Whats the worst car you've owned?

Let's hear horror stories! What make or model of car has been the worst you've owned or worked with? Save someone some misery and entertain us with your misfortune!

i guess i've been lucky.. out of the 200+ cars that have passed thru my possession since i got on the road in 1990, i haven't owned anything that has been exceptionally bad.. never been stranded far from home for any reason- the farthest i've been from home when something broke was when the ignition module in the 90something Mazda 323 died about 1/2 mile from home and i couldn't find a matching one in the junkyard..they used 3 different modules on that engine in that year, and they didn't have the one i needed.. so instead of a $10 fix it was a $100 fix.

2000 chevy venture WB edition.

paid $1600 for it.

in the 9 months i owned it, i chased it right down the berkeleying rabbit hole, hoping that this time would be the last time i had to put money in it, this time it would just run for awhile.

both headlamp housings, both tail lights (just fell off at speed...?) both A-arms, both wheel bearings, both C/V axles, both tie rods, 4 tires, headgasket set with head and intake bolts, water pump, thermostat, radiator, rad fans, every coolant hose, intake hose, hatch struts, A/C components galore (stupid rear air), both idler pulleys, three belts, both power windows, the damn door motor for the sliding rear door (bitch to change!) a power steering pump, two seats, two steering wheel air bags (one just popped at random on the freeway at 65mph...), not to mention EVERY DAMN SENSOR YOU CAN THINK OF AND AT LEAST 5 YOU CAN'T!

i hated that Friggin van! sold it for $900 and was glad to see it go. that was my first and LAST FWD GM product, EVER!

Miata.

(Isn't the answer always Miata?)

1983 Nissan Stanza. What a horrible machine.

Reply to jmthunderbirdturbo. Interesting, My 1999 Venture was and is one of the best cars I've ever owned. 230K and climbing. My son has it now and puts 90 miles a day on it.

The worst car that I've ever owned was a 1974 Subaru 1400 DL Automatic. My father bought it used and I sort of inherited it at some point. I found the original window sticker and it was something like $2400 new. It rusted worse than any car that I have ever seen and always had mechanical issues.

The worst car that I ever bought new was, coincidentally, my first new car. It was a Chevy Cavalier. It was such a piece of E36 M3 that I've never bought another GM car. I'm sure that they are worlds better now, but that car just pissed me off so much, I've never gone back.

1994 nissan maxima. Ate fuel injectors for lunch. 3 sets in 2 years. replaced all 4 window regulators, rusted all over, Sunroof broke, and the VTC's ticked like crazy. Decently fun car when it ran good but it was a real pile that I was glad to get rid of.

Back before I knew what the hell I was doing, I had a 91 Ranger that was a piece. Nothing seemed to work right.

I have recently bought a 91, Ranger . I still don't know what the I'm doing.

Wife had a chevy aveo when we first met. It was the biggest POS I've ever been around. Sitting a a light the plastic thermostat housing split and dumped all the water on top of the engine creating a smoke show 4 lanes wide.

The car wasn't even fully paid for when timing belt tensioner shattered wiping out the head. It was plastic as well.

All maintenance was done by the book yet this thing wanted to die. Luckily I was able to trade it in at the dealership I worked at on one of its best days and got out of it. It constantly gave them issues as well just sitting in the lot. Coil packs, ignition, starter all went out while they tried to sell it. It even broke down on a test drive in the middle of the freeway! They finally just sent it to auction. I swore off chevy for ever! (Then bought a Cts-V a year later! Lol!)

1999 Ford Focus. I only had it for 6 weeks. Stuff kept breaking, and when it did there was always some moronic way to go about fixing it. Remove these 4 things to get this bolt out so you can remove the bracket that blocks the part you need to replace. That POS left me stranded on the road twice in 4 weeks. That crap can was the newest car I've owned up to that point, and had the lowest miles of any car I'd owned up to then. It's also the ONLY one to ever leave me stranded on the road.

86 dodge Shelby charger.

Thank god most of these pos have died and are no longer on the road, when I see one I still feel like Someone kicked me in the nuts. That thing was one horrible electrical problem after another.

'88 SAAB 9000 turbo with an automatic. Great car except for the paper mache auto trans. It went through 2 transmissions in about 3 years.

Pro tip: never buy a SAAB 9000 or c900 with an automatic transmission. The one and only good thing GM did for SAAB was put decent transmissions in the GM era cars.

"64 MG 1100. Fun car to drive, but---

1983 VW GTi. What a pile. Fun to drive but the list of things that went awry would bust the intertoobz and it has the distinction of being the only car I ever owned which actively tried to kill me. The MGB I owned at the same time had less go wrong with it.

Next was a 1974 Mustang II hatchback, 2300 with a 4 speed. I guess I really should not complain because I bought it for $125 with a bad motor, at the same time the sheer amount of work I put into it with no return in reliability or performance just plain angered me. I traded it in at a local used car lot toward a 1978 Plymouth Arrow which except for oil consumption was quite a decent little car.

98 Lincoln Navigator Repairs equaled the purchase price within 11 months. The worst was the contaminated cooling system that killed the climate control during a New England Winter.

Knurled wrote: Miata. (Isn't the answer always Miata?)

Seems like "Miata" is our community's equivalent to "F1rst p0st!!!11!11!!!!"

My answer is Mercedes 240D. Slow. Problematic. Complicated vacuum system to operate damn near everything. No one would align it. Pretty sure the rear wheel bearings and their grease were original (because removing it requires a special tool). Parking brake components were nonexistent and unobtainium. Did I mention slow?

1997 Toyota Rav4 manual trans. Ate 5 cat's, 3 sets of OEM sensors, one ECU, the rear diff and struts in 79k miles. Oh... and caught the plastic splash shield on fire.

Wife bought it new in 97. We dropped it in Jan of '02 for a Suzuki GV. granted, the Rav got better gas mileage, but the repair costs killed it.

The isLexus series is so bland as to put you to sleep. Even my wife hated to drive it. It would just sit in the driveway for weeks on end.

My kids wouldn't drive it either. When they'd come over and need to run into town for something or wanted to take a drive just to see the countryside they'd take any car but it.

Also the GPS was completely useless since you couldn't turn it on or adjust it while the car was moving. Talk about a pain! You'd have to pull over and stop to do any searches.

For a while, I attempted to daily drive a 23 year old Corvette with nearly 200,000 miles on the clock. It was giving me trouble... so I sold it and bought a '95 Honda Civic with 75,000 miles on it. And surprise... this post is about the Civic. I kept the car for about one year, and here is a partial list of what went wrong on it.

The first problem that came up was that it was on horrid no-name Chinese tires that had about as much grip as cast concrete. And the valve stems failed with alarming regularity. The first time this happened, I found that some jackass had replace the spare tire with one that had the wrong bolt pattern. Bought a junkyard spare and ordered a cheap set of aluminum rims and tires for $500, problem solved.

The A/C needed just about everything replaced inside of a year - including a dash switch that refused to turn on in hot weather.

Faulty radiator caused it to blow a head gasket.

I had a problem with one of the brakes making noise. Didn't have time to fix that and dropped it off at a mechanic. He calls me back in a couple hours reporting that the car has brakes 1" larger on one side than on the other.

It ate two starters and two distributors. One of the distributors was my fault for testing out a MegaSquirt on it. The other one just died for no reason.

Had it stall out once on the highway and I pulled over, it restarted a few minutes later. Never duplicated that problem.

The ECU went up in flames once, literally.

It gave a Check Engine light problem where the code came out as a crankshaft position sensor failure. This persisted after replacing the distributor (which has the sensor), ECU, literally trying every diagnostic procedure for this in the Honda factory service manual, and pulling out an oscilloscope and personally checking the signal.

One headlight worked only intermittently.

Had the driver's side window fall off its track and shatter when I tried to close the door.

And a couple other issues that I've forgotten, all in one year. Replaced it with an E36 BMW that had 115,000 miles on the clock, and the BMW has now passed the 210,000 mile mark four years later, with fewer issues and less spent on repairs than the Civic has had.

Well, I should say that it's a split between my Trans Am and CSX, but those don't really count, as they were project cars from the beginning.

I'm going to go ahead with a 2002 VW Jetta I used to have as my DD (I leased it, does that count?). It had issues from pretty much day 1. It had 4 miles on it when I got it, and it was ready to be scrapped by 35k when I turned it in. Some of it's features:

-D/S window regulator broke and window fell in the door @ 5000 miles

-Would burn the entire crankcase capacity of oil between oil changes, dealer said "that's what the 8V motors do, it's fine"

-Gauges worked intermittently and would just zero out while driving down the road

-Made an awful death rattle noise at exactly 32mph in any gear, dealer couldn't find the problem

-Exhaust was rotting off at 30k miles

-Tires (Michelin Energy MXV4's or something like that) started dry-rotting almost immediately after delivery, dealer said they were "fine"

-It went through headlights like no other car I've ever had, I must have put 10 headlights in that car over 3 years

-Heated seats were part of a recall, the heating elements gave some people burns on their butt through clothing!

-Side mirror glass cracked a few times due to the heated mirrors and moisture getting behind them and freezing in the winter

There's probably more that I can't remember, but these things shouldn't happen on a 15-year old beater, let alone a brand new car. I will give it this: all that stuff and the check engine light never went on once. My guess is because the bulb was burnt out.

The 1988 Buick Century is the fleet car of Hell.

I'm not sure i want to share that information, considering there's a good chance i might want to sell it to one of you in the next year or two.

Incriminating evidence and all that.

This one is a toss up. Both are Ford products. It was either the 1989 Escort wagon, that was anemic new- and FREAKISHLY slow after I got it- that I paid 350$ for. It leaked EVERYTHING (seriously, I'm pretty sure I saw pancake syrup under it once), the rear suspension was shot, the whole reason to own a wagon...didn't open, both the rear doors were sealed shut for some reason, the hood latch was busted, the electrical was fried, the exhaust fell off in a deep snow...... but damned if that thing didn't start every single stinkin time. It went to the crusher when the trans decided 1st was the only gear it needed.

The other, a 1995 Ford Taurus with the Vulcan. I purchased THIS gem for the princely sum of 100$. It had 117k on it when I got it, so I knew I was on borrowed time. Oh, and the front subframe was nearly rotted in half. No big deal! Rear valve cover gasket leaked oil directly onto the exhaust manifold, creating a nice smoke show for the neighbors. The right rear door didn't open, at all. The left rear window didn't open, at all. The right FRONT window opened, but it didn't close. My wife was a dummy one day and hit the switch, even though she knew better. It was February. I ended up pulling the entire regulator assembly, and locking the window in the up position, after I made her pay for it. There were several other maladies with this one- I finally parked it after it got a flat, as the tires were wearing STUPID fast on the inside, due to the dead subframe and subsequent suspension issues. Oh, and it got hit twice. But it also started EVERY TIME, and had the coldest AC on the face of the earth. That was traded for a Jeep, that I never actually drove before I decided screw it- took what I wanted out of it, and had it crushed. The Jeep might have won, but I literally NEVER drove it. It was delivered to me, and taken away on a tow truck.

Lack of knowledge made my 63 Mini 850 a nightmare, mostly trying unsuccessfully to get the SU carbs to work.

The worst car was a 87 Mitsubishi Magna, uninspiring, horrible gearing, craptastic automatic, just lifeless

1973 Super Beetle. Granted it was pretty much my first drivable car and I knew E36 M3 about anything...

Could not get the brakes to work with anything less thAn three full pumps of the pedal. Heater boxes so rotted I literally got a migraine from carbon monoxide poisoning unless all windows were down, fun in New England winters. And speaking of cold, would refuse to start in 30 degree weather. Wouldn't even turn over. So every cold morning, my dad and I would push it out to the street and I'd coast down the hill and jump it it second. Not easy in snow let me tell ya!

Forget the fact that i WANTED a Baja Bug but bought a Mac Strut car by mistake. God was I dumb back then!