"what’s the worst car you’ve ever owned”

[Ming the Merciless]

A Vauxhall Cavalier is the worst car I’ve ever owned.

 

[presta]

When I see the bulbous monsters on the road these days I recall that my long suffering parents used to drive off on holiday with three kids (one of whom, usually me, would be car-sick) and a dog in a Moggie Minor.

I saw a Capri go past a few years ago, and what struck me was how tiny it looked compared with everything else. I'm 6'5", but I had no problem getting in mine, unlike anything nowadays. 60s & 70s cars had bags of room in them, the problem with cabin space started in the mid 80s. Todays cars are like a Tardis in reverse: huge outside and f*ck all room inside.

had to leave my window open all the way home in pouring rain so I could wipe a small part of the windscreen with my hand

I drove my Mini home from work once leaning over in front of the passenger whilst the offside wiper wiped the bonnet instead of the screen.

Vauxhall 101. Gearbox was useless. You never knew what gear it would change into.

That reminds me, definitely the worst car I've ever driven was the VW Polo we had on hire on Corfu. It had no first gear, and by the end of the day second and reverse weren't working either.

 

[Gwylan]

Reminiscing about my dad's Moggie I remembered that when he got the pump attendant (no self service then) to fill up he would ask for "shots" and the attendant would squirt several shots of something from a can in with the fuel. I can distinctly remember the phrase "four and four shots".

What was the "something"? Someone here is sure to know. Not just oil presumably. I always thought oil in fuel in a four stroke engine was a Bad Thing.

Redex.
Made claims for upper cylinder lubrication. Sounds rude and improbable

 

[Gwylan]

There was the jelly mould Ford. Had 2 of them, at someone else's expense, put phenomenal miles on them. Typical reps car.
Boring beyond belief.

 

[Beebo]

Worst car driven, was a company owned Lada Riva Estate pool car, it was impossible to kill it, we would fill the back with tools and nuts, bolts, screws etc, then follow the van to where ever the job was, the back window fell out in Guildford, one of the staff topped it up with oil, to the brim, yet the damn thing still started and ran, just in it’s own blue cloud, I think I dropped about 15 litres of oil out of it, and put about 5 back to get it to the right level, the seats were shocking, and to top it off, it was finished in “Baby poo beige” an absolutely hateful thing

My grandparents had a two tone brown and beige Lada, right at the height of all the Skoda / Lada jokes.
It was so embarrassing as a teenager in the 80s.

 

[kapelmuur]

A Morris minor. Why they've become a collectors car god only knows. Nothing but trouble and a complete rust bucket.

I had one, there was a split in the floor pan through which you could see the road. Very reliable though, I did thousands of miles in it. Maybe a bit of selective memory, but when it did go wrong it was very easy to find and fit replacement parts.

This was a 1955 split windscreen model I had in the late 1960's.

 

[Rusty Nails]

1948 Austin Devon. My first car which cost me £25 in 1968. Full of rust, missing teeth on the flywheel so used the starting handle a lot, drank petrol and oil, arm indicators needed a helping hand to get them to lift up, wipers temperamental, steering needed arms of steel, regular visits to scrapyards needed to get replacement parts, but on the plus side plenty of room in the back seats.

Wrote it off in crash within the year but it was a learning experience.

 

[Yellow Fang]

I only owned two cars. The first was a twenty-year-old mini with one careful, woman driver. It then had a reckless, male driver. I crashed it four times in about 18 months. I eventually wrote it off after crashing it into a parked Lada. I could not be bothered defrosting the passenger's side of the window. The next was a Talbot Horizon. I coveted up the rust with spray paint close to the original colour. The rear view mirror kept falling off. There was a hole in the fuel tank, so if I filled it up it would leak on the station forecourt. I changed a sparkplug once, but it was a different type to the other sparkplug, so it was effectively running on 3 and a half cylinders. When I wanted to buy my flat I could either afford the deposit on the flat or another car, so I decided to go for the flat. Apart from my resentment on the money pit that is car ownership, I was aware that I was a bad driver. Most the time I drove like an old woman, except when road rage took over me and I drove like a maniac. Decided it would be safer for everyone if I stuck to cycling.

 

[Smokin Joe]

I've had so many sheds I wouldn't know where to start.

 

[Drago]

I'm sure if Gene Haas were on here he'd claim his F1 car was the worst he'd ever owned.

 

[Mike_P]

My first car was an Austin Maestro which needed a new engine. Had a reconditioned one fitted which was even worse and had that exchanged free. Made the mistake of ordering a Punto mk 2 without test driving it, having a Punto mk 1. Turned out to be horrible to drive as the clutch pedal had no foort space to the left of it.

 

[Smokin Joe]

I once scrapped a Ford Capri because of a faulty spark plug.

A piston hit it.

 

[Richard A Thackeray]

The Worst
A Ford C-Max
The first shape, on a ‘57’ plate
(1.8 petrol, might have liked it more as a diesel?)

Utterly vile, with the only redeeming feature being LED taillights!

- It constantly misted up, requiring ‘full time a/c’ (no apparent damp/moisture in it, or smell of it)
- 30MPG best ever MPG
- 3 cracked windscreens in 2 years (2 on insurance, 3rd was left, as chips)

It got to the point that l hated it so much, l used to leave it outside the house with all 4 windows down overnight, but even the local feral scrotes seemed not to want it!!

The 2nd worst was a FIAT Tempra estate back in about 1993, we’d had 5 consecutive FIATs before that
1 x Panda
3 x Uno (2 x new)
1 x Punto (new/first shape/1.7TD)

All were paragons of reliability/economy (barring an alternator on one Uno ‘cooking the battery’)
The Tempra was a ‘Friday afternoon car’


The Best
(excluding my present Kodiaq)

Skoda Octavia estate (1.6TDi)
March 2012 - May 2021
Bought with 7,000 miles
50,000+ miles added in first 2 years
Remapped to 150bhp & (more importantly!) 250ib/ft torque at about 70,000miles

MPG was impressive
79.6 MPG average to East Midlands Airport once!
King’s Lynn & back on 4 gallons (about 64MPG average
If we’d not bought a caravan, l’d probably still have it!’

The only photographs l have of the things

Back in the mid 90s, it could still only manage (circa) 100miles for £10 of petrol!!
Hated starting when warm


Father-in-law bought a new saloon, when we got the Punto
He liked his


The vile thing

 

[gbb]

I think it was a fuel additive, possibly Redex for extra lubrication of the cylinders, or supposedly to make it run better. On 2T motorbikes and scooters, you could get shots of oil as this was obviously long before the advent of autolube systems.

Back in the mid 70s, we realised if you put a shot of it straight into the carburettor, the car would smoke like a tank...
So one night, about 1am, we set off to the now long gone Heron garage on the old A46 where we knew from experience a friend who did the night shift...would be soundly asleep at the till.
We rolled my then mini countryman in, we'd just put a shot of redex in..and it promptly filled the entire forecourt like a smokescreen, you couldn't even see the kiosk it was that thick, then drove off laughing like hyenas.

You'd get strung up for it now...People are no fun anymore...

 

[gbb]

Not.mine but a friend in the 80s brought a Renault Fuego, second hand, £1800 iirc which was a lot of money back then.
It blew the engine a week later...

Had a friend with a Vauxhall 101 , a nail of a car but it was a banger anyway. Its trick was when you were driving if you turned the key to the Starr position it would suddenly accelerate up a few mph. He never did figure out hiw or why.

Talking to the local MOT station owner some years ago and asked if he'd had any real shockers come in. Not so much nowadays he replied but years ago, you'd get 'Bert' etc turn up and expect a clean MOT on a car that really...really shouldn't be on the road. Outrageously rotted etc...and they'd moan like buggery when he told them it just wasn't safe....