Easily the worst car I have eer owned in myentire life for actually living with it day to day. Talked myself into wanting the diffs and the better interior and overlooked everything that made it a terrible daily car.
Easily the worst car I have eer owned in myentire life for actually living with it day to day. Talked myself into wanting the diffs and the better interior and overlooked everything that made it a terrible daily car.
The used 75 TR7 I bought in high school after I totaled my MG. It blew a head gasket the week I bought it and it was downhill from there. I had just enough in my bank account after 6 months to trade it and buy another MG. I ended up putting over 150000 miles on it in the 9 years it was my daily driver.
The second was the RSX-S that I replaced my 96 MX-6 with. It was a much better car than the Mazda, but I never could get comfortable in it and ended up hating it.
I had to look closely at that Mini shell to confirm that it wasn't the one I sold someone about 23 years ago...
'81 full size Bronco. Needed something to get through the winter while the other cars were in storage. Five months was all I needed. Made it 2 months before I gave up and put all seasons on my stripped Civic hatch and ran it through the snow until spring came. Sold it for a loss and never looked back.
Some lessons are expensive.
1962 Ford F-100.
Bought it in 2004 right after getting married. We were planning on moving several times over the next couple of years and I got the brilliant idea that I should buy a truck as our second car instead of renting one whenever we moved. I wanted a T-100, but got talked into this instead. Paid way too much for it ($2500), though the paint looked a lot better back then. (Took about a year for me to realize how much of that paint was on top of bondo on top of rust.) Spent awhile making sure everything was good--re-cored the radiator, adjusted the valves, replaced the fuel pump. Made it about 500 miles into its first journey towing a U-haul before it refused to go much faster than about 20mph and smoked like crazy. One of the rockers ate its way through the rocker guide. Ended up renting a truck to tow my truck:). Not my best move.
I parked it for a year or so, then found a shop in Oklahoma that seemed a reasonable place to work on it. They pronounced the engine junk and did a complete rebuild for about $1,500, which still seems like a really good deal. I think they did a good job, it runs fine, but the whole thing really needs to be restored and I don't think I have the motivation to work on it. I'm just not a truck guy. But, I've had it for 20 years, and I suspect it isn't going down in value...
1989 Jeep Comanche Eliminator.
Fastest compact truck until the Syclone / Typhoon twins arrived.
Friends had Cherokees and kept saying how awesome and indestructible they were.
Mine was built at beer-thirty on the Friday before a union strike. It was fun when it wasn't broken but it was broken more than it was fixed. Renix EFI can eat a bag of dicks.
'92 Taurus SHO.
I read about all their problems and immediately went into "It won't happen to me" denial.
In 3 years, from 30K to 110K failures included but are not limited to:
Toyota Tacoma. Wanted to like it, tried changing stuff to make it better (wheels, roof rack, cap, etc. ). Hated it, got rid of it after 6 weeks. It still surprises me that this was not a fun truck to have...
My 92 S10. It's had two engine swaps that both were a bigger hassle than they should have been (2nd one is still in the working out bugs phase), and I don't want to think about how much money I have put in into it. It has eaten so much time that could have been spent out having fun if I had just bought something fast already.
Thing is, I still have it, I love it, and almost every time I drive it, I am reminded why I love it. The V8 torque, combined with it being an older GM RWD platform is like a nostalgia hit of the first few cars I ever owned (all 70's GM), only with a better power to weight ratio in a more compact package.
Bought my dream commuter car.
Stock, original owner, adult owned.
Six months of ownership, barely got to drive it. Couldn't wait to get rid of it.
wearymicrobe said:Easily the worst car I have eer owned in myentire life for actually living with it day to day. Talked myself into wanting the diffs and the better interior and overlooked everything that made it a terrible daily car.
In my mind that would be a great car to drive every day. Who would've thought.
Datsun310Guy said:wearymicrobe said:Easily the worst car I have eer owned in myentire life for actually living with it day to day. Talked myself into wanting the diffs and the better interior and overlooked everything that made it a terrible daily car.
In my mind that would be a great car to drive every day. Who would've thought.
Having owned a regular one, I think the engine/transmission (or just the transmission) from the STi combined with everything else from a regular WRX would have made a decent commuter. The STi, at least in that generation, is too harsh for the roads I drive on, but the gearing of a normal WRX sucks for stop and go traffic.
A Triumph Stag bought on a whim from a used car dealer as a summer convertible to sell in the fall. What could go wrong?
The most expensive car per mile I've ever had, too, mostly because it didn't go too many miles before getting all splodey.
My current car, a E46 M3. Shame on me for skipping the PPI. Since I bought it last year I've had to spend so much fixing and maintaining it. Thought about selling many times, but sunk cost fallacy is real. Every new dollar I sink into it makes me feel the car is a bit more reliable, even though it's probably not true. It's a vicious cycle, but at least it's a damn fun car.
1967 CJ-5. This vehicle broke down every single week of ownership. Clutch. U-joints. Ignition stuff. The radiator finally sprung a leak and I couldn't find a replacement for this oddball Kaiser era thing. Retrofitted a Pinto radiator in it which was too small and sold it in cold weather.
My '81 Charger 2.2 was a complete turd too. Left me stranded twice because of cooling system problems. Sold it within a month. At the time it was the newest and most expensive car I'd ever owned.
michaeldeng said:My current car, a E46 M3. Shame on me for skipping the PPI. Since I bought it last year I've had to spend so much fixing and maintaining it. Thought about selling many times, but sunk cost fallacy is real. Every new dollar I sink into it makes me feel the car is a bit more reliable, even though it's probably not true. It's a vicious cycle, but at least it's a damn fun car.
My current truck, a Cadillac Escalade ESV. Shame on me for skipping the PPI. Since I bought it earlier this year I've had to spend so much fixing and maintaining it. Thought about selling many times, but sunk cost fallacy is real. Every new dollar I sink into it makes me feel the car is a bit more reliable, even though it's probably not true. It's a vicious cycle, but at least it's a really nice truck.
There are two, and I've owned a lot of cars.
84 Rabbit Diesel. In 21 years of commuting I have been stranded a half dozen times, every one of them in that car. One day on vacation, on our drive up north it broke down on us four times. In one day.
05 Toyota Echo hatch. Since all the Swifts and Fireflies have returned to the earth, I was so excited to find a really low mileage, really clean 2dr hatch to have a little fun with. It was a horrible, soulless piece of garbage that I was constantly working on. I gave up on it after a year and it sat in front of my shop for nearly two, until gas went stupid and I sold it to my apprentice. I took a hit on it, but was really glad to see it go. I warned him multiple times, but gas was killing him and being a hardcore Toyota guy said, it's a Toyota, how bad could it possibly be? It took about a month before he told me how much he despises the piece of garbage.
Anyone who has paid attention to me, knows that it was my Subaru Baja. I had owned a bunch of $1000 gut-rusted E36 M3boxes that I was afraid to go anywhere with, and wanted to get something a little nicer, so I bought an '03 for $3600 in 2017, non-turbo with a 5-speed. The Baja had always seemed an interesting, quirky vehicle and it had AWD for the NY winters, so it seemed a good choice. On top of the usual Subaru problems (chewed through brake parts every 6 months, leaked every fluid, rusted like it was it's job) it was just a horrible, horrible vehicle. I joked it was the worst of both worlds: fuel efficiency of a truck, ground clearance and cargo capacity of a car. It only sat four, unlike a Legacy wagon, and rear leg room was non-existent. The bed was pretty useless. The transmission gearing was absolutely horrendous, it was like you were taking off in Second and going down the highway in Fourth. First gear was way too high, and combined with the gutless 2.5L, it resulted in lots of stalls, and out on the road Fifth gear was too low and the engine was humming along. I hated that car and was glad to be rid of it after two years of ownership. To it's credit though, it was pretty good in the snow and it never left me stranded anywhere. I replaced it with my Yaris, which I have been much, much happier with.
I bought my dream car in 2013. 1999 M3Ti. I'm at 45¢ per mile versus 10¢ per mile for my Jeep that I like possibly more. I really enjoyed it but things kept going wrong. The E36 is a great platform. Super fun car. Very practical. Sexy. For sale.
Bought a 1995 GTI VR6, still my dream car, from a well known and supposedly loved place. Was told owner was driving the car and it was rust free and ready to go. Like an idiot, I went up to pick it up on a cold rainy day. Got it off the trailer 2 days later to find the floor completely rotted out, more coolant leaks than imagineable, frozen calipers, and the odometer had only moves 3/10s of a mile. I was lied to from start to finish. I threw it on ebay and was happy to get half my money back calling it a parts car.
I don't think any of the cars I have bought have been a big mistake. The only ones that were mistakes were so cheap that I would have a hard time calling them big mistakes.
93EXCivic said:I don't think any of the cars I have bought have been a big mistake. The only ones that were mistakes were so cheap that I would have a hard time calling them big mistakes.
This!
Speaking of, now you can make my mistake your mistake.
The biggest one -- by a large margin -- was buying an '84 MB W123 300td turbodiesel back in '06, finally selling it in '20 after it'd been sitting since '11. Before I get critiqued on the nomenclature, "td" and "turbodiesel" are not redundant, as the "t" in "300td" means "touring," not "turbo" ("300tdt" is not a real designation, no matter how common it is).
I bought it for $1,250 and IIRC put close to $4K into it from '06 to '11 fixing everything from the brakes to the SLS to the vacuum systems, and then the transmission failed. I obtained a relatively-fresh rebuilt transmission, but by that time I was really done with it and had absolutely no interest in even offloading it. I was also responsible for taking care of some significant family matters starting then, so that was a factor, but not the factor.
PROs: It was slow, but it otherwise suited my needs and it was generally nice to drive. The giant manual sunroof was great, and it regularly got 30 MPG commuting.
CONs: The vacuum systems, the inordinate difficulty of doing many normally mundane fixes, and the haughty/derisive diesel Mercedes fanbase.
For those who are not familiar with these cars, they have a vacuum pump (not surprising, being a diesel), vacuum runs through the ignition (sic) switch for the purpose of disengaging the injection pump, vacuum operates everything non-motor thing that moves in the HVAC, and the door, fuel fill door, and rear hatch locks are all vacuum. If a door lock or the HVAC is leaking (which happened regularly), the engine might not shut off, so MB conveniently provides a lever on the injection pump labeled "STOP" in red. That lever is also handy if the injection shutoff diaphragm has failed, which had apparently occurred at one point, as nearly the entire HVAC vacuum system had diesel oil in it, which had also gotten out into the center console.
Way too much stuff that's easy to do is inordinately difficult. Want to replace the front sway bar frame bushings? Well, it's part of the upper control arm and runs along the top of the firewall, with the bushings under the brake booster on one side and the battery box on the other (took me 4 hours). Want to pop off a tie rod? The tool that worked on my '57 Chevy, '914, AMC Eagle, Chevy G30 motorhome, and plenty of other vehicles wouldn't work on it. Want to compress the front springs, which have a gazillion coils and are much taller than other cars' springs? You can't use any normal compressor of any type -- gotta find a special compressor just for W123 springs.
I have many stories about the diesel Mercedes fanbase, but one memorable incident was when I asked if anyone had any data on actual running oil temperatures. I wasn't going to be pulling a trailer up a desert mountain pass, so I was interested in knowing if the leaking and hard-to-find/expensive oil cooler was actually necessary for my usage. Well, of course that question unleashed the harpies and the attacks went to 14 pages, with only one person commenting with data and opining that it wasn't necessary for my purposes. The most common comment was along the lines of "Mercedes put it on, so it's necessary. Are you an engineer?" I am an engineer, FWIW. The most idiotic reply was "My offshore power boat with a blown big-block has an oil cooler, are you telling me I don't need that?" I couldn't find a replacement cooler, but some ingenious member had discovered that the damaged fittings could be repaired by installing MB V-8 intake manifold coolant nipples, which necessitated buying the fittings (appropriately MB-priced) and an M18x1.50 tap and appropriate bit, which together were $60 and which I only ever used for this task.
So, yeah, when the transmission went, I was well "over" the 300td.
All of them? I could have bought a camry like 10 years ago, and saved so much money.
I've loved even my worst cars. My e46 was like an abusive relationship, and I still tell people how nice they drive and how much I liked mine.
I once traded 3/4 of a pack of cigarettes for a running and driving 82 Cadillac Eldorado. After I think about $800 in it I gave it to the tow truck driver to make it go away and went back to walking. I will never own another Cadillac.
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