Your Worst Car

Chasplaya
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Sat Apr 11, 2009 4:00 pm

Mine would have to be an Alfa Romeo 33, great to drive ... when it actually went..electrics were shocking literally... finish were below par.. spare parts in NZ were really expensive. it loved rust... This was a love hate relationship lol


Kollas
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Sun Apr 12, 2009 11:48 am

"72' Ford Pinto..


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neverfoundthetime
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Fri Dec 03, 2010 12:49 pm

Well I found this rip-roaring thread by Chas from about AD 1876 and it could well be one of the very first threads on TG ever and proves elegantly that I'm not exaggerating about Chas' age. and I thought this TopGear clip would fit just wonderfully. I used to live "up North" in the 70s ..1970's not 1870's like Chas and I have survived a couple of drives in one of these block-busters....



Chasplaya
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Fri Dec 03, 2010 12:58 pm

But then the Robin morphed into this:



Chris still has his


dennisg
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Fri Dec 03, 2010 1:05 pm

My first car was a 1960 Corvair (the car Ralph Nader said was "Unsafe at any speed") that I bought from my brother. He must have been feeling parental, because he offered up these words of advice: You get out of a car what you put into it.

He was right. I put a new engine into it a month after I bought it, and it had to come out six months later.



mcfingers
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Sun Dec 05, 2010 2:32 am

Kollas wrote:
"72' Ford Pinto..
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: Me too. What POS that was. Mine had no Air Conditioning and I remember coming home from L.A. in the summer. Coming down the Grape Vine into Bakersfield it had to have been 110°F. I had all the windows open and it felt like someone had a hair blow-dryer pointed at my mouth. Geeze, I hated that car.


cosmicmechanic
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Sun Dec 05, 2010 4:14 am

mcfingers wrote:
... Coming down the Grape Vine into Bakersfield it had to have been 110°F. I had all the windows open and it felt like someone had a hair blow-dryer pointed at my mouth. Geeze, I hated that car.
Hey mcfingers, this is a perspective from the MORE UPPER northern hemisphere (Montreal, Canada)

My first car was a 7 year old 2-door 1976 Chevrolet Impala, when cars rusted out really fast compared to today. What with winters and all, the handle came off the rotten passenger door panel, and since I was in poor-boy's financial status and too inexperienced to fix it myself, I could only camouflage the gaping hole.

Result: I had only one door on this car, driver's side :blink:

Then, since the seal on the side windows was a joke, snow and sleet infiltrated the doors continuously, freezing up the door mechanisms and so the remaining driver door was unopenable after the car had sat unused (unheated) for a short time.

Result: I could not reopen my only usable car door because it was frozen. :blink:

The solution for opening the only remaining door that had a handle was to dump a bucket of scalding hot water on it where the water could also infiltrate the frozen mechanism inside the door. That's feasible when you leave from home, I guess, but I had to be sure to bring a bucket with me wherever I went and also be sure there was a way to fill it with very hot water if I wanted to return from my destination.

These cars had lots of rusted out parts, visible gashes after only a short period of time, and so I practiced bodywork on this, my first car. The police eventually forced me to take it off the road because of the terrible fibreglass mess I had wrought.

This may be the first and only time a car has been taken off the road for ugliness.

For the record, I did eventually become proficient at bodywork ... hard to believe it's been like, almost 30 years? :huh:

Pierre


AcousticAl
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Sun Dec 05, 2010 7:46 am

Hyundai, Excel. Mid-80's.

Bought it off my brother for $5 bucks-- not kidding! He couldn't afford to drive it, so it sat in his driveway for about 18 months. EVERYTHING seized up! I put close to $2 grand into it to get it back on the road.

The hatchback leaked when it rained, so it would literally fill with water!! You would hear it swishing around when you turned corners!!

I eventually traded it in at a dealership when I bought my next car. It was raining that day!! I parked it under an overhang so there was no leaking when they came to inspect it!!!
:evil:


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jcrocket
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Sun Dec 05, 2010 7:30 pm

Hard to top the Corvair, but my worst was also my first, a '69 Chevy Impala that had 145,000 miles on it when I bought it. I new I was in trouble on my first out-of-town trip, when it used almost as much oil as it did gas.

Jeff


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