The Worst Car You've Ever Owned

[Meltingpot]

Loooks good doesnt it

On paper: 3.3 litre straight six, Bench seats, manual 4speed gearbox, 8 track , BRitish Racing Green, Lots of chrome and bus sized thin steering wheel

The reality :

points had to be set after every outing to the shops

The tappets had to be done weekly - a new cork gasket most weeks

I had to leave a towel under it if I parked on somenes drive, such was the oil leakage- even the casings seemed to be seeping oil from their surfaces

The 27x 1 1/4 skinny tires and soggy suspension meant cold sweat white faced fear and vomiting when it was wet / greasy

the 140 feet of exhaust system and its 245 joints meant that the aftermatch of every outing was an hour on my back tightening every single joint had had come loose

The 8 track caught fire as it had been wired in with bell wire and melted a slim whitman tape ( these are the only 8 tracks you can find at markets these days for some reason )

brakes were random/ absent / comedy flintstones

interior filled with water on wet nights ( a 6 inch nail driven through the lowest bit of the footwells sorted this )

air flow from vents smelled of curry

Radiator imploded - yes, actually collapsed

piece de fucking resistance- filling it up wth oil before a 9 miles E-Z M11 motorway run and finding the bulkhead and footwells being peppered by white hot piston shrapnel at a sedate 50 mph after the oil filter fell off - the AA man asked if I wanted the tow home or straight to a scrapyard in dagenham


It did look fuckin cool tho. Got more attention than my 911 carerra ever did

It was comfortable tho, my dad's workmate used to give us both a lift in one of those and it was like an armchair to ride in, acres of room. He ended up with a Hillman Avenger which was much smaller and less comfortable and smelled of cheap plastic - now there's a car I hated.

 

[Meltingpot]

Sure it wasn't the other way around? The Rover 820 series has a reputation as one of the most unreliable heaps of shit ever to tarnish the roads...

<e2a> Horrid cars to drive as well. They feel really flimsy and tacky.

That's what he said at the time, but it may have been that the 827 was new and hadn't given him any problems yet.

 

[mysterygirl]

Worse car I ever owned was possibly my favourite also

MK IV Spitfire. Every journey was an adventure and you never knew if you were going to get where you wanted, or get home. But, every journey was fucking fun.

I loved my Spitfire! Don't know what number it was though, don't even remember the reg now, but still..........

Then some idiot pulled out in front of me & wrote it off.

 

[chainsaw cat]

Sure it wasn't the other way around? The Rover 820 series has a reputation as one of the most unreliable heaps of shit ever to tarnish the roads...

<e2a> Horrid cars to drive as well. They feel really flimsy and tacky.

Can only half agree.

I had an 827si which was absolutely great to drive, a real A-road eater, loved it. Lasted quite a while then EVERYTHING went wrong at once.

Started at a festival, Womad I think, when I grounded it and all the fluid fell out of the rad. Fixed the leak and filled up with water, but there was still a bit of seepage so I went and bought some radweld as a get-u-home job. This involved a big walk. Got back to the car and read the lable (yes, yes, I wasn't having a good day) to find it said 'suitable for all makes and models except Rover 825 and 827'.


Oh just super.

Later, Ms Cat was on the motorway when enough things went pop to leave her swearing that she'd never sit near it again, let alone in it.

 

[janeb]

This beauty

Bought off ebay for £800 (excellent feedback, fsh etc) , needed a new automatic gearbox, became apparent after a couple of weeks, sold on for £50 to someone on the saab uk forum as a repair project within 3 weeks

I love old style saab 900s, have had 2, but doubt I'll be getting another

 

[longdog]

One of these.

A Triumph 1500.

It was basically a front wheel drive version of the Triumph Dolomite. It had a longitudinally mounted engine and clutch with the power (and I use the word in its loosest possible sense) taken down to the gearbox by an arrangement of gears. The clutch rode on a piece of pipe protruding from the casing for the transfer gears but the pipe was so piss-weak it was a miracle if you could get it to last more than a few hundred miles. I tried everything from Loctite to Araldite to Liquid Metal to get the bastard to stay in place without success. My dad even set the best minds of a large engine part manufacturers (who will remain nameless) to work on the problem. They made a hardened aluminium tube, threaded the end, threaded the casing and TIG welded the tube in place once it was screwed in. Better but no coconut, lasted a few months.

I ended up buying a second MOT failure car as an engine donor but that turned out to be no better than the original.

When MOT time came around it failed for having too much play in the steering so off I toddled to buy a replacement rack (for a very reasonable £15)... didn't fit. Took said rack back and had it swapped for a slightly different rack... that didn't fit either. It turned out that although the rack was superficially the same as a dolomite one it had different internals. Thanks to the very helpful guy in the car parts shop we eventually came to the conclusion that dismantalling the new rack and turning the actual rack itself 180 degrees would do the trick. Glossing quickly over the fact that the bolt holes didn't line up and the rack had to be held down with six U bolts and rubber packing I went back to the garage and at last got my MOT. Luckily they never noticed the steering wheel could be turned 2 1/2 to the left but only 1 1/2 to the right

It wasn't long after that I scrapped the thing (and the engine donor car too). I like to see the best in cars and I'll overlook quite a bit as long as I can get from A to B, I even liked my Allegro, joke they may be but mine was a little work-horse that took me all over the country in exchange for a little bit of petrol and a lot of engine oil. The Triumph 1500 though is in a world of its own for utter shitness. I can't think of one good thing to say about it. I've not really mentioned the 101 other things that were wrong with it.

Truely a fucking awful car with no redeeming features whatsoever.

 

[Roadkill]

Truely a fucking awful car with no redeeming features whatsoever.[/QUOTE]

Well, aside from the fact that it looks quite good. IMO, of course. But then, it looks much like a Dolomite, which was a far better car, and rear-drive to boot. :cool:

 

[Sweet FA]

Our first family car Dad got it free off a 'mate'. For our first outing, Dad decided to take us to Southend on a pissdown with rain Bank Holiday. About 15 miles down the A13, the windscreen wipers fell off. Cue Dad driving with his head out of the window, whilst me and my little bro got soaked in the back. We finally arrived, parked on the front, ate our sandwiches, went for a desultory walk past a miserable Peter Pan's playground then went back to the car. Which wouldn't start.

We got the train home and never spoke of the incident again.

Happily, Dad bought a brand new car a year or so later.
Unhappily, it was this one

 

[Jografer]

Austin Princess, about 20 years ago....for so many reasons I haven't the time left in my life to detail them....

I got it for a fiver including ticket ..... & I was ripped off...

 

[Poi E]

A 53 reg BMW 320d I bought last January. The turbo went after about 3 months of owning it (bought it from a BMW dealership) and the electrics were faulty from the start. It cost nearly as much as the car was worth to put the engine right and BMW aftercare service was terrible.

I have to say I was not impressed by my colleagues new BMW. Rubbish interior build quality, and why does every fucking BMW have that "bumper droop" syndrome, where the bumpers all start to part from the body? Put a another screw in there, you fucking idiots.


My worst was also one of my best. Holden HQ Monaro. Four on the floor, 350, but jesus not a week went by when the starter didn't, the alternator froze, the brake lines leaked, the alignment wasn't etc. Buying a Toyota of similar vintage afterwards was a revelation. But I miss that beast.

 

[I'm Simes]

I reckon that one could actually be really good!

Belonged to my mother, rather than to me, but I challenge you to beat this fucker:

Well, not this actual one. Ours was green, broke down at the drop of a hat, had no functioning heater or blower (in fact I don't remember it having a blower full stop), leaked, blew like god knows what, and had the appealing habit of turning upside down for the hell of it.

Four stroke two cylinder 600cc (air cooled?) 'engine' for the lose.

Yep - but fit a motorbike engine in it!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=O1Dwe46QWLk

 

[bmd]

This thread has made me laugh.

I was about to post a new one about this very subject but I'll save Pogofish the bother and resurrect this one instead.

I'm just watching James Mays Cars of the People and felt I had to balance his enthusiastic review of the Citroen 2CV with this story.

Having never been a car person I decided that a 2CV would be just the thing. I found a yellow and white one and being colour blind, no that's not it, being perfectly colour sighted but hey I'm buying a 2CV so what the hell, I went for a sunflower yellow and white one. The bonnet had a crease right across it which I didn't notice until I was screaming down the dual carriageway on the way I home. What's that from, I wondered?

My girlfriend was in the passenger seat and as she was less than chuffed about our purchase I decided to play my trump card and show her the sunroof. You see these massive clips holding the sunroof down? Well, you just unclip your side, yep like that and I unclip my side and hey presto, the sunroof unfurled clean off the roof at 50mph and the metal rod holding it in place, powered by the disappearing sunroof, whipped round and clouted the bridge of my nose.

Cue immediate excruciating pain and blindness. Although I couldn't see anything I could hear the sun roof flapping behind us and then I felt something give me an almighty twat on the head. Ducking down behind the wheel, driving one handed whilst blindly trying to fend off my surprise attacker, I could hear my girlfriend shouting that the bonnet had come open. She's getting confused I thought, that's the sunroof. But no, in all the excitement the bonnet had decided to free itself from the dodgy catch and not only come open but actually fold back over the windscreen and rap me smartly on the head. Thank god it was only made from tin foil. I don't remember getting the car to the side of the road but I do remember my girlfriend's disparaging remarks about my knowledge of cars.

I didn't get to choose our next one.