Worst Car You've Ever Driven?

Chevy Lumina. It was a rental car on a snowy road, it kept sliding into the median. At first I thought it was the road, then I realized it was only sliding in one direction. I was on a work trip so I traded it in the next day in another town. Surprisingly they didn't give me any problems when I told them why I wanted a different car. Customer service used to be so nice.

 

Modified: 1999 Chevy Camaro - The car was heavily modified and when I hammered the throttle and crossed the beams (drag racing) the front tires left the ground and the car pushed me back hard in the seat..... then after bouncing up and down I crossed the 60' mark or so it lost traction and I headed into the other lane. I recovered and floored it again and the car lifted back up then lost traction again sending me back into the other lane. Turns out the guy drilled holes in his factory shocks to make the front end easier to lift.

Non-modified: - C4 model Corvettes - you climb into a well and then sit cramped up inside of a cheesy interior and have to look out over a super long hood or look back through a window that affords poor visibility. Good luck changing the battery on one as well. lol

 

Really, it was my 1957 Ford Country Sedan.
But more recently, a 2004 Chevy Malibu, as a rental. My 2001 Chevy Blazer rides better and seems a lot higher quality.

 

Several, but first one that comes to mind was a Renault LeCar. Horrendous, and evidently owning one brought even more pain than my simple test drive.

 

Easy answer...the Kia Optima. It is a piece of crap. Runner-ups are 1974 Mustang II, Dodge Neon (had the feel of a Kia) and Mercury Villager (Ford mechanics didn't even know how to fix it when it died. That gave me a lot of confidence in Ford products).

 

Going back to the middle ages it was most likely my old VW fastback. But by far the worst car I've driven in the last 10 years was a Dodge Caliber. The road noise was horrific.

 

If you had asked my dad, it was the used Renault Dauphine he was looking to buy back in the mid-60s (for gas savings!). He took it out for a test drive. Fortunately, he saw the semi coming up to the traffic light behind him. He survived the truck stopping on top of him, but had a good story about the salesman's reaction when he came walking back to the lot. He never bought one. In fact, he thought is 81 Olds Cutlass was too small and traded it in a couple of years later!

 

Hands down, it was a 1981 Chevy Citation I had as a rental in 1988, it failed to start 5 Fridays in a row, I finally left it dead at a restaurant and told the rental company how to find it.

Other than that, I drove a Chevy Vega with odd carburetion issues.

 

The worse car I've ever driven was a rented chrysler sebring (2008). The steering was all over the place. it was so loose and there was a split second delay between when you hit the accelerator and when the car went. Transmission was terrible... it was just a crap car all around.

 

1976 American Motors CJ5 Jeep. I wanted 4WD for the back roads of rural North Dakota, and it was the only way to get that on my budget back then. Piece of crap from day one until I traded it in, 13 years later, on a 1989 Honda Civic station wagon that never gave me a day's trouble in the 15 years I owned it.

 

2007 Hyundai Accent. It was a rental, and already a couple years old (probably abused). Very cheap and uncomfortable, and compared to the Prius very loud and unsafe-feeling. I'd far rather drive my old '88 Tercel or '81 Jetta, both of which got better mileage!

 

76 mercury capri i bought used for $500

i had it for 2 weeks

it caught on fire twice

i junked it at a loss

 

My 85 Chevy Celebrity.
The celebrity dashboard would literally bounce up and down when over 65 MPH. It was the cheapest looking and feeling car I ever owned. Those mid eighties GM's had the worst paintjobs ever.

Runner up was an 89 Lincoln Continental
The Continental was just a nightmare. So many problems kept popping up that it drove me nuts. And NEVER buy a car with air shocks. They all died one by one at a cost of about nearly $1000 each. I'd have saved money if I would have junked it when the first one failed, but didn't realize the next 3 would ALL go out at evenly spaced intervals (along with the many other problems).

 

1991 Dodge Shadow. After 3 years, the shifter cable snapped (at 1 AM ... 2 hours from home). Then the controller chip (or something like that) started to go. Around the 5-year mark, whenever the A/C compressor would kick in, my dash lights would blink. Eventually my headlights would blink, too. Took the local dodge dealer 4 freakin' tries to figure out the problem. Once it was fixed, the same problem started again within 5 months. got rid of the thing ASAP.

 

In the US - a 2004 Buick Regal (the last year of production?). Shockingly poor all round; saggy, wallowy and floaty to drive so that it seemed that nothing you touched or manipulated was connected to anything mechanical in any way. Extraordinarily weak engine with a vague and unhelpful auto box. Vile build quality with massive panel gaps, exposed screw heads everywhere, nasty cheap plastic trim and an unremitting feeling of cheap shoddiness. It felt like a car built in the 1970s (which was when it was designed I suppose). I LOVE the USA and all things american almost without question, but this (and Los Angeles) made me rethink my whole attitude.

In the UK? A 1990 Kia Pride (also known as a Ford Festiva / Mazda 121 I think) which I had as a loaner. It felt so fragile that I drove less than 5 miles from the dealership, left it an a parking lot where I left it and borrowed a friend's car for the next two weeks.

Best Car Ever Driven? Aston Martin DB9

 

Ford Ka ~2006 model- bumpy on highway

Smart 4 two diesel~2003 model- really bumpy on highway and side wind

lexus I(s)250 petrol ~2008 model small space inside

Toyota highlander 90 ~2004 model- terrible big Front window side's a bike or person can disapear from your line of site.

Mini Cooper damm small inside.

VW jetta Station bleu-motion diesel model 2009. Terribel shifting and for a comfort car to sporty suspention. also disapointing fuel economy.

 

A 1950 something Fiat 1100 with suicide doors in the front. An unusual and completely unsafe 1st car for a kid going to college way back when. Wheel bearings melted on the San Bernardino Freeway near Cal Poly.
Closest near death experience was a '97 Ford Explorer with a stuck under the air filter throttle linkage. Turned it off passing through 90MPH on the freeway in Phoenix and hit that off ramp and shoulder hard. A known problem that Ford somehow never got around to telling its customers about.

PasPrius

 

Interestingly this got me thinking.

I've more or less liked every auto I've owned.

It really wasn't it's fault but the worse would of been a 90's Ford Taurus I owned for a short period. I bought it used from a private party and it had a lot of mechanical issues. It was very comfortable. It had a "quirk" where if you turned the wheel sharply to the left the engine would die. It had to be a very, sharp turn so it didn't affect it very often. One day I stupidly was driving up a narrow mountain road and decided I wanted to turn around, I gambled that I could make the U-turn without stalling out the engine. I was wrong. So I had a Ford Taurus perpendicular to the roadway around a blind corner on a mountain road...stalled. I heard a car coming up the mountain. I moved so fast...the only way to get it started again was to pop the hood and tap on the battery. I lost 20lbs in 20 seconds trying to get that Taurus out of the roadway before the aproaching car arrived. Thank god, I was able to do it.

That was probably the worst car I've owned, but the flaw wasn't really the vehicles fault. The person I bought from had rebuilt everything and not done a good job. It was a youthful mistake in purchase.