People are alaways amazed when I show up to work or the grocery store in the DeLorean or am just out doing anything I'd normally do in a car with it. It's not particularly impractical really- not the most efficient thing on the road but better than many cars of its era, and since it was marketed as a fairly luxury vehicle it's quite comfortable to ride in.
In the early 80's, I had a 76 Spitfire that was actually a very nice car, unfortunately I was NOT mechanically inclined at the time. I was capable of oil changes and tune ups and not much else. That car spent more time at the repair shop than in my driveway. I could make my next appointment for a week later when I picked it up for what ever was broken that day. Sold it to a girl whose boyfriend was a mechanic and they kept it for ten years with no issues, but I suspect he did a lot of tinkering on it.
My current ride:
Noisy, stiff, shakes your fillings out, but boy it goes like stink. I'll keep it, even though I do have to replace the turbo next weekend.
I was gonna say the answer is always Miata.
My worst DD is one of my current project cars, an E36 328i. It had broken something for 4 months straight and was a little too costly to maintain when I bought it. Sadly I make less money now 
. It also doesn't help that I tried to skimp and buy aftermarket parts like a guibo and a power steering rack and now I have to buy the factory parts (I should have known). I also need to do a compression check to be sure that the engine needs to be replaced. It still drives better than almost every car I have driven in the 90s and is one of my favorite cars.
I daily drove a '91 Suzuki Samurai with no doors, no tailgate, no roof with a spring over lift and 33" Super Swampers with no sway bar.
Rain, sun, cold enough to have frost on my seats on the way to work.
Man, do I miss that thing!
1997 Miata. I have nothing against miatas, and I think they are great fun, but I am 6'3, and at the time 250lbs. I drove it for about a year as a DD. I was stationed in Fort Lewis WA where it rains constantly, and my weather protection was a softtop with a broken rear window zipper. I even had to pick up all my issued gear for a deployment in that thing. Which meant occupying all of the passenger seat as well as the shelf behind the seats with duffle bags. No one in my unit understood the allure of a miata.
all I can thing of was my 318ti..
stiff Bilstein Coilover suspension, Poly bushes everywhere, Super Sprint Exhaust, no rear interior, peeling clearcoat, and a very leaky sunroof.
But was a lot of fun
One of these for almost 9 months. Then a 65 Shelby cobra replica that got 6 mpg.
A lot of people think I'm dumb for DDing a bike year around in TN, but really the worst was my first 944T. It had super stiff track suspension, no AC, no power steering, and one summer the heat stuck on and I couldn't afford to fix it. That car was a pain in the ass, but some days I still miss it.
A series of British sports cars. Like 'egnorant' on the previous page my favorite was a Bugeyed Sprite. It did fine in my home town in NE TN but after college I moved to Atlanta and had two truly terrifying experiences in it. I thought I'd never sell it but I had a really bad feeling that I was going to get killed in it. I sold it and regretted it deeply but probably made the right decision.
Gonna be a tie.
This thing is pretty hairy. But still comfortable in a weird way. Reliable, gets great gas mileage. Entirely way more power than any 80s E36 M3box knew what to do with, no power steering, no a/c, big tires, huge steering effort. Tons of fun.
This thing was my daily driver before that. Not much power, but gutted interior, no power steering, no a/c, ridiculous spring rate suspension, wide tires, and an extremely "responsive" (read: twitchy) alignment. Sneezing on the highway often meant you were changing lanes. Not very comfy. Had great seats, but it didn't make up for ride.
Ya know, the J-H with A/C would probably make a decent DD if I wasn't towing race cars and such silly crap around. It's reasonably comfortable (the Brit magazines and their 'tough sports car men' writers of the time decried its 'soft' suspension and lack of hard edges, of course that was all the fault of the US market it was aimed at) gets decent gas mileage and is more than quick enough for modern traffic plus the trunk/rear shelf area are big enough to carry the week's groceries, I've done it more than once. On long road trips with the top up the noise level will getcha, though.
Dumbest? 86 CRX Si Challenge car with no side glass and no heater. In the snow. Scraping ice off the INSIDE of the windshield sucks. Do I win something?
That said, I'd take it over the 4-door new yorker turbo or 82(?) Cutlass any day. Both were always broken.
Hmmm.... Worst car I've ever daily driven?...
In first place is.... Well, it's a toss up between my A1 VW and my E36 b/c they both broke regularly.
Second place - my F250
Also, perhaps not coincidentally, the most fun and extreme car I've daily driven.
Wife's DD
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Well, i did facepalm at it, but probably not for the expected reason.
I dont think i've ever DD'd something i shouldnt have. Ive never DD'd something so unreliable it was a risk to my job or anything like that. And all the things that most people consider downsides just make things more 'interesting' to me. I get a kick JUST from something being E36 M3ty and me using it anyway so im pretty easy to please.
Now if you go with worst tool i ever kept using for years even though it was a piece of E36 M3, or worst looking hat i wore constantly that looked terrible on me, yeah sure.
Tough toss up between one of my DSMs and my C5 Corvette.
The DSM was your stereotypical ricer car. 3" exhaust, no cat, big turbo, dumped wastegate, no interior after the doors, pulled out the cruise/ac/sound deadening because race car. Gutted doors with no cage because street race car, cut a ton of stuff out and off of it, still drove the wheels off it, long road trips, commutes, you name it.
The Corvette was purchased as stock with a cat-back and has transformed into a sunny day/weekend cruiser. I still take it to work from time to time, but its nice to hop into the F250 with an automatic, nice stereo, tons of room, and cruise that to work. The Corvette still has A/C and a full interior, but its supercharged and tuned to the ragged edge on pump gas, loud straight exhaust, tons of gauges and stupid crap in the interior, stiff and grabby twin disk clutch, slammed on Pfadt coilovers, dark ass ghetto tint so I cant really drive it at night with the windows up, running drag radials that wear out in 3k miles and cost more than a house payment, etc. So not nearly the nice road trip car it once was.
1977 GMC Suburban. In the late 1990's. In upstate NY. The truck was more rust than actual metal, was a 2 wheel drive model, and got 14 mpg on the highway with the cruise set at I-can't-drive-55.
Man, do I miss that thing.
Most of your stories make me sound like a flat out sissy! I can't even imagine the idea of owning a car without heat in a Midwest winter, not just because I would be cold be safely driving when the INSIDE of the window is frosted or they fog up.
The worst I've drove was a tie between the 90 S10 Blazer beater I owned or the 92 Crown Vic Beater I had.
The Blazer had 230K miles on, a clutch of unknown age and a sifter that felt pretty sloppy, and by the Grace of God all the rust that it was comprised of still held together. Remarkably it wasn't as unreliable as I thought. I set myself a budget cap for repairs that was "half the current value" so I told myself if any one repair ever exceeded $500 it was going to the junk yard. Remarkably I drove it for a year and a half before I found a new "good car" and I sold it for $500.
My truly sketchiest car was a charming burgundy paint on burgundy interior 92 Crown Vic. Of it's most charming attributes the windshield was cracked, the headlight switch was shorting out so I occasionally didn't have working taillights, and I had some weird issue that I think was a throttle body position sensor which would make it start cutting out acceleration at highway speed.
1987 ford Thunderbird turbo coupe. ported head, big cam, monster turbo, big inter-cooler, 3.5 inch straight exhaust, slicks, skinnies, parts store racing seats, and line lock. that car was easily 400HP to the tires, and would spin the 10 inch slicks for 200 yards. its was an absolute death machine. no cage, crap seats and broken belts, bad torque boxes, bent control arms, ZERO bushings left in the rear suspension, its was a plain crap box. but it would run 12's, wake up the neighbors, do 145 on the freeway at 3AM, and i had a little switch to kill every light except the high beams.
i miss that car TERRIBLY!
-J0N
I'll add my 1973 Super Beetle. Rotten heater boxes that plumbed the exhaust straight into the cabin between the seats. As you know, the exhaust IS the heat on these things so the only way to keep from freezing was to let the hot exhaust into the car until things got blurry or the headache got too bad then roll down the windows, clear the carbon monoxide out of my lungs until I couldn't stand the cold.
Even better was that it had to be push started any day the temp got below 30 degrees or so. Ya ever tried to push start a car down the street in a snowstorm?
It's a toss-up. . .
'73 Mercedes 220 or Land Rover Disco II.
This:
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