Tell me about the worst car you've ever owned

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

We’ve all been there at some point in life. Unless Daddy bought you a 'vette for your sweet 16, or you got a loan for a new car right out of the gate, you’ve likely driven a vehicle that was somewhere between “colorful” and “cursed.”

I’ve had a few. The worst, by far, was the Chickmobile. I named it that because it was a true babe magnet, I tells ya. And since I was in my 30s when I got it, I tells ya I was picking up college chicks like no one’s business.

It was a '79 station wagon, which was 15 years old when I got it in '94. It didn’t age well. It had around 200,000 miles on it. And it was one of those BIG station wagons. The kind that you’d use to haul the Brady kids to The Big Game. It may have once been silver, but by the time I got it it was grey. Dull grey. It was the color of old asphalt. Truly, it was a stealth vehicle.

Bucket seats? Nope. The front seat was a bench set, and was stuck in the forward-most position. It couldn’t be moved. I’m 6’1", and even though this vehicle was long enough to carry several surf boards end-to-end, I looked like Shaquille O’Neil driving a Cooper Mini (though far less cool). My knees were up around my ears.

It had a really cool feature. The passenger-side door would open fairly easily. And by that, I mean spontaneously. Usually at unsafe speeds, which for that car meant anything over 20mph.

I constantly had to carry a bottle of graphite with me just to start the thing. The key wouldn’t go into the ignition otherwise. Even after I had the starter replaced (which I needed 3 weeks into owning this marvel of precision American engineering.)

One night, as I was tooling down a highway in the deathbox, the muffler fell out. From that point on, starting the thing was real fun. If I could manage to get the key into the ignition and turn it, I had to gun the gas for about 15 minutes, until it got warmed up. If I let up so much as a bit on the gas, the engine would die. It might then be 5 minutes before I could start it again. The noise it made while I warmed it up would have silenced a gang of Hell’s Angels. The black smoke would have rivalled that of when the Emperor’s Sardukar shock troops invaded Arakis. Dune. Desert planet. It was no longer a stealth vehicle.

The final thing that broke down was the windshield wipers. The last time I drove it was during a major snowstorm. A chunk of ice had formed on the wiper blade, giving me a 1/2 inch curved strip of clarity through which to view my fellow motorists.

I sold the Chickmobile the next day. I got $75 for the battery, and I think the dealer took pity on me and took a $75 loss. I’m hoping he shot the car to put it out of its misery.

2

I was 16 when I got my first car. The car was 14 years old. The engine was in good shape, but the outside was poo brown. The headliner was held up by the passengers heads, until I pinned it up with safety pins, which seemed to randomly fall out when no one was in ther car, thus making sitting on one a fun way of finding them. The car had been left in the sun, so the poo brown was faded on the roof and the hood, leaving a real cool sunburst effect. The fuel gage didn’t work, so you quickly learn to calculate gas millage and learn when to fill er up. Although I had this car for 3 years, I only ran out of gas once. It seemed to flood with gas if you looked at it funny, thus a screwdriver became a regular passenger. Here hold this in the butterfly valve while I start it up, then pull it out real quick when it fires! That was always a good way to impress a date in highschool. While CD’s had already replaced the cassette, this car had a push button radio, kinda cool if you have only read about them.

Where there good things about this big piece of shit, yeah. I only paid $500 for it from some little old lady. It only had 30K miles on it and it had a small block, thus being way overpowered for its size. I was able to do donuts in a light rain, usually in the middle of the interection while others looked at me with the fear of death in their eyes.

It had a huge backseat, and although not all that important, at that time in your life, it can be important.

The trunk was huge too. You could easily put 2-3 people in there, which meant it was cheaper to go to the drive-in or easier to haul the corpses down to the river…

The overpowered engine would blow away all my friends BMW’s in a heart beat… Plus the car was still made of steel so anyone hitting me would feel the pain of metal…

Do I miss that car, nope, but it was fun while I had it…

3

I bought a Chevrolet Shitation for the hefty price of a case of beer. A guy I knew was sick of his parents riding him to get rid of it. It had been sitting so long that the tires had squared, but it started right up. For the first few miles the car went WOOOMP-WOOOOMP-WOOOOMP from the squared tires. The friend that drove me out there was driving behind me cracking up, because at each WOOOMP something new would fall off the car. I paint the exterior a nice surf green with a brush, and the interior white with surf green highlights. Painted white dashboards cause a lot of glare fyi.

It lasted eight months. When it finally died, I was pissed so I kicked it. My foot went through the door and got stuck. I sold it for fifty bucks. I was bummed because I had just filled the tank.

4

My GF told me about a car she had that she called Satan. She swears to this day that it was posessed.

Apparently it had no dashboard left. The steering column went straight down into the engine. The key bore an uncanny resemblance to a wrench.

And I guess to start it up was a good long procedure in which various arcane steps had to be performed in exactly the right order. I think sacrificing a chicken to Baal was one of the steps.

One day she did all the right steps to start it, but got nothing but black smoke out of it. So instead she got a ride to work with a coworker. When she got home, Satan was still in the driveway. While washing dishes several hours later, she looked out the window, and there was the car – it had decided to engulf itself in flames.

5

Mine was paradoxically the best and the worst I ever had.

During my freshman year of college(fall 1991), my dad felt sorry for me because I’d griped at Thanksgiving about how I couldn’t really take girls on dates because I had no vehicle.

So he finds a buddy of his who was trying to unload his father’s old Suburban. They strike a deal whereby we got the Suburban for $500.

It was a 1976 Chevy Silverado Suburban with a 350 V8, automatic transmission and air conditioning, as well as 176,000 miles on everything but the engine, which was rebuilt, and only had about 76,000 miles on it.

It was great- I could fit half a dozen people very comfortably, and if we really piled in, we could double that. It was cheap to fix, which was a good thing, because it needed fixing on a regular basis. It had a huge gas tank (31 gallons), which was good, because it got 13 mpg.

It was maroon and white colored, but the driver’s door was brown & beige, and the body was in various states of rusted-out, with some areas covered up by bondo and paint, and some not.

After a couple of years, it leaked like a sieve when it rained. Luckily, there were enough rust-holes near the door frames, that any water that leaked in, ran back out quickly.

The A/C worked fine, but about halfway through my college career, refrigerant-12 became very hard to come by, so I went without A/C for the second half of college.

I had to fix or replace the following during my 5 years owning it:
[ul]
[li]U-joints (twice)[/li][li]water pump[/li][li]alternator[/li][li]transmission (2 times)[/li][li]brakes (once)[/li][li]ignition switch[/li][li]holes in roof[/li][li]radiator[/li][li]a/c compressor[/li][li]carburetor[/li][li]brake master cylinder[/li][li]door hinge bushings[/li][/ul]

6

I had a Renault 6… no, wait… Renault 6, given to me by my dad when I passed my test. It was in a terrible state; the exhaust had snapped in several places and I had repaired it with baked bean cans and jubilee clips; the wheel bearings were shot, so it made a sort of loud roaring buzz at any speed over 20mph; the rear shocks were completely non-functional (I think this might have been my fault, owing to driving way too fast over a humpback bridge), so any small bump in the road would cause the car to bounce up and down rhythmically on the springs for a long time afterward; the locks fell out of both rear doors, so they were held shut with bungee cords secured between the door handles and the seat belt posts (if I cornered a little too fast, the rear door would fly open against the bungee, then slam shut again). I think there were other things badly amiss too, but that’s all I can remember for now.
It was just a really weird car to drive; the gear lever was a rod that stuck out of the dashboard like the pull rod on a pinball machine; the hand brake was similar - a rod with a right-angled handle you would pull and twist to lock.

7

My £30 dreamboat. A [Morris Marina](he Marina - possibly the lowest-ever point in the British car industry) (even in that URL it’s called “possibly the lowest-ever point in the British car industry” and that’s saying a lot). I mentioned this a few days ago. There were holes in the holes, and rust held the rust on. What I didn’t mention in the previous thread was the interior smelled of moldy carpet and cigarettetes: the floor was the ashtray. The back seat wasn’t fixed to anything, and on one journey to the south coast, the gate for the gearstick came dislodged, so changing gear was a guessing game, like dipping a stick into a bowl of porridge. During the same journey the water pump siezed. The windows didn’t work. And it used a liter of oil per day.

After a year of owning it, I sold it for a 250% profit, and it blew up the week later.

8

Sorry, even in this URL it’s called a piece of shit (in so many words).

9

Thank you jjimm. You just cleared up a Thursday Next reference for me that I didn’t even know I was missing.

10

I bought my worst car brand new. I had it less than two years.
It was a 1984 Camaro. During the first 5 months I had it, it refused to start 12 times. It was towed to the dealership all 12 times, and started on the first try there, every time.
The cruise control would start or stop, randomly, without my participation.
The rear end fell off in the middle of the street one week after the speedometer turned over 12,000.
The speedometer blew up. Yes, it did. BOOM! black, no needles left, buckled dash.
The last straw was not it’s doing. An unoccupied car ran into it while I was in the car.
The car was possessed. It’s the only logical answer.

11

Mine was a 92 Ford Tempo I got it used with 130,000 miles on it, it nickel and dimed me for 2 years. Then the fun started, the exhaust manifold cracked in january took me a day and a half to replace it, cost $200 and I froze my butt off in the wet and cold. A month later the front motor mount went south it was cheap but the stiches in my finger made up for it. Early that summer a lifter went flat, I didn’t have time to so I just installed new lifters and left the old cam. I’m glad I didn’t because in september the transmission stopped shifting and made strange noises whenever I put it in gear.

12

I never had a really terrible car, but the 1980 Renault Le Car was probably the worst. I liked a lot about it – good mileage, surprisingly large amount of room given how small it was – but there were several issues:

  1. The controls. The turn signal and dimmer switch were too similar – they came out of the left side of the steering column. If you held your hand straight, you’d hit the dimmer switch; if you curved your fingers, you’d hit the turn signal. Lots of times, I’d try to make a left turn at night and changed the lights from headlights to parking lights.

  2. The exhaust piping. It would burn out after about a year, and cost a fortune to replace. You couldn’t patch it, either.

  3. The rear side windows. They hinged outward and were attached to their hinges by metal plates about 1" x 1/2" that were glued to the glass. The glue would never hold; the weight, rain, ice, and pressure would cause it to loosen and the would hinge pop away from the glass. You either had to replace the windows, reglue (which would hold about 35 minutes), take it to a glass shop (which would hold about a week), or use duct tape to keep the windows from falling out.

13

86 Ford Ranger 4x2. Where do I begin?
It had a newer engine in it, thereby replacing the 4 cyl with a 6. Didn’t notice the rust on the back underside. Apparently, it was used to tow a large boat. More on that in a minute.

Impervious to any weather, except rain. Oh, and since it was overpowered from the 6 cyl, I also learned how to steer out of a skid. Rain caused the thing to stop running, requiring a tow. Thankfully AAA+ has 75 miles it will tow you. Know what? It worked. I hit 74.6 in my greatest moment EVER!

Broken glass on the inside from the new rear window. New paintjob before I bought it. There was NO insulation in the cab whatsoever. No AC, either. Yes, it got obscenely hot on summer days.

2 cynderblocks in the back scraped up the paint to bad the bed was rusted in a year.

Replaced the driveshaft yoke, courtesy of Mr. Driveshaft in Farmingdale. Love those guys, quite possibly the best weld shop around.

Had a mechanic tell me he was surprised the wires hadn’t melted, since there was nothing to wrap or guard them, and they were laying on the engine itself. Not just the plug wires, mind you, EVERY WIRE was there. The engine was slapped in about 2 weeks before I bought it, apparently.

The gear shift knob came off in my hand at the same time I was trying to put the light knob back on the switch. And then the speedometer stopped working. I traded it in without it working and the Saturn dealer STILL took it!

The blue smoke. Ah, what can I say about the blue smoke? How about when the guys at the DMV laughed at me in unison when I pulled up. Or, when the cops pulled me over and told me to wait until they left before starting back up. Or how about when I was wondering who was using an oil furnace, then I realized it was me. I’m pretty sure that’s also why the last time I got the oil changed, they said it had NO oil in it. They opened the pan, nothing came out. They used the sucker, not even sludge showed up. I was convinced it ran on hate. Every day I told it I hated it, it would start right up.

Oh, and my own personal favorite, when I hooked up driving lights to it, the tail lights stopped working. So, I ran new leads from the headlights. The lighter stopped working.

14

'88 ford crapscort pony (lowercasing on purpose, this “vehicle” doesn’t deserve the respect of capitalization)

lets see, purchased this “car” used with 10,000 miles on the odometer, basically a new broken in car

a week after purchasing it, the main computer died, specifically, the idle control section, i could drive the top speed in each gear without touching the gas pedal, push in the clutch and the engine would bounce off the rev-limiter

at 20,000 miles, the left-front tie-rod was on the verge of failure, all because ford decided to save .35¢ and use a brass bushing as opposed to a wear-resistant ball bearing
at 25,000 miles, right front tie-rod on the verge of failure
30,000 miles, drivers side window shattered spontaneously when i was inside a service station paying for gas, shattered AGAIN 9 days later after the window was replaced, this time it shattered while i was driving…
40,000 new brake pads and rotors, as the stock rotors were warped, even though the pads were within spec
50,000 gas tank develops a slow leak, cannot keep more than half a tank of gas in it
55,000, ignition system fails, need new plugs, wires, rotor and distributor cap
60,000 miles, throttle-body fuel injector burns out (the wiring harness shorted out)

on top of all of this, the crapbox had an appetite for tires, even when properly rotated and balanced, i couldn’t get more than 20,000 miles off a set of 60,000 mile tires, and the 85 HP of 1.9L four-cylinder fury barely had enough power to get out of it’s own way, and that was with a FOUR speed manual transmission

at 65,000 miles i had had enough and traded out of the piece of dren, getting a whopping $1200 for it, and got an '02 Dodge Shadow that gave me 120,000 trouble free miles and never left me stranded

i’ll never trust another ford product as long as i live

15

the first car i bought was the worst I’d owned, an '84 Merc Capri. It had that glass-bubble hatchback? Remember? When I bought it it only had 35K miles or so. And I owned it for 8 years. The first time I drove it, at the dealer where I bought it, I knew I wasn’t going to like it. Underpowered, noisy, no a/c. But my dad was there and he was loaning me the money and it just seemed like an easy thing to do. It eventually burned a lot of oil, sold it to my boss for $400 and a vcr. He used it as a delivery driver then sold it to a guy to use as a race car.

Good riddance.

16

Dude, you just filled my office with laughing engineers.

Mine is pretty tame; a Chevy Corsica that I dubbed “Cheaper Than A Car Payment” because that was the then-wife’s justification for keeping the piece of crap. Four alternators, three water pumps, two rebuilt engines, and a partridge in a pear tree later, we gave it back to her parents, and good riddence. I will never, never, never own a GM product again.

Stranger

17

For me it was my first car, a '71 Ford Torino. My friends called it “The Butt”, as in “butt-ugly”. It was a greenish color, one which is not found in nature. The left rear was fairly well dented in from some accident before I owned it.

I bought it for $550.00, and to this day, I still use that as a benchmark for purchases (“Oh, that new cell phone costs six hundred bucks? What kinda mpg you get out of it?”).

It ran… sporadically. Quite often, usually after one day of driving, the battery would be dead. It took about two hundred buck’s worth of mechanic work to finally get deep enough into the engine and reattach one little wire before THAT was fixed.

No radio. No AC (this in Houston). When it did run, it only got about 8 mpg. The one thing that was good about it was that I was invincible in traffic- people saw me driving towards them and could easily see that I didn’t care at all if it were to be totalled… so they’d get out of my way.

I think I owned it for about six months, and maybe put a hundred miles on it.

18

1975 Honda Civic. I borrowed $750 off my Dad to buy it when I first went to Uni in 1992. It was poo-brown, but despite that it was really cute - tiny little 3-door hatch that was semi-automatic, i.e. no clutch but you needed to start off in low gear and then shift up to Drive once you got past about 40kph.

I have no idea what the mileage was when I got it, but it survived for 4 years. During that time, the head gasket needed replacing, after which the damn thing smoked worse than a 3-pack-a-day addict! The radiator hoses busted with incredible regularity, the low-beam on the headlights didn’t work (but the high-beam was so pathetic, it didn’t really matter), the CV joints crapped out …

Finally (the piece the resistance) the Dashing Fart turned into a total fair-weather friend - if it was raining, which it did regularly where I lived, you needed to keep revving the engine so it didn’t die. For example, slowing down at traffic lights in the rain, once my speed dropped below about 30kph, I had to shift into neutral, keep braking with my left foot while simultaneously feathering the accelerator with my right foot! If you didn’t get the timing right, the sweet brown baby would quickly die, leaving you stranded in the rain! Happened to me once driving home from a party at about 3 am - some fool (obviously more alcohol-impaired than me) tried to go the wrong way around the roundabout, realised his error and cut back in front of me, forcing me to brake suddenly. The Dashing Fart instantly gave up the ghost, leaving me stranded in the tropical downpour at least 10 miles walk from the nearest telephone (this was before I had my first mobile/cell phone). GRRRRR!

I sold the little brown piece of shit shortly after her 21st birthday for $100 for scrap!

19

I had a Lada Riva for about 4 weeks.

That says it all

20

Mercedes 280s. I will NEVER buy a Mercedes again. And it takes a lot to get me to even ride in one of those lousy things.