I’m watching The Science Channell and they are discussing the best “people car”. Coming in at the bottom is the Cintron. According to the show, many millions of people bought the Citron but it is probably the worst put together car ever. Thin sheets of metal bolted, not welded, together with slung, hammock-like seats and an engine not much bigger than a lawnmower. Sounds like a winner to me.
But then I really do not know anything about cars. I don’t even drive. Hubby insists it is the Hugo. When they first came out there was a dealership in Brooklyn that would give away a Hugo with every new Nissan.
The Yugo is generally considered the bottom of the barrell, at least for cars ever sold in the U.S. However, I distinctly remember that in the early 70s, Consumer Reports labeled a Japanese model (I just can’t remember whether it was a Subaru or a Suzuki) “Not Acceptable” because it was badly assembled, had terrible brakes and a host of other problems.
On the other hand, I was the proud owner of a Gremlin for 6 years, so my opinion isn’t worth a damn when it comes to bad cars.
ALmost all of the subcompacts that came out of Detroit in the '70s, that were meant to compete with the Japanese invasion. The Pinto and Vega come to mind immediately. Also the American motors cars of the 70s, especially the Marlin and the Gremlin.
For truly bad cars, you have to head to the Eastern Bloc. Surely everyone knows of the Trabant? At least Skoda has been given a good kick up the arse by Volkswagen, and Renault are doing the same for Dacia by cannibalising all the cheap and reliable elements of their current models to make a basic solid car to sell across eastern Europe and Asia.
A good friend of mine is a mechanic, currently the service manager at a Volkswagen dealership. Years ago, he was a mechanic at another dealership that also carried the Yugo.
He swears it’s the worst piece of crap ever sold to the American public. He told me that every car the dealership ever sold came back for warranty work within a month of being purchased. And not just small stuff.
Two things I remember him saying: First, the camshafts weren’t properly heat-treated, so that they wore down to a circular profile from the normal egg-shape very quickly. This, of course, caused the valves to stop opening and closing, which in turn cased the car to stop running completely.
Second, the manufacturing tolerances were so bad that the cylinder bores were extremely inconsistent. Not from car to car, but from cylinder to cylinder in the same engine. So one car might have four different-sized pistons. And the cylinder walls wore so quickly that top-end rebuilds were frequent (ever hear of a decent car needing a top end while still in warranty?). The dealership had to keep a whole range of piston sizes, and the matching rings, in stock.
I waopuld say the late lamented YUGO…in addition to the engines being crap, they came pre-rusted from the factory! I actually knew a guy who had one…the shift lever came offin his hand while driving to work!
There were plenty of bad cars…just about everything made by RENAULT was crap…the cheaper model FIAS were also not much good.
Anybody remember DAIHATSU? It was a curious little car from japan-they lasted all of 12 months in the USA market! Something major must have been wrong with this car-they came and went so fast!
I knew someone who had a Daihatsu, around 1988 to 1989. It couldn’t have been 100% bad, because he couldn’t stop raving about how great it was. But as far as I could see it was just another micro hatchback. And the model name–Charade–sounded stupid to me.
This was the Subaru 360, reviewed in April 1969. It looked like a cheap knockoff of the VW Beetle. Sporting a two-stroke engine, it required 37.5 seconds to reach 50 mph from a standing start. The doors were hinged at the rear, and if opened while the car was in motion could slam back against the body. And to top it off, the bumpers were so low they were “virtually useless against anything more formidable than a watermelon.”
(Yes, I collect old Consumer Reports. They’re full of interesting articles like this!)
I never knew this, but I Googled it and got [url=http://www.microcarmuseum.com/tour/subaru360.html]this - there was a guy who had a car like this that we used to laugh at on our way to school when we were six! It was wonderful - he could park in the small spaces nobody could get into, but then couldn’t get any of his stuff out of the back!
To be fair, Subaru have made a few improvements to their output over the years (North Yorks Police even have a rally-spec Impreza, for high-speed pursuit).
Anybody remember something called the Datsun Honey Bee? This would have been somewhere in the 80’s.
My sister had one and I borrowed it. She warned me I would have to floor it leaving stop lights, and at first I was too scared to heed her advice. But giving it some gas wouldn’t make it move at all. You really did have to absolutely stomp the pedal to the floor to get it started, SLOWLY, from a dead start. Fortunately I was in Chicago, and in my brief drive I never faced having to stop on an uphill slope. She’d been to the dealer with it – it’s just the way it was, they couldn’t fix it.
Of my own personal experience, my ex’s Peugot 505, purchased new, deteriorated faster than any other car I’ve encountered.
'70s Chevettes and Vegas (aka Rusty) were pitiful rides as well.
My '81 Chevy Monte Carlo, purchased new, was a pretty sorry example of quality control. The windows didn’t seal, a wheel fell off (catastrophic axle failure), the A/C blew at about 18 months, the stereo ate cassettes, and the catalytic converter failed with 13 miles left on the warranty (I had to plan my route to the dealer carefully - oh yeah, warranties were 12/12 back then).
In all fairness, I did crash it a buncha times, but I really think most of its problems were inherent. Finally somebody stole it. Yay! Discriminating thieves, all they took were the motor and the fat tires and rims.
I’ve never experienced some of the econo-dogs mentioned here. The only Trabant I’ve ever seen was (oddly) in the U.S. Air Force Museum.
Some sort of (dis)honorable mention must be made for British Leyland products of the '60s and '70s. I had a Triumph GT-6, and I had friends who had Spits, MGBs, TR-6s, etc. They were fun cars to have and to drive. But if you were going to live with one, you just had to get used to door handles that didn’t work, windshield wipers that didn’t wipe, quirky electrical systems, loose trim, rapidly rotting rubber and the like. The GT-6’s congenital defect was valve springs. I got to where I could change out a valve spring on the side of the road faster than I could change a flat tire. Which reminds me of my first flat in the GT-6; the scissor jack it came with just self-destructed as I tried to lift the car - didn’t budge the car.
Every car mentioned in this thread was / is a POS but I think the absolute top POS was the Geo with the three cylinder engine. The Borgward (sp?) gets top POS marks, too.
