What's the worst car you've ever owned?

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lanciaman

lanciaman

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E220 Cabrio (A124) - 1994
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Seems to be a French theme going on here!!!!
 

lwbnick

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expedition
just wait untill the injectors, fuel rail, leak off pipes start to fail,oh an the maf decides its had enough. when I worked for Vauxhall the amount of these failures that we used to see on these would surprise you. its not even the vx engine

Vauxhall hit 260k miles yesterday, no major breakdowns as yet, a Mercedes van could not do that.
 

Uncle Benz

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Mainly Mercedes
2004 vauxhall corsa. Purchased new on a one year lease program for the motor trade. We used this as a courtesy car to start with, but couldn't give it back quick enough. Water leaked into the drivers footwell after a month, dealer failed to fix after two attempts, rear seat stitching all disintegrated which dealer claimed was our fault!?! Had a replacement timing chain at 4000 miles after it began howling all the time. To be fair, I think there was a recall for the timing chain...
Never again!!!
 

gizze

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5 Series Touring + 911 Carrera 4
Audi S4 Avant, the one with the V8 engine.

Truly failed in just about every area.


I had always wanted and S or RS avant, but before getting into one I moved to BMW and thus my desire moved over to an M3.
However, after loosing my garage and my parking space in the same month I decided that my current 535d sport touring and M3 CSL had to go and be replaced with one car, so I went for an 18 month old S4 avant.

I remember being so excited the week before collecting it, far more so than any other car I had owned, and on the day I was collecting it from Newbury it started to snow, but rather than worry about the drive home I actually had a little flurry of excitement at trying the super Quattro system out.

However.....by the time I got back to Norwich I knew I had made a mistake.

Because of the sleet the traffic round the M25 was fairly stop/start, and this showed up the S4's first failing, the pedals, they are offset, which I can live with, but they were also all different heights, the gas was almost 3" lower than the brake which in turn was an inch higher than the clutch.
This meant that if you got the seat in the right position for the accelerator you were then too far forward for the brake, this meant in heavy traffic I got cramp in my shin after an hour or so, this happened numerous times over the ownership, and had me pulling into the hard shoulder of motorways to relieve it!! Safe!
The clutch was also so close to the footrest that you had to twist your leg to get it to go down, combine this with the offset pedals and you have your knees pushed to the right and then then lower leg twisting back left, a strange and very uncomfortable position to be in for any length of time.

On the way home I left the A11 and came back the last 15 miles through some nice twisty B roads, the temp was around 4ºc and there was light sleet, I thought this would really show me just what this great 4.2 litre V8 S Car was all about, oh how wrong I was!!
When people used to say 'the engine is over the front axle' I thought they were joking, I thought they were just poking fun of the understeer Audis are renowned for, but this 15 mile stretch of road hit home that what I thought was BMW fanboys having a dig was them explaining why they would never own one!
The weight over the front of the car was pretty scary, I know that road well and long sweeping corners I could take in the M3 at 90mph I simply couldn't get the S4 to hit 70mph at, it was a real fight to keep it on the road even slowing down to speeds you could do in the M3 with your Nan sat next to you.
The benefits of Quattro would simply never be found imho, I certainly never found any in anything other than snow and deep mud.

Then there was the gearing, the gearing is set up to make sure the 0-60mph times are kept under 6 seconds. They are really short, and the problem with this is you are constantly swapping cogs, combine this with the awful pedals and it became very hard work.
In the end I used 2nd, 4th and 6th only to try and make it a little better.
It also mean that sat at 85mph on the motorway it was doing 3500rpm, and only 18mpg.
The US guys tend to swap the final drive to give much better real world driving at the expense of acceleration, but it is a £2000 swap and I didn't think the rest of the car was even worth £2k to be honest.

Now the auto has deifferent gearing and sat at 85mph it is doing around 2700rpm and sees 27mpg.



I swapped springs, anti roll bars etc. etc. to try and improve things, nothing did, I just hated it.

I sold it to one of the guys from the M3 forum, if you think I am harsh you should see what he had to say, he kept it a fortnight and basically said the same, but with a little more venom. haha



Now when I hear the Audi guys going on about how there is not much between their cars and the equivalent BMW or Merc I just bite my tongue and smile.

Don't get me wrong I still like Audis, but my expectations are now very, very different, I have owned more Audis since then, an A6 3.2fsi Quattro Avant, but that was an auto and I didn't expect to handle like anything other than a bus, so I was not disappointed.

But for me, it turns out one of my dream cars ended up being my worst car. :(

s4.jpg
 

gizze

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Nice house mate. Shame about the car..LOL

Cheers, we had to get rid of the house as the subsidence was awful! :p
 

st4

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Disqualified driver
Cheers, we had to get rid of the house as the subsidence was awful! :p
I'm sure if you did some CCW rotation you could get your house back...

Edit, not sure, the driveway looks ok and the cars verticles slightly distorted. Not sure what went wrong there, wide angle lens and stood quite close to the car might throw these shapes....
 
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syncropaddy

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.... too many cars!
Opel (Vauxhall) Vectra 1.7TD without a doubt was the worst car I ever had. Everything except the engine went wrong. Then the engine went wrong !!!

I remember getting a brand new Astra 1.7TD as a replacement whilst my Vectra was in getting 'fixed' again and the sump plug fell out on the way back to the office !!

Pure sh**e .......
 

gizze

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I'm sure if you did some CCW rotation you could get your house back...

Edit, not sure, the driveway looks ok and the cars verticles slightly distorted. Not sure what went wrong there, wide angle lens and stood quite close to the car might throw these shapes....


Probably shot with a 28mm prime, so fairly wide.
 

gizze

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Opel (Vauxhall) Vectra 1.7TD without a doubt was the worst car I ever had. Everything except the engine went wrong. Then the engine went wrong !!!

Hahhaa, that tickled me! :D
 

rich599

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w204/sprinter/vw t5 autosleeper/david brown 880/david brown 950
I think i will win this one i am ashamed to say i once bought a austin allegro the one they did with a square steering wheel only owned it for 3 months 1 month on mechanics trying to keep it running 1 month welding another month trying to sell the piece of carp
 

AMGeed

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S204 C180K
I've owned a few howlers, but the worst buy had to be a 1988 Ford Sierra Sapphire Cosworth:shock:
I was naive,but desperate to own one of these "supercars" of the day. Drove off one evening to view one and I had to have it. Resprayed in a pearlescent blue/green/purple depending on the light it looked magnificent.
I knew nothing about them, and the stutter on booting it on a test drive didn't put me off.
The drive home was exhilerating after my SRi, and this beauty would get me all kinds of attention:cool:

I knew the exhaust was blowing, so another £500 saw a 4" Magnex SS exhaust fitted by a Cossie "specialist" near Lee-on Solent. The drive home was eventful as smoke started to billow from under the bonnet close to the M27 services. The exhaust manifold was touching the engine compartment insulation which had caught alight and only a rapid dousing with a 2lt bottle of coca-cola saved the day.
I rang the exhaust fitter and he apologised and promised to fit a free new actuator that was sticking and causing me all kinds of problems under hard acceleration by cutting the boost when it was required.

I decided I'd go the whole hog and chip it while I was there. 320BHP? Sounded good to me and it was.....apart from the dire MPG.

I got plenty of attention too, mainly by the traffic police and vandals and I did seem to tot up the points quite fast too:Oops:

It had to go, so I advertised it with just a short MOT left. I got interest and finally a buyer who liked the car but he wanted a new MOT before committing.
No problem I thought, until the MOT guys rang me and asked me to pop in. Siezed front brake calliper, extensive rust in the chassis, new pads and discs were the main problems. Go ahead I said confidently thinking I got a good price for the car. I made £300 after settling the bill of over £2500:shock: mostly labour to strip out the rear suspension and tank to weld plate after place where it had rusted away.

The final shame came a week after when the new owner rang me and claimed I'd sold him a pup. He had done what I didn't even think about, I was so fixed on having that car. He had HPI'd the car and it came up stolen & recovered. Fortunately I convinced him I knew nothing about that and would never had bought it had I done the right thing and checked it out properly.

So, that Cossie, although great fun became a nightmare and I was so glad to be driving my first Merc instead of one of Ford's finest.
 

Frontstep

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A Ferrari complete let down, heavy heavy clutch, always stalling, seemed to need setting up after every trip.
Barmy prices, gas guzzler and to top it all I pulled more girls in my rotten Mazda pickup.
I always wanted one and like the best looking girl in the class, the chase was better than the catching.
 

gizze

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I'm assuming on an FF so fairly wide. I assume you were very close to the car, thats whats done it. Nice lens though, you can just tell...

I think it was a Zeiss 18mm prime on a cheap 350d cropped body.
I borrowed that lens off someone, it was pretty amazing, but quite expensive.
 

EDX

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2009, C220 CDI, SE Blue Efficiency, Estate
One day, a 'classic' motorbike with brakes that were fairly good back in the early 70's hit the back of my cherished 12 year old Manta and wrote it off. I had to buy something in a hurry and ended up with an Orion 1.6 diesel.
It had been used as a taxi and everything was on it's last legs. After less than 6 months, a Carlton estate that suited my needs at the time replaced it. So far the Orion was the only front drive I've owned in 40 years of motoring. That high polar moment of inertia induced understeer makes me break out in a cold sweat!
 

malcolm E53 AMG

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I think you should send a selection of your car photography to MB Steve. A lot better than the MB publicity shots that I've seen.
 

martinopy

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W219 cls
Mine would have to be my R230 sl500. I ended up hating that car and everything about it. Unreliable,uncomfortable and lots of rattles. It was a dream car that turned into a nightmare. I do believe I just got a really bad car and these things happen unfortunately.
 

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