Worst car you've ever owned?

[CortinaDave]

So whats been the worst motors you've had? a W reg Vectra sri 140 I owned in 2007 is probably one of my worst..

 

Head gasket went on it, got it fixed at a cost of £450, picked it up on the Friday, and went to work in it on saturday morning. It burst into flames 20 miles later. Wiring for the air con had gone up, despite it not being switched on. So £450 literally disappeared in a sea of flames after not even a day's motoring.

 

I also had a 2 year old corsa at one point - the only new ish car i've ever bought.. it was a complete lemon, dogged by sensor faults. Took it into the dealer and he put it on the fault diagnostic machine.. it lit up every fault light on the thing like a christmas tree.

 

Got it sorted then it started snapping fan belts every hundred miles, almost to the exact mile.. replaced the alternator, running perfectly true.. but still it snapped again.

 

Parked it up in the drive and bought a Y plate sierra ghia until id paid enough of the finance to hand it back.

 

2 months later i saw it at the side of the road with the bonnet up and an AA man clutching the fan belt

 

This is part of the reason I now drive shite. If a £500 car dies spectacularly you weigh it in and get £200 back.. If you spend ££££ on a car you are stuck with having to fork out for expensive repairs or take a massive loss.

[ashmicro]

I hate to say it, but my worst ever car was a (then) brand new Rover R8 214 SEi.

 

3 days old: PAS failure

5 days old: expansion tank exploded (when driving it home from having the PAS fixed)

6 days old: rear seatback collapsed (with no one sitting in the back)

3 weeks old: PAS failure

Approx 9 months old: exhaust rear silencer fell off

 

In 4 years of ownership, as well as the above: alternator FELL OFF, wiper motor failed, barmy instruments, central locking mechanical links broke in both doors, drivers electric window motor failed, both front wheel bearings went, heater blower failed. It ate brakes too. I got next to fuck all for it but I didn't care. I got a 190E instead.

[Volksy]

Chrysler Neon.

 

*see Shite you Hate thread.

[flat4alfa]

Rover 216 bubble, 1998

 

Fell to bits far worse than the Alfa that replaced it. And it was'nt even a good model Alfa.

[DSdriver]

Easy reply for me, I didn't even have to think about it, in the early seventies I had an H reg Brabham Viva (HB based on the SL90) which kept several RAC men in regular employ.

It looked a bit like this:

Not a bad looking car and quite easy to work on, which was just as well, I could remove the gearbox in 35 minutes by the roadside and I also developed a technique for changing cylinder head valve springs without having to take the head off.

[wuvvum]

Reliant Regal, probably. About the only "car" I've ever owned that I could find no redeeming features on. After that, probably the Volvo S40s - not that well built and so boring they made me want to cry. After that, probably the G reg Toyota Celica I bought from north London which did a big end on the M11 on the way home from collecting it.

[cort16]

Renault 21. The passenger door fell off, none of the electrics worked, the subframe was rotten but it was only 6 years old and it would start itself back up in bursts even while you where out the car with the keys in your hand.

[barefoot]

1963 VW Beetle - absolute pile of shit.

I will never have a 6V car again ever.

At night with the lights & wipers on, the indicators wouldn't flash.

& it was a complete miracle if it could ever manage to start itself.

 

Still it was pre scene tax, I only paid £35,

- still don't think I had my monies worth though.

[maxpower]

rover 216.... i never owned the car, it was a replacement car from insurers while my car was being fixed...

 

the day it arrived the inside of windscreen was misted up.... took the missus shopping in it, burning smell from air vents, brakes shot to bits, struggled to make ramp to car park... so i just stopped on ramp and left it there, called insurers and said where i had left the pile of shite and i wanted what my policy said "a like for like car" my car was 53 plate they sent 1995 rover

 

insurance said "we sent you a 53 plate fiesta" fucking garage bloke had gave me his shite and was using my replacement car

 

needless to say fiesta showed up and the insurance company never used that garage again..

 

sorry for the long winded rant (grump habit)

 

in a nutshell ROVER 216

[PaykanHunter]

1987 Nissan Pulsar. Too embarrassed to post a photo of it here.

[OwdChina]

1976ish Fiat Mirror Fury.

Nothing worked and everything fell off.

Left a trail of rusty shrapnel in the road on the way to the scrappies.

[Shep Shepherd]

Easily my 1994 Rover 214Si, which I bought in 2000 for £2995 to replace my written-off Fiesta. It was a good car until it began to succumb to Heritage about two years later. I ended up giving it away to a scrapman in 2004 after I abandoned it outside my house for six months when I bought The Volvo, which has turned out to be the best car I've ever owned.

 

The 1988 Volvo 240GL I briefly owned in 2002/2003 was pretty awful as well, but that was down to it being badly neglected by its previous owner. It was a GR9 stop-gap car, though, and got me to work when the Rover's engine hydro-locked after I drove it into floodwater on New Year's Eve 2002...

[scooters]

Define "Worst"

 

if you mean expensive to fix ten the Daimler Double Six wins hands down

 

if you mean bits kept falling off it then the Citroen CX is up there but mostly due to age

 

However, for all round crapness it HAS to have been the 1989 Chrysler Lebaron (K car convertible) that I sold to Torsten (sorry Vek) - nasty engine (4 pot not 6), nasty gearbox, uneconomical, horrible handling, dreadful brakes, electrics that were baffling - BUT - I also really liked it - well, this is Autoshite!

[Lord Sterling]

1994 K-reg Vauxhall Astra Cesaro. Had been slightly barried up. Smoothed tailgate, curbed 17" Halfords alloys on bald low profile tyres. It didnt help that neither myself nor my mate held an actual driving licence. Why the hell we bought it in the first place in anyones guess.

 

The clutch on the Astra was burnt out, and it needed bits here and there to get it sorted. It would have cost us close to £500 to get the car sorted and we just didnt have the money. After being looked over at another mates garage, it got taken to my mates house were it was eventually taken for scrap.

 

What an idiot I was then.

[Guest]

fiat bravo 1.4 s

 

horrible thing to drive ,double head light failure on the m1 at 4am whilst doing well over the speed limet , injection warning light on 90% of the time / until the bulb came out . hydrolic clutch seals bursting , coil pack packing up on 1 cylinder whilst miles away from home . central locking issues resulting in me bending the door top out to get in the fucking thing

 

all in less than a year .i wrote the spiteful thing off on the way to work one morning mind ,

got a nice whiplash claim from the citroen c2 driver that turned right across my path too

[Felly Magic]

MG Metro. Hateful car, my first car too. Wouldn't stay in 2nd, brakes were shoddy, and it was made almost entirely of rust!

[Bren]

Rover SD1 Vitesse.

 

I fulfilled a lifetime ambition when I got the car - but like the saying goes "don't meet your heroes" - a huge disappointment.

 

Paid £750 for it as it was indeed ropey - needed rear lamp panel, two rear arches and full respray. I had this done.

 

Car started rusting again, needed rear axle, fuel pump packed in at a pelican crossing (sd1's are a bastard to push), while in the garage starter motor packed in !

 

I later found out the 9.75:1 motor had been removed and replaced with a low compression unit from a range rover.

 

Car was as rotten as a pair - sold to someone who breaks SD1's (I kept the interior).

 

I hated it so much I later had two more!

 

I bought Pete's VDP EFi from him, this will be a damn site better when finished than the Vitesse.

[tonedepear]

V reg Vectra SXi. Nothing specific broke (although the manifold gasket was blowing as per standard). It was just spectacularly shit and had nothing to recommend it.

[Cavcraft]

I've owned so much effing rubbish it's almost impossible to pick the worse one.

 

In fact, I'm going to cop out and go for a car my mum owned but I used to drive too:

 

Fiat 126. What on God's earth is the attraction to these heaps of junk? Slow, noisy, cramped, uncomfortable, smelly, spectaculary unreliable and rust issues thatw ould shame a BL car. Honest to God I can't think of a single time I went out on the damned thing and it didn't conk out, break down or something fell off.

 

I'd also love to tell you about another bag of shite I didn't own but drove on a regular basis, but you're sure to be sick to death of my rants about Ivecos.

[Pete-M]

It is difficult to single out the worst car I've owned, but other than a rubber bumper MGB GT which was utterly shit and immensely unreliable, this was the one that jumped to mind first.

 

 

Rover 827 SLi Auto. Bought this for an extortionate £375 in 2001 with 62k on the clock if memory serves me right. Owned by a giffer until about a month before I bought it, serviced by the Rover main agents expensively and regularly.. The most abysmal piece of shit to ever darken my driveway, and that takes some doing. There didn't seem to be anything actually wrong with it other than being shit to start with. Gutless unless it was revved to 4k+ when it picked up reasonably well, didn't handle despite having the "sport pack" or whatever it was called, steering was just plain nasty and most of the interior appeared to have been thrown in. Not screwed in, just chucked in the general direction of the car and left there until it fell off. I got very bored indeed of hunting around scrapyards for replacement door handles for the bloody thing. Hateful. I'm sure Rover built it with a catapult. Unfortunately, I've driven a few of them and this one appears to have been a good one.

 

 

2600 SE Auto. This was six or seven years old when I bought it. Ex-company directors car, 60ish k on the clock. Doors rotted before my eyes, Boge struts had done their party trick of locking up near-solid and the gearbox started slipping in 1st and reverse. Then it started to lose oil pressure. Sold it to lads who fitted a new auto box to it and shortly afterwards it was scrapped.

[eddyramrod]

Another vote for the SD1 in 2600 form, this one a VDP, 12 years old at the time. Engine committed suicide after almost a month of use, much of which it spent with assorted garages. In doing so it had swallowed all the money I'd saved up to restore the 20-year-old Volvo you can see behind it; which never got restored and finally went to scrap.

 

My third Chevette. It was just a total bag of shit from day one. I was ill when I bought it, that's my excuse. One of those days when I simply shouldn't have gone out.

[whitevanman]

Gods thats a hard one

 

probably my 96 Mondy dizzler estate, had it 5 months, spent a fortune on it replacing the front wheel bearings more than one, timing belts etc, then the diff went always started though. That car put me off modern Fords forever.......

[Cavcraft]

Gods thats a hard one

 

probably my 96 Mondy dizzler estate, had it 5 months, spent a fortune on it replacing the front wheel bearings more than one, timing belts etc, then the diff went always started though. That car put me off modern Fords forever.......

 

[ProgRocker]

My first car - the 1979 Austin Morris Mini 1000. Required quite a lot of investment to keep it going and road legal. It was probably built inbetween wildcat strikes. As a comparison the 1990 Rover Mini was much better.

[Futuramic]

That's easy: 1995 Vauxhall Corsa. It had no power steering and a 1.2 8 valve engine. It wasn't in bad condition but a bit rusty. My parents got it for me as a first car.

 

I was really pleased until I tried to drive it for the first time. Moving off was alright. I came to a junction near my house and the lights flipped to green. I indicated right; pulled away and began steering. And then "OH MY GOD I'M GOING IN A STR8 LINE IM GOING IN THE ONCOMING TRAFFIC IM GOING TO DYE!!!!!!!!!!!!"

 

I have never since driven somethig that exhibited such chronic understeer at minimal speeds. The thing could not go round corners at all. It kept breaking. A 1.6 Nissan Bluebird was a vast improvement. The damn thing is, or recently was, still going too. I saw it parked.

[Futuramic]

That's easy: 1995 Vauxhall Corsa. It had no power steering and a 1.2 8 valve engine. It wasn't in bad condition but a bit rusty. My parents got it for me as a first car.

 

I was really pleased until I tried to drive it for the first time. Moving off was alright. I came to a junction near my house and the lights flipped to green. I indicated right; pulled away and began steering. And then "OH MY GOD I'M GOING IN A STR8 LINE IM GOING IN THE ONCOMING TRAFFIC IM GOING TO DYE!!!!!!!!!!!!"

 

I have never since driven something that exhibited such chronic understeer at minimal speeds. The thing could not go round corners at all. It kept breaking. A 1.6 Nissan Bluebird was a vast improvement. The damn thing is, or recently was, still going too. I saw it parked.

[maxpower]

^^^^^^^^there is an echo in here

[uk_senator]

Everything French (LNA, 104, 18, 20, Horizon, Samba, 306, 505 GTi family), plus an Allegro Equipe, & I was always underwhelmed with my E30`s.. which blew HG`s soon enough...

[whitevanman]

Gods thats a hard one

 

probably my 96 Mondy dizzler estate, had it 5 months, spent a fortune on it replacing the front wheel bearings more than one, timing belts etc, then the diff went always started though. That car put me off modern Fords forever.......

 

 

 

Doesn't mean I won't dabble again though.............

[catsinthewelder]

Being an idiot in need of cheap wheels I bid blind on an M reg Espace and won it for £205. The MOT had run out and 'it just needed a couple of things sorting to pass'. So having booked it for a test close to home, I handed over the cash and got the missis to drive it back (I'd borrowed the work van to get there).

 

I chucked it in for a test on the Monday and was just told to scrap it, the underside was a mass of yellow chalk from a previous fail and most of the front bushes were shot on top of the couple of bits the seller told me about.

 

Taught me a lesson on car buying