hi y'all.

to elaborate on the thread title:
what is the WORST car/bike/etc. u have ever owned, driven or been associated with, and 'if u knew back then what u know now', u would have avoided like the plague.

a couple of ground 'rules' before we begin:
1. only stuff u have driven, worked on, been around for a while, etc, or preferably, owned. not the 'my mate's cousin's dad reckons' stories please.
2. remember, this is all taken in the lightest and most 'fun-est' possible way, so the opinion of each user/poster is their opinion, and if u happen to love what other's despise, please refrain from making rants about why they are wrong, as i really don't want to use my position as a moderator to break up arguements.
3. while it's ok to just post 'the XYZ i owned was crap', it's much more enteraining to also add the reason, or reasons in most cases i'm betting, as to why it was crap.
and 4. if u have one than one car, feel free to add them all, not just what u feel topped them all.

let the fun begin!

i'll go first.

morris/leyland marina.
mate's grandfather had 1. thank god only 1. would die on an almost weekly basis, and the poor old guy would be on the phone "can u fix my car again?" off we'd go....
some of the list includes: u'd fix one water leak to cause 5 more, several door and window winders broken, vent windows never locked due to garbage locks that broke when u fitted them, rear view mirror only stayed still when it was on an angle, forever replacing front end parts coz when u'd fix one part, the next one would break... the points needed adjusting every fortnight or they'd close up, it would idle like it had a massive cam in it, so u'd just it and it'd purr like a kitten...... until u drove it, and it'd be a pig again, electrics were only ever a suggestion (but that's good ole 'lucas' stuff for ya!), the auto would sometimes just decide to stay in netural, then go into drive when it had 2000rpm going thru it but then behave for the next month, then play up for a week again, then behave.............. but the best was the starter motor. old boy said it wouldn't start, we look under the bonnet..... half the starter is missing! the front nose and solenoid are there, but no main body, rotor, nothing. just broken clean off...... when it finally died (coz we couldn't get parts for the POS anymore, coz they were all dead. hooray!) not even the 6 or so wreckers would take it, for FREE! so it was pushed onto the trailer, and dumped at the local tip, with a string of beautifully put together expletives from my mate as a good-bye gift!!

what about a hx holden wagon I owned for 18 mths 40k on the clock 65k on clock when sold to some unsuspecting poor b******d via a car yard .
list of probs in 18mths
4 diffs no burnouts (didn't have enough grunt)
2 auto transmission's
head of twice for burnt valves
electric windows & t/gate window had a mind of there own & would open or close as they felt like
when traded diff was on the way out again

saw car & new owner 6 mths later 7 asked how the car was he said
replaced diff
recoed trans
converted electric windows to manual & was trading it in 2 days time

obviously a monday car
a

OK, PR91....Your racking my brain. Haven't owned many machines, but the worst one was a 1980'something Mazda 929, stationwagon. It did multiple head gaskets, with driving akin to grandma going shopping At least one every 6 months for the few years I owned it. Ate oil and chewed petrol. It had it's best moments stationary, backed up to a drive in screen with the back seat down and the tail gate up (love wagon )

When Liz and I got together I inherited her UC "backfire" torana along with matremony. All in all, it must have been a friday car as it didn't skip a beat. We flogged the "shortened" 186 until it finally died prematurely. I then fashioned a hot 186 into it and used it as a forest work horse in Wirrabara for many years. Geared with the original diff, it only had a top open road speed of 110 kph, screeming at 5,200 rpm. But in the bush it went where most 4wd's went if you were game enough, ploughed paddocks and pulled 2 tonne of firewood.

Now thats the worst AND the worst from me. Keep the contributions coming.........

B.

The worst car that I have owned was a 64 Bellett, a real piece of s h one t. I bought in about 68, about the second day I owned it had it parked out side work and some nice person did a u turn and slamemed into the rear door and then drove off.
I could not keep head gaskets on it,every time I left town would blow a head gasket. I could remove the head in 20 minutes and replace in under an hour, bought head gaskets 3 or 4 at a time. I wasn't cash up in those days was young and had a family to support.
I removed the motor and sent head to be shaved and checked,also sent block to be shaved and bored, fitted Florian Pistons mild cam,and rebuilt the motor in the back shed at home. Refitted the motor, did about 500miles and blew another head gasket.
Time to go,found my self a real nice EH Holden, had to borrow the money to buy it, so got a personal loan and on my way out to buy it, passed a car yard at Stones Corner in Brisy, out the front was a real nice 67 bellett sedan, so I bought it instead, a beauty and that was the start of love affair with Belletts. I joined the Bellett Car Club in Brisbane and met the Bloores (at that time they had a Toyota Corolla The PILL)
A few years later I bought my first GT, and that is the red GT that GTorpanage has restored.
I have always loved the Belletts and especialy the GT's. and look forward to day that I finish the resto on the one I have now.
Geoff

Nissan Bluebird, it was my mum's car and was forever having something go wrong with it.
Engine, transmission, differential, wiring, wipers, water pump, radiator, seats, steering, wheel bearings, etc, etc, etc.
My brother in-law helped her pick it out. He probably wished he hadn't the amount of work we had to do on it.
I have a hate for those square Bluebirds,

If you have had one that was good, be happy, very happy ... the one my mum had was Sh** !!!!!!

Cheers
Rob

Well, there's been a lot, and nothing's ever let me down too badly, many let down by shoddy work done on them. Here goes:

1979 TE Gemini - Early build, trim never fitted properly, rainwater cost me a head (1st rebuild), conrod cost me an engine (second rebuild), it was a magnet for bogans who enjoyed steeling/kicking/smashing in/vomiting onto it, carby never ran properly, door locks fell out and ran like an asthmatic Cliff Young. Eventually got so smashed up it was no longer driveable. Sold for spares.

Closed seconds go to:

1974 Lancia Beta Berlina - Electrics never worked, Solex carby was terrible, about 20mpg economy (from a 1800cc), the factory sunroof collected water then superheated and dumped it on the front passenger (in one case, a date!), rusty subframe slapped on the body when it lifted, heater was stuck on - boy did it go though, woo! Sold to a clown who didn't transfer the rego and racked up $1,000 of fines for me. Loser.

1971 Fiat 850 Special - Not the one I have now, this one was very low mileage, but series of terrible rebuilds carried out by idiots killed it - couldn't keep the heads on it (including the day I bought it). Eventually a loose spark lead ignited the car. The old man stood and watched, then abused someone who came to help put it out ("nah, let the piece of s**t burn")! Sold off, last seen repainted and being towed out of the city about 10 years ago.

1986 Mitsubishi Cordia Turbo - Beautiful low mileage car when I bought it, but when the turbo eventually went, it took the whole car with it. The idiot who attempted to fix it made sure of that. Couldn't believe my luck when I got a trade in for it on my current Hundy wagon.

Oddly enough, there were others probably just as guilty (Fiat 850 Sport Coupe, Studebaker Cruiser, both still alive and living in Adelaide), but I only really have fond memories of them...I gues the fun outweighed the hassles, sometimes the hassles created the fun!

Cheers,
Duane

See, I'm lucky. I have 4 older brothers. They & my Dad have all driven trucks at some stage. Many miles and kms covered. And they told me "If it's not Japanese, don't buy it!" Especially not made in Aus lookalikes (square Bluebird, etc.) Our first Isuzu was a 1959 TX550 6 Ton Truck - And it sealed the deal. (If anyone ever sees one, please tell me - I want it!!)
But rules get broken. To appease his english 2nd wife, Dad bought a V8 P-76. He could fix anything, so it didn't matter that stuff went wrong. They were actually an O.K. design, but stuffed together without any care. He took it back for one warranty claim at the first service, but unfortunately the dealer was also in Australia & so didn't give a stuff. The brakes failed (again) on the way home from the dealer. Dad found that the booster hadn't been assembled properly. He determined to never take any car back to a dealer again, not even for a service. But there was one thing he could never fix. On hot days it got vapour lock. He tried replacement carbies, electric fuel pumps, wrapping fuel lines with asbestos tape - nothing worked. When it stopped, you pulled over, poured water on the lines & carby, waited, then went a bit further.
So when he got rid of it what did I do? Bought it of coarse! Well, it was real cheap and we needed a car right now & had no money. (Tracy had just totalled her Fiat).
I couldn't fix it either, so we begged a loan & bought our first Subaru.
Yeah, the P-76 was probably the worst.

Cheers, Matt.

well here goes nothing...volvo 240 gl wagon.
something went wrong at least once a month and it always ended up in one workshop in town.
if it had never broken down i would never have meet GTorphanage and i would never have started this love affair with Belletts

That's got to be the BEST of the worst Mrs. Leadfoot !! It's always good to get to know the better half.

Can someone top the volvo "love at first sight" ?? And keep 'em comin' guys.

Ohh... and how about my mother in laws 80's CAMIRAAaaagggh !! Many a hungarian swear word was uttered many years after father in law bought one with retirement funds in '94. Now this should be the BIG question, WHY ?? Even the local mechanic, who was usually a wizard with anything else, began to curse profusely every time it arrived at the workshop door. The price hurt even more, $10,000, from a dodgy used car salesperson. But the old girl still has it. And even though it's just hangin' together she still talks to it with hungarian "endearments". Very sad.

B.

btw...I admitt to driving it on occasssion through necessity !! Heres a description. When I lived up in the sticks, I also drove a tractor or two. My dad's 1982 massey/fergason was smoother and more fun in and out of the orchard !!

As degruch said, there's been many but I haven't really been let down badly by any of my older cars on a regular basis... Anything that broke I either knew was coming or had the spare in the car to sort out or worst case had the gaffer tape, cable ties and a hammer to get me through.

The worst car that was in possession though was only just recently and has a bit of back story as it was my sisters. When my sister left the country for two years and I was asked to sell her car which was a 2002 Kia Rio Wagonoid thing. My sister bought it with help from my dad (don't go there, I know) from a yard in Adelaide and it was always in the shop even though when she bought it in 2004 it had low km's and was still under the new car warranty. Just as well really. The radiator cracked and leaked, the central locking was variable at best and the mechanism inside the drivers door that connects the handle to anything broke a couple of times forcing my sister to enter through the passenger door. For months on end.

So fast forward to 2007 when she is leaving the country and I get lumped with this car. At the time I was between cars as I hadn't purchased my Bellett yet and as I'd been interstate for a few years, I thought, "Ok, it's a cheap Korean car and the panels are so thin you can see through them but it has A/C and is only 5 years old... How bad can it be?"

The answer is atrocious! When I got it and took it for a drive it was a bit of fun even if the clutch had the bite of a ceramic button clutch and made take off's annoying, jerky and embarrassing unless I was right on the money... every time. It was a five speed manual and after driving an auto for awhile I thought it would be good...

The next day I took of from the first set off lights when driving to work at 6am and in my half asleep state the clutch bit harder than I was expecting, the front right wheel start to spin and the car lurched almost the width of the lane to the left! I eased of the 'power' but by this time the rough bitumen had started the car bump steering as well and it was lurching back to the right! It was the single funniest and most confusing wake up call I have ever had! It was torque steering AND bump steering... AT THE SAME TIME... I had no idea what had happened and when I got to work I looked at the car and the tyres and the front rubbers and found two things. A) the front tyres were to the canvas on the inside and B) ALL of the rubbers were ROCK hard. There was NO play in anything at all! Pushing the front suspension I also found that I could make the whole car bounce and keep bouncing while I walked away....

On top of all of this the interior fitment was poor, the plastic cheap and brittle, the A/C drained so much power from the engine that I would have to turn it off to go up hills in any gear above second and the final straw for the 'worst car' category is..... wait for it.... it was rusting... Yep, a car that was built in 2002 was rusting quite badly in the roof and under the rear tailgate in less than 5 years! WTF? It does explain why they were so cheap new though.

Anyway, I could rant on (ala Dave) about how horrid that car was but suffice to say I had a bit of a time selling it even after putting new tyres onto it and lowering the price... twice. In the end a guy at my work bought it to 'carry model aero planes' and I have the minor misfortune of watching it slowly rust away in the car park at work each day. The rust is getting worse and he's had to have the suspension done and a couple of other things in the last two years he's had it so I think it will just slowly decompose until there is nothing but a pile of base components and good ridance I say.


R.

Brave bloke Ross, selling that to someone you know! I suppose you can always remind him how cheap he got it.
Liz, did you know the 240 was for a long time the safest (lowest death rate / registered cars) on U.S. roads? Perhaps thats because if they aren't going they can't crash!!
Cheers, Matt.

I-G-T 'S 64 SEDAN was similar to our 70 mod series b 4door ---played up every second day till Carol got the s---ts with it , sold it and walked home one day
wish Ihad that car now

Belletts that don't work. Hard to imagine really!!
But then again, we have a Forester that used oil from new, was rebuilt under warranty at 120k km, & now uses a liter/700km!! And people say "But it's a Subaru, What have you done to it?"
It's also had 6 replacement CD players (warranty), 2 rear wheel bearings & housings, Centre diff failure ($1500) 2 timing belt tensioner failures, broken sway bar hangers, gear selectors are worn out, & it constantly rips the inner edge off the front tyres! (only the toe is adjustable). All in just 285k km!
Anybody wanna buy an '02 Forester? Cheap!? Rattles thrown in.
Dreers, Matt.

I have to go with the Marina too. My sister-in-law and my father both owned them at the same time, and because I was Mr Fixit fo family cars I got to work on both.

Worst job was replacing the starter ring gear, which regularly chipped teeth, making the starter inoperable. I did it on my sister in laws car first and it took ages, because Leyland Australia in their wisdom had carefully designed it so that several bolts took ages to undo as you could only get fraction of a turn at once. There was probably a 'special tool' for this but for a backyarder it was a pain. When I got the flywheel off, the ring gear appeared to be made from some kind of brittle cheese, just so teeth would chip easily. Two weeks after I did it my fathers did the same thing.

The Marina was also awful to drive. It had moderate power, but still too much for the handling - it was *** scary at speed. My regular car at that stage was an RX3 - which weren't the greatest handlers but they were sooooo much better than a Marina.

My Dad's Datsun 120Y was a piece of crap too, being slow, cramped and ugly - but at least it was reliable.

Hey Ross,
There's a lady in the villiage here has one of those Kia Rio wagonoid things. Recently she came into the post office with one of the worst black eyes that I've ever seen, half her face actually.
What happened??!
Seems she had the passenger seat layed back to move some stuff into her new house. She accidently tripped the recline lever while leaning over it. The recoil was so strong it almost knocked her out!
She has written to Kia....
She has 2 big dogs, hopefully they'll eat it soon.


Sube is now missing under load, and stalling a lot. Using around 11 lt/100km. Blue clouds follow at the bottom of hills. Stuffed basically. 300,000 km.
Matt.

Actually, your mention of the Sube reminds me of another contender for this thread. My Dad once had one of the first Subarus sold in Australia, a little 2wd wagon. It was kind of like a front wheel drive Datsun 120Y, except it was less reliable. He bought it 2nd hand and when it was 2 weeks out of the 3 month warranty it blew a head gasket. The dealer kind of did the right thing and went halves in the cost of repair.

Now my Dad was never much of a gambler, which was wise because his luck was awful. I remember once he drew the red hot favourite for the Melbourne Cup (Big Filou) - absolutely guaranteed to win - until it was scratched half an hour before the race. Anyway, he came around once and was all excited that he had won about $1000 in Tattslotto. Later that week he rang me to say the Sube had blown the head gasket again, neatly accounting for the money he had just won. I pointed out how timely his win had been but he didn't see the funny side.

Anyway I sent him to the bloke who fixed stuff (that I couldn't do) on my BMW. Next time I saw the mechanic, he explained that the head gasket was blowing because of a design fault with the motor. Apparently the motor was wet sleeve, and the sleeves were inserted from the crankcase end of the block, rather than the cylinder head end. So they weren't locked in place by the head, and over time they would move, causing the gasket to blow. Sure enough, 12 months later it went again - this time I told him to get a 2nd hand Japanese motor from a later model where they had changed the design.

So ours is not the only crook Sube! I'm looking at doing a similar thing - the 04-on motors are said to be improved. Meanwhile, while we wait for the tax return, we bought a '94 Magna 2.6 Auto as a fill-in car. (I can hear the howls of "WHAT??") Well, at $300 & only 138,000 ks, can't go far wrong! And it was a beauty, everything working, 29mpg, and NO rattles - makes the sube sound like an old ute! I say "WAS" because after 2 weeks, a woman came through a 'Give Way' sign in front of Tracy, and she had nowhere to go but straight into it! So it's a 'total loss', and we are back to Black Betty as our family transport. (and doing around 400 ks a week!) Sad, it was a good one.
Upside is, I insured it for $2400, so I can lift my sights on a replacement. AND, Tracy was shaken, but unhurt. AND Betty is too tight a fit for Tracy to drive, so it wasn't her that slammed the Commondore!!
Busy times!
Cheers, Matt.

sad to hear about the magna but good that nobody hurt
good luck in your quest for another drive car
cheers ken

C'mon guys

Lay off the poor ol' Morris Marina.

I bought one for $500 as a "disposable" second car in 1991. it was a blue "fastback" two door coupe sports. I'll find a photo for you all to enjoy and post it some time.

I gave it a major service upon purchase and never touched it again except to add oil and water. My work involved travel and I got paid 36c per kilometre to drive it.

It paid for itself over and over again until the day the front RHS suspension mounts gave about 5 seconds notice of their intention to separate from the rest of the vehicle (read "lots of vibrations coming through the steering wheel") . Like I said... "one major service and never touched it again"

The result was that the RHS front wheel, instead of being perpendicular to, and rolling on the road, quickly became stuck under the car acting as a huge round skate. Mind you, this procedure is an efficient way of pulling them up quickly!!!

Fortunately I was just entering a roundabout so wasn't going too fast. The result was me with my prized sports coupe (OHC motor, SU carb) stuck on show in the middle of the roundabout for all to see as they toured past. The ultimate embarrasment was that a load of young boguns actually did several laps of the roundabout so they could point and laugh - and they were in a 120Y sedan