What was your most Crap Car?

I have had a succession of crap cars.
My first was an A90 which had no brakes going backwards and a sort of "gearchange" which you would stir around to find a gear. Destroyed in an accident , six days before senior exam.

Then an A95 , slow learner I was.

Ah now I recall a Hillman Imp GT was the worst , although I thrashed it to death. The diff dropped some teeth while teaching my future wife to drive. It kept on doing generators and water pumps, and a tech at the Civil Aviation training school put a tach on the generator and found it was doing 10,000 revs. This led me to find it was peaking at 11,000 revs when I revved it hard. I bored and sleeved it to 1025CC and had it dyno tuned but one day it did a head gasket and blew the side out of a cylinder.
Then a Morris Major which I fitted a MGA engine to. Totalled by a drunk soldier hitting it in an FC at about 70MPH while parked.

The worst condition car was the MG ZA Magnette I then bought for $395 with 12 months rego and good tyres. It was painted with red oxide primer and the grille was made of Rebar. The back seat was the subject of a foam fight. It had no door cards and the gearshift had been turned around to enable a third front seat passenger. The exhaust was welded to the underside. The night I bought it my wife had to go to a squash match so I told her to take all backroads, but she forgot and drove it up Queen St Brisbane. How she didn't get defected I will never know. I restored it in a sense only for it to be t boned after I had repainted it with new bonnet etc.

One of the best was a Honda N600 scamp. That thing motivated. I would pull over 90Mph to the terror of any passengers while returning to Broadmeadows from Kal Kallo. the doors flapped , The heater was just a sleeve around the block, and the roller bearing crank rattled like buggery on idle. we gave it to my wife's cousin in Adelaide and it served the convent well for many years. We moved house with it.

There are many more including a Mk 11 Cortina GT, TC Cortina 250 auto , RWD Mazda 323 in Malaysia, 74 FJ40, then heaps of Ford assigned cars the outstanding one being a Peppermint XD wagon S pack with a 351 which I specced up. did 9MPG .

The most disappointing I think was a first shipment Jackeroo. I thought like an RR but good economy. Was the most gutless thing and did 19MPG. I should have bought a few year old RRC for the same money, although I did a good deal on it.
Regards PhilipA

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Originally Posted by justinc

Without doubt, would have to be the 4x4 Jeep J20 ex gov flat tray.
258cu in breathless oil and fuel consuming engine, zero suspension articulation despite the flexible chassis, and no power steer.
Apart from the tough as nails drivetrain, it was the first, and last American product I have ever owned...

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Snap!

Sort of.
I inherited a 1970 J3000 Gladiator with the business when I started working for myself several lifetimes ago
Ex-divers vehicle with a Pantech body on the back so it was riddled with tin worm but I loved it.
And the spring over front end flexed pretty well, the spring pack was dead flat at rest.
It didn't use oil but fuel use was pretty severe, and the engine went a lot, lot better with a set of big bore headers and 2.5" dump pipe.
Steering was fixed by installing an HQ Holden steering box. They are literally a bolt in.
Oh, and the hand brake was a brick under the seat.
The transmission parking brake didn't have any shoes or bits in it at all. [emoji56]
I had to retire it, my mechanic mate refused to pass it. The cab was stuffed. He would've lost his inspection ticket.

The F100 with a 351C on LPG was a bit of a revelation after that, although how Ford managed to get more turns lock to lock with much, much heavier steering I'll never know.

Funny the MKII Cortina gets mentioned. I had one that was great, just kept going.
Worst I've had was a VC Commodore, auto died, AC was crap, build quality terrible (switched breaking etc), gutless the list goes on. It was stolen one night and that was the best thing that ever happened to it.

I have only every bought 1 brand new car and that was the worse by a country mile. All the others have been used so very hard to tell if it was thru poor build quality or just having been trashed like an old XB sedan i had, which was still drivable except all the bits that had rusted started to fall off , and no amount of painted cardboard patches could hide it from the cops.

Car in question , 95 mitsubishi magna ,bought at prolly the biggest dealership in Perth, of the 9 months we owned it , it spent 6 back at the dealership. log story short , the owner -who also owned a big Ford dealership - told me he would give us the full cost of that car off any other car in his dealerships if we wanted a change - drove out in a 2.8 diesel Pajero.. Fantastic 4wd and I ended up giving it to my sister when she fell on hard times due to a gambling addict husband. i think i would still be a Pajero owner if that didnt happen.

A close second was a holden Camira which the dash fell on my lap 1 night driving along a bumpy road ,not to mention a passenger seat that would lock into position , so every time you braked the seat - empty or with a passenger - would go to the forward position.

Bulletman

Been running through my list of vehicles and there’s only one I can think of that I really hated - and that was a VE Commode. Terrible vehicle, gutless, auto had no idea what it was doing, spent a lot of time at the stealers being repaired. Glad that was a company vehicle. After 3 years (180,000KM) it was basically junk - even the dealer said they felt sorry for whoever was going to buy it at auction as the engine was chewing through oil (around 4 litres between services) tranny was basically toast and the suspension and brakes all needed doing but the Lease company wouldn’t allow it as it was close to end of lease when those items were requested. Oh yeah and the body loom which was replaced twice was still playing up so it would bring all sorts of strange faults up from time to time.

If I had to choose one that I’ve owned myself, sorry to say but it would be my L322 Range Rover - great to drive, loved that side of it but couldn’t trust it to get me anywhere in one go which is the reason I moved it on. It enjoyed 5 trips on a tilt tray in the few years I owned it.

Apart from that, I can honestly say I’ve really enjoyed every other vehicle I’ve owned - including a 1976 Subaru 4WD wagon which was my first car - gutless 1600 engine in it, but boy I had some fun finding out where it could (and couldn’t) go. 😁

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Originally Posted by 4bee

JEEEEEEEZUZ Windy, you really didn't like that car did you?[bigrolf]

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No I didn't. :no2: It was cursed and caused much cursing. My old toaster had... well... done it's final act a few days previously. I was hungry for some toast, and my brother agreed to swap for a brand new toaster.

He had a trouble free run with it for a few months and sold it to a backpacker. There was certainly no love lost towards that van.

Edit: Maybe I should start a great toaster thread! [biggrin]

Hi,
Not really mine, but owned by employer; Valiant sloped 6. Ok on the open road, but garaged under a building supported by many concrete pillars in a difficult spot.
They had to bolt angle irion to the pillars to protect the building. Thus the car was often out of service.
As it was used for transporting the odd animal, hay and feed it was not fit for purpose.
Never understood Dept of Supply and Tender's rational for not giving us a ute.
Cheers

Mitsubishi Magna. Mid to late 80’s I had three or four in a small fleet that my team used for installing computer & telco equipment and branch fit outs, coax cabling etc up and down the eastern states. All wagons and automatics.
Besides being gutless particularly when loaded the problem was they would go into neutral by themselves when you were driving along and you had to stop to be able to select drive again. This was pretty scary. We had one involved in an accident with a truck on the Paramatta Road, luckily no one hurt or worse. Mitsubishi were unable (or not interested) to find the cause of the problem so the company replaced them all with falcon wagons. Much better suited to the work and I think the only issue with them was the fuel gauge didn’t always read correctly resulting in running out of fuel on occasion.

All my land rovers

PhilipA, was your A90 the four cylinder one with the extra headlight & Girling Hydro-mechanical brakes? I had a couple of early fifties Austins with these brakes. They didn't stop well going forward or backward. A40's were crap cars. Couldn't keep head gaskets and No.2 big end bearings up to them. Front shock absorbers wore out at an alarming rate.

I bought my first car in 1956 before I was old enough to get a Learner's Permit. My mates and I as impecunious students and apprentices drove worn out pre-war cars and motor bikes as this is all we could afford.

I will comment on my post 1956 acquisitions.

Worst company car - Sigma by a mile. Gas and oil guzzling junk. Our Sydney accountants caught four cylinder fever and put us all in Sigma, Meteor, Telstar for "four cylinder economy". Sigma without a/c used more fuel than Commodore with. The reps with Telstar and Meteors went on strike and refused to drive them. They reckoned they were dangerous on the dirt, with a history of falling over.

Best company cars - EH Holden and Valiant Slant Six. Almost totally reliable and economical. Honourable mention to Commodores.

Worst personal car - Falcon XH ute. Gas guzzler, totally unreliable electrically. This was tilt trayed eight times to the dealership under warranty. Had all the known Falcon problems that Ford refused to fix or even acknowledge. Leaking head gasket at 80,000, corroded cylinder head in spite of the correct coolant and procedures, rust, rust, rust.

Best personal cars - Once again, EH Holdens, Valiant Slant Six. I had a terrific run with an FC Holden ex-taxi which just kept on going and going. 1959 Chev. Corvette best performer and reliable, cheap to service.

I had a 1970 Dodge Challenger Hemi for a while but it was a play car with a 600+hp Mopar drag engine that did take a bit of care and feeding. Reliable, good starter. Used 115 Avgas at an alarming rate when I got my Size 12 on the pedal. Fun, fun, fun, though. Not safe in the wet. Skinny tyres and an excess of power saw to it that throttle movements were in small increments. Not really a street car.

Also owned a 1952 Ferrari 212 Export. Being young and naive I thought this Italian thoroughbred would be a reliable daily driver. Ha! I found that with Italian exotica one fettled them all week so one could drive them on the weekend. A real hoot to drive when all the stars were aligned and with all the Magneti Marelli bits working as intended.