Cars you can’t forgive

Having just confessed on another thread that I still whisper "you suck" to 914s I see at shows, despite it having been more than two decades since I've owned one, I'm wondering if I'm the only one. Anyone else so scarred by a prior experience that they can't forgive that model? And what car did it to you?

Margie

Most GMs of the 80s and 90s that aren't full size vehicles.

Something about the seating position in them torques my knee into a painful position and if I drive them for more than an hour my knee locks up.  Happened with an El Camino, a Blazer, an S-10, and a few random ones that weren't in the family but were rentals or such.

My C5 Z06 ruined what little respect I had left for GM vehicles. 

My GMC Sonoma still has me questioning anyone that buys an S10 and I haven't owned it for 17 years. 

In reply to Marjorie Suddard :

I don't know of one, but have to ask, was it the green 914 that hurt you? I remember the articles on it being mostly positive (yeah, I get it, magazine project car). What turned you off.

On a peripherally related note, I am the only human that can't make a 22R Toyota continue to run. A failed U-joint broke the block on my recently rebuilt Hi Lux. I had a miracle 30K mile one die in my second, followed by a very expensive long block that lasted maybe 10K miles, followed by a rebuild that had piston slap upon initial startup after a rebuild. I still can't write them off entirely. 

When I was young I bought a 1980 VW Rabbit.  The RX-7 I craved had a note of $25 a month more than the Rabbit but I could not afford that extra $25 at the time.  

This Rabbit was nothing but trouble. 

I didn't realize it until no one could align it that the chassis was bent.  It had a crab thing going which my mechanic brother pointed out to me was noticeable when driving behind it.

I didn't realize it but the A/C unit was not a factory unit.  It was a dealer installed unit.   It was mounted on rubber bushings because of a vibration problem the poorly designed bracket caused.  Those bushings wore out 3 times in 5 years. And were a pain to change.

The VW dealer was a criminal.   He made the local news several times because people he screwed over came into the dealership and punched him in the face.   Boo hoo.  He was the "victim".  Blah, Blah.  Sometimes Schadenfreude is fun.

Then it would only go 79 mph.    I remember many times driving with the pedal to the metal.   

I ended up giving it to my other brother, the dope head.  He wrecked it.  I knew he would because that's what he did.   

Happy Trails Rabbit. I hope we never meet again.

In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) :

Yes, the green 914. It was gorgeous, it drove and handled great--except that gearbox. I wanted to love it, tried to bond with it, but every time I thought we were cool and working as a team, there was a balky shift that felt, well, personal. I guess it was more unrequited love than anything else. Also proves that taste colors perception--so flaws that others can forgive can be absolute no-go's for you.

Margie

Not me, but Mrs Russian Warship will never forgive this vehicle.



1996 Buick Roadmaster.   Because this photo sums up their relationship the best.

Because Optispark.    But it would only die while she was driving it by herself.    And then run perfectly fine as soon as I went to bring it home.   (It once made her walk over 5 miles home in knee deep snow, and started right up when I went there with jumper cables and a truck full of tools to get it started, only to fire off at the touch of the key, as it had always done for me)


Until we drove it to St Louis to pick up a motorcycle in early March, and it died three miles from the seller's house.  And refused to start.   And we were forced to ride the untested motorcycle back at night without cold weather gear instead of towing it home to Chicago in the trailer we brought with us.  A motorcycle that just happened to have a faulty headlight switch that failed on us on a pitch black section of I-55.    Oh, and we had to leave the Roadmaster at a Firestone that charged us $1500 to replace the Opti.   Which ended up doing the same thing a little over a year later.



It rode fantastically, however, and was a great road trip car.   Except when it decided to lose all of its ability to hold its oil at speeds over 60 on a trip down to Austin.  They must have loved us at The Westin with our Hemorrhaging Hooptie



See that sheen on the rear window?

I gave it a name on that trip-




But my wife had her own name for it- Shiny Happy Person

Only she didn't say "Shiny Happy Person"

A 92 eclipse and a friend's 2nd gen soured me from DSMs forever.  They will forever be banned from my garage.

In reply to Marjorie Suddard :

Person getting into a 914 the first time after owning a Miata:

Hmmm, light weight mid engine, 5 speed this should be fun!

Two minutes later.......where the Berkeley are the gears in this thing?@#$&

1981 Gutless Supreme. 260V8 White. Chrome fake wire wheel hubcaps. Light blue vinyl landau roof. Malaise era special. Was my Grandma's car until I bought it from her. Car couldn't break traction on wet leaves. Gutless.

Perhaps I actually should forgive it because the gutless-ness probably saved teenage me from fiery joyriding death.

Any American car made in the 60s through 80s.  Good for making loud noises and gobbling lots fuel but not much good at the things I valued in cars like good braking and handling.  I eventually switched to American iron for tow car service (my British tow cars were fine as long as the tracks were along I-5 but not as much use if mountains needed to be climbed on the wat to the races).  

PTSD triggered, 42 years later.

An Audi 100ls, looked just like this one.

It was a beautiful car when it ran properly.  It did so exactly twice during my ownership experience.

Since then I've had more German cars than you can count, but I can't go near an Audi.

Land Rover Discovery 2, first and only British car we've owned.  Head gaskets and cooling issues needed to be handled with a sledgehammer sized checkbook.  A checkbook and patience I didn't have at the time, you can't fix one piecemeal. 

My 05 Avalanche ruined GM trucks and the company in general for me.  berkeley that E36 M3box

The WRX wagon I bought at the start of the pandemic cured me of my Subaru want forever. 
 

70s Cherokees. My parents had a 76 and it was a screaming pile of garbage.

Sad because I think they look cool

Fiat 128, my first out the showroom car.  Commuted 25 miles to work and liked it a lot when it ran, but sometimes for no reason it would just shut off.  Dealer couldn't fix it.  

I should have gotten a clue when the owner of the dealership and his wife didn't drive what they sold.

Any Volvo with their iteration of that abomination PRV V6

You had cam wear problems that you flat out denied and refused to fix which made an already terrible design even worse, go fornicate yourself with an iron stick.

2007 Subaru WRX STi.  What a steaming pile that car was.  Had more rattles at 4000 miles than my German cars had at 140,000 miles.  Built really cheaply, insanely umcomfortable seats, a factory stock tune that was gauranteed to blow up the motor, on and on.  Didn't last long in my garage.

Isuzu Impulse Turbo.

The car that turned me off of turbos, piston engines in general, and got me interested in sim racing.

*looks at the parade of turbo piston engined cars owned* I got better.

But it is still stupid to have inline valves with exhausts right next to each other right where the turbine inlet is.  Recipe for hot spots and cracked cylinder heads.  Many cracked cylinder heads...

A 1983 Nissan Stanza. The most hateful vehicle I have ever owned. It left me on the side of the road more than any other vehicle I have owned. It was such a nightmare to work on and pissed me off so much I didn't buy another Nissan product for 30 years. 

My 1989 Merkur XR4Ti. Gorgeous, low mileage car that should have been awesome. It was never driven in the rain, was spotlessly clean and always won me trophies at car shows.

But that berkeleyer constantly broke just sitting in the garage. 

I owned it during the very early days of the internet so knowledge was still kind of hard to come by. Parts were harder to come by. Even Ford pretended that the car wasn't theirs.

I paid a lot for it, put a lot of money into it, and sold it for a fraction of what I had invested.

You couldn't give me one now.

Mid-90's BMW 530iT.  never again. NEVER.

Oldsmobile Alero two door. Red. Leather. Beautiful car that my wife's parents bought her I college and then handed us the payments when we married. 
It first broke down on the way home from the Atlanta airport to Roanoke Rapids, NC. Just turned off. It would just randomly not start for no good reason all the time. It looked great and drive ok when it worked, but you puckered up turning the key just praying it would fire. 2 years later we traded it in and almost did a dance when it started for the dealer. That 96 accord was a welcome muscle relaxing pill in our life.