Worst car you have driven ?

[440]

What is the worst car you have driven being a rental, loan car, friends car etc...

I had a 2011 Ford Fusion as a rental and it was the worst car I have driven. Granted it got good mileage but had no power, terrible brake pedal feel, didn't shift smoothly, and had a huge delay in the throttle if you for example coasted up to a light and as you almost stop it turns green.

I must say the radio was impressive though    

[68X426]

Once drove an insurance loaner car that we immediately returned to the insurer. It was a 2002 Mitsubishi Montero. It was dangerously unstable, a soft breeze could tip it over. A death trap.

[Bob T]

Austin/Morris minor 1100 land crab,p.o.s. those Poms sure couldnt build anything decent when you look at what Detroit was pumping out at a similar time

[twodko]

Ford courier pickup.......devils spawn.

[TK73]

Besides 30 year old beaters...  2008 Dodge Coronet rental.  F-in uncomfortable and unwieldy

[440]

Besides 30 year old beaters...  2008 Dodge Coronet rental.  F-in uncomfortable and unwieldy

It amazes me that with today's technology and standards some new cars feel like a step backwards and just feel plain terrible. Although undoubtedly safer it's pretty bad when a standard 30 YO beater is more comfortable to drive than a new car.

[surmanajaja]

early 80´s Fiat Ritmo. rusted floor so the front wheels tracked different from back wheels, it was moving around a lot.. had to drive it once in winter for a friend, scary.

[bill440rt]

1995(?) Ford Tempo. Had it for about a month maybe. Luckily it wasn't mine, I just had it use it. Horrific. 

[XH29N0G]

Once rented an aspire.  At the time, I felt like I was driving down the freeway with my does tucked into the front bumper.

[elacruze]

1975 Ford LTD with 80k miles on it.

Made worse at the time because I was 21 and had the Charger in the garage, pre-rebuild.

[41husk]

1975 Ford LTD with 80k miles on it.

Made worse at the time because I was 21 and had the Charger in the garage, pre-rebuild.

I agree! My first car was my wifes four door 73 LTD.  It was a boat, I hated it. 

[Indygenerallee]

85 GMC S-15, 4 "knocker", Pile from the word GO!!! 

[sixpack70]

1984 Pontiac 6000 station wagon. Unreliable as hell. If you drove it outside of the city limits it would break down. It constantly broke the top motor mount in the car. Not sure how because it was a gutless vehicle.

[Kern Dog]

A friend of mine borrowed my truck to tow a parts car. During the tow, he jacknifed and wrcked my truck. The damage was limited to sheetmetal and paintwork, so He kept the truck to do the work. I got HIS 93 Ford Ranger to drive. What a steamy pile of crap! Slow, uncomfortable, shifter knob always came off when shifting to 2nd or 4th. It handled poorly. not fun.

[71charger_fan]

Probably a toss up between a Ford Contour, Subaru Forester, or my '82 Camaro.

[mauve66]

late model-chrysler 300, bottom of window frame too high, felt like i was sitting on the floor
late model-dodge magnum, new ones, horrendous blind spot on the pass rear side, felt like i was sitting on the floor again

[bobs66440]

Geo Metro or my '68 Jeep plow truck.

[HANDM]

My wifes 08 focus, brake pedal feels like it's going to break off, way too squirrely on the freeway, ass end too high to see anything behind you, seats feel like plastic go cart seats, manual window cranks crank backward while being too close to the door grab handle resulting in smacking your hand every time to roll up or down..........

Should I keep going??

[67_Dodge_Charger]

My wife's Toyota Corolla, what a piece of &@$%.  The car rolls through the corners and you feel every bump in the road.  I prefer my truck to that car.

[Budnicks]

1st Datsun B-210, I think it was a 73, if I remember correctly, what a POS, a close 2nd was a Fiat X-19 early 80's vintage POS, a close 3rd Honda 600 mid 70's POS, all former girlfriends cars too, 4th my older sisters old 77 Ford Granada or 78 Ford Fairmont both were real pieces of crap...   added Pontiac Fiero of any year

[Bob]

87 ford tempo all wheel drive.   

[Paul G]

Last year we rented a Camry for a week. A very bland car. I dont get all the hype about how superior Asian brands are. I didnt see it!

[PA Dodger]

I once got a loaner car while mine was in the shop for a while. It was a mid 80s Chevy Citation. It tried to kill me twice in a week. Trying to merge onto the freeway it would go from 15MPH to "OH MY GOD I'M GONNA DIE " MPH in about 1 1/2 minutes. I couldn't get to 55 MPH. Then when I tried to stop the brakes locked up instantly and I slid into an intersection and watched as people just about T-boned me. I took it back to the shop and the guy says "Oh yeah, they're known to do that." He gave me a Plymouth Horizon. Oh joy.     

[Chryco Psycho]

Ford trucks with twin I beam front ends come to mind , steering was always a guess while it was wandring all over the road skinning the inside of the tires off , put a load in the back & it gets a whole more scary !!
Also an Isuzu Rodeo , could not do the speed limit on the highway floored into a headwind

[Vainglory, Esq.]

I've driven a lot of shitty cars in my day (mostly rentals), and I don't remember all of them. A few stick out in my mind.

1. 2006 Chevy Impala SS. This is my wife's car. It's an utter piece of shit, but don't tell her I said so. Sure, it gets going pretty quick for a boat, but its suspension is ridiculous. Any tiny little input into the steering wheel makes this couch on wheels sway roughly 8-10 feet sideways. I may have driven worse handling cars, but I've never driven a car that FELT like it handled worse than this one.

2. 2012 Lincoln MKZ. Anemic all around. The leather inside was lovely, and the rest of the car was crapped out by the devil himself.

3. 2011 Chevy Malibu. My dick has more horsepower than this piece of shit. It came with paddle shifters on the steering wheel, which just made it worse. Every time you used them, it took roughly 8 seconds to actually shift the gear. Outside of the complete lack of performance, the car was utterly unremarkable. I've had more fun with an Oreck vacuum.

4. 2009? Nissan Versa. The rental company should have paid me to take this car off their lot for a couple days. Everything about it was cheap. Cheap plastic, cheap engine, cheap transmission, cheap noise-deadening material, cheap steering wheel, cheap speakers. Just a cheap-ass piece of shit. Everything about this car screamed "false economy!"

[Vainglory, Esq.]

In hindsight, that seemed harsh...

[dodgey68]

a vw combi, 

[mauve66]

I've driven a lot of shitty cars in my day (mostly rentals), and I don't remember all of them. A few stick out in my mind.

1. 2006 Chevy Impala SS. This is my wife's car. It's an utter piece of shit, but don't tell her I said so. Sure, it gets going pretty quick for a boat, but its suspension is ridiculous. Any tiny little input into the steering wheel makes this couch on wheels sway roughly 8-10 feet sideways. I may have driven worse handling cars, but I've never driven a car that FELT like it handled worse than this one.

2. 2012 Lincoln MKZ. Anemic all around. The leather inside was lovely, and the rest of the car was crapped out by the devil himself.

3. 2011 Chevy Malibu. My dick has more horsepower than this piece of shit. It came with paddle shifters on the steering wheel, which just made it worse. Every time you used them, it took roughly 8 seconds to actually shift the gear. Outside of the complete lack of performance, the car was utterly unremarkable. I've had more fun with an Oreck vacuum.

4. 2009? Nissan Versa. The rental company should have paid me to take this car off their lot for a couple days. Everything about it was cheap. Cheap plastic, cheap engine, cheap transmission, cheap noise-deadening material, cheap steering wheel, cheap speakers. Just a cheap-ass piece of shit. Everything about this car screamed "false economy!"

In hindsight, that seemed harsh...

i thought we were talking DRIVING experiences here, not..................

[billschroeder5842]

Anything with MINI VAN attached to the name.

Bane on all humanity!

[71bee]

'89 Bronco II. made a Phord hater outta me! 

[Kern Dog]

I've driven a lot of shitty cars in my day (mostly rentals), and I don't remember all of them. A few stick out in my mind.

2011 Chevy Malibu. My dick has more horsepower than this piece of shit.

I friggin cracked UP at this one! If I thought that I could get away with writing it, I would have wrote the same thing!

[RIDELIKEHELL]

1993 Ford Probe GT, 2002 PT cruiser,2008 Dodge Caliber

[Ghoste]

Yeah PT Cruisers were bad.  Take an Neon and make it overweight but leave it with the anemic drivetrain.  I know they are bastions of wonderfulness today but I drove a CIVIC in the late 70's that made me fear for my life .  I had a 1980 Citation that was an awful turd too.  My wife had a 2000 Taurus that I hated but it was more from a personal ergonomic point than anything.  At one time or another they each have made something horrible.  I wonder if Yugo's would be able to score in a most consistently bad poll?  I have only driven a couple and they were bad but they were both well used cars before I got in them so its hard to count them without knowing what sort of abuse they had already endured.

[Old Moparz]

There are two categories for "worst cars ever driven" for me. One for poor design, & one for just being a totally worn out POS. 

For the poor design category, I think it has to be a 1973 Chebbie Impala that my Mother had for a couple of years. The weight & shape of the doors, & the curvature of the glass were dangerous. If you were parked pointing upward on a hill, the door wanted to swing shut while you were trying to get in or out. The bottom of the heavy door would clip your leg while the frame-less glass that was angled like a guillotine would clip the side of your neck or head.

I also remember doing a few "simple" repairs on it or maintenance that sucked. Like removing 6 foot deep fan shroud that was more like a culvert pipe under a roadway to get to a radiator hose. Seemed like typical poor quality & design of the mid 70's that gave American car companies the edge on cornering the market for crap that lasted just a few years & rotted out in half that time. I hated the dash layout, the poor visibility, the rattles & squeaks, etc. This Impala, a 1975 Monte Carlo a friend owned, & a similar year Grand Prix someone else had, turned me off to GM completely.

The worst car I drove for just being a worn out POS was a 1973 Duster I owned. It had a worn out, slant 6 that ran hot & needed a long hill to roll down just to accelerate. Getting on the highway & merging into traffic was impossible without having at least a 20 minute head start & a push.   

[GOTWING]

1980 VW Dasher diesel...83 Mercedes 300D...both belonged to my parents in my teen years.

[Dino]

That's a tough one.  To be fair we should compare apples to apples so we should not compare a new Chevy to a 30 year old Fiat.  I expect cheap cars to be built cheap so I will leave those out.  Out of the more modern cars the worst car was probably a Dodge Avenger, that car was built with leftovers from a preschool although that would be unfair to Fisher Price. 

Probably the biggest pos I've ever driven was the car I loved most as a little kid.  A Lambo Countach.  My dad's buddy had two of them so he let me drive with him, as a passenger of course.  One was in pieces because it had 'issues'.  So we took the other out, we almost made it to the end of the road before that one got some 'issues' as well.  Still looked cool though.

I grew up with German,French and Japanese cars so most US cars fell in the crap category by default, not always true but we sure saw a lot of poorly made cars back in the day.  I'm happy they're finally catching up, sort of.

[Tilar]

2012 Chevy Malibu I rented in Seattle. I think that was the biggest POS car i've ever been in, and I've had lots of cars. I hated that thing from the time I got into it until I turned in the keys. Zero performance, handled like a cinder block and had just about as much comfort as one.

[BB1]

Any ford or chevy   POS All

[aussiemuscle]

76 Subaru Leone 'Ugly Duckling'

[FLG]

2012 Jeep Patriot 2.0

New work truck, they took away our 2010 Dodge Mini vans (man i loved that thing!)

You need to put the pedal completely to the floor to get anywhere, its horrible.

[Dino]

76 Subaru Leone 'Ugly Duckling'

Now I see where Homer Simpson got his inspiration.   

[SRT-440]

Ford Aspire...it could barely get to 55mph...it was a rental...and 99% of my daily driving is on the freeway...and takes about 30 mins to get home going 65-70mph...took an hour with this thing. Felt like it was going to break apart at 50mph..LOL...this was back in like '96-97ish.

[Charger_Fan]

1981 Plymouth Aries K...yeah, the "K car". I called mine The Turdboiler. Maybe I just got a lemon, or maybe it simply hated me for making it do burnouts when it was only a few months old & it never forgave me for that. It got to a point where I was working on it pretty much weekly, just to keep up with the crap going wrong with it.

The odd thing is that a few years ago I bought a '93 Dodge Shadow super cheap. I just needed something with good mileage. The Shadow is pretty much a K car with a sporty body & fuel injection...I thought I would be lucky if it lasted a year. It now has 245K on the clock (120K I have put on it myself) & has had very minimal issues. This car is probably the BEST car I have owned in at least 15 years. Very odd. I don't know if I'll jinx my luck if I paint it (the paint is peeling off), or if I should leave it alone...it seems happy the way it is.

[Brian in GA]

Ford courier pickup.......devils spawn.

That's amazing.  When I saw the thread title, the very first vehicle to come to mind was a ford courier my dad owned for probably 6 months to a year when I was growing up.  I don't know if there was a shock absorber or leaf spring on the thing.  It sure didn't feel like it.