Like Axel Foley in Beverly hills cop, he drives some beat-up heap, which his old girlfriend remembers he had like fifteen years ago. Or the Dude’s car in The big lebowski, which gets more and more beat up until the final scene, when the dude utters the immortal They finally did it. They killed my fucking car! See also Ace Ventura’s car, the sheriff’s car in Smokey and the Bandit… All driven to destruction. I bring this up, because my Fiat has finally gotten to the stage where it simply isnt economically viable to do all the repairs needed, so soon I’ll be making a dude-style outburst!
I had a 1974 Beetle. It belonged to a neighbor who drove it to work at a local paper manufacturing plant. The plant had a car wash for the employees because of the toxic chemicals spewed out by the plant. He never washed the car!
It had serious rust on every body panel and on in the inside as well. After repairing the brakes and replacing the carbuerator, it ran for about a year. During that time the window crank mechanisms in both doors rusted through. I had to hold the windows by wedging a small block of wood in between the glass and the door frame. The handle on the trunk came off in my hand.
The speedometer cable rusted loose from the front wheel. There was a hole in the rear floorboard that ran from under the front seat to the back of the back seat. I had to sit the battery on a board that was braced across the gaping hole. Part of the front passeneger’s seat support rusted out and the seat leaned forward.
After a year, I finally sold it.
I miss that car.
An old girlfriend of mine had a Volkswagen station wagon of some kind. She got it free from her older sister. Her sister had rear-ended someone at some point in the past and never got it fixed. It was clearly pretty beat-up already at the time of the accident. Since the engine was in the back, the accident caused the hood to arc up like an inverted V. Her boyfriend decided it would be a good idea to jump up and down on the hood so that she could see out the front windshield, at which point the hood then looked like a large boulder had fallen on the car.
It was truly the most embarrassing car I have ever ridden in.
Earlier this year, my SO’s brother gave us a rusty 1977 Cutlass Supreme sedan. Although half of one of the doors was bondo and window screen, we didn’t really know how rusty it was until we took it to our mechanics. They wouldn’t even touch it! Pretty much from the chassis down was covered in rust, which probably was the only thing holding it all together. The brakes went out when we tried to get it out of the mechanics’ lot so we had a junkyard pick it up from there. My SO then went off on her brother for giving us a piece of crap that could have killed us!
I’m still driving my '86 Jeep Cherokee, which has two busted-up front fenders, a hatch without inside trim, a battery that we secured with wire after the platform was eaten away, a leaky power steering pump, various dings and dents, and peeling paint. Every time I fill the tank, I double its value, so I always stop to consider whether I think it’ll last another couple hundred miles whenever I put gas in.
I drove it today. Someday we will break down (perhaps literally) and replace the old heap.
My first car was a 1977 Toyota Corolla hatchback which my mom bought new, the year before I was born, and handed down to me to learn how to drive on. I took that car back and forth to high school every day during my junior and senior years, in 1995 and '96. By that point, over 15 years later, it still ran reasonably well, but I occasionally had to go under the hood to “hotwire” it when it wouldn’t start. It flooded whenever it rained, to the point where I carried a bucket in the trunk for bailing purposes, and the body was rusting so badly it was held together with duct tape and band stickers. My friends called that car the “Blue Hemorrhoid” (because it was blue). Eventually I went to college, where I didn’t need a car, and it became my brother’s car to learn to drive on. In the end, my parents donated it to a family friend, who put the still-strong engine into an airboat he was building.
I should probably chuck in my own story; I drive a 97 Fiat Punto which in the time I’ve had it, I’ve had to replace thae clutch, Slave cylinder, all shocks and suspension, radiator, the entire brake discs and housings, as well as seal up serious reoccuring oil leaks. I also had to replace the back indicators due to reversing into a bus, and have the car put on a pulling-jack to rectify chassis damage done when i smashed into a big dog coming home one foggy night after Blade: Trinity. Man, that was a shit night. Its current crop of (unfinished) repairs include a water pump which causes the car to overheat at fifty miles or more in fast conditions, or five miles or more in slow conditions (I suppose driving fast into a headwind will cool the engine, right?), a front indicator clipped on an '05 toyota avensis, at speed, a back door which sticks so bad you have to put your foot on the car to wrench it open, rust which has eaten right through the boot, front wheels running on only three wheet studs, dangerously, and a smell… a very bad smell. It is a deathheap, and when i get a few bob I’ll scrap it, but for now I love to meet people I have’nt seen in ages, and answer their question " What are you driving instead of that money-pit heap of shit Punto you used to have?" …“The same, money-pit heap of shit Punto I used to have!” 
I’ve never owned a car made in the same decade I was driving it in.
I owned a pickup in college that was decribed as ‘The least road-worthy vehicle in the state’. The rear cab mounts had rusted thorugh, so the cab of the truck leaned backward at a rakish angle. The body was around 60% rust , with the larger rust holes covered with bumper stickers. None of the gauges on the dashboard worked.
What was worse was that you didn’t need key to start it, just turning the ignition with a screwdriver or quarter or whatever you had that was reasonably flat would fire it up, so my friends would just borrow it whenever they felt like it. It was frustrating to get up in the morning and find my truck gone, again, and then get passed by it while walking to class.
Robert? That you?
My first car was a big '79 Chevy wagon that I had bought from the original owners. All their kids had learned to drive that behemoth and the odometer had rolled over at least once. It did have a rebuilt engine so that was good. There was a huge dent in the rear door on the driver’s side and it wouldn’t open due to a faulty mechanism. The steering was loose and it always reeked of gas. We had to practically flood the engine to get it to start on cold days, something we didn’t find out until we had driven half-way to my sister’s place in Illinois. The trip back pretty much killed the transmission and I had decided not to put any more money in it. Never again will I pay for repairs that cost more than the vehicle’s worth.
One of my brothers drove a Porsche 924 until he needed back surgery and couldn’t get that low anymore. That little car lost reverse at one point and it took him a long time to get it fixed.
My other brother took over a '71 Pinto from one of my sisters, the car originally belonged to Dad and I was with him when he bought it at the dealer. It would have been mine but my brother was able to get to it first. The car had been struck by a snowplow when I was a kid, the only damage was that the driver’s side fender and headlight was torn off. For a Pinto, that car was indestructible! My sister drove it all through med school and it was at least 12 years old when my brother got it. Still in good shape, with one fender a lighter shade yellow than the rest, but by then it was burning oil.
When I was a kid, another sister had a VW Beetle with a broken trunk latch. The lid had to be tied down to keep it closed, and untied whenever it needed gas. At least one poor attendant nearly got conked on the head trying to fill it up! I think that’s the same Bug that ended its life being driven home while on fire.
One of our friends owned a Maverick that had the same problem.
Nope, I’m not Robert. Now that I think of it, I am in the same boat as you. I’ve never owned a vehicle made in the same decade I drove it in either.
My first car, which I drove from 1993-1995, was a 1980 Oldmobile Omega. The headliner had fallen down completely, but was held in place by a couple hundred pins. The plastic covering the steering wheel cracked and fell off in chunks, eventually leaving me with a skinny metal rim to hold, which was really hot in these Houston summers. The front floorboards would fill with water if I drove through water that was more than about 2 inches deep. At precisely 77MPH, the car would begin to shimmy and shake and make a horrible noise that suggested imminent disintegration if I didn’t slow down. The rearview mirror tended to fall off the windshield at least every couple of months. It would overheat if I had to sit still in traffic for more than a few minutes, which of course is a daily occurrence in Houston. It was rusty and dented, and I had no less than 3 minor wrecks in it which didn’t help matters.
When I finally got a newer car (an old 1985 Chrysler 5th Avenue with a bent frame, another fallen headliner and a trunk that filled with water every time it rained), my dad sold my Omega to a coworker for $100. I heard it eventually ended its life wrapped around a telephone pole in Mexico, the victim of a drunk driver.
From the 70s to the 90s I owned a long string of POS’s, but the one that stands out was a 1967 Plymouth Valiant station wagon I bought from a neighbor for $75. It was a formed Con Edison vehicle in that cool Con Ed blue that NYers may fondly (or not) remember. For 6 months, it didn’t give me a moment’s trouble until some SOB decided he needed the shift cable for his POS. I couldn’t replace it and had to junk the car. I miss that little beast.