Worst car you have driven ?

[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.