised the hell out of my buddy who was attached to the door mounted seat belt. It served it's purpose and never stranded me, I remember it fondly even.

I'd even look at the silver lining of my mom's poorly purchased salvage title'd 1998 Rav4. Poorly repaired by "mechanic" to sell and previous owner sins were pretty atrocious. It was threatening to overheat on me in rush hour LA traffic last Friday on the way to the junkyard 1hour+ there and back, although I had to take precautions and was pretty skeevy it got me home. And recently it looks to be leaking oil out the front of the engine, despite me changing all the seals with quality parts during the timing job I did a year ago. But I blame that on my mom's going over oil change intervals by 2000 miles.

So far, my '88 325is. I paid a lot of money for it thinking I was buying a good car and yet I've dumped more money into that miserable POS than I care to admit. Damn near as much as I paid for it. And yet it never seems to stay running right for more than a couple of weeks (currently broken now...). While my Cummins stands as a great example of how not to buy a car off eBay, it pales in comparison to the E30 in overall disappointment. I'm going to take a massive loss when finally leaves my driveway for the last time...

kb58 wrote: So after reading this entire thread, are we to conclude that we should just ride bicycles?

The thought has crossed my mind numerous times...

1998(I think, I try not to forget about that car) Pontiac Bonneville

It was great having a giant, low, wide, Detroit barge that got ~24mpg overall, but the windshield channel was just about gone, it had rusted ways I didn't know modern cars could(think 3-4 cans of great stuff to sorta seal up the trunk bad). It then proceeded to blow an engine 2 weeks after I put an intake and plates/insurance on it. It also in that 2 week period managed to shear the shaft in the PS pump, driving that home for the repair was fun. I sold it for $650 and put that towards a 99 Prizrolla and haven't looked back since.

I have a rule. If it leaves me stranded 3 times, it's sold I have only had to enact that rule once 78 impala. She was built like a tank. Slid on ice into a omni totaled it but only broke bumper grills out.

1987 Mercedes 560 SEC. My cousin pointed out, "that car consumes money faster than my ex wife!"

And it drove like a Buick

In reply to b13990: I remember that article! I was impressed with how scathing it was.

I'm slightly ashamed to admit I drove one of these for about 6 months. It was my father's, and he let me borrow it because I needed a car.

ebonyandivory wrote: In reply to b13990: I remember that article! I was impressed with how scathing it was.

Do you remember if it was in Car & Driver? I really want to find it. I can't just let the Toyota PR goons win!

In my fairly limited experience, worst car was a '76 Olds Cutlass Supreme. It was a wallowing pig of a car, with a 350 cubic inch weezer of an engine that thirsted heavily for gas, but was out-accelerated by 4-cylinder economy cars. The car routinely bounced its nose off dips in the pavement because of laughably soft springs. It devoured front tires in 12 to 15k miles, and was prone to swap ends when cornering in the wet. In its defense, it started every time I went to crank it, and never left me stranded.

1988RedT2 wrote: In my fairly limited experience, worst car was a '76 Olds Cutlass Supreme. It was a wallowing pig of a car, with a 350 cubic inch weezer of an engine that thirsted heavily for gas, but was out-accelerated by 4-cylinder economy cars. The car routinely bounced its nose off dips in the pavement because of laughably soft springs. It devoured front tires in 12 to 15k miles, and was prone to swap ends when cornering in the wet. In its defense, it started every time I went to crank it, and never left me stranded.

I had a '77 Cutlass S... very similar car, albeit somewhat better looking than a '76 Supreme. I had no major problem with it, other than the quality of the body. The sheet metal was paper thin and bent/rusted under the slightest stress.

I always thought the performance was OK. Mine had the Olds 350 just like yours probably did. I was running with no catalytic converter or EGR (premium gas required) and the Q-Jet had been replaced by a Holley double-pumper (not my idea). I also had a "TransGo" shift kit that really helped the overall feel of the car a lot. And I did replace those springs shortly after getting the car.

Eventually, I had to take off the front sway bar due to some typical GM deterioration, and after that the Cutlass was a very tail-happy car.

In reply to b13990:

Interesting that your Olds 350 wasn't the dog mine was. I attributed it to the fact that by the mid-70's, smog controls had taken a lot of HP, and the mfrs hadn't yet figured out how to get around that. Could be that the mods on your car helped. I think the engine was only rated at 170 HP. Mine was okay from a standing start, but was truly gutless at speed. Driveability was fine, and the trans actually did a pretty good job and downshifted readily. I had replaced the cat and rebuilt the carb looking for lost HP, but never could find any. I had heard that the cams were prone to wearing out, but I never got into that. The car really didn't have that many miles on it.

I recall a long straight stretch of urban interstate where I once floored the car from 55 mph. Almost 2 miles later, I had still not reached 80.

When I eventually replaced the car with a new '89 Mazda 626, I was amazed at that car's top gear acceleration--all 2.2 fire-breathing liters.

In reply to 1988RedT2: I got my '77 from a mechanic. I think he knew what he was doing. At that time, I had been driving an 88hp Mustang, so I was impressed by anything that could break the tires loose.

The heads- and the 2.73 back gears- were the downfall of that car.

Another Cutlass story: I managed to bust loose the speedometer cable taking a turn too fast on broken concrete. I bent up some other suspension crap, too... it turned into $1,000+ at the Chevrolet stealership. They considered my car a "Laguna S3." I think the S3 and the Cutlass S shared some upgraded suspension components.

In reply to SilverFleet:

-Gauges would zero out at random while driving. Dealer couldn't find the issue.

Same issue with 98 Passat. Traced to loose ground wire under intake manifold. Took days to find. And why in hell was it under there?

1984 Rabbit Diesel. So much blowby I drilled holes in the bottome of the airbox so the filter didn't choke out. HV(no AC) only worked on center vents-by design. Wouldn't start under it's own power, so I ran a vaccum hose through one of those holes I drilled in the intake so I could give it a shot of ether from the comfort of the drivers seat.

92 Corrado VR6. Man, did I try hard to love that car. Wife called it the scarlet whore.

Any american made car I've ever owned has been horrible. Even my '04 F150 has eaten a transmission and the cab corners have rotted out in the last 12 months...I don't live in the rust belt.

Without a doubt - my 99 VW Passat. I have ranted on here before about it so I wont repeat.

Two best vehicles - 93 Pontiac Grand Am and my 98 Ford Exploder - both have been mentioned as worst earlier in this thread. Mine were great.

m_walker26 wrote: In reply to SilverFleet: -Gauges would zero out at random while driving. Dealer couldn't find the issue. Same issue with 98 Passat. Traced to loose ground wire under intake manifold. Took days to find. And why in hell was it under there?

Good to know.

It's also good to know that I most likely will never buy another VW product for the rest of my life, no matter how tempting the TDI models and the GTI variants are to me. I almost gave in when I bought the my Mazda, but I maintained self control and ran away.

To me, cool VW's like the TDI and GTI/GLI are kinda like high class strippers. They look very appealing, but once you get your hands on one, you are sure to end up in a heap of trouble and realize at the end of the ordeal, it really wasn't worth it.

1988RedT2 wrote: In my fairly limited experience, worst car was a '76 Olds Cutlass Supreme. It was a wallowing pig of a car, with a 350 cubic inch weezer of an engine that thirsted heavily for gas, but was out-accelerated by 4-cylinder economy cars. The car routinely bounced its nose off dips in the pavement because of laughably soft springs. It devoured front tires in 12 to 15k miles, and was prone to swap ends when cornering in the wet. In its defense, it started every time I went to crank it, and never left me stranded.

Back in 1977, my wife had a lightly used 77 Cutlass Supreme with the Olds 350 4V and we both loved it. Not bad gas mileage or performance. We didn't have it but a couple of years and the only real issue was the silver paint was fading badly.

b13990 wrote: In reply to SilverFleet: Ah, rev-hang; it's sort of like the high-tech successor to "run-on," AKA "dieseling." They just can't quite engineer it out, it seems, at least not without endangering some stupid emissions goal. If you can stand NASIOC, there's some impressive-looking crap on there about remapping the electric throttle. The factory map is designed to create an impression of power during test drives. I worked as a programmer on vehicle control systems for a few years (mostly autopilots and robotic positioning systems for work boats). It's easy enough to write a "loop" that reads some sensors and generates an output command (e.g. injector duty cycle) repeatedly. The aspect of the newer systems that scares me is multiprocessing. Just like a desktop computer, an advanced ECU is running multiple programs at once. Guaranteeing the correctness of such a system is much more difficult. Think of all the ways programs on a desktop can crash, lock things up, etc. There is an unfortunate lack of respect for these issues among many engineers, in my experience. You can't take the people who wrote the single-process system and expect them to make the multi-process system unless they're able to start applying a much different mindset to their work. This is an emerging area in computer science, and the people who really grasp it fully aren't as widespread (in geography and in their roles) as one might hope. My hunch is that the Toyota firmware has some sort of infrequent issue that only arises under certain circumstances, and if different ECU activities are interleaved with each other in very specific ways. That's 10% of the problem (these things happen...) and the other 90% is attributable to driver panic/ignorance.

Much agreed.

My issue with a lot of new computing systems in cars are the fact that they are going the way of CAN-Bus. For aftermarket tuning or simple diagnostics - it just makes a headache. Example? AP2 S2000s - if you want to tune one without a migraine you need to convert a plethora of parts to AP1 specs so you can interpret the input and output values from those sensors.

That and I recently read up on how the use of these new can-bus systems are vulnerable to potential malware attacks with the implementation of these new wi-fi hotspot cars or even through bluetooth if someone is that deadset on ruining your vehicle through a malware attack.

And Toyota/Subaru interiors are the worst. I'll agree with all who said that through personal experience.