Worst car ever owned

[Stanley Rockafella]

My fave is the PT cruiser story. Totally epic!
Sadly there's an 80's BMW story, (dont' worry, it's not an e30;))

http://jalopnik.com/your-painfully-tragic-stories-of-the-worst-cars-youve-e-1756396826

"While I don’t support domestic violence, I firmly wanted to punch my wife in the mouth every time we got into the car"

[gwb72tii]

1972 Chevy Vega, worthless pos
Aluminum cylinder walls back then was new technology that didn't work.
After 30k miles, still under full warranty, car got 400 miles per quart of oil. Should have been classified as a 2 stroke.
Chevy refused to repair the car under warranty. I was 19, just starting to learn about cars. The dealer removed the cylinder head and you could see gauges up and down the cylinder walls. Even I with no mechanical experience could tell that wasn't normal. Chevy wouldn't budge.
FUCK Chevrolet. I will push a car rather than own a Chevy.

[FredK]

haha, that guy has some real anger management issues.

[flyboyx]

i always try to bash chrysler at every reasonable opportunity and this seems like a worthwhile instance to further my agenda.

I've owned quite a few 80's chrysler front wheel drive vehicles. they were all shit. spongy marshmallow suspensions. crappy 4 banger engines......just plain cheap shitty cars really.

i have rented several chrysler products from the 90's to present. they were all shit. some of them were even brand new cars with less then 1000 miles on them.

i remember about 6 or 7 years ago, the ex and i rented a car in denver because there was a wedding we needed to attend in ft collins. the only car available was a fucking pt cruiser convertible. my girlfriend at the time was ecstatic. the weather was going to be nice and to her it seemed like the perfect car to drive up into the mountains with the top down. i simply cringed. the car never broke down but it was a total piece of crap. shakes, shimmies, rattles....crappy plastic everywhere.....horrible seats. the cruise control was broken. imagine how pissed i was at the prospect being stuck with this thing for a week and perhaps 600 miles of driving.

about a year ago, we rented a car in detroit. kind of like the guy in the pt cruiser story, my wife picked out some shitty light blue chrysler mid sized car. sitting right next to this piece of crap was the holy grail of rental cars: a toyota corrola. i made a b line for the 'yoda, but my wife begged and pleaded for the pentastar. goddamnit. i figured we would only have it for a couple days and it would be better to placate my wife rather than listen to her complain the entire time about how we selected the wrong car. needless to say this car was a squeaky, noisy, gas guzzling piece of shit too.

i just can't figure out how those assholes stay in business.

[Kevinl]

I was never forced to get a certain car or hand me down so there werre never any cars i hated but i certainly had favorites

As far reliability goes the worst cars i owned were

Subarus what a bunch of junk except my 1985 gl hatchback
and GM cars except for my 2005 Suburban

[bikerbill2021]

...sitting right next to this piece of crap was the holy grail of rental cars: a toyota corrola. i made a b line for the 'yoda, but my wife begged and pleaded for the pentastar. goddamnit.

Ahh the corolla, similar story happened to me when I went back to the east coast for a friends wedding, got lucky and got a brand new corolla instead of the Dodge Dart the rental cars site said I would have gotten, bluetooth, back up cam, everything, made my E46 at the time look like a huge outdated POS, which it pretty much was

Worse car I ever owned was my second car, and first "project" car, a 1985 VW 8v Scirocco, the BIGGEST pile of shit. I had two of those fucking things, my second one was an 88 16v I got shortly after the 8v, ironically the 8v sat for 3 years before I got to it, the 16v was a field car and bombed around in/shot at/jumped regularly. 16v was a way better car then that god forsaken 8v just for the fact that it had its wheels driven off of it on a regular basis. Ditched both of them and bought my E30 for 500 bux, and the rest is history, said goodbye to the VW brand (owning them at least, I work on those damn things daily) and went to the dark side.

Goes to show you, letting a car sit and rot does no good for it

EDIT: HA just read that link after I posted this and the first story is buy anything BUT a VW

[Das Delfin]

Oddly enough my bmw has been the most reliable car I've ever owned with only the alternator and clutch slave cylinder failing on me. A month after I sold my '89 Toyota pickup, which always had cooling system issues, the new owner called me asking why the truck would crank but not start. I told him to get on the web and figure it out because I'd just put in new head gaskets so as far as I was concerned, it's his problem. Plus I was about 3000 miles away so what was I going to do anyway?

[ST1G]

My ex girlfriend had a PT cruiser. She was probably an 8 (and a 10 in bed). Couldn't get over the car though. That and she was a PT cruiser convertible in person form.

[Vincent Brick]

1972 Chevy Vega...

Holy shit I'm not the only one with a Vega story. I had a '77 GT, someone had a put a 2.5L/5sp from a Monza/Sunbird in it and it was still broke more than it ran. I couldn't even get rid of it, sold it to some folks and they only made it to the end of my Dad's driveway before the steering box broke off the subframe. Eventually got $200 for it, but they got stuck in the snow trying to pull it out of my driveway, had to call a tow truck to get both vehicles out out. I guess he welded it back together and wrapped it around a tree not long after.

2nd was my 1990 Cutlass Supreme. It was my grandmothers 2nd husbands car, he died, and she was about to die, so she gave it to me outright so I wouldn't have to pay inheritance taxes on it. It had the grandpa bench seat interior and column shift, but it had IRS/4wheel disk so it actually wasn't a complete bore as long as it had decent rubber. That guy maintained that car meticulously, I had the big folder of dealer service records since new, but once that thing hit 60k miles, every 6-8 months I have having to come up with $600-800 to keep it on the road. Or I should say my parents did, I was young then and really REALLY poor so my parents paid a lot of it just because they knew it was my only way to work.

I will never own GM again unless it is a Corvette, regardless of my lifetime discount for being the son of a GM retiree.

[Vincent Brick]

i always try to bash chrysler at every reasonable opportunity and this seems like a worthwhile instance to further my agenda.

I've owned quite a few 80's chrysler front wheel drive vehicles. they were all shit. spongy marshmallow suspensions. crappy 4 banger engines......just plain cheap shitty cars really.

i have rented several chrysler products from the 90's to present. they were all shit. some of them were even brand new cars with less then 1000 miles on them.

I owned four 1st gen Neons and they were the absolute best cars I ever owned. Reliable, cheap to own, cheap to make quick, fun to drive, 1500+ SCCA podium finishes and a shitload of character. The A413 automatics sucked way worse than your average automatic car though, and I agree with you fully on every other FWD Chrysler product ever that lacked a turbocharger.

There's a reason they already discontinued the new Dart and Chrysler 200, with no plans for replacements. They are giving up on those segments entirely. I grew up around '60s Mopar muscle cars and used to have a lot of Chrysler brand loyalty, but that is gone now.

[Kershaw]

It would definitely have to be 1995 Chrysler LeBaron convertible. With a transmission that dies every 50k and a top that never seals quite right it was a joy to own. It also had the worst suspension, super floaty and soft. I can't believe I didn't die in that car. One time I actually hit 117mph in that car, I'll note that it never surpassed 105 after that. Not sure what internal damage happened, haha.

My current IX is kind of a close second though. :(

[BobombETA]

1984 BMW 528e, the only car to leave me stranded multiple times.

Crank position sensor failed = no start
Waterpump failed = overheating
Exhaust fell off 150 miles from home. tried my best to limp it.

My Jetta was pretty shitty towards the end too.

[djjerme]

i just can't figure out how those assholes stay in business.

Because of people like my in-laws.

Not kidding, they ONLY buy Chrysler products. Refuse to buy or even look at anything else. Only consider something connected with Dodge - which goes all the way to back to the first car my wife ever learned to drive on, an AMC Eagle 4x4.

I think they BUY brand loyalty - they give stupid huge discounts to family and friends of employees.

As well, I have owned a few Pentastar products: '69 Dodge Dart (slant six fail), '68 Full Size (318 Fail), '99 Dodge Dakota (12 mpg no matter what)..etc.

Chrysler - the company may have given us the Superbird, but also gave us such hits as:

The PT Crusier

The K Car

And the greatest sin known to man, and the birth of the suburban hell hauler:



Burn in Hell Chrysler for that one.

[mjimport]

Say what you will (I hate vans too) but ironically, that box on wheels basically saved the company, and for some reason, they couldn't make enough of those stinkin PT Cruisers! Customers ate them up.

I feel bad for the company really, but I used to work in the truck/jeep vehicle development so I have a soft spot.

[Rouvld]

2000 Mazda millinia S, I don't even want to get into the stories about this car.