The worst car I’ve ever “owned” was a Ford Fiesta company car in the mid- to late-90s, a Mark 4 I believe. It had a normally aspirated 1.8 diesel block and it was one of the most insipid, gutless, hateful cars it’s ever been my misfortune to spend any time with. On the motorway on my commute there was a stretch of road which had a gentle incline for, I don’t know, half a mile or so; hitting the bottom at about 80mph (probably its top speed) with my foot to the boards I’d be doing about 55-60mph at the top.
At the time I was doing quite a lot of mileage and the thing just wasn’t up to it. It curled up its toes inside of six months, so work gave me… another one. I think I killed four of them before they finally relented and gave me an Astra. I thought I’d never drive anything as shit again, until relatively recently…
My current car is a BMW (not by choice, don’t hate me). It was off the road recently and the repairers sent me a courtesy car. I thought, ooh, this might be something interesting.
It was a Nissan Micra.
Ye gods, it was like a timewarp back to 1980. Everything about it felt cheap, e.g. the inside of the fuel filler flap was just unfinished metal folded over itself to hide the sharp edges. My old 1977 Fiesta was more refined than this thing. The only way you could get any use out of it was to rag the knackers off it, which every other driver prior to me had clearly also discovered.