What Do You Think was the Worst Car Made?

[Mercman]

Dodge Dipolmat with a slant 6 engine. Plugs on the slanted side towards the fender well, and a upside down oil filter.

[mrmike]

I once worked with a kid who owned a Yugo. It stopped running and he pushed it into the backyard and gave it to his dog as a doghouse. Yugos are junk!

[Ace-Garageguy]

....never had any of the 3 Pintos I owned explode. What was I missing? Maybe not panic-stopping in front of a semi on the interstate had something to do with it........

...also, I maintainrd a fleet of 60 Mitsubishi pickups in the mid '80s (same as a Dodge D50), and amazingly, not one had cylinder head cracking issues. Of course, part of the maintenence program was to check the water in the cooling system......

Trabants though....... now there's a really poor excuse for an automobile...anemic, smoking 2-stroke engine, phenol resin / cotton fiber body.....but it's kind of a cult car now.

Edited October 27, 2012 by Ace-Garageguy

[Badluck 13]

I love the Ford Pinto but I couldn't resist.....

[CadillacPat]

Loved my Pinto, 3 speed on the floor and bucket seats,

Drove a Fairmont doing contract work between Houston and Mississippi, what a piece of garbage, the Fairmont, not Mississippi.

Next would be the Reliant, what were they thinking??

CadillacPat

[imatt88]

I would have to say Yugos. I freind of mine bought one brand new when we stationed in England back in the 80's, and it was constantly breaking down and parts kept falling off, Junk

Cheers, Ian

[Draggon]

From personal experience I would say the Pinto, and the Triumph Spitfire a very close second. My 71 2-liter Pinto wore the camshaft out before 50,000 miles, not to mention the thousands of squeaks and rattles that were un-fixable. The wife had a 71 Triuimph Spitfire through the early 80's. Almost every weekend I was working on it, and parts were incredibly hard to find. We ended up buying a second one just for parts. Paid less for the car than a new set of carbs. At least it was fun to drive. I was overjoyed when the wife failed to ck the oil and blew up the motor.

[sjordan2]

I nominate the 1970s for the Hall of Shame, during which only a few brands around the world made anything but junk. Barrett-Jackson bidders may disagree, but the muscle cars from then are much better in today's restored condition than they were new. It's like the entire car industry was scrambling so hard to deal with a global fuel shortage and US emission and safety regulations that quality was put on the back burner.

Edited October 27, 2012 by sjordan2

[Lownslow]

I nominate the 1970s for the Hall of Shame, during which only a few brands around the world made anything but junk. Barrett-Jackson bidders may disagree, but the muscle cars from then are much better in today's restored condition than they were new. It's like the entire car industry was scrambling so hard to deal with a global fuel shortage and US emission and safety regulations that quality was put on the back burner.

i nominate the 90s for the hall of shame

[dartman]

The renault douphine (sp).

[sjordan2]

i nominate the 90s for the hall of shame

Good choice, too. The beginning of an era so loaded with unreliable, obsolescent computer technology that those and today's cars will be nearly impossible to maintain or restore. I couldn't even get body and trim parts from GM for my '93 Corvette in 2006 because they'd been discontinued. Imagine trying to replace the "Master Control" computer in any car made today in the next ten years.

Edited October 27, 2012 by sjordan2

[Ace-Garageguy]

Good choice, too. The beginning of an era so loaded with unreliable, obsolescent computer technology that those and today's cars will be nearly impossible to maintain or restore. I couldn't even get body and trim parts from GM for my '93 Corvette in 2006 because they'd been discontinued. Imagine trying to replace the "Master Control" computer in any car made today in the next ten years.

Yup.

[DR JAY]

I spent 25 years repairing cars for a living...my list is quite long. BUT- I have also seen Chevettes and K-Cars with over 200 000 of pure abuse still running reliably. (Luck perhaps?) Styling is subjective...what's ugly to some is beauty to others.I personally like the 61 Dart and the 62 Fury while most avert their eyes to avoid blindness. I based my choice on vehicles I have repaired in the past. (...sadly.)

Two vehicles that have always been at the top of my list were both Renaults...The Fuego and Le Car. To call them manure spreaders would be doing a disservice to farm machinery everywhere...even the finest of Russian tractors. Their styling was abysmal ,at best, but it was the mechanical aspects of these disasters that stuck in my mind. I could go on forever about them, but that would be wasting time on the same scale as actually attempting repairs on them.

Anyone remember the Chevette Diesel?

[disabled modeler]

Chevy Citation....can you say Lemons?

[MicroNitro]

Aztek

[Craig Irwin]

Over the last 40 years I have worked in the automotive service and repair busness. I started, just out of school, at a multi line import dealer, where we would service any import that came in the door. Everything from late 50's Voxhalls to Ferraris came through, plus the FIATs, Triumphs, Alfa Romeos and Subarus that we sold new. This was in the early to mid 70's.

This was quite a shock to a kid who had grown up in a GM town where people expected cars to start and get to their destonation without the aid of a tow truck.

I soon learned about FIATs, as the young new kid I got to climb up on the transports to get the brand new "cars" (term used very loosly) running long enough to be unloaded, or to push them off to the more experanced mechanics. Those Yugos everyone badmouths? They are a FIAT design (FIAT 128) built under license!

Triumphs normaly went 18 to 24 months before returning home on a wrecker. Then they seemed to remain forever.

Alfas required constant "fideling" to keep them happy, A trate I found all Itialian cars to have, the more expencive (read Ferraris) the worse they were.

Subarus were good cars, even in the early days of imports to the USA.

As for the "off brands" that we didn't sell new but serviced, German cars from VW to Benz were great cars, only Audi ownership needed to be avoided.

NO ONE should ever own ANYTHING French, and I don't believe that the French should even be allowed to make cars.

The British were somewhat better, but were stuck with the Lucas electrics and severe oil leakage. I remember a TR 4 that came in with a timing chain so loose that it had sawed a slot in the timing cover. It was still running fine!

Having said that, the worse car I personaly owned was a TR 7, Yes, I should have followed my own advice. A Hyundai Elantra is a distant second. A Plymouth minivan third.

Edited October 27, 2012 by Craig Irwin

[Craig Irwin]

I spent 25 years repairing cars for a living...my list is quite long. BUT- I have also seen Chevettes and K-Cars with over 200 000 of pure abuse still running reliably.

Anyone remember the Chevette Diesel?

My broher put over 250000 on a gas Chevette, my uncle got 500000 on a diesel (which used an Isuzu engine, BTW).

[SSNJim]

Yugos seem to be a constant theme in this thread. Never had one, but heard all the jokes....

When the Yugo was introduced in the US in the mid 80s, there was a bit of excitement about them. The price was less than $4000, making it the cheapest car in the US and pretty economical. The next cheapest was the also newly introduced Hyundai (rhymes with Monday) Excel at about $5500. One of the radio stations in San Diego (maybe XTRA?) had a contest where the grand prize was a six-pack of Yugos. All you had to do was tell them what you would do with a six-pack of Yugos. I don't remember the winning entry, but the prize was awarded. She was happy to get them - this was all pre-reputation.

I found the article on the LA Times website:

November 25, 1987 | THOMAS K. ARNOLD

- Last week, one of the strangest promotions in local radio history came to an end when progressive rock station XTRA-FM (91X) awarded 22-year-old Sonia Rodriquez its "Yugo Six-Pack": six 1988 Yugo automobiles, valued at more than $24,000. As one of a half-dozen semi-finalists, Rodriquez chose the correct key to start a Yugo--and thus won all six cars--in a drawing held at the College-area Wherehouse Records store.

[uncle potts]

Any dodge.

Careful.......

[Jim0205]

Chrysler circa 1990 and up (last one owned was an 05) not sure of the build quality now but cheaply built cars with very weak power train and chronic repairs and reliability issues. My 05 sebring had a variety of issues that one should not expect from a car like the heater knob falling off in july, the dash lights work one day not the next, my favorite was the magic gas gauge fill the tank full then settle on empty then hours later rise to full and back around again. Not a sensor issue checked out fine, too many repairs to list.

[MachinistMark]

Any. Chrysler. Product. Ever.

[Harry P.]

Any. Chrysler. Product. Ever.

Ok... maybe you have some sort of personal bias against Chrysler, who knows... but to say that any Chrysler product ever is the worst car is just plain ridiculous. I doubt very much that you have personally driven every Chrysler product ever made and are in any position to hand down a verdict on every Chrysler product ever made.

That sort of comment can't possibly be taken seriously by anyone.

[Harry P.]

Just to illustrate how silly your comment is...

Every car my dad ever owned, except for his very first car (a Ford Falcon) and his very last car before he died (a Ford Taurus) was a Chrysler product. Either a Dodge or a Plymouth (never an actual "Chrysler" model). That includes lots of Dodges and Plymouths.

My very first car was my dad's '67 Belvedere, which he gave to me when he bought a new Dodge. When I got that Belvedere it was 10 years old and had 100,000 miles on it. I drove it for another trouble-free 20,000 miles before I sold it (and it was still going strong when I sold it). That car was as solid as a rock and as reliable as the sun coming up every morning.

[Craig Irwin]

Any. Chrysler. Product. Ever.

I've heard it said that in case of a nuclear apocalypse the only things that can survive will be cockroaches and slant 6 Dusters.

[Rob Hall]

My one experience w/ owning a Chrysler product has been positive, my Jeep Grand Cherokee has gone 140k miles in the 12 years I've had it, with a few issues but overall fine. I'd consider another Chrysler product, I especially like the current Charger and 300, would also consider another GC.

My Dad had a '79 Dodge Power Wagon 4x4 that I learned to drive in...it had numb steering w/ no on-center feel and a tendency to stall on left turns (one experience which no doubt led to my phobia of left turns I've had for 25+ years).

Edited October 28, 2012 by Rob Hall