Simple Q: Most unreliable car you've ever had?

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Not technically mine, but the Renault 18i my wife owned when we started dating.
 
I forget the year it was a long time ago. The late 80's early 90's door sagging, plastic rattling, head gasket blowing, seat held up with phone book, constantly broke POS Ford Thunderbird.
 
A 70 Corvette with an LS6 from a Chevelle and my 68 L36 Roadster. Biiiiig money pits.
The 70 got 4 to maybe 6 mpg.
 
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88 Ford Bronco. Love/hate relationship. Underpowered, unreliable, great off road.
Have a 01 F150 4x4 now. I guess I'll never learn.... This time it's my last Ford!
 
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Originally Posted by bullwinkle
Originally Posted by csandste
For new car:

1986 (IIRC) Ford Tempo was the worst new car ever. Ford had a warranty program that would fix anything taken to dealer after the first repair. Found out all sorts of different things could break once. Caught fire while trying to cross the Ambassador Bridge and get back into the U.S.

My mom had an ‘81 Lynx (Mercury Escort) for a while that liked eating ignition switches-had it fixed at the local L-M dealer-again, and again, and again... They got tired of putting free ignition switches in it! My vote for most unreliable has to be any Escort, Lynx, or Tracer that had a FORD 4 cylinder engine in it-between lunching timing belts, bending valves, even cracking blocks due to losing the timing belt at speed on the interstate, and dropping valve seats out of their GARBAGE cylinder heads!


I don't know I had a 2000 Escort ZX2 with the 2.0 Zetec and manual trans. I owned it I think 7 years and got it with 114k on it, put another 70-80k on it before selling when the water pump started leaking and I didn't want to deal with it. I'll be darned though if the thing just ran and ran on my long commute. It seized a pulley once and threw the belt but I still made it home. Other than that it was tires and oil and a rusted muffler in that time. Oh and the AC evaporator too.
 
Originally Posted by SirTanon
1982 Ford Escort. Total piece of crap.

My 1983 LTD was built just as wonderfully. Paint that oxidized within two years, for starters, not to mention the great early 1980s overall build quality. That wonderful B&S style power, not to mention the torque of a riding lawn mower. Oil consumption issues all the time. Wet noodle steering from the factory despite rack and pinion steering. I could go on.
 
Originally Posted by wemay
2003 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII
2013 Hyundai Santa Fe Sport 2.0T (current)


Sorry, i thought this was "most reliable". The two above were and have been that.

The most unreliable was a 1990 VW Corrado G60
 
Originally Posted by Yah-Tah-Hey
66 Dodge Dart V8 special ordered with disc brakes and four on the floor. Hamtramck POS junk.


Hammtramck is like the walking dead if you ever go through there. Very run down, waist high weeds everywhere. lots of shootings. Don't recommend a visit there during day even
 
Originally Posted by 14Accent
My 1984 Fiero 2M4. I've had lots and lots of turds over the years, but that one takes the cake.

It NEVER ran at the right temperature. I could purge air all day long, change stats, clean radiator fins, anything. It either ran too cold in the winter or too hot in the summer.

It got awful mileage for a car that weighs what it does. That Iron Duke might be tough, but it's terrible on fuel.

It started on fire twice. Once was electrical, once when a rod flew through the block and the oil hit the cat.

Fuel pump failed.

None of the gauges worked right. Ever.

It handled like the Kool-Aid man on skis. Downright scary. Yes, I drove it in MN winters.

The heat was a joke. An absolute joke. There was hot air, usually, but the airflow was so weak that there might as well have been no climate control at all.

When it was really hot the TBI would boil and cause a hard hot-restart if you tried to run in to the store quick. You'd have to sit for 15-20 minutes with the hatch open and the air cleaner lid off to get it going.

There were apparently no baffles in the fuel tank, because when it was below 1/4 tank and you took a cloverleaf too fast it would stall out half way through the turn.

I can't believe I had that car as long as I did. And put many miles on it. Not one of them was memorable or pleasant.


OK, now this is an impressive epic!
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Here's surely an unreliable vehicle that I'd LIKE to buy....just for the challenge.
There's a '71 Land Rover a couple of miles from me that's been parked for 20+ years. It belongs to a lawyer who I went to high school with and he has no wrenching skills whatsoever. Matter of fact, he doesn't even live in the area.
I talked to his dad about it 15+ years ago and the dad said he'd never sell it. I talked to the lawyer 10+ years ago and he said it had the rare "overdrive" unit on it....but he said he doesn't want to sell it.
So there it sits....
 
Originally Posted by Garak

My 1983 LTD was built just as wonderfully. Paint that oxidized within two years, for starters, not to mention the great early 1980s overall build quality. That wonderful B&S style power, not to mention the torque of a riding lawn mower. Oil consumption issues all the time. Wet noodle steering from the factory despite rack and pinion steering. I could go on.


In 1994 I bought a 1984 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe(manual) to run as a work beater to keep the miles off my E24 M6. The Turbo Coupe wasn't terribly unreliable, but there were a couple of problems I didn't expect- the power window switch caught fire once and another time the injectors began to leak- shooting fuel all over the engine compartment. Oh yeah, you also had to replace the auxiliary clutch cable(a five minute job) at least every 10k miles to avoid performing the procedure on the side of the road.That said, it was a lot of fun to drive; I sold it to the son of a friend, who still has it and has kept it in remarkably good condition.
 
My first car was the least "reliable". In 1962 bought a 1956 Chevrolet 150 2-door post. Found it on a small-town Texas used cart lot sitting there sprayed primer black. Paid $250. I was thirteen and just got my driver's license. Car had V8 with two four-barrel carburetors. Turned it into a 1960's street gasser just like everybody else. Gotta say it was not very reliable but all the work it took to keep it running taught me everything it took to get me started with cars and the people associated with them. Do it again in a heartbeat.

ETA: Like this one
ETA 2: Engine did not have an oil filter at all, none

[Linked Image]
 
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Notice that most of the comments here refer to 70's and 80's era vehicles. One of the worst times to buy a car.
 
Originally Posted by MCompact
In 1994 I bought a 1984 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe(manual) to run as a work beater to keep the miles off my E24 M6. The Turbo Coupe wasn't terribly unreliable, but there were a couple of problems I didn't expect- the power window switch caught fire once and another time the injectors began to leak- shooting fuel all over the engine compartment. Oh yeah, you also had to replace the auxiliary clutch cable(a five minute job) at least every 10k miles to avoid performing the procedure on the side of the road.That said, it was a lot of fun to drive; I sold it to the son of a friend, who still has it and has kept it in remarkably good condition.

I had LPG, so had my own set of fuel issues, notably being an unreliable fuel gauge and having ot pay attention to miles. Fortunately, there were no power options in the LTD, aside from the AM radio, not even power trunk, so electric failures were never its weakness, aside from the electric engine fan.
 
1999 Dodge Neon DOHC - traded at ~80k miles at serious loss because it needed major repairs. $800 trade in value, needed ~$3800 in repairs.

- Headgasket leaking.
- Exhaust manifold cracked (only noisy when cold).
- Tail lights filled with water when it rained.
- Would not stay running on a cold start, would have to idle for 4-5 minutes on a 50 degree ambient start then would have to be gentle with throttle inputs to not have it stall.
- Frameless windows would not seal properly and leaked water and wind.

That was a definite throwaway car, it was a hoot to drive but it was made during one of the many dark periods of Chrysler. I wanted a Neon so bad during those days, the "Hi" commercials trapped me and the glow in the dark key was such a novelty.
 
I've only had two bad cars, and it wasn't really the car's fault, it's just that by the time I bought them used, they had high miles, were in poor shape and almost ready for the junkyard.

The first was a 1999 Ford Explorer that my brother in law gave to me for free. If I didn't take it, he was going to junk it, so that should tell you something about its condition. I started to fix it up, then realized it would've taken too much money to fix all of its issues, so I parted it out and scrapped it. I drove it probably a total of 50 miles before it blew an intake gasket and puked coolant everywhere. That was the final nail in the coffin.

The second was my 2004 Honda CR-V. I bought it used a year and a half ago with 155k miles. I didn't realize it came from New Hampshire and apparently the stuff they use on the roads in the winter is way worse than what they use down here because that car had rust way worse than any 2004 from here. My fault for not inspecting it closer when buying it. The front subframe wasn't even bolted to the body in one corner because the mount was totally rotted away.
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Car still drove fine though. I had to sink over $1500 in parts in the short time I had it, and it still had more issues I hadn't fixed yet. I was going to sell it in the spring, but luckily it got totaled last week and insurance paid me more than what I originally paid for it, and more than what I could've sold it for myself. I really liked the car though, and would've kept it a long time if it was in better condition (and hadn't gotten totaled).
 
Kia Sephia. I hated that car so much that at 7x,xxx miles I donated it to one of those groups that gives you a free vacation at a resort. I will admit my reaction was overboard, and today I would probably fix the car before sending it to the junk yard.
 
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