What was the worst car you ever owned.

[A0wen]

Pre-facelift Rover 216, L-prefix, bought a low-mileage example at 5 years old. Underpowered, heavy and unresponsive on the pedals, and everything inside felt cheap and tatty. After having some pretty nice cars loaned to me by work, it was a terrible buy. I got rid of it at about 8 years old, after the bonnet catch failed suddenly on the A45, resulting in the bonnet flipping up and through the windscreen. Traded it in for an S-prefix Escort which was a huge improvement; the dealer suggested he'd be scrapping it but I did see it subsequently on the road with a (different coloured) bonnet from a scrapper.

Remarkable - because the Rover was based on a Honda and the controls on those were lauded at the time as being light and easy to use.

The Escort was positively antediluvian by comparison - a design which was the same age as the Rover but with inferior handling and ancient CVH engines.

 

[DustyBin]

I have a Yaris now and it's absolutely magnificent.

Toyota GR Yaris Review 2023 | Top Gear

The GR Yaris is superb - the best Toyota we've ever driven

www.topgear.com

Do you have a GR Yaris?

 

[GusB]

I've owned four cars over the years. The first two were Mk1 Fiestas, the earliest of which was a 1978 T-reg. It was mechanically sound, but the bodywork let it down. My first year university flatmate was very much into his Fords and had one that was a year older; if I supplied the parts he'd fit them for the fun of it (and maybe a few beers).

Madge, my second Fiesta, had sound bodywork (hand-painted with an inch thick layer of paint!) but mechanically it wasn't as good.

Car number three was a K10 Nissan Micra which was great on fuel and had the ability to beat anything off the lights (up to 5mph). It cost me about £25 a month in petrol which was an absolute bargain compared to the £17 a week it was previously costing on bus fares.

The last car I owned was another dad cast-off; a 2000 X-reg Citroen Xsara which I absolutely loved.

I couldn't put any of these into the "worst" category, though. All were second hand and, other than the Xsara, were almost done when I got them.

The worst cars I've driven were a D-plate Volvo 340 which my dad bought after his Citroen BX suffered an un-economical MOT failure, and a one litre Corsa that I hired for a weekend; the latter had a three-cylinder engine the that would look at the skin on a rice pudding and shrug. It was truly awful to drive, especially on the A9!

 

[DustyBin]

You've clearly never driven a VW then - dull really isn't the word - the magazines all say VW's are "comfort biased", which is rubbish - they handle like a wet sponge.

To be fair to Vauxhall their cars are generally reliable, generally cheap to buy and own - I've had two, the first was a Mk2 Astra (my first car) which was lively for a 1.3, the second is my current car a 1.5 petrol Insignia auto, which I picked up last year when I needed a cheap family car having handed back my company car. Sure it's not the most exciting car to drive, but it's comfortable, roomy, quiet and just shrugs off long journeys with no complaint from the passengers.

No I have, and I completely agree with you. VAG cars really don’t appeal to me. I posted my thoughts in regard to an Audi A4 company car I once had a few pages back!

Remarkable - because the Rover was based on a Honda and the controls on those were lauded at the time as being light and easy to use.

The Escort was positively antediluvian by comparison - a design which was the same age as the Rover but with inferior handling and ancient CVH engines.

On an S plate it may have had a Zetec engine to be fair.

 

[richw]

The last car I owned was another dad cast-off; a 2000 X-reg Citroen Xsara which I absolutely loved.

I had a 1998 Xsara about 15 years back. I recall how incredibly comfortable it was, if nothing else

 

[bspahh]

I had a 1998 Xsara about 15 years back. I recall how incredibly comfortable it was, if nothing else

My Mum had one, in a run of Simcas, Renaults and Citroens. It wound my Dad up no end that Renault had a penchant for Aluminum cylinder heads, with spark plugs pointing in awkward directions.

Anyway, the Xsara was fine - comfortable, and reasonably reliable. It had a radio cassette player and my Mum wanted to play CDs, so I bought an aftermarket stereo one and a bracket to fit it. It worked fine, but it meant the dashboard display no longer showed the fuel economy and clock, so the radio cassette went back in. K.I.S.S. was never an mantra for Citroen's engineers.

 

[Ashley Hill]

My worst car is my current one,a Volkswagen Golf. I always said I’d never buy an old banger but when my previous car of 18yrs failed it’s final MOT very badly it was no longer worth repairing. I needed a car for that weekend so my garage sold me their courtesy car for £500. “It’ll do you for a couple of years” they said which it has. However the CDL never unlocks the same doors twice,one always needs manual help and not always the same one. It stinks of “wet dog” even though we’ve never owned one. It doesn’t like hills either! It sailed through its last 2 MOTs but its third cost me £420 to get it through. I think it’s time to say goodbye to it.

 

[A0wen]

My Mum had one, in a run of Simcas, Renaults and Citroens. It wound my Dad up no end that Renault had a penchant for Aluminum cylinder heads, with spark plugs pointing in awkward directions.

Anyway, the Xsara was fine - comfortable, and reasonably reliable. It had a radio cassette player and my Mum wanted to play CDs, so I bought an aftermarket stereo one and a bracket to fit it. It worked fine, but it meant the dashboard display no longer showed the fuel economy and clock, so the radio cassette went back in. K.I.S.S. was never an mantra for Citroen's engineers.

BIB, Citroen were by no means the sole offender. Many cars from the mid 90s onward which had separate radio displays had the same issue if an aftermarket stereo was fitted.

 

[Towers]

I once inherited a 1991 Skoda Favorit. Oh boy!

I love a bit of bangernomics and have pretty much always driven sheds, quite happily. Old motors are, almost without exception, far more interesting & enjoyable to drive than dull new stuff. This thing, however, was awful! It seemed to be loosely based on a Soviet battle tank, including how heavy it felt - no power steering! Styled like a brick, the interior (in beige/brown) was equally rugged. There was very little enjoyment to be derived from driving the thing, even for a lover of old rubbish like me!

It was then followed - either immediately or eventually, I can't remember!) - by it's successor, the equally luxurious Skoda Felicia. Unsurprisingly, it was essentially more of the same but slightly updated. Still no power steering, still felt like it weighed more than a building, still a dreadful thing! This one had the added 'personality' of regularly overheating, and eventually it chose to retire in the middle of the evening rush hour at a busy junction!

Quite why anybody ever bought this sort of stuff new in the UK has always mystified me, I suppose if you must have 'new' and are at the bottom end of the market then there must be some sort of appeal. But, yikes!

 

[birchesgreen]

My second car was an L reg Favorit, they had given it power steering by then though it never seemed that stable on the road. I took it up to 70 once, i felt like Chuck Yaeger to be honest the faster it went the more it seemed to rattle. Never again.

 

[Cowley]

I once inherited a 1991 Skoda Favorit. Oh boy!

I love a bit of bangernomics and have pretty much always driven sheds, quite happily. Old motors are, almost without exception, far more interesting & enjoyable to drive than dull new stuff. This thing, however, was awful! It seemed to be loosely based on a Soviet battle tank, including how heavy it felt - no power steering! Styled like a brick, the interior (in beige/brown) was equally rugged. There was very little enjoyment to be derived from driving the thing, even for a lover of old rubbish like me!

It was then followed - either immediately or eventually, I can't remember!) - by it's successor, the equally luxurious Skoda Felicia. Unsurprisingly, it was essentially more of the same but slightly updated. Still no power steering, still felt like it weighed more than a building, still a dreadful thing! This one had the added 'personality' of regularly overheating, and eventually it chose to retire in the middle of the evening rush hour at a busy junction!

Quite why anybody ever bought this sort of stuff new in the UK has always mystified me, I suppose if you must have 'new' and are at the bottom end of the market then there must be some sort of appeal. But, yikes!

My second car was an L reg Favorit, they had given it power steering by then though it never seemed that stable on the road. I took it up to 70 once, i felt like Chuck Yaeger to be honest the faster it went the more it seemed to rattle. Never again.

To be fair to the Felicia they were actually VW underneath the skin and were basic but pretty much ok (I had one for a bit as a company van in the 1990s).
VW actually sold a rebadged version as a Caddy for a while:



I do remember the one I had (1.9 non turbo diesel) being painfully slow though and it came in basic HM Prison specification.

 

[A0wen]

To be fair to the Felicia they were actually VW underneath the skin and were basic but pretty much ok (I had one for a bit as a company van in the 1990s).
VW actually sold a rebadged version as a Caddy for a while:

View attachment 119944

I do remember the one I had (1.9 non turbo diesel) being painfully slow though and it came in basic HM Prison specification.

Bit in bold - no it wasn't. It was the first car Skoda released after VW took over but it still used the Favorit's floorpan and used some VW engines, though Skoda's own 1.3 was also used.

The Felicia was really little more than a facelifted Favorit.

The first Skoda to use a VW platform was the Mk1 Octavia in 1996, followed by the Mk1 Fabia in 1999, the latter replacing the Felicia.

 

[Cowley]

Bit in bold - no it wasn't. It was the first car Skoda released after VW took over but it still used the Favorit's floorpan and used some VW engines, though Skoda's own 1.3 was also used.

The Felicia was really little more than a facelifted Favorit.

The first Skoda to use a VW platform was the Mk1 Octavia in 1996, followed by the Mk1 Fabia in 1999, the latter replacing the Felicia.

Well I never. I’d always assumed it was virtually new and based on the Polo platform. You learn something new every day!

 

[richw]

Skoda Felicia. Unsurprisingly, it was essentially more of the same but slightly updated. Still no power steering,

I had a Felicia, T606JWJ was it’s registration, it had both power steering and electric windows. It was bright green. Long since turned to bean cans

 

[AndrewE]

Worst car (out of only 4) was a K-reg mini, but tbh there wasn't much wrong with it. You got what you paid for. One morning my wife - who drove it to the school where she taught in about 1975 - ran out of petrol about 1/2 mile from where we lived. Odd, as she had only filled up the day before...

Getting under the bonnet I found that the flexible tube link between the metal pipe from the petrol tank and the carburettor inlet was about 1/2" too short. For some reason the jubilee clip had stopped holding it and the metal supply tube had sprung back, taking it off the inlet and dumped a tank of petrol into the gutter.
A friend who worked for BLMC (as it was then) said it was rumoured that they miscalculated the production costs and made a loss on every mini they sold! I wondered whether shaving 1/2" off the hose that let us down was one of their attempts to minimise the losses... We only got rid of it because on a camping holiday with 2 kids there was no room to pack the wellies in and it turned out to be a wet week in N Wales!

Since then we have had 2 Astra estates which lasted well over 30 years between them. The first one was bought off me by another friend who salvaged it after a MOT failure (which was fraudulent and easily fixed) and his kids learnt on it, as ours had. It's currently in a shed behind his house awaiting its resurrection, as it's so old that it has no computer or fancy sensors on it and, once put right again, will probably be more reliable than anything else on the road now!

 

[Ediswan]

Quite why anybody ever bought this sort of stuff new in the UK has always mystified me, I suppose if you must have 'new' and are at the bottom end of the market then there must be some sort of appeal. But, yikes!

I once bought a Fiat Panda 1000 CL new (1988 ?). Looked much the same as your Skoda. Excellent little car. 1000cc was sufficient, even for motorways. Handled like a go cart. Small enough that there was always a parking space to be found. I vaguelly recalling paying a bit extra for a radio cassette (default was nothing).

 

[Cowley]

I can’t quite call this the worst car I’ve ever owned for a couple of reasons but it’s worth a mention.

Mrs C had a 1995 Nissan Serena when we first got together. It was a 2.0 non turbo diesel and it looked like this:


The dog had eaten all the headrests and various other bits of trim when he was a puppy and then the kids had done the rest.
My now stepson had snapped the stalks of the steering column at one point while pretending to drive it (I managed to fix them somehow) and one time the prop shaft fell off when she was taking the kids to school. The inside of the thing was truly something to behold. A real take your shoes off on the way out job…

Amazingly we actually managed to coax it over to France for a holiday at one point and it just kept trundling along like an old blue tractor.
What killed it in the end was the price of a replacement brake master cylinder but we sold it for £300 to an old dear nearby, who stripped it out and turned it into a little camper van complete with gingham curtains (hopefully she fixed the brakes)!

I remember we went somewhere in it one day with a friend of ours and he asked if he could drive. When we set off he kept looking down because he was convinced the handbrake was stuck on. That’s just how slow it was though.

 

[richw]

Mrs C had a 1995 Nissan Serena when we first got together. It was a 2.0 non turbo diesel and it looked like this:

Famously had the slowest 0-60 mph time of any car available to buy brand new in the U.K. at the time they were launched

 

[Cowley]

Famously had the slowest 0-60 mph time of any car available to buy brand new in the U.K. at the time they were launched

God it was slow.

The older girls used to hide below the seats or ask us to drop them off around corner when we got to school.

 

[birchesgreen]

To be fair to my Favorit, its the only car i've had (except the new one) that never broke down. Rock solid reliable, just a bit wobbly at times. The steering always seemed to be on the verge of breaking. Very quick off the line, glacial between 10-30 but seemed to go 30-40+ in the blink of an eye. It was a GLXie so i don't know if that was something to do with the fuel injection being a bit esoteric.

 

[Cowley]

To be fair to my Favorit, its the only car i've had (except the new one) that never broke down. Rock solid reliable, just a bit wobbly at times. The steering always seemed to be on the verge of breaking. Very quick off the line, glacial between 10-30 but seemed to go 30-40+ in the blink of an eye. It was a GLXie so i don't know if that was something to do with the fuel injection being a bit esoteric.

I must admit that I am enjoying hearing about all our car histories. It really does remind you how much better cars have become.

 

[KeithMcC]

Austin Maestro 1.3 HLE. I'm not *quite* old enough to opine accurately but, if it wasn't, then it should have been the car that finished off the British car industry once and for all.

I remember years ago having an almost brand new Maestro as a rental car for several weeks to get to a site. Had a nasty habit of starting OK, but 5 minutes later as I went on to a busy roundabout it would just die and roll to a stop in the middle of the traffic. Generally awful car!
My son bought a Focus ST, the best part of the deal being a warranty! It went through several turbos and an engine control unit at the expense of the insurer before he got rid of it towards a BMW.

 

[AndrewE]

I remember years ago having an almost brand new Maestro as a rental car for several weeks to get to a site. Had a nasty habit of starting OK, but 5 minutes later as I went on to a busy roundabout it would just die and roll to a stop in the middle of the traffic. Generally awful car!

Probably around that time I was working across the NW region and there was the fuel train fire in Summit tunnel (Dec '84) We (usually me) had to go to site daily for an early start monitoring for flammable fuel residues as the remains of the train and the track were cut up and removed...

We hired a little mini Metro for the duration and would set off about 6 or 7 a.m. each mid-winter morning to drive around/across Manchester to get there. 60 or 70 miles and 70 to 90 mins even with the current motorway network...

The point of the story is that over maybe 6 weeks that little car only let us down once... when a colleague left the headlights on after doing the previous day!
The Maestro might have been a poor car, but that Metro couldn't be faulted. (But saying that, I don't think our mini ever let us down 45 years ago either.) I just can't get over how good car engines are nowadays...
Correction: car engines were reliable about 10 or more years ago before all these sensors and engine management systems started to be fitted. I'm certain our cars have got progressively less reliable over the last 20 years for that reason. Current engine is fine, exhaust sensor says fail, but not an MOT failure because the exhaust is in spec!

 

[gavinro]

Do you have a GR Yaris?

Yes. It's truly awesome.

 

[MotCO]

Quite why anybody ever bought this sort of stuff new in the UK has always mystified me, I suppose if you must have 'new' and are at the bottom end of the market then there must be some sort of appeal. But, yikes!

I've always wondered who in their right mind would go to a Reliant showroom, and say I must have a three-wheel Regal or Robin. After all, someone must have bought them brand new at some stage!

 

[Dai Corner]

I've always wondered who in their right mind would go to a Reliant showroom, and say I must have a three-wheel Regal or Robin. After all, someone must have bought them brand new at some stage!

They were cheap and I think you only needed a motorcycle licence.

Does anybody want to talk about their best car?

We've done 'worst car you've ever owned' so how about 'best car'?

Mine would be the Ford Focus I traded the problematic Renault mentioned in the other thread in for.

Three years old, previously owned by an old guy who probably used it once a week to go shopping. Cost me £4000 plus the Megane, no expenses other than servicing, MOT and tyres, got £4000 back when I traded it in for my brand new Mazda 3 thirteen years later.

 

[Gloster]

They were cheap and I think you only needed a motorcycle licence.

That was their attraction, possibly the only one. A chap I worked with traded his motorcycle in for a Plastic Pig (as a friend calls them) as he was courting. I was on nights the day he picked it up from the garage and he should have relieved me at 06.00. Just before that the phone from the next box rang and the Reliefman who was there that day told me he had passed young K., who had put the Reliant in the ditch and wasn’t coming in: he was shaken but unhurt, but the vehicle required refitting of door-handles, mirrors, etc. on one side. His explanation was that he had lost control after he leant over to straighten up his milk flask after it tipped over. General opinion was that he had tried to corner it like a motorbike.

 

[Ashley Hill]

. It really does remind you how much better cars have become.

My first car was a Mini Metro. I could lift the bonnet up and pretty much recognise everything and maintain it myself. My last two cars are so full of electronics that just downloading their faults at a garage costs a pretty penny.

 

[Busaholic]

Funnily enough, my best car was an R5, though one of the later ones... in fact mine was one of the last RHD ones built, a 1994 (L) 1.4 Campus Prima. It unfortunately got damaged in an accident, and as I needed a replacement quickly I sold it for scrap rather than repairing it or finding it a good home. I've regretted doing so ever since. I replaced it with the aforementioned Suzuki, though I was very tempted by a 1982 Renault 5 that the same backwater used car place had... it was in a brownish beige colour, so very Hubnut!

Though if your story is representative, I probably did right avoiding the early ones!

I bought a very well used late model Renault 5 which got written off while it was sitting outside my sister's house at night by a young driver experiencing the first rain that had fallen for weeks and not dealing with it very well. My insurers paid out a reasonable sum, and informed me that Renault must have run out of the correct engine because it had substituted one meant for the then new Clio! Actually, it was one of my favourite cars - I much prefer uncomplicated ones, I believe in keeping things as simple as possible.

 

[bspahh]

I remember years ago having an almost brand new Maestro as a rental car for several weeks to get to a site. Had a nasty habit of starting OK, but 5 minutes later as I went on to a busy roundabout it would just die and roll to a stop in the middle of the traffic. Generally awful car!

I had a 1984 Maestro which I got from my Dad. It had an engine management computer (which was good), but the soldered joints were prone to cracking (bad). You could get them replaced, but there was no guarantee that the replacement would be any better. My Dad was able to fix some with a microscope, soldering iron and a steady hand.

When I got it, it had a problem where the automatic choke would choose randomly to be on or off all the time. When it was on, starting was easy, but it would kangaroo after half a mile. When it was off, it would take minutes of churning the engine to get it to start, but once it was going, it was OK. I fitted a manual choke, which worked around the problem.

It also had a problem where sometimes the warning light for the engine temperature would start flashing for no reason. It once did it on a frosty morning, before I had started the engine. My fix for this was a bit of insulating tape in front of the warning light. This was cheap and effective and worked for several years, including 6 months hammering up and down Autobahns at 90mph. However, one day, the engine overheated, the tape masked the warning light, and the first thing I noticed when it lost power and ground to a halt, where all the wiring on the engine had melted.