it’s not unique, virtually every single W210 late 90s german car I’ve seen is rusty, with peeling paint.

ftfy

W210s are horrendous for this, mate’s dad had all doors, wings and boot lid replaced on their 4 year old E. Having done that the strut tops started going. Their contemporary A-class went similarly. VW polos & golfs from the same era were also self-destructing rust buckets.

I remember reading the M-B techical magazine at the time & it was full of cost-cutting measures like shoving the seats full of shredded coconut husks as it was cheaper than foam.

The floorpan was based on that of the Austin Maestro, and minor components such as interior door handles were Maestro items.

I used to work for Mintex Don in the R&D department, and we had a prototype Freelander. It had the underpinnings of a freelander with a maestro van body. We did get some very funny looks when driving to the test track.

Yep that era of Mercedes are pretty rough. The boss went all Gerald Ratner and publicly said that their customers no longer wanted to buy a car and maintain it for 30 years or more, they wanted a new one every 5 years so made them cheaper.

Seems even those who did want a new one every 5 years still wanted one they assumed would last decades – they’re not terrible, but they were noticeably cheaper feeling that the older ones and buyers didn’t like seeing Mercedes on the road with rusty bodies etc, especially 10 year old ones.

Jeez, I had to drive a brand new Maestro diesel for a couple of weeks and I really couldn’t believe how bad it was! Truly, truly awful car, with not one redeeming feature!

2CV’s and Defenders are fun, perfect for their intended use and infinitely rebuildable.

Loved our Mk1, drum braked, 998cc Fiesta, but yes the floor fell out.
Brilliant car, as was our Daewoo Nexia, Shedric, which took us and the bikes everywhere and had the decency to blow up outside my favourite pub.

nickfrog

I think they’ll be grateful for you avoiding them and might consider a side benefit of their car as being the ability to easily annoy reverse snobs and narrow minded people who judge others they don’t know based on the car they drive. I don’t blame them !

Sorry, missed your post.
🙂

Honestly, it’s not reverse snobbery.
No issue with people buying nice cars, it makes me smile to see them being used.

It’s just that particular type of car offends me (not really, obviously, but let’s go with it) on almost every level.

A totally shallow, completely merit free retrograde step which logically can only reflect the character of those that choose them.

I own a fat, ugly, cheap Doblo.
😀

it’s not unique, virtually every single W210 late 90s german car I’ve seen is rusty, with peeling paint.
ftfy
W210s are horrendous for this, mate’s dad had all doors, wings and boot lid replaced on their 4 year old E. Having done that the strut tops started going. Their contemporary A-class went similarly. VW polos & golfs from the same era were also self-destructing rust buckets.

I remember reading the M-B techical magazine at the time & it was full of cost-cutting measures like shoving the seats full of shredded coconut husks as it was cheaper than foam.

BMW’s aren’t exact;y great for rust proofing – the E46 and E39’s have issues. Lots of E46’s around with rusty wings.

Rich_s – Member
…
Awful car. Would I have another? Yes.

You watch the Grand Tour unironically, you do.

POSTED 4 HOURS AGO # REPORT-POST
PJM1974 – Member
I was enjoying coffee outside at a local café, when I noticed a late 1990s Mercedes E class parked on the pavement next to me.

Now, the previous generation E class (W124) seems to be one of those ageless, classless type cars that keep going for ever. Customers paid a premium on the understanding that even with poverty spec (steel wheels, no radio) that the car would outlast you and as such was the chariot of choice for many a European taxi driver.

This model, of 1999 vintage suffered from rampant rust and had multiple perforations in the bodywork. The trim appeared to be hanging off in places and the paintwork was pretty shoddy. It’s not unique, virtually every single W210 I’ve seen is rusty, with peeling paint.

Had this car been sold as a Rover, I’ve no doubt that we’d be slagging it off as the epitome of crapness. I feel very sorry for everyone who paid a small fortune for one of these, expecting it to last a decade or more.
I agree to a point (Mercs quality did go downhill at that point), however feel compelled to point out that it’s 18 years since 1999 – well over a decade, in other words.
To be fair though these days you’d expect most cars to last that long. A premium car like a Merc should be solid and last quite a bit longer, not just a luxury car for 5 years until too much starts going wrong and it becomes a cheap car for the brave (wo)man.

er, edited to slightly reduce the size of quote…

Original Mini with A-series engine.

What sort of lunatic puts the radiator sideways? No other car before or since was such a flawed guff-crumpet.

Thats only a minor design flaw compared to having the gears sitting in the sump, the distributor poking out of the grill virtually, the carbs sitting on the exhaust manifold. Yet one of the most iconic if not the most iconic car ever built. I’ve loved all of mine and will have another one as soon as I can persuade my wife that we really need a mini van!

IIRC the Freelander was developed in 18 months, so you should cut it some slack.

I own a fat, ugly, cheap Doblo

tremendous cars, I miss ours

I agree to a point (Mercs quality did go downhill at that point), however feel compelled to point out that it’s 18 years since 1999 – well over a decade, in other words.
To be fair though these days you’d expect most cars to last that long. A premium car like a Merc should be solid and last quite a bit longer, not just a luxury car for 5 years until too much starts going wrong and it becomes a cheap car for the brave (wo)man.

There’s a lot of late 1990s vintage Rover 75s and Alfa Romeo 156s that are still going strong. Both seem to be more resistant to rust than an E class of the same era. I used to own an example of the latter!

Fast enough to get you into trouble, but with brakes and suspension not quite good enough to get you out of said trouble.

The VW Polo G40 was like that, fast, relatively easy to get big HP gains, lightweight but lethal. Were rare due to being a silly price when new and became even rarer after many were crashed. Oh and the superchargers had a bad habit of lunching themselves. Well sorted examples were great fun to drive though and obviously much better build quality than Metro’s, but subpar for VW’s of the time, they were assembled in Spain!

The only way to really sort the brakes was to fit a Passat master cylinder, ideally a bigger servo and do a rear hub conversion to MkII Golf disc brakes 😀

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poOuVD9Bpx8[/video]

My brother had a G40, it was a cool little car and despite being about 25bhp down on my 16v Golf it was nearly as quick.

rover 200, with the peugot 2L diesel. Where they clearly took the peugeot diesel and “fitted” a different turbo. Which didn’t manage to span the rev gap between gears. Hill start up an extended incline? 1st gear, 2nd gear, up into 3rd aaaaaannnd down into 2nd again, and up into 3rd aaaaand down into 2nd…

Rover never used a Peugeot engine, all theirs were based off the Perkins lump.

I suspect you had an SD which didn’t have the intercooler. Was a bit narrow on the powerband but it did only have 86bhp.

Bombproof though.

For me it’s a Renault Clio MK3 (I think), odd speed sensitive steering, non fold flat rear seats, head went, tiny drain holes for the area under the windscreen which block every 3 months with leaves so the wiper motor flooded and shorted, plus the pollen filter soaked, then dribbled into the passenger footwell which I thought was the sunroof.

There is a litany of things that went wrong with it but I suspect the previous owner wore spurs and a Stetson.

@ P-Jay – I had one. Brilliant little Q cars, bloody fast for such a small engine and sounded like a jet fighter under power. The wide powerband of supercharged cars makes them so nice to drive.

G40’s needed quite a bit of fettling (suspension and brakes) to get them right and the brakes were just not fit for purpose, they were dangerous in car that light and fast. VW uprated the front discs without any of the other braking system components, such a half arsed bodge IMO.

It should be a car that had no right to be on the road, that was particularly dangerous or badly thought out to such a degree that it was extremely difficult or challenging to drive.

Absolutely. Like the Lada I used to drive. Exhibited all of those traits, vague steering, vague brakes, vague gearbox, vague handling…
Hopelessly unsuited to going outside the 30mph limit of any given town/city/village.

It’s a thing. Getting the steering to fit on RHD cars is a challenge and many corners often get cut. Also, you’ve got to account for the front wheels and footwells and a transmission tunnel.
Vauxhalls seem to have an issue here. I drove a late model Zafira and noted that the wheel was still offset. I had the dreaded backache within twenty miles and I had to drive the hateful, sodding thing to Ayr from the south-eastern tip of England.

Strange, I’ve driven a lot of Vauxhalls over the last fifteen months, Corsa, Astra, Insignia, Meriva and Zafira, and I’ve never, ever noticed it, in fact I’ve found all of them to be perfectly fine to drive, comfortable, with the possible exception of the Meriva, which lacked a certain something.

Anything, simply anything by Ford or Vauxhall currently. They are all built to an exacting budget, and look and feel like that whatever you are in.

Just how many have you actually driven, and for how far? Zafira of four years ago had a pretty cheap dash and control system, but newer ones are much better fitted out, and aren’t bad to drive at all, Corsa SR/SRi are great little cars, really nicely fitted out, you even get a heated screen!
And while their infotainment system is fairly simple, that works in its favour because it’s just so easy to use, unlike the Sony that Ford use, which I find almost unusable, it has the worst interface I’ve come across since the Alpine X-1 I made the mistake of buying some years back, but other than that, pretty much every Ford I’ve driven over the last year or so, which are all between two and four years old, have been great cars, really fine handling, comfortable for long drives and, apart from the shitty Sony radio, really well fitted out. I found the B-Max to be surprisingly good fun to drive.

My first car was a 1972 hillman avenger, appalling vehicle.
My second car was a 1975 hillman avenger which was much better because it had a vynl roof.

Hiya,

Worst car i ever had the misfortune to drive was a VW Passat circa 2006.
It was a hire car i had when i worked in Germany. Too bloody long and impossible to park anywhere. However the award for an invention that didn’t need to be invented was the electronic handbrake. The amount of times it jammed on was ridiculous. The final nail in it’s coffin was it jammed on at a petrol station at Hannover airport. I wasn’t far from the airport so i dumped it there walked to the sixt office gave them the keys and told them never to give me one again. Ironically at the time i had a skoda Octavia estate shorter than the Passat and no electronic handbrake absolutely brilliant car. The only problem it had was a VW traction control system in snow it would refuse to move. Found a fix on a forum by removing a fuse.

JeZ

By far the worst car I have ever been in.
Not very cheap but very very nasty. Terrible plastic everywhere on the inside and the have cut corners in the wierdest places – terrible suspension, no temperature gauge, even the rev counter is an option, no boot light, no glove box lid, etc etc and yet offer it with pointless friperies like air con, bluetooth and alloy wheels, for extra money of course.
It is extremely noisy and feels coarse and gutless.
My biggest gripe is the seats though, absolutely awful, I can do 40 miles max in it before I have to stop and get out and get some feeling back into my buttocks. I could do 600 in my old Mondeo and then only have to stop to refuel, which reminds me the Aygo is surprisingly thirsty for something so small and gutless
Also quite unreliable, seen a wide variety of issues with them (previous girlfriend had one, another girlfriend had an almost identical C1)
I’ve had basic and slow (I grew up with 2CVs, have had a Defender and now have a Transit) but they were all infinitely better, much better thought out, being in them was just much nicer.
Other crap cars usually have something going for them, usually being cheap, but a top-spec Aygo is £15,695!!! Couldn’t quite believe that when i googled it.
Rant over. It’s rubbish.

Absolutely. Like the Lada Landrover Defender I used to drive. Exhibited all of those traits, vague steering, vague brakes, vague gearbox, vague handling…
Hopelessly unsuited to going outside the 30mph limit of any given town/city/village.

Can we add Defender and Honda Jazz to the list.