Thread: What was your most Crap Car?

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...

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.
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. 😁

Originally Posted by 4bee

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

No I didn't. 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!

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