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Whats the worst car ever?


dem00n

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The big 3? bailouts? nah never happens.....maybe Ford can get back some of the money they funneled into the Nazi concentration camps..........oh ya..I went there.

 

I agree....

 

Coca Cola is guilty too (Fanta Orange!), but that's another rant of mine concerning American corporations!

 

Okay, we better shut up now!

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I agree....

 

Coca Cola is guilty too (Fanta Orange!), but that's another rant of mine concerning American corporations!

 

Okay, we better shut up now!

Ya, we will get ourselves in trouble. [glare]

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It would be a tie between a old VW Karmen Ghia and a 1975 Merc. Capri.

The VW was, well, a VW...[thumbdn] ...The Capri was so messed up...the windows would not roll up, which was good because it the fumes would have killed you, if you took the key out you couldn't get it back in, the clutch slipped, the slave cylinder leaked, so you could not hold the clutch down at a stop light, the shift forks were so worn out every gear felt like a open pit mine. The engine mounts were gone and the motor rocked around under the hood like a dying orca. The front end fluttered like a butterfly in a tornado, the seats were torn up, the defroster would fog the windshield (screen for you Brits), and the heater was stuck on high. Other then that it was a swell little car. Smoked like a old four stacker..

This was given to me by a friend? Yep. I didn't want to hurt his feelings. But one night it was stolen. I am not kidding you, the police called me at 7:30 am and told me it had been abandoned in a intersection and nobody could get it started! The thiefs didn't even want it!

So I donated it to charity...they fought it but in the end I convinced them they could sell the hub caps, so they took it.

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It would be a tie between a old VW Karmen Ghia and a 1975 Merc. Capri.

The VW was, well, a VW...[thumbdn] ...The Capri was so messed up...the windows would not roll up, which was good because it the fumes would have killed you, if you took the key out you couldn't get it back in, the clutch slipped, the slave cylinder leaked, so you could not hold the clutch down at a stop light, the shift forks were so worn out every gear felt like a open pit mine. The engine mounts were gone and the motor rocked around under the hood like a dying orca. The front end fluttered like a butterfly in a tornado, the seats were torn up, the defroster would fog the windshield (screen for you Brits), and the heater was stuck on high. Other then that it was a swell little car. Smoked likt a old four stacker..

This was given to me by a friend? Yep. I didn't want to hurt his feelings. But one night it was stolen. I am not kidding you, the police called me at 7:30 am and told me it had been abandoned in a intersection and nobody could get it started! The thiefs didn't even want it!

So I donated it to charity...they fought it but in the end I convinced them they could sell the hub caps, so they took it.

That's the difference between "grand theft auto" and "theft: misdemeanor"

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I owned a Pinto Wagon. It was unstoppable. I took it off road... hill climbing... drove through creeks, floods. Eventually, it became a Fix Or Repair Daily car and had to go.

 

 

I can't believe no one has mentioned the GM version of the Granada.... and my personal worst ever.... the Chrysler K car.

 

 

Oh Man, those K-cars came from the factory pre-rusted.

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Opel Manta story:

 

Went "4 wheeling" up on a mountain with some freinds, and got ran off the road. Everything looked good after, but soon the radiator started to leak. So, turned around and headed for home, or as close as we could get.

 

Made it out of the woods onto the highway, and the engine seized from the heat. We were almost to the top of the hill, so we decided to push it to the top and at least coast down to civilization. I bump started it on the way down, and drove it through town by keeping my foot on the accelerator. We filled the intersections with so much smoke you couldn't see the traffic lights. It was night. We were laughing pretty hard.

 

After a week or so in the driveway, I decided to replace the radiator and the water pump and see if it would drive (it would start but couldn't run it because the fan was flopping around). I did that, filled it with water, filled it with oil (there was no oil left....I made smoke out of it). Car ran GREAT. Idled good, had good power. Only problem was, I couldn't get it to stop smoking.

 

I pulled the head, and there was just 2 little peices of gasket left on each end. Completely fried away. The head had 2 big cracks in it, and the valves were not flat any more, but more like balls of carbon and soot.

 

German made Opels are GREAT cars.

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As a die hard car buff,I'd like to mention a few things about some of the cars that were brought up.First regarding the Vega the earliest ones were plagued with engine problems as they had an alumimum block with iron piston sleeves and needless to say that it didn't take too long for these metals cooling and heating at different rates before the engines warped.After GM addressed this the cars were just as good as any average domestic car especially the Cosworth Vega which has become a very pricey collectable because of it's impressive performance and it's still being raced at antique and classic car racing events.

The Citroen has been hailed as one of the cleanest and most advanced car designs of the 20th Century by car industry designer organizations time and time again and is in fact the only car design that has made it to be displayed at both the Metropoliton Museum Of Modern Art and The Smithsonian Institute.

The Edsel wasn't nearly as plagued with problems and this is merely a popular misconception.The Edsel was quite literally years ahead of its time and that along with the "horse collar" grille was a bit too much automotive advancement for most to take at one time.

A lot of automotive journalists have deemed the AMC Pacer or "fishbowl on wheels" as it became to be known,as the ugliest car ever made.

What was said about the Alfa Romeos was true in the 60s,70s and 80s but after that they pulled up their socks and finally realized that their horrendous reputation was killing them and in the 90s made a huge concientious effort to bring their reliability up to industry standards.The same held true for it's parent brand the FIAT or (Fix It Again Tony) as the acronym became known as.These days Alfas and Fiats are much less prone to breakdown.It's a pity that they were so "temperamental" because even the regular run of the mill Italian family sedans could run rings around the ponderous North American behemoths in the day.Now that Fiat has also taken Chrysler they are even more commited to family reliability.

 

BTW,Regarding the Yugo:One of the mechanics in a local garage took an unblemished Yugo body and grafted it onto a modified Bronco or Blazer chassis and made a pretty funky looking compact 4X4. Speaking of 4X4s,over the years I've owned many but 2 of them were just lemons in the truest sense of the word.First was a '76 Jeep Cherokee 2 dr with Quadra-Trac and the very thirsty 360 4bbl engine.This was an incredible rig (when it was running) but if a dog took a leak on a tire the plug wires would get wet and it would refuse to start.Even with a change of all wires,the ignition coil and the distributor cap she still got wet then the real trouble started with the running gear giving out and finally repairs were costing me more than payments.When I bought it there were only 25,000 careful miles on it and there were less than 40,000 on it when I decided to cut my losses and run.My next lemon really surprised me because it was a Toyota 4Runner that had belonged to a doctor I knew of and only had about 38,000 pampered miles on it that he only put on it while on call in the winter.As did the Jeep,the 4 Runner started costing more than payments in repairs.Strangely enough I had a little '91 Suzuki Samurai for 11 years with no problems at all plus it could go anywhere and got incredible gas mileage.Finally after 250,000 kms I had to let her go as she had rusted badly but still ran like clockwork.

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Ive had so many car's I had to jump in on this the worst car Ive ever owned was a Chrysler Lebaron Convertible. Especially the first year it came out, they were really and amazing car looked great got a ton of compliments on it every time we drove it but mechanically it was horrible.. We should have known when it broke down the first time during the first 3 miles. Seems that had left metal shavings from mounting the gas tank and clogged the fuel line. That was only the first of many tower that car had. It was made so poorly the things would actually fall off of it whenever you tried to do anything We actually had a cardboard box in the back area behind the seat to hold all he parts that actually fell off of the car. Things like Logo's and trim as well as handle and door locks would fall off on a regular basis. It had power adjusted seats that were set to the drivers key fob so when I unlocked the door it would start adjusting the seats and mirrors etc to my setting rather than my 5'2" wife but as the seats adjusted you would hear pings and pops and there would usually be a good five or six small pieces on the floor mats after the automatic adjustment adjustment. we would just pick them up and throw them I'm the box. It also had power windows and sadly being a convertible it had no window frames so it was a friction plate that held the windows in place and if you hit a speedup or any kind of pothole at least one of the windows would fall into the door at such sped they would usually sharer the glass. It took about 16 hours to replace a window because it was such a tight fit all the seat had to be removed. If you ever honked the horn it would stay on until you could turn the car off completely and reset the alarm system because it somehow it thought honking the horn meant you wanted to set off the alarm in the panic mode.

 

In the first year we replaced five McPherson style struts and two transmisssions as well as 9 tuneup's and we had 9 oil changes because something was wearing so badly in the engine that the oil would be full of metal shavings. We also had the fire department respond twice because the turbo charger on the car go so hot that when you parked the black smoke would pour out from under the hood about three minutes after you left the car, and concerned people would call the fire department. We were suing them under a lemon law that Arizona had just enacted and I actually was late to the hearing because while heading to the courthouse in downtown phoenix the front bumper grill and a whole air dam cowling fell off and damaged all four tire. I actually arrived at the hearing in a tow truck which kind of helped the case be decided very quickly. Chrysler had to buy the car back for full value plus write us a pretty good sized check for all the pain and nuisance of having a car that was in the shop more than 30% of it's first year caused. They had courage though in court they offered to replace it with a new one at a huge discount saying that had resolved many of the issues. When I finally quit laughing. they were pretty offended. They did refund the full purchase price the day as per the courts requirement as for the Money they were supposed to pay us for causing us so many issues and lost wages form having to call in sick when the car broke down etc. They appealed that, twice even as they said they didn't want to establish a precedence of that type of payment. Poor sods got the same judge on the final appeal turndown and a penally have and she applied maximum penalties as well as finally adding fee's for all the time required to fight it in court so they ended up paying me plus all court costs and all my attorney fee's and the check they finally wrote me was almost exactly the original cost of the luxury car i had purchased. Even then they were trying to get me to accept a car rather than cash but I wouldn't do it since by then I was so mad I didn't care what happened but I wasn't settling. so that's the worst car I ever had.

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Not a bad car story but the most dangerous car i ever drove was a Chevy Nova Police package Pursuit Intercepter that Chevrolet made in late 1978 and 79 made especially for police departments that needed a very high speed police car for high speed pursuits. The city I worked for was basically the front gate for a very large Air Force base that served as a training center for Air Force fighter pilots so most of these young pilots drove very hopped up corvette's, Trans-AM's and the high end Chevy Camaro's mostly Z-28's and special packages as well as Porsche's, Ferrari's and a slew of other fast cars and even faster motorcycle's as well as a selection of true muscle cars from the early years of American heavy metal performance cars. At the time the young pilots as general young hot dogs knew they could outrun anything on the road for a police agency and they typically did just that. causing sadly a lot of fatal accidents with there drag racing and fast driving. So the laws changed and we got three of the fastest most high performance Police cars Chevrolet could make they looked like a typical Nova with scooped hoods full cages, no back seat and 12 quart oilcans under the engines. Marked and painted cars but they were only partially marked no top lights just paint, grill lights and lights on the rear deck because at really high speeds the light bars tended to come loose. They tested all the young crazy cops at the GM proving grounds and the best drivers or just the craziest cops were assigned the pursuit detail and given these cars. At that time the cars were not fuel injected so they had huge dual carbs under the hood and they got a little less than four miles to the gallon when pushed so even with larger tanks the main reason to lose pursuits then was running out of gas. It was a blast but the cars were all engine and overall weigh to light in weight so they basically had almost no breaks so at speed you could not stop one, no matter what unless you had miles in front of you. And if you hit the breaks hard in an emergency the ceramic breaks literally would shatter leaving you nothing until you finally hit something. I totaled all three in a 16 month period but we caught 26 felony pursuit all at speeds in excess of 130 MPH which was all the law cared about at that speed it's aggravated and a felony pursuit across the board.

 

The cars were only made for a year or two and they were replaced with Malibu's which were heavy enough to control and actually be able to stop. By 1982 we were no longer running pursuits like that it was just too dangerous and we went to helicopters and radio's and just letting them run and picked them up later but for a few years it was a pretty exciting way to make a paycheck.

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From my own personal experience most French cars are terrible, my brother for example owned a Peugeot 407 from new and every week it had a different, problem. After 18 months he gave it back to the dealer.

 

Rovers/Range Rovers as well have a rep for terrible reliability.

 

I also know a lot of people slate Italian cars, I've however have had an Alfa Romeo 156 2.5 V6 since 2006 (was 3 years old when I got it) and practially no issues.

 

Drives a like dream too, this car had the last proper italian V6 powerplant not the GM derived one the current 159 has.

 

http://racingpics.awardspace.com/alfa156/Soto/index.html

 

Its the only car i've had where you dont need a stereo as the engine note is just to die for !

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Ive had so many car's I had to jump in on this the worst car Ive ever owned was a Chrysler Lebaron Convertible.

WOW! [scared] that story is similar to my buddies yugo and my bros.renault! [cursing] chrysler has sold me 1 too many vehicles also!they made me realise just how good my chevys are!~! =D>

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Worst car ever are the cars I cannot afford :(

and other than those: Fiat Panda and SMART...you don't want to be seen in those...but then there is also VOLGA and LADA, Citroen...bah...there are so many bad cars...lol topic.

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... No one gets by with a friggin' Prius in SW Montana!

...

 

You need a longer extension cord.

 

Quite honestly, I had a co-worker who has a Prius. Bragged about it being a 'Hybrid'.

 

She and I take roughly the same 22 mile trek to work. 20 miles of open road @ 55 mph (she drives 70), then 2 miles of in-town driving.

 

The electric motor kicks in only below 40 mph. For those who haven't done the math, 20 miles on gasoline motor, 2 miles on electricity. After the newness wore off (a couple months later) I asked what kind of mileage she got. "36 MPG," she bragged.

 

I got the same MPG with my Saturn SL-1 without the, then, $7000 premium in purchase price.

 

After about 5 years she 'had' to trade it as she had heard, quite correctly I might add, that the battery pack had to be replaced after about 7 years, at about another $7000.

 

The Prius, while it is a nice car, it is not cost effective. My guess is that, minus the heavy electric motors and heavy battery pack, the car might easily attain 45 - 50 mpg.

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Opel Manta story:

 

Went "4 wheeling" up on a mountain with some freinds, and got ran off the road. Everything looked good after, but soon the radiator started to leak. So, turned around and headed for home, or as close as we could get.

 

Made it out of the woods onto the highway, and the engine seized from the heat. We were almost to the top of the hill, so we decided to push it to the top and at least coast down to civilization. I bump started it on the way down, and drove it through town by keeping my foot on the accelerator. We filled the intersections with so much smoke you couldn't see the traffic lights. It was night. We were laughing pretty hard.

 

After a week or so in the driveway, I decided to replace the radiator and the water pump and see if it would drive (it would start but couldn't run it because the fan was flopping around). I did that, filled it with water, filled it with oil (there was no oil left....I made smoke out of it). Car ran GREAT. Idled good, had good power. Only problem was, I couldn't get it to stop smoking.

 

I pulled the head, and there was just 2 little peices of gasket left on each end. Completely fried away. The head had 2 big cracks in it, and the valves were not flat any more, but more like balls of carbon and soot.

 

German made Opels are GREAT cars.

 

 

 

At first I thought you were berating the Opel. But in the end it makes you proud that a operator abused and neglected engine could still run. I opened up an old Briggs and Stratton lawn mower engine like that once. It was so abused, galled rod and crank journals, scored cylinder walls and a bent valve. But the s.o.b. still ran. Smoked like the dickens, but started on the first pull. Kept the mosquitoes at bay too.

 

I finally had to retire the mower. Nope, "Old Smokey Stover" still ran, but the deck was rotting out from under it. That's why I call them Briggs and Scrap Iron. They still run even after the equipment they are bolted to has turned to scrap iron.

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You need a longer extension cord.

 

Quite honestly, I had a co-worker who has a Prius. Bragged about it being a 'Hybrid'.

 

She and I take roughly the same 22 mile trek to work. 20 miles of open road @ 55 mph (she drives 70), then 2 miles of in-town driving.

 

The electric motor kicks in only below 40 mph. For those who haven't done the math, 20 miles on gasoline motor, 2 miles on electricity. After the newness wore off (a couple months later) I asked what kind of mileage she got. "36 MPG," she bragged.

 

I got the same MPG with my Saturn SL-1 without the, then, $7000 premium in purchase price.

 

After about 5 years she 'had' to trade it as she had heard, quite correctly I might add, that the battery pack had to be replaced after about 7 years, at about another $7000.

 

The Prius, while it is a nice car, it is not cost effective. My guess is that, minus the heavy electric motors and heavy battery pack, the car might easily attain 45 - 50 mpg.

 

Exactly! If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

 

And if I took a Prius up in the mountains that I so love, I'd end up scared, bewildered, and pissed off all at the same time. And then when I come to my senses and realize there's no cell service, I EXPLODE!!!!!

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My worst car was a 3rd gen Mazda Rx7 twin turbo. She absolutely screamed and I got her up to 160 at the local airport before I chickened out. Very neat rotary engines, unfortunately required tons of maintenance and was in the shop about a 3rd of the time. The engines only get about 80k miles before they need to be taken apart to replace the apex seals. Only pic I have left of her is a small avatar photo from the Lotus dealership I had her shipped from. Sold it to a kid in Topeka, hope it didn't ruin him financially.

y1pjosoptri5ppzamaliwtu.jpg

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