The worst car you ever owned?

lol I had the European version of that called a Talbot Horizon. It too was totally dreadful and it too had a problem with door handles coming off. Being 20 at the time, I never bother replacing any other than the drivers door

Chrysler Horizon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The Omni/Horizon appeared to be a low quality copy of the early VW Rabbit which was already low quality by VW standards. But, the Omni/Horizon was based on a French Simca (Chrysler owned French car company), so had inherently lower quality than a low quality VW.

 

Well the radiator expansion tank in the version I had from 1979 was a glass jar! Not a plastic expansion bottle as you got in any car from the mid 1970's but a glass jar with a special cap on it!?!

Sums it up.

 

This is a great topic!

SCH-I535 ? 2

 

The police department bought some Omega's to try them out. When you tried to stop with the AC on you had to reach up and cut the AC off to get the breaks to work. I bumped into a car trying to stop. Both feet pressing hard on the brakes would not stop it until you cut off the AC.
In the winter the air scope under the front bumper scooped the snow up and it got packed up around the engine. Then the car would over heat in the winter.

SCH-I535 ? 2

 

My 1993 Saturn. At 69k the timing chain sproket broke. Had to pay for a new engine. Alt & radiator thermastat went out. AC compresor. The car sat so low it was a pain to get out of. A deer totaled it in 2007.
My 2002 VW Jetta TDI was fun to drive. I just sold it and pulled out all the maintance bils. It was so much fun to drive I did not notice the bills I had paid over the years. Wow!
SCH-I535 ? 2

 

My Dad had the next size up - a Talbot Alpine. It was horrible. And he replaced it with.... another one! My Dad has made some quite poor car choices in his time.

He had the old shape....



... and upgraded to the new shape.



I can only hope that that "British excellence" caption is sarcastic.

 

They were ok when they first came out and looked nice and shiney. We had one in about 1978 and I remember being impressed with it. But they didnt age very well and the engines rattled badly. Saying that, my Dad was a fan of Rootes Group vehicles such as the Avenger, the Imp, the Alpine and then the Horizon. I don't think my dad made good car choices either, upon reflection!

I like to think that my good car choices are as a result of his poor choices. Though I have owned some shite in my time.

 

Ah, yes. I do remember it being phenomenally noisy.

Rootes Group never really would have got off the ground in Australia with that name. But, yes, my family had a few of those Chrysler-Talbot-Simca cars as well: Mum had a Simca 1100 which was quite nasty, and remarkably ugly.



My parents' decisions have definitely affected me: I would never, ever, every buy a Citroen after my parents' experiences with an AX (the handbrake came off in my hand) and a BX (we left it unlocked in Moss Side overnight with the keys in and no-one would even steal it!).

 

Moss side? lol, I broke down there once. That was erm, interesting!

Citroens should be OK in Oz, cos there's no damp to stop them starting up on a cold, frosty morning or rotting quicker than a bowl of fruit left out in the sun.

Nah, Citroens are just total pap. They look good, but that's about it. To our American friends who don't know what they're like; Imagine fiats, but worse, much much worse.

 

I'm astonished you lived to tell the tale. My mum was ready to pick us up the second my Dad and I abandoned the BX.

(For the Americans, Moss Side is a horrible district of Manchester. It used to be the one place in Britain that had almost as many guns as the average genteel American suburb. It was a terrifying place, although apparently an excellent place to buy and sell heroin, if that's your thing.)

It's kind of a shame, because Citroens have always looked good - the C6 looks lovely, and the DS5 diesel hybrid 4WD SUV is a really interesting idea (diesel engine driving the front wheel; electric motor for the back wheels).

DS5


C6


And when the BX was working, it was a joy to drive. But that wasn't very often.

I went in a C5 recently. It was a two-year-old car with 50,000kms. When I closed the driver's door, the whole of the inside of the door - leather, handles, switches, door bins, the lot - fell off. I got someone to open the door from the outside to let me out, and everything fell on the ground.

 

Worst car I ever owned was a 1968 Holden Special station wagon. (Aussie version of Chev.) The steering would not reciprocate, and it wandered all over the road at any speed. Unfortunately it is also the vehicle my Dad was killed in.

I've never bought a GM car since.

 

GM has had there head up there a$$ for about 45 years now. When Toyota launched there first Corolla in what 1968-69 they should have sat up and took notice. Big Time. They didn't.

1970 Corolla was a nice little sh*tbox. The little engine ran great the manual trans shifted great and rolled down the road great.
Good gas mileage and you could give it to a 17 year old driver and it would survive that.
It was a fun car to own and drive. But GM kept spitting out one bloated piece of crap after another and then with 1970 emissions regulations you could barely drive these awful cars. Only thing that saved GM was there performance vehicles.
And the Jap's kept getting better and better. Datsun hit the docks and that was that. They made a fabulous 1970's car. Nissan still makes a great car.
Amazing that GM survived this long. Ridiculously managed company. I give you "Who killed the Electric Car" as Exhibit A.

 

I'm 16 and I've only owned three cars. The best is the Prius, second place is the Civic I traded in for the Prius, and last place is my 1996 Chrysler Concorde that I still own "just in case."

Really the Concorde is a great car, but here's a few things you'd hate about it:
1. 20 MPG seems to be what it gets all-around.
2. Seats do not fold down so versatility is out of the question.
3. Power door locks and the key fob are dead, which means this car's security is stone-age compared to my Prius and its SKS.
4. If it's 75+ degrees outside, then ABS and traction control will be off.
5. It is an absolute boat to drive and there are no backup sensors or camera, so good luck not running over another car.

A few things I love about this car though are:
1. Rear air conditioning
2. Fantastic sound system for something out of the 90s
3. The two spoke steering wheel is probably the most comfortable thing ever to hold. You don't even have to punch the center of it to honk, there's buttons on the spokes!

 

Any mainstream British car (which means anything but the RR's and Bentleys) built before the 21st century, with the exception of the first generation Land Rovers and the Morris Minor, was synonymous with "last resort transportation"

Today Jaguar, Mini, and LR really have their crap together. I've even heard that Jaguar has become the most reliable European luxury make. But how can someone with the name "TheEnglishman" seem remotely unbiased anyways?

 

I bought my first car, a Peugeot 204, when I was 30. Second car was a Mitsu Mirage, 3rd car a Honda Civic, and 4rth our first Prius bought in 2004.

The Civic was the all around best, but I traded for best fuel economy and to support the hybrid movement and curiosity about the car. I have not been disappointed in the least.

 

I had a diesel Chevy chevette. If I floored the gas when I pulled out of work, I would just be getting to about 60 by the time I got home. Going back to the future was out of the question.

 

How have you managed to be on your third car at 16? How old do you have to be to drive there?

Much as they're no longer in charge, Ford seems to have really sorted out QC at Jaguar-Land Rover. And Tata have kept it going. It's the same with BMW and Mini. The thing is, the problem doesn't seem to have been British workers: QC at Nissan's and Toyota's and Honda's British plants has been as good as it is in Japan. I think the problem was management's disdain for the customer. My uncle's Austin Allegro, my Dad's friend's Austin Princess, and every Rover SD1 I've ever seen all seem to demonstrate this.

 

All of those were dreadful cars. They had so much going for them until the accountants and management got hold of them. Thankfully there are only a few hundred of any of them remaining.

The SD1 V8 was a cracker, though probably because it was the only V8 available in a British car built for the masses. We had nothing to compare it to.

 

The thing is, though, the Allegro and the Princess were rubbish in every possible way. No thought went into the design (apart from the square steering wheel), or the engine or the handling or anything. (I can't remember whether we have pictures earlier in the thread, so here are a couple for those fortunate enough never to have seen these cars.)

Allegro: it was more aerodynamic when reversing than going forward.



Allegro steering wheel: it could break your thumb when self correcting.



Princess: rubbish in every way possible.



But the SD1 was different: it was a good concept. It looked fantastic for its time (late 70s) - like a Ferrari Daytona crossed with a DeLorean - and the V8 had the potential to be actually quite fast, and the interior was imaginative.





It's just a shame they were so badly made.