To 'celebrate' the release of Top Gear The Worst Car in The History of The World just wondering what do you think is the worst car 'In the World'? for me the Morris MARINA
Of the cars I've experienced personally, an automatic Focus. Brilliant handling, ride, steering and engine spoilt by a dog turd of a gearbox - the manual is great, the automatic hideous. I'm sure there are worse cars though, I often think the worst cars are the ones that elicit no emotional response at all, i.e. a Golf or something similar, 5 doors of generic machine that does everything well, but has no character.
Austin Allegro --it was just crap all around. The first concept drawing showed a sleek machine; what rolled off the assembly line was what happens when a committee gets its hands on the design. Ford Pinto: without any protective structure or bumper around its rear-situated fuel tank, it had a propensity to burst into flames at the slightest rear-ender. Not so much a car as a mobile barbecue. The Ford Fiero continued that theme by its propensity of spilling oil over the engine which then caught fire. This leakage also caused the car to seize up a lot, not helped by the owner's manual specifying that the car needed to be filled with 3 litres of oil instead of the actually needed 4.5 litres. Yugo, Trabant and Lada: a testimony to Communism as a superior economic system. Dashboard controls would come off in your hands, windscreens would fall into your lap and poorly cast wheels would split in two or make a bid for independence on the motorway. Going uphill made them run out of low enough gears --you had to climb them in reverse gear. But the Americans hardly did any better: the rear-engined Chevrolet Corvair was incredibly unbalanced (for want of a $6,-- part that could have remedied that --design by committee again), and flipped over repeatedly on the test track. The air-cooled engine caused the car heater to fill te cabin with toxic fumes. The non-collapsible steering collumn impaled the driver in a frontal collision. The Chevette had a more original way of killing its driver: the drive shaft could suddenly disconnect from the gearbox, causing the car to pin itself to the road and pole vault over itself. Then there is anything made by AMC. Ugly, badly built cars that fell apart on themselves.
They're all shite. motorbikes seriously: mid 90s vauxhalls of all types. that weird no-mans land of "hey we dont have to make square cars anymore" before they figured out how to make them look good
The Ford Escort Mk. 4. Nineteen recalls in the first year. 'nuff said. Volvo 480: great design, worst implementation ever. The engine was underpowered and had an uneven idle. Through their construction, the rear light clusters unintentionally acted as gutters for rain water running down the rear window and therefore were always filled with water. The heavy clutch often caused the clutch cable (which was insanely long as it reached over the engine to get to the gearbox) to push through a weak bulkhead --the first aftermarket mod any decent mechanic did was to reinforce it with a metal plate. Clever gadgets (lit, heated key locks, button-controlled climate control, seat heating) were prone to malfunction. The automatically variable windscreen wipers were linked to engine RPM meter rather than the speedometer. The rear wheel arches were prone to rust. Its road holding and safety were excellent though.
This. They are the epitome of mediocrity and crap build quality. I briefly had a '98 Astra and its reliability went downhill like a ton of bricks from about 3 months after I bought it with a clean history. My older Clio was more basic, but better. My dad owned one in the 90s too and it just smelt thickly of 'car' and was generally uncomfortable as a kid in the back.
NO. These cars are great-if you ever drive one,you would know it. There are many Yugo's them still driving in Croatia,and they have legendary status and large fanbase. American model was even better. Trabant is also a legend-that car that can't rust or be damaged. You could flip it on the roof and then put it back to road like nothing happened. Lada is awesome-Niva is best buy terrain vehicle-has great value for money. Not like this new fancy SUV's. You can drive trough fence and you don't care. The worst band is Opel(known as Vauxhall,Saturn or Holden models in different parts of the world). The ultimate rust car with worst hadling-even the school bus has better handling. And not to mention that parts fall off randomly.
Gearbox wise I have never driven anything as bad as a Citroen C4 Grand Picasso with an auto box. Took over a second to change gear and caused the car to lurch every time, it was so bad I couldn't help but laugh continuously for the first day I drove it whilst my head was shook back and forth.
I loved my 440, virtually all the same problems as it was the same car however Renault should be blamed for the crap engine, and Leyland DAF for causing the use of the engine. Having said that, the engine is bulletproof and Volvo sorted the gearbox out making it much stronger than the french spec. Worst car, the ford explorer due to the fact that is started the whole SUV market that outed the station wagons in the states, which then came this side of the pond reducing the amount of estate car sales and increased fuel consumption.
Yep, my friend's mum drives one for god sake. SHe spend more time pressing all the buttons in that damn thing than she actually does driving it.
Anything BMW X- to be quite honest. Purely designed for twats to sit a little higher. Not a ****ing one of them has ever even seen mud, let alone get near it and would bog down and die if it ever got in the mud. In fact anything along those lines (Porsche Cayenne etc.) are just made for dickheads to be even more dickish (anyone remember the test Clarkson die with the Cayenne? Hmmm, what had to tow it off the hillock it got stuck on? Oh yes, a Land Rover Defender.) Meh, maybe I'm just a bit of a hippy or I just hate the modern equivalent of yuppies. For actual shitness I'd have to go with the Triumph Stag. I absolutely adore this car, the looks, the sound, everything, and yet every single one I've ever come into contact with has literally had the driver with more time under it than in it.
Smart cars: detestable hipster transportation that they park sideways by the side of the road, stick out 1-2 feet further than normally parked cars and the owners head is too far up his own arse to see it is in the way of other drivers. Only saving grace is that in a crash, the crumple zone is the drivers legs
I beg to differ, the safety cell is a wonderful piece of engineering and the car is designed for an urban environment so vehicle length is perfect for nipping around a city.
Designed in Sweden, built in Netherlands. On mine, it wasn't just the clever gadgets that were prone to malfunction but also necessary electrics - the whole dashboard for example. It was frustrating driving along the motorway and finding the speedo falling to zero, which left the only way to tell how fast I was going by the amount the car was shaking. That's the only car I've driven where I've been scared to push beyond 70.
Smart cars. I weigh 140 pounds and I can tip one over. This is not a theoretical, but don't ask me how I learned that. It would hurt your head (and incriminate me.) I saw one brave individual take one of those onto the interstate here. Said gentleman had the windows down as his balls were spilling out of the passenger compartment. If he crashed at speed, we'd be sweeping up foil for a month, and cleaning him up with a squeegee.
I once drove a nissan micra 03' 1L worse car I have ever driven. It had no redeeming features. The gear box felt like it was made from plastic cogs. It also wasn't geared very well at all was doing 4k rpm at 70 mph. So the max comfortable speed was 60.