The worst car I’ve ever driven was also the best because it lasted me until I was able to get on my own two feet and afford a new one: Nissan Sentra 97’.
- around 200,000 miles the engine literally began falling out from the bottom of the rusted frame. I took it to a mechanic and they ran a wire underneath to hold it in place. Drove it for 5 more years after that!
- Driver side window would not stay closed during Chicago winters so I glued it shut.
- Dashboard lights burnt out.
- Muffler would scrape across the pavement as I courted my girlfriend (now wife) around town.
I rented a 2020 Mitsubishi Outlander in 2022 and it was amazing how unresponsive it was. It’s a small SUV with the engine of a hamster. It has a “sport mode” that really struggled to get me up some hills in Colorado.
Also, the rubber seal for the door, on 3 of the doors, was constantly feel off and could be worn as a second seatbelt.
1994 Toyota 4Runner. It should’ve been good, but ironically (being a Toyota) it’s the least reliable car I’ve ever owned. The engine loses power randomly and I can’t figure out why.
Sometimes u get lemons. Check ur area’s lemon laws
I appreciate the advice, but a 30-year-old truck is no longer subject to lemon laws.
(I’m having these issues now with a truck I bought only a couple of years ago, not describing something that happened in the past, LOL.)
I think after 30 years since the vehicle was manufactured, you probably can sue the company for selling you a lemon.
Toyota Echo
I had to rent one one year because my car was in the shop for a while.
I was being cheap and I just needed a car at the time.
There is no seat room or leg room. I’m tall but not that tall and I couldn’t get comfortable in this thing.
And who the hell thought it was a good idea to put the instrument panel in the centre of the whole dashboard and not directly in front of the driver. I had a few near accidents before I adjusted myself to where the speedometer was.
Going to be a toss-up between two of my own cars.
1992 Cavalier convertible Z24 I bought for pennies as my first own car. Had 420,000km on it and grabbed it and it’s papers from some sketch dealer.
Looked good enough on the outside for it’s purpose of having fun. Roof worked. And it had a v6. But it fell apart fast (and a lot due to my own shenanigans). Stearing became so off that I had to turn left to stay straight. The heater died, I live in Canada. The seat’s support broke, so I used an old set of goalie pads propped against the back seat to keep my seat upright. The dashboard lights were blown, so I had a ducked tape flashlight on my headrest to light my dash up. More than ounce, I’d have to pull a fuse and put it back in while cruising on the highway.
Second worse was the off the lot brand new 02 Sunfire my parents forced me to buy to replace the above shitbox due to it’s safety. For fuck sakes I despised this car. Despite how bad the cavalier was, it was FUN and quirky. The Sunfire was just a poorly made shitbox with zero power, and non-stop electrical failures the day I took it off the lot.
1994 Ford Taurus.
I went over a speed hump at 5mph and the whole engine fell out of the front.
Apparently it’s not supposed to do that.
Thank you, I needed that
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I had a 92 Taurus that made a loud crack when I turned left. Mechanic said engine was about to fall out. Left it parked in front of my house and a cement mixer backed into it and crumpled the front end. Got about 2000 bucks out of a car we were going to scrap.
Hyundai Sonata 2019 seats are hard as hell. Rear view mirror is way to low.
Chevrolet Cavalier. A good engine (L61)… but that’s all. Literally everything else was ultra cheap and broke.
I had one of those too, was my first car. Got to 280,000km on it (had to hit the dashboard for the digital odo to appear), pretty much every feature was broken from the clock on the radio to the rear defroster and the A/C but it kept rolling. Until someone T-Boned me at like 30km/h coming out of a parking lot and absolutely OBLITERATED it. Such an unsafe vehicle
Ah, yes, I had to do the same thing to get my dash lights to turn on. Had to bop the top of the dash in the right spot. Eventually, I had enough and took apart the dash to put conductive grease on the instrument lights.
my uncles old moskvich-412, shortly before he bought a new toyota. was a fun experience though.
A 2018 Nissan Frontier. It was a loaner car while my Pathfinder as in the shop, and because it was brand new I thought it would be nice inside. But it wasn’t. It had no power anything, a four speed automatic, and only AM/FM/CD. But the worst part was the floor was so high I was basically sitting with my legs straight in front of me. The ride was bumpy as hell, and the noise was so bad the little four speaker radio could barely be heard.
Honestly, my 2010 Silverado (RIP) was a nicer truck, if only because it was heavier so the ride wasn’t as bad.
1994 Oldsmobile cutlass supreme. Gutless and with that horrible 4 speed automatic gave my murderous thoughts. Oh and that god awful rear suspension.
1994 Oldsmobile cutlass supreme
Was it the 2 door or the 4 door model?
We had a 1995 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme SL 2-door model with the 3.4L engine that GM developed with Lotus. That car was a ton of fun. Quick for the time, handled great, and parts were relatively cheap for it. Unfortunately, somebody totaled it when it was parked on the street one night. It was a bit of a pain in the butt to work on because the engine barely fit under the hood and it was a ton of work to replace parts like the alternator since the engine subframe had to be unbolted and lowered to provide access.
Oh it was the 4 door of a clown car.
Chrysler 200 as a rental after someone smoked my Civic, and I waited to get a new one.
The car was… Jiggly? Like the suspension was unsettling, the brakes needed getting acquainted with lest you rear-end someone, and the steering had too much play. It wasn’t enough play to convince me something was wrong, it was just shit quality.
No power. At all. Getting on the freeway was an adventure in noise and hope. Everything lagged. Fuel economy was garbage too.
Looked stupid. And my Civic si that replaced it, the econobox with a hot engine, had a luxury interior in comparison, which is saying something.
Horrible car to add to a horrible week.
I had a Lincoln mkz for a week after someone hit my car in a parking lot, insurance said I was covered for a premium sedan.
Worst car I’ve ever driven. Handled like a boat, was all flash but everything felt cheap and “jiggly” when I touched it.
Learning at the time (2012) that this was a 35k luxury car was mind-blowing. You couldn’t PAY me to drive that car again. My 20k Prius blew it out of the water in everything but acceleration, and even then it wasn’t behind by much…
Chevy Suburban. I volunteered to drive for a university course field trip and it’s what I got stuck with.
- Unresponsive fatass brick of a vehicle. I mean, come on, a minivan has more cargo space and the same passenger capacity without three light aircraft worth of inertia.
- Dashboard sucked. It took me a solid three minutes to find the button shifts. (I know these can be done well - Honda does them right - but the PRNDL was fucking laid out in a thin row at the side of the dashboard. Huh?)
- Overtaking damn near anything would redline the (very new, less than 10k miles) engine.
My uncle owned an 80’s suburban. That thing was an absolute tank… and not in a good way. The steering had so much play in it, you had to turn the wheel about 45 degrees for there to be any input.
A fedex truck actually ended up t-boning him, and the truck flipped. He was fine. Suburban wasn’t. Probably for the best.
Overtaking damn near anything would redline the (very new, less than 10k miles) engine.
While this suggests it might have been underpowered, how high the engine revs during acceleration in a modern automatic transmission vehicle is determined by software that operates the transmission and the driver’s control inputs, not how old the engine is. The designers of the car probably decided that was the best way to deliver the performance you asked for. They may even have been correct in that assessment.
03 Ford Focus. Terrible transmission, on board computer fried, all kinds of random engine and sensor issues. Finally found an honest mechanic that said it would cost more to fix everything wrong with it than to just take the L and get a new car. Took a loss on the loan and bought a Camry. Best decision I could’ve made. Nothing but Toyota since.
A 1980 MGB.
The fuel gauge was only loosely related to the fuel level, I ran out repeatedly before learning to use the odometer instead.
The dashboard switches would sometimes disintegrate, springs fly out, when you flipped them.
The electric radiator fan was controlled by a relay that melted if the fan ran too much, and the engine would overheat. I lived in Arizona at the time.
The brake system totally failed in traffic and I had to stop from 40 MPH using the emergency brake. I think that was the most scared I have ever been in a car.
The supposed catalytic converter was an empty shell (I bought the car used, I did not do this) so once a year I would take it to the mechanic, who would tune it to pass emissions, get it tested, and immediately take it back to the mechanic to make it drivable again. The statute of limitations has run out so I can admit that.
Finally, the water pump failed in an incontinent way when I tried to sell it, the buyer had second thoughts after that and I had to fix it and start over selling.
It was cute, cheap, and drove well, but a creation of Hell.
