What's the worst car you've owned?
 

I'll start and cheat immediately - I've owned two awful vehicles (so far), I'll let you decide which was worse.

The first was a VW Polo in the UK in the late 70s. I bought it secondhand with 19000 miles from a VW dealer. I didn't know that it had already had the cylinder head replaced twice until it needed replacing a third time because of leaking valve guides. It suffered badly from carburettor icing; VW UK said it wasn't a common problem although in Germany you could buy a fuel additive from VW to prevent it. The front struts were held in place by a rubber doughnut sandwiched between the wing and the strut - when the rubber compressed over time the strut was free to move up and down (MOT failure). Finally, the oil pump situated at the end of the crank decided it didn't want to spin with the crankshaft any more which had a somewhat disastrous effect on oil pressure (duh). VW said it was unusual (but they'd now changed the design of the crank and the oil pump). There was no temperature gauge and the electric fan switch was prone to failure...

The second nightmare was a secondhand Ford Aerostar minivan, 3 litre V6, auto, in the US, again bought secondhand, less than 20k miles, from a Ford dealer. It looked pretty which is the end of the good news. During the first week of ownership we (my now ex and I) decided to take the kids up Mount Baldy in CA to see the snow - we never made it, the water pump failed. This started years of its incontinence - every hose failed at least once, the heater core failed twice (and the dealer tried to tell me it was the a/c condenser - when he rechecked and got back to me, he agreed but said there was no freon in the a/c - he'd removed the condenser and lost the freon). A second water pump failure and then the radiator plugged up, the final straw was when we put it into gear and nothing happened - we traded it quickly after that.

Re: What's the worst car you've owned?
 

2009 Ford Focus 1.6TDCI. No end of problems starting with a badly deleted DPF system leading to a replacement engine that also blew the inlet manifold taking the sensitive bits with it in a thick black cloud of smoke. £3k rebuild and another 1k easily on fault finding and diagnostics.Cost me £100+ for a gssket they couldn't be bothered with for the egr pipework

The software on the car was so badly edited there would have been no real way of fixing it

Re: What's the worst car you've owned?
 

1998 Rover 416. On paper it sounded good: economy of a 1.4 and the bhp/performance of a 1.8. All complete rubbish as you had to thrash it to get any get up and go with the inevitable impact on petrol depletion. It was a magnet for dents and scratches, door seals didn't, the thermostat failed, the clutch had to be replaced, the suspension squeaked, the stereo was tinny, and the head gasket leaked oil all over the engine bay. Kept it less than a year and gladly chopped it in for a Vauxhall Astra (which was an excellent car in every way).

Re: What's the worst car you've owned?
 

1993 Rover Metro 1.1 I made the mistake of buying new. The rear wheel arches rusted out within three years (fixed under warranty initially) and it began to show in other places. Used to blow the main fuse for the engine electrics once every six months or so in all the best places (heavy traffic, on roundabouts). Oil pump blew all the oil out once while I was on the M25, luckily I had come off onto an A road and when the oil light winked at me while changing gear I instantly went to neutral and switched engine off and coasted to a halt which saved it from making any expensive noises. It had early single-point injection which used to frequently play up and result in a kangaroo ride occasionally on three cylinders which the dealer never quite fixed.

Eventually the now long-gone dealer refused to honour the warranty with the rust etc. so after telling them it was a pile of sh1te and the last Rover I would own I took it to a nearby Arfur Daley with all the receipts for the bad stuff that happened with it removed and he said would £1995 be OK? I accepted while trying not to smile. With half the money I bought a replacement in a 1990 Ford Fiesta 1.1 as a cheap runaround - it never missed a beat over the 4 years I owned it and is still the best, most reliable car I've owned. I've had Fiesta's ever since.

Re: What's the worst car you've owned?
 

Thought this was a motorbike forum :p


I had 2, the one I really didn't like was a gutless 1.3 VW Golf, 4 speed. I bought it because I thought the Saab 900 I had at the time would be too expensive to run, as I'd changed job and I was commuting further. What a mistake, really horrible car, I never got on with it, especially after the Saab.

I also had a Talbot Solara, which cost me £50 from a work colleague, it was a horrible car, but it did me well for a year, never let me down, and because it only cost me £50, I never worried about it. Drove it like a loony in the heavy snow we had in 89, so taught me some good slippery road skills. I gave it to my local fire brigade for their RTA training, when I bought the Saab from my brother in law.

Re: What's the worst car you've owned?
 

Austin Maxi.Quite a nice car back in the 1970s but it just kept stopping when you needed it to go.:mad:
Vauxhall vx 2300 estate.To be fair it was an old banger but dropping a valve on the old orbital road was a faux pas too far. I think the oil slick is still there.:smt004

Re: What's the worst car you've owned?
 

2005 1.5dci grand scenic for me, did serve us well whole we were regularly treking out 4 kids about but it was dogged with issues towards the end before I finally lost patience when it dumped the clutch fluid into the bell housing and all over the clutch.

New dash under partial warranty, new epb, then another failure of the relay in the epb that I resoldered a new one in, continual egr problems leaving it gutless so I bypassed it. Probably more but I can't remember.

My best cars were my Renaultsport 172 and 182 just for balance.

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Re: What's the worst car you've owned?
 

Vauxhall Zafira 1.9 cdti Sri

Still got the thing

Re: What's the worst car you've owned?
 

Fiat Uno - my first car. Piece of ��.

Re: What's the worst car you've owned?
 

Still got my Zafira too, had it for 13 years. Apart from the EGR valve, its been a good car. Bypassed the EGR, otherwise it was going to make the list of worst cars :p