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Seeker · 15-01-18, 12:41 PM

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.

15-01-18, 12:41 PM	#1
Seeker Member Mega Poster Join Date: Jun 2016 Location: NE Lincs Posts: 1,069	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.