Motors What Was The Worst Car You Ever Owned?

Ooh. Well. I had a B-reg Maestro 1.3 as my first car. It was cheap, slow, and basically fine. However - it had a habit of the gear-shift linkage coming undone at the most inopportune moments, leaving me with only 3rd or 4th until I could find somewhere safe to stop, and reconnect the linkage. It was a bit rubbish, but I sort of hold fond memories...!

I suppose, on balance, it was the worst I ever owned, but it wasn't awful!

After that I had a 1991 1.6 Mk.V Escort which was great (and only cost £150), a 1992 1.9D Clio. Oh, actually, the Clio. That was the worst one. The clutch cable used to snap for a pastime, and 'cos those pesky French designers just made the clutch cable longer when switching from LHD -> RHD, it was a right fist to change. Oh and when the clutch needed replacing, I had to take the whole car apart. Yes - the Clio was the worst. Sluggish, a pain in the ass, and the clutch was a nuisance, but - it was cheap to run haha!

I then had an M-plate Cinquecento which I moved house in, twice (washing machine in the back) and I loved that car, and then a 2002 Fiesta Zetec.

I'm now on my favourite car ever - a C6 Audi RS6...

 

We have a winner!

As a kid I spent a lot of time in Marinas. My father had one and so did my friend's father (followed by an Ital - 'Ital go if you push it' - and then a Maestro. He was a proud brit-car buyer).

They were shocking cars.

 

Is that the 1.4 Turbo?

What are the "stupid" things it has? (I've had some Fiats, maybe they make some weird sense)

 

The worst car I ever owned was also my favourite (probably because it was my first car, and it could corner like nothing else), but trying to live with it day to day in the hope it would get you to where you were going was enough to break anyone.

My worst car was my 1978 Mini 1l, with wide wheel arches, minilite alloys with spacers, and the crowning glory a straight through Peco exhaust.

It was fun, but in 1990 it was already 12 years old, and back then a 12 year old British Leyland car was not a healthy beast.
The brakes failed (more than once), the engine would overheat and blow gaskets (more than once), the boot was big enough for a pair of football boots there was virtually no sound proofing so the noise from the exhaust system meant you got a sore head after anything over 10 miles.

I don't have any pictures of the actual car, but this is pretty damned close.


Ohh, and the front grill fell of when I braked hard one day.

And if I remember correctly the insurance, 3rd party only, was more than the car cost.

 

05 Honda Civic 1.6

Gearboxs are complete crud

 

Is it classed as a first car if you never got to drive it?

If so it would be a maroon Austin Allegro that i paid £50 for so i could learn to drive in it, that never happened as i broke the engine mount by doing wheel spins.

 

A lucky escape from a much derided motor!
A school friend had a white Allegro as his first car and took a lot of flak for it
What did you end up with instead?

 

Perhaps surprisingly, a 1983 BMW 323i bought in 1987. While it had great performance with occasional scary handling (a quick right turn followed by a quick left turn on a roundabout required a change of underwear) it was incredibly expensive to maintain.

I bought it at 4 years old with around 57,000 miles on the clock but on reflection it had probably done a 100,000 miles more than that. Just about every component apart from the engine needed major work from a steering rack to warped discs, prop shaft (at least twice) to the wheel bearings.

Sometimes cheap to repair often very expensive I can't believe looking back I kept it for so long. Towards the end of my ownership the fuel consumption dropped from around 25mpg to around 10mpg so something serious and expensive was in the offing.

 

Nothing until after i passed my test, we really do some silly stuff when young don't we.
The car i bought after passing my test and got to drive legally was an MkII RS2000.

 

Yeh - the 110kw version of that engine.

Stupid things:
Balance too far forward on the car means that it pulls quite well, but heavens beware any mid-corner-lift.
The key fob that has the UNLOCK part raised, rather than the Lock.
The steering wheel that (no matter what) obscure the top of your speedometer the moment you're a smidge over 6 foot tall.
The fact that it has a lane change indicator (but no other Fiat has) - also - the L indicator switch seems to "migrate" - as in - the older the car gets, the more finicky it gets on right turns.
A compartment in the middle arm rest that doesn't fit a bottle.
An arm rest that puts your hand in a really awkward position in relation to the gear lever.

It's minor things.

 

Only had two cars, a 2002 Golf 1.4 which was just plain slow, and apart from it warping its front discs on two occasions (still don't quite get how, I was gentle) and the ECU having a meltdown once it did pretty well and I regret selling it as it was mostly reliable.

My second and current car is a 2012 Leon 1.2TSI which has a cam chain that 'lasts the life of the engine'. If the life of the engine is less than 60k miles, then sure it does. The air con compressor also decided to start howling around the same time too, so 1350 eur later I was rather missing my old Golf The 1.2TSI is a gem of an engine though, superb torque and does 50mpg+ when sensible.

 

I have only ever owned two cars and that was about 40 years ago. Decided that I really did not need a car after getting rid of the Hunter.
The first was a Mini van probably the most useless van in the history of vans. if you put the slightest weight in the back the front pretty much left the floor.
My second car was a Hillman Hunter built like a tank did not have the power steering all the girlie, oops modern cars have so bloody heavy to drive.
So out of the two has to be the Mini van as it was totally useless in every department.

Not my cars but and my Mini van did not look as good.

 

My worst was probably an '86 LandRover 90 with the 3.5l Rover V8. Great fun and deceptively quick, but at around 14 to the gallon if you were careful, it had a bit of a drinking problem. Add that to the fact that they like to eat accelerator cables due to some bad routing and the clutch slave cylinder was somewhat temperamental to say the least (had to drive it may times without being able to disengage the clutch), I don't look back on it too favourably.

The older '61 LandRover that I also had was bad, but not in a way that it shouldn't have been, given the age of the beast.

 

one of these beauties

 

Parents had one of those... well technically 2 as they discovered after buying it that it was a cut-n-shut...

 

So you can unlock it whilst strolling casually with your hand your pocket...They're Italians, style counts.

All the rest, again they're Italians, you're simply too big

 

Vauxhall Corsa 1.2 8 Valve. 48 BHP. 1994 model so was on an L plate.

Looked like a hairdressers car, took ages to get it to 60 on dual carriageways. Ugly, girls hated it.

Had to drive it hard everywhere, always had to rev the engine hard and drive it like a lunatic. Uncomfortable seats on a long drive. Refused to start on cold mornings, sunroof leaked. I let my girlfriend at the time drive it and she reversed into a wall and the wing mirror fell off.

Someone drove into it at work, they left the details but I didn't claim against them for it as I hated the car. I traded it in and the dealer gave me £500 for it. Oh and I recall it was clocked but not by much.

 

doesn't "Italian" in a car basically mean "It's a bit sh*t, but at least it has character - if you wanted a better, more boring car, you should have bought something German"?

that's how I always read it.
I'll tell you this, though - with a working Turbo and a new clutch, that Bravo is FUN to fling around

 

Lol since when is a German car boring? BMW and Audi make some of the sexiest cars out there. And Porsche!

 

Don't all cars have some annoying traits? or is that just me?

My Tiburon came fitted with a Cliford Eagle II alarm. It had everything, shock sensors motion detectors etc. It also had a feature where after about two minutes of inactivity it would automatically lock all of the doors etc and set the alarm. Annoying when you only have one set of keys and they're in the f****** car when it locks.

It happened once when I was visiting my ex father in law. It cost me $100 to get back in. I had two sets of keys cut and left one at my ex FIL and one at my ex MIL.

The next time it happened I was at home. There was a snow storm going on and I had about 2ft of drift snow on the car. So I figure I will get in, start the engine and leave the heaters running for a bit to get the worst off (windows etc). I forgot about the locking part. So yeah, it locked me out. Because of the snow storm I could not get to my FIL or MIL houses so I called a locksmith. Because of the weather he wanted $200. I had no choice, but he took hours to arrive by which time I was out $25 of petrol too.

It never happened again after that