<p>I had a Ford Tempo in the 80’s that was a lemon. Had it barely a month and some sensor went out and stopped me in the middle of the street. Also had trouble with the gas gauge being inaccurate. Had to have the air conditioning unit replaced. And I think there was more, but it was a leased vehicle and we gave it back as soon as the lease was up.</p>
<p>My first car was a 1965 Ford Galaxy XL bought used for $300 and which we finally gave up in 1981. It wasn’t a particularly good car, but my dad was a mechanic so he always kept it running. Boy, would that V-8 engine snap your head back when you pulled out to pass. It was very temperamental though, but by the end I had figured out its quirks.</p>
<p>My folks always swore by Oldsmobiles, had 10 of them in a row, but again my dad was mechanic.</p>
<p>We swear by Toyotas–2 Camrys, 2 Corollas–3 still running. 2 have been driven well over 100,000 miles (one still going) and the others will be. We’ve never had any kind of service on them other than natural wear and tear (oil changes, tires, belts and plugs after 80,000 miles, etc.).</p>
Same here. I bought it to replace a Subaru Legacy wagon that was totalled in an accident, and the Sable was inferior in every way except that it was slightly bigger, making it easier to put in an infant car seat.</p>
<p>Wow-- how did we all survive with cars that stalled out in the middle of the street??</p>
<p>My brother had some POS that was real popular when he had it ( I am blanking on what it was-- but it’ll eventually come to me and I’ll post it – A little boxy Dodge something or other, I think, from the late 60’s- early 70’s). He then got a volvo that he called his revolvo because it revolved in and out of the shop</p>
<p>**** EDIT***** It was a Dodge Dart. 1970 or so</p>
<p>I have a hard time deciding which “worst car” to describe here…</p>
<p>The '71 Ford Capri (bought in 1981)? It had dents everywhere, but ran reliably… Eventually it lost 2nd gear and I shifted from first to third for months… I sold it to a friend for $150. I remember driving to a job interview wearing cutoff jeans and a t-shirt because I knew I’d have to stop and tweak something. When I got there, I changed into my peach linen suit in the bathroom and the receptionist burst out laughing when she saw me.</p>
<p>The '72 Datsun (Nissan) 610 with 135,000 miles that a friend sold me for $50 (1982). I drove it for a year until I spun out on the NJ turnpike on ice and got t-boned, wrecking the car but leaving me undamaged. Hard not to total a car when you’ve paid $50 for it… but I did drive it away and actually tried to trade it in on the Toyota Corolla I bought. The dealer gave me $100 not to trade it, then one of his lot boys bought it from me for $25. </p>
<p>Or maybe the '71 Mustang Mach 1, which I adored, but only owned for two months (1983), because I wasn’t strong enough to drive it. Power steering, power brakes… and power all over. It wanted to go SO fast in a straight line. Bought it for $500, sold it for $2000. </p>
<p>Honestly, though, I think the all-time worst car was the brand-new Alfa Romeo GTV-6 that my husband bought. Oh, it was a wonderful car to drive, but it had electrical issues… and you just never knew if it was going to start in the morning, or stay running all day. At one point, in a Boston sleet-storm, it developed a problem with the electric window openers. Specifically, it rolled down one window at a time, then rolled the other up. So I was driving through wet ice, coming sideways, as the windows in the car are randomly rolling up and down. We sold that car to someone moving to California. It was much happier there.</p>
<p>lje62 + Inthebiz - another '72 Vega owner here! My first car and I loved it! I took such good care of that car - the interior looked like it had come off the showroom floor, but the outside (due to the rusting through problem mentioned) looked like an old beer can!</p>
<p>Sorry, defected from US products and bought a Land Rover. In fact, we bought three in a row until we finally decided that as much as we loved the look and the functionality (is that a word?) of the vehicles, they were service nightmares!! They were contantly in the shop for some fairly significant problems.</p>
<p>Oh, my brother LOVED his Dodge Dart with the scoop on the hood. The little boys in the neighborhood could hear him coming blocks away and would wave and cheer when he drove by.</p>
<p>I don’t remember it breaking down a lot, but he certainly worked on it a lot, just for fun.</p>
<p>Worst 1977 Chevy Vega–but I bought it for $300 in 87 and sold it for $200 after driving it for 3 years, so I guess it wasn’t that bad of a deal–except for all the repairs. By the time we got rid of it there was something wrong with the steering–it could only make right turns. . .
My parents and a couple sibs had Chevettes in the late 70s/early 80s–remember those? Like driving a tin can down the highway.</p>
<p>Had a couple Dodge Caravans–transmission always went out around 100,000.
GMC Savanna–lots of repairs.</p>
<p>Best cars: we have a Hyundai Elantra and a Sonata. High mileage and going strong. Love them. Bought them both used–no major repairs in years. Highly recommended.</p>
<p>Ford Escorts and GMC Safari–not too bad (or is it just fond memories?)</p>
<p>Car I learned to drive was a '72 Maverick. And a '68 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser Station Wagon. LOL</p>
<p>My friend had a Ford Pinto…another fine vehicle
Does anyone remember AMC cars ? I recall the Gremlin, Hornet and there was another one that reminded me of a bloated, blood-filled woodtick, ready to pop.</p>
<p>1986 Pontiac 6000. It was my wife’s (at that time my girlfriend) first new car. I don’t even know where to begin. The fact that the transmission was so rough and ill-designed that it broke the engine block mounts broke off TWICE is a good start, I suppose. Sluggish, broke often. I can’t tell you how happy she was when it was totalled in an accident (nobody was hurt) and the other party was at fault. I see a lot of Pontiac’s on this list.</p>
<p>My dad bought a new 1960 AMC Rambler at the recommendation of Consumer Reports. It was the proverbial lemon, broke down on the way home from the dealership and had every mechanical failure imaginable. By the end of its life, my parents were using ropes to keep the doors shut and my mom actually let my friends and I enter & exit through the windows, so she wouldn’t have to deal with the doors (my friends thought this was very cool). My dad still doesn’t trust Consumer Reports to this day.</p>
<p>We owned several cars which we were not particularly fond of, but our worst one was our first “new” family vehicle - a dealer demo Mazda MPV (do not remember the exact year) with every bell and whistle possible which we bought when H got a real job. It was a fine van until one day it literally started falling apart! Since we were stupid enough to buy an extended warranty on this heap of junk, the dealer picked up the estimated $6K in repairs (which included a “new” engine :eek:). I bet the dealer regretted that he schmoozed us into getting an extended warranty for several hunsred $$. And as soon as we heard another screeching noise from under the hood, we traded the sucker in.</p>
<p>My current car is my disaster–2001 Volvo V90. It was our first non-Japanese car, and I got talked into buying it for safety reasons. My kids were getting ready to drive and a friend convinced me that I needed something more substantial than a Honda.</p>
<p>The car has been a repair nightmare. Problems started within the first couple of months. Little problems at first-mostly cosmetic. Then the problems got bad. I had a throttle problem that made the car cut out on the FREEWAY! That was scary.</p>
<p>Every time a light comes on (for a while there, the check engine light came on all the time), it costs me $1000 to repair. I’ve had to replace things on this car that I’ve never had to replace on any other car (and I’ve driven cars till they drop…150K-225K miles)–very expensive things. It’s been eating oil since just after the warranty expired at 50K miles. It’s had a throttle defect so bad that it was the subject of a government recall that made them up the warranty to 200K for this defect. </p>
<p>I’d get a new car, but can’t for two reasons: H’s car had more miles on it and he really should be getting the next new car; I now google “XXX Brand Car problems” to research what car to buy, and have been so spooked by what I’ve read, I don’t know if I’ll ever find a car that I’ll be comfortable with.</p>
<p>On the plus side, if my Ds had been in an accident and they were able to walk away unharmed, then I would be singing the praises of the car, no matter that its other problems.</p>
<p>dmd, Your experience with ‘tweaking’ the engine of the 1971 Ford Capri is the same as that of my husband!</p>
<p>My husband had a bright yellow '71 Capri. He bought it in 1978 with the $700 insurance settlement he received when a group of joyriding teenagers broadsided his '70 Toyota Wagon in a stolen car. H was thrilled that he was able to ‘upgrade’ his Toyota to a Capri with the $700 insurance settlement since he had only paid $300 for the Toyota.</p>
<p>Ha! Some upgrade. I never once saw my husband drive off in that car without first seeing the hood up and him tinkering around with the engine. When we purchased our first new car, a 1980 Honda Accord (my favorite car ever), it was a tough decision as to whether we should sell the Capri to a junkyard or have a car-bashing party.</p>
<p>I remember my childhood family’s worst car–Ford Cortina, early 70s. The first time my dad took it on the freeway, the engine blew up. We didn’t have the car for long. The Ford dealership convinced him to give them another try with a Ford Maverick…</p>
<p>My 1980 Fiat Brava.
Ugly pea green color.
The gas cap was screwed on the exterior and it kept getting stolen.
Car was fast but the brakes we HORRIBLE.
Funny how I thought the car was “cool” at one time.</p>
<p>I wonder if some of Detroit’s problems today stem from the problems our folks had with their cars in decades past. I know I’m traumatized My dad’s Buick Electra had serious problems requiring us to get out, lift the 2-ton hood and twiddle some thing in the engine to get it going again, wherever it died (often in the middle of the street). And it would suddenly accelerate - this we finally learned via a very late recall was bad engine mounts shifting the engine into some cable. His Chevy Chevette rusted through - you could see the street passing underneath as you rode in that thing.</p>
<p>We had a couple of Plymouth vans for a while but they just weren’t as reliable, and broke apart in weird spots, like the trim.</p>
<p>I bought a 1970 ish Maverick or was it a Vega, hmmm, don’t seem to remember now, for $200, yes, that’s right, $200! It looked like somebody had gone around it with a sledgehammer and taken quite a few whacks at it. I didn’t care, just wanted to get to point A to point B. I first had to learn how to use a “3 speed on the column” manual shift. My best friend Trish and I decided to move from Denver to Socal, and yes, drive the $200 car, AND pull a small u-haul with it. I’m not sure whose brilliant idea this was! Everything was going good until, in the dark of the night, on I-25, the hood flew up, I panicked, and managed to jackknife the car and u-haul on the middle of the interstate. I’m not sure exactly how we got it secured down, but somehow we did, and got off the interstate knowing we would have to wait till morning to get a more permanent, secure “tie-down” of some kind. Low and behold, we realized we were in Las Vegas…New Mexico. Now I’ve been in some odd wierd places, and this one was right up there with the best of them. We checked into motel from you know where, (it was around $20 if I remember correctly), then proceded to go across the street to what looked like a “nice” hole in the wall. Once again, not sure whose bright idea this was, we proceded to tell everybody our names were “Inga and Helga from Sweden!” Both of us being blond, and not very bright, kept this up for the couple of hours that we were there, making up an entire language of our very own in our best Swedish accent. Trish ended up pool hustling several of the locals, won a little over $300 dollars, which was more than our ghastly car that took us to this town in the first place! Needless to say, the newly broke local boys didn’t find the two blond Swedish girls quite so cute anymore. We hightailed it back across the street to our palacial room, and promptly pushed the dresser in front of the door for added security! We left quietly out of town the next morning after getting a bungee cord. </p>
<p>Cheap ugly car…$200
Memories of it…$Priceless</p>
<p>this thread is sooo much fun; ummm, where should I begin…:</p>
<p>1975 Plymouth Duster: couldn’t stay on the road, even with an alignment; almost blew up in Philadelphia in 1983 when it broke down on the Skuylkill Expressway…literally caught on fire…but I guess that’s what you can expect from a car that had an MSRP of $1995</p>
<p>My dad had a 1974 Olds Toronado…hated that car; huge, always in the shop…</p>
<p>recently, the only car I really hated was my husband’s E350 Mercedes; I guess it was a 2003, very cheap on lease, but 0 acceleration…after driving that car, I couldn’t figure out why Mercedes is “supposedly” such a great car brand…back to japanese for us…</p>
<p>Oh, I had forgotten about the used Jaguar my ex-husband bought. It was really pretty. Had a ***very scary ***steering problem. After a few trips to the shop, we knew we couldn’t keep it. We put an ad in the paper to sell it; we’d get calls about it, but we couldn’t show it because it would be in the shop again. Finally got it out of the shop long enough to sell it to a guy who owned one of the strip clubs on Northwest Highway - he paid cash in small bills.</p>
My dad’s Buick Electra had serious problems requiring us to get out, lift the 2-ton hood and twiddle some thing in the engine to get it going again, wherever it died (often in the middle of the street). And it would suddenly accelerate - this we finally learned via a very late recall was bad engine mounts shifting the engine into some cable. His Chevy Chevette rusted through - you could see the street passing underneath as you rode in that thing.</p>