Top 10 worst cars of all time!

ceccil wrote:..... Darn thing always hissed when driving. ......

That was around the time that catalytic converters became mandatory. If the hiss was accompanied by poor acceleration & fuel economy, my money is on a partially plugged cat. If it was completely plugged, you wouldn't be able to hit 5 mph without opening the secondaries (BOOOOOOOOOOG! ).

I had an '85 Monte Carlo that plugged the cat solid. I recall going 10 mph up Rt.20 in Worcester/Millbury with my foot planted on the floor, and the carburetor screaming BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG!! People flipping me off, yelling out the window for me to get a horse, etc ... When I got home I shoved a jack handle into the cat & kept slamming the *censored* out of it until the honeycomb was busted into tiny chunks. Then I fired it up and held it to the boards to blow the fragments all over the street. I hooked my exhaust back up and laid a one-legged patch 100 yards long up the street at half throttle. Yeah, BIG difference! Got over 20 mpg after that too.

Anyone ever have one jap trap early 90's eclipse or eagle talons? What a pyle of crap they where. I had a 93 eagle talon and what a heap of wasted time that was. Turbo was cracked, frame rusted out, junk!
List was no where near the size of Smittys problems, but it wasnt short.

My buddy had a Mitsubishi version, which was basically the same car I've been told. The engine grenaded in spectacular fashion at 100k miles. Dealer wanted almost $4k to repair it & basically laughed at him bitching about their quality control. They said at the time , "well, it's 6 years old" ... and he's never bought another one, and never will. Paid alot of money for that thing from what I remember too.

anthony7812 wrote:early 90's eclipse or eagle talons? What a pyle of crap

They had lots of black dots in Consumer Reports. But two of my kids had 91 Eagle Summits which were nice cars and held up well.

Wood'nCoal wrote:Vega should have been #1. It was a colossal turd.

Yes, the Vega would get my vote. My first car after graduating High School was a '72 Vega Hatchback. I didn't like the car but it belonged to one of my Dad's friends and I didn't want to hurt his feelings. I threw away 200 bucks on that thing. It had the four cylinder, aluminum block engine in it. I bought it in the Summer of 1978 and it was already a worthless rust bucket, death trap. It tried to kill me several times and it almost succeeded. The throttle stuck wide open in City Traffic, I had the fuel pump go out during a heavy thunderstorm. There were other incidents with this Christine of a car, I can't remember them all.
Finally, I was driving to work in the Spring of 1979 and was rounding a curve on a road with no curbs and deep ditches on each side. I was only going about 35 MPH. The car lost its grip as I was rounding the curve and it spun out, then hit the ditch and flipped over. It came to a stop against a telephone pole which snapped. The car blew apart when it rolled over, All the glass blew out and the engine came off the motor mounts and left debris all over the road. The hatch back also ripped off. The roof of the car mashed down to the level of the seats. If I had been wearing seat belts I would have been killed by the roof crushing in. Somehow, I lived through all that. I ended up with a broken back and damaged kidneys which haunt me to this day. I can still hear the sound of the crash and remember the instant terror one feels when it is realized that you no longer have any control over what is going to happen to you. I was bedridden in a hospital and later at home for most of my 19th year.
I hope all the Vegas in existance have been melted down to make beer cans.

Holy *censored*! Glad your still with us!

That's one hell of a Vega adventure ....

The Vega followed by a Chevette were the two last stupidest purchases my family ever made on a GM product. I can never forgive them for that ....!

Oh yeah! The SHITvette! Forgot about that one!

My father in law drove a '81 shitvette DIESEL - yep diesel - up until some teenage bimbo drove right into the side of him. He actually found another one up in NH, and brought it home to use for parts. He really loved that thing. But he can fix it - makes a difference when you do your own work, I guess. I almost *censored* when I was looking at my wife's graduation pictures ... and there's the same 'vette in the background! He's had it since it was almost new. That got the used motor oil treatment before every winter - it worked.

Thing got like 45 mpg & ran exclusively on #2 oil. Nice & cheap.

Dad bought one of those Chrysler K cars Lee I. came out with when Chrysler was going bankrupt back in the late '70's. That car made me walk home many times, scarred me for life and cured me of ever buying a Chrysler product!

Among the hundreds of issues, one thing I remember was the routine monthly maintenance to replace a rubber grommet that was on a plunger in the carb. It would get frayed at the edges and you could tell it was time for a replacement because the car would stall out when you accelerated. We bought them in a 10 pack and that would almost last a year.

wsherrick wrote:I hope all the Vegas in existence have been melted down to make beer cans.

And I thought there was no redeeming social value in a Vega!

How about Ford Aerostar. NO ONE MAINTAINS A CAR LIKE ME ! 2 transmissions in 10 years, it needed a third but we traded it in Florida 14 Years ago.

SMITTY wrote:Oh yeah! The SHITvette! Forgot about that one!

My father in law drove a '81 shitvette DIESEL - yep diesel - up until some teenage bimbo drove right into the side of him. He actually found another one up in NH, and brought it home to use for parts. He really loved that thing. But he can fix it - makes a difference when you do your own work, I guess. I almost *censored* when I was looking at my wife's graduation pictures ... and there's the same 'vette in the background! He's had it since it was almost new. That got the used motor oil treatment before every winter - it worked.

Thing got like 45 mpg & ran exclusively on #2 oil. Nice & cheap.

They put an Isuzu diesel in those things, IIRC. Same engine that the diesel LUV and Isuzu Pup pickups had in them. Not exactly fast, but good on the fuel and bulletproof engines.

Chris

Ah great info Chris! I didn't know that was the same engine. That engine ended up in some S10's if I remember right .. unless that's the Isuzu pup I'm thinking of.

Yeah I think 2 weedwacker engines married together would make more HP than that thing did.

My student car was Mercedes 180D. Weighed over two tons and it was a small car, 0-60 in about three weeks, would do 67MPH but not 68. 38 MPG (British gallons). Bought it from a fellow student with 150,000 miles but found out that was a wind back and it was 250,000 miles. Ran it for three years putting in an occasional oil change and a very large battery. Sold it as an 210,000 mile car (really 310,000). Saw the guy about two years later and he thanked me for selling him this wonderful machine. Solid??? You bet. Drove over the Seven Bridge (separates England from Wales) on a Sat night - very drunk. Rammed a 20' high traffic sign and a road divider, straight over a traffic circle taking out all the plant life and so on to home. Woke up next morning and thought - nah must be a dream - right? Dug out the plant life from an unbent radiator grill and so on to school.....