[Closed] Whats your worst ever car?

The aptly named shitty shitty bang bang. A VW Polo. The old style ones that looked like a mini estate. It was always on the way home from work that it would break down, never to work. Got chucked out of the RAC in the end for calling them out too many times. One time on the way to the airport, the engine kept overheating and I had to keep pulling over onto the hard shoulder to let it cool down before setting off again. We made it but it was a tad stressful. Then there was the time it broke down in the middle of central London on a roundabout. It had been a bit stop start for much of the journey but the roundabout was where it chose to finally conk out. The black cab drivers were none too happy with me. Then there was the petrol leak. The garage had done something to the fuel tank - the next garage I took it to said it was a death trap - and fuel came out over the top when you filled it up. The problem was the fuel gauge was broken so you just had to try to judge how much petrol you had. Sold it for scrap in the end for £50. I had bought it with an ex partner and saw her in a club that night. We'd split by this time and things were pretty bitter between us. I offered her £25 for it. She was with her new girlfriend and I think felt pretty embarrassed. So I guess there was that 😉

A 1980 Renault 5 . Comedy values of lean when cornering,inaccessible plugs as longitudinal engine in front engines, fed car , bodywork as thin as Bacofoil and made lighter by corrosion, interior by Fisher Price.
Had numerous electrical issues and sold within 3 months.

Hmm close call between a Ford Focus Mk2 and a Polo of similar era.

The winner is the Polo. The Focus was just disappointing given the hype. Dull to drive, small inside, under underpowered 1.6

The Polo - doors didn’t shut properly, noisy, no power, scariest car I’ve ever driven in the snow, electrical faults. Never bought a VW since

. A VW Polo

Me too, but a recent one, a 1.4 petrol. It never broke down but it was a tinny, gutless piece of crap and we sold it after less than a year. The metro I had in the 90s was better.

Not mine but my parents when I was younger. A white vauxhall cavalier estate early 90s.
Waiting to be picked up after football practise or from fishing, you could hear it coming from miles off.

Also one holiday in Dorset, dad had to take run ups at a hill, never quite reached the top so had to turn round and find another route after a few attempts.

Ive actually been pleased with all the cars I've owned.

Worst - Morris Ital
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The choke starting position was an artform in location and Lord of the Dance foot technique.

Following the thread featuring Morris Marinas

A couple of high-school mates had Marinas, one of them a customized panel van that his dad though would help him score with the ladies. Good god those things were awful. I never owned anything remotely that bad. I think that after about 1985 or 1990, even the worst cars were actually quite functional, so there will never be anything again to challenge the crapboxes from the 1970s.

Audi A4 Avant, the wheel arches disintegrated before my eyes and I swear it needed new discs and pads annually.

2 year old Ford Fiesta. No major issues but plenty of minor and moderate niggles that have resulted in maybe 15 warranty claims (everything from seized gear linkage to faulty boot struts to buzzing dash to knocking steering).

Cannot wait to get rid but it is barely being used now and if nothing else it is cheaper than what would replace it.

Very likely to be our last Ford.

Mk2 Mondeo. It burst into flames while I was driving it. The fireman thought it started at the fuse box. Apparently this is common for them 😳

Peugeot 406 diesel estate replacing a petrol 940. Big expensive mistake. Even in France you didn't see many because they were all promptly cooked. What should have been the worst, Toyota Corolla estate (1200cc for a family car!) lived as long as Methuselah.

Peugeot 309 "Style".

Proper Gallic Friday afternoon special - it ate CV/driveshafts and wheel bearings, had two head gaskets replaced and electrics were from the Italian suppliers. We suffered it for two years.

It says as lot that the garage leant us a Proton, and we thought it better...

Renualt Laguna (early 2000's) company car, it spent most of the 2 years I had it in the garage. We had about 20 at work and they all suffered badly with faults.

An Alfasud,gearbox had first and reverse,it was a lottery trying to find anything else,the bodywork rotted while I watched it,and it blew light bulbs with monotonous regularity.

My mum's Fiat Panda.
Driving along and a horrendous noise. Front left wheel rolling down the road in front of us.
A major part of the suspension had rusted right through

Ford Ka, could’nt even accelerate down a hill.

Peugeot 406 diesel estate

Actually, I might reassess my polo comment above, we had one of these and it was a costly mistake.

Reliant 3 wheeler like Dell boy Driven on my motorcycle license,hence I learnt to drive without a lesson. The Reliant was inclined to fall over.

When I was 20, my father-in-law took me to a car auction & I got a bit too excited & ended up coming away with a Citroen C2. I think I liked the colour. Anyway, what an absolute shed.

It had no service history and when I serviced it it was clear it had never been anywhere near a spanner. The oil was like pre-historic sludge & the plugs were seized in.

I was young and poor & had to sell it on at a fair loss (which I felt guilty about). Lesson learned & I haven’t been back to a car auction as I’m too impulsive!

Mk7 Ford Transhit. I'm 2nd owner from new and had an easy non commercial life.

It's utter crap.
Gives me severe shoulder/neck pain after an hour or so due to crap ergonomics.
Appalling design flaws with no consideration for repair other than for throwing them together quickly on a production line.
Leaks water in
Continuously rusts despite slathered in waxoyl.
Random boost leak/EGR fault and drops power just when you need it most.
Eats starter motors.

I hate it

I loved my 406 hdi estate.

I had a 106 1400diesel that was woeful but I loved it

A 70 Cavalier

Mk1 mitsi colt.

I love bangernomics. Worst car a 3yo mg zr..... 2x gearboxes a power steering pump cambelt failure. Nit to mention front pads every 7000miles.

VW Golf MK3. If it could break it broke. Usually when I was on the way to something important.

An 8-valve Mk3 Golf GTi bought second hand when I couldn't find a sound Mk2. I know it's not in the same league of some of the stuff listed above, but after owning a really well sorted Mk2, it was truly horrible. Fat, handled badly, zero charisma, weirdly unreliable in a petty way. When I bought it the cam timing was out so it pulled hard low down, then died at the top of the rev range. It was geared too high and then the gear box failed and was replaced with a Mk2 spare I had lying about. At some point that basically fell out when I'd lent it to a mate. It had air con that never, ever worked reliably for more than five minutes. I think you can forgive that sort of thing if the car is fundamentally brilliant - my Corrado VR6 isn't exactly a paragon of reliability, but it only takes five minute of driving the thing to let me forgive it.

I don't think it was a terrible car per se, but it was a dull shopping car that VW had slapped a GTi badge on in a proper mutton dressed as lamb sort of way and was my worst ever car. By contrast my old Polo Coupe S was hideously abused and never missed a beat.

A VW Passat. Think it was a 2007 plate. The most utterly bland, wallowing, boring and uninspiring heap of crap I've ever had (it was a company car)

Austin Princess...

My second car was a 1979 Fiesta 1.1 and it was a complete POS. It looked cool though with Escort RS style alloys, Cibie spot lights and a rear spoiler, but there was always something going wrong with it.

In the late 90s we had a pool van at work, a Vauxhall Corsa based one. Utterly useless but the worse thing was the driving position. The pedals were off to the left somewhere vague and having large feet meant you get to push 2 out of 3 pedals most of the time.

It was chronically underpowered so overtaking was always dicing with death

Never had a really unreliable or crap car mechanically (including two Morris Ital and Peugeot 309) but we had a very late Rover Metro. Really nice 1.4 K series engine but my god it started rusting. Probably only 3 years old when the rust hit the A pillars. Traded in soon after that!

We also had a mid-90s poverty spec diesel Astra, again woeful at everything.

My colleague gave it a great nickname .. "The disAstra".

Fiat sedici. We moved to a house at the end of a 1 mile track, and needed a car with a bit of ground clearance, and the soft linkage 4wd was also a bonus.
They had early diesel particulate filters, before they were required, and the regeneration process never happened leading to all sorts of problems....the highlight being a 14 mile drive home from Bradford in limp home mode. Replaced the dpf with an empty box, new turbo, several strip downs and remappings, spent thousands then sold it for near scrap price. The last diesel car and fiat we will ever have.

MK4 golf.

On paper the best car we ever bought.

Taught me an important lesson.

Buy on condition and your gut.

What a raft of electrical faults and shit handling that car was

Very sad at the Polo hate. My first car was a 1978 Polo and I loved it. It gave me freedom.

My worse car. Probably a 1998 Vauxhall Vectra. I needed a car quick and brought a blue one basically unseen. It was horrid, really horrid and this comes from a man who owned a Vauxhall Chevette saloon 1.2 for a number of years.

I’ve been quite lucky with all my non project cars.
My first car (Datsun Stanza)you had to get where you wanted before the engine warmed up as the auto choke tended to stick. Helpfully it overcooled so rarely warmed up properly unless I got stuck in traffic. The stupidly heavy clutch would mean the pedal box would slowly tear the sheet
Metal, making traffic avoidance a priority.
Company vans:-
1991 Ford Escort van. Horrible in every way. Didn’t even have a lighter socket. Unreliable thirsty 1.4 petrol, 20mpg with ladders on the roof. Zero grip in the wet, followed my then boss round a corner. He made it I didn’t.
Lucky dip clutch, would slip randomly, usually halfway across a busy road. Took Ford a few attempts to fix that.
Burned to the ground before
It reached 100k.

1994 Ford escort 1.8d. Reliable but hateful in every way. No power steering but felt like broken power steering, the engine was utterly gutless.

1989 nova merit. It was only £150 and we got a couple of years out of it but it was a rustbucket. Battery was ****ed and manual choke was tricky so starting it in winter was a challenge. The engine slowly died as I was crawling up to the cat and fiddle in the early hours praying it would get to the top so I could roll back to Buxton. It got me home but never ran again. Still, it was my first car and it had a minidisc player so I loved it in equal measure.

Also sad for the polo hate. I learnt to drive in a 1l petrol c reg one. Great little car, killed it in the end by blowing the cylinder rings (probably got fed up with me loading with lots of windsurfing kit and driving all over the country).

My worst was a 1.6 Renault Scenic - the early round shaped one. look nice, air con, leather seats etc but soo underpowered that it made diving on motorways stressful and rolled round corners.

Renault Scenic and Clio at the same time, both from new, both had extensive issues just after warranty, airbag deployed when it shouldn't have, splinter on driveshaft shattered, loads of starting problems, soft feel interior that peeled. Clio ate springs daily and a multitude of other issues. Bought the Scenic for £14k, sold it 4 years later for £1.4k,shows how rubbish they were.

Would never have another Renault. Our previous VW To Iran also from new seemed to self district after the warranty ended, multiple electrical faults and sensors failed in quick succession and due to VW attaching cheap sensors to expensive mechanical parts and not selling them separately it got very expensive quickly and VW were not interested. Latest one is ok though, apart from the suspension, but that might be the roads locally and my wife's uncanny ability to hit every pothole there is.

The Devil Car.
In the 80s when we were properly skint, and the interest rate on our mortgage went up a percent a month (it can happen kids) we bought a Renault 5 for a couple of hundred quid. Absolutely nothing but trouble, until one day it caught fire outside my mum’s house. Fire Brigade type fire 🔥.

I have two - a Vauxhall Chevette - just because it was an awful rust box that was screwed together extremely badly. The wings just rotted in a two year old car.
It reached a point where out was costing 200 quid a month to rub - in 1984.

A Citroen BX 16 valve GTI. Has it for two years as a company car - 27 weeks off the road. Hydraulics, faux warning lights, build quality, mechanical issues - and being smashed into on the first 3 miles of owning it.
It was terrible - the noise levels were unbearable in the car - the only way to remove the sonic boom above the drive was to open the sun roof. The radio was so quite you could hear it - and the speakers fell out of the door.
Will never ever have another French car ( although I would love an original DS)

I've not had anything quite as bad as most posters.

For sheer abject frustration and irritation for me it has to be the more recent of the two Passat's I've had.

The Passat should be a good fit for me, big enough to lump sailing and biking gear in, ok for towing, auto, comfy ride and enough poke to make long journeys relaxing.

But the volume of electrical and mechanical part failures, large amounts of labour replacing them and faults in a sub 100,000 mile car, coupled with the constant changes from rolling post emissions fix 'updates' just did my nut in. In 3 years and 50,000 miles it threw up more unplanned repairs than the Mondeo before it did in more than twice that. What's depressing is I don't think that level of repair for modern cars is all that uncommon now.

It was infuriating at the time but looking back it only really justified glum annoyance.

Without question, the Rover 620SLDi.

Bought because, on paper, it had the best economy and the Perkins 2.0l diesel was a good engine. Sadly, driving it was a terrible experience and very uncomfortable. I had to tank every four days and it kiled a gearbox after about five months of use.

By the time I sold it (eBay, sold as seen) it had a crack case oil leak, the sunroof did not work, the electric window on the driver's side would not close properly, the clutch was stuffed and it would not leave third gear. My mechanic told me that, even though it would have made him a lot of money to fix it, he just did not think it was worth it. The bloke that bought it drove it home in third gear.

Hated that car. Horrible thing. The only good thing about it was the colour.

The least reliable car I have owned was also a Citroen BX16v GTi.
I had mine for a year and it was running properly ( i.e. everything worked as it was supposed to) for about 6 weeks in total. Strangely enough I actually liked the car, it was comfortable, characterful and had good brakes.
The worst car as a whole in terms of what it was like to drive and general crapness was a Peugeot 309 XS. Nasty, tinny, horrible seats etc. Etc. But at least it was reliable.

Honda Jazz,

First new car we ever owned. Hateful pile of crap. Three years old failed its first MOT.
1. Leaking sump, had to be replaced
2. Wheel corrosion so bad on inside Honda had to replace them.
3. Honda took the car for evaluation and after £3500 of repairs returned.

Roll six years roof leaked, boot leaked, gearbox layshaft bearing went, apparently they do that. Gearbox needed £600 of repairs and rebuilt. Leaks, faulty panel gap sealant, they used the incorrect sealant that went hard. After 10 years we finally decided we couldn't bare the car any more with only 52K miles on the clock. We traded in for Toyota IQ. The garage scrapped the car, beyond economic repair. We had many cars prior to this heap real bangers and many new cars thereafter, but it remains the most unreliable heap of monumental crap we ever owned. Whenever I hear people say get a reliable Honda I almost feel obliged to hit them. Give me french cars any day over these. In fact the two culprits of countries that make apparently reliable cars (Germany/Japan), have produced the most unreliable cars we have owned...

JeZ

Honda Jazz, 2004.
Claimed on warranty for wheel bearing when it failed its first MOT, first of many wheel bearings to die. Leaky tailgate from new. Huge wide gap in the front bumper meant the radiator fins looked like they had been shotblasted with beach pebbles within months of new. Tracking would be put out by a single pothole. Bowden cables for bonnet catch and tailgate handle siezed every winter. Clutch stupidly heavy at the pedal and squeaked loudly when pressed after warranty was up, like a clown car. Had three recalls for electrical stuff (window switch that was a fire risk in snow, airbags, something else like a control column stalk, I can't remember now). Brake calipers all round prone to dragging & eventually seizing & handbrake was comedy, ineffective no matter how much adjusted. Ate two air con compressors. Radio died suddenly after about four years, then CD player. Engine mounts had rapidly worn out according to its last service/MOT.

It actually got singled out & shot with a BB gun in my works car park one day.

My first car was a K reg Escort in glorious burgundy, no power steering and a 1.4l petrol engine. I helped a mate move house from Worcester to Sheffield and it used a full tank of fuel. Each way.

Any sign of a hill in the distance and max motorway speed would be 50mph.

At least it only cost me £100