What's the most unreliable car you've ever owned?

[TylerH860]

Based on the Jalopnik article. Thought there would be some interesting responses here.

What's The Most Unreliable Car You've Ever Owned?

For me it was a 2003 BMW X5 4.4i. It's like they put a timer in the car. Flawless through the warranty period then all hell broke loose at 50,001 miles to 75,000 miles spanning 2 years when I finally dumped it.

The front CV boots would tear if you turned the wheel to lock at any speed. Had to replace the 3 of them in two years. The intake gasket broke causing the engine to gulp coolant. Every third day a new pixel would die in either the instrument cluster or radio. The interior door handle broke off, flimsy plastic fatigue. I had 4.6 IS wheels that would wear unevenly, last only 20,000 miles. BMW dealer said that's how they were, the rear-end especially is designed that way and could not be corrected. 2 window motors failed. Both tail light housings failed and I would still on occasion get failed rear bulb messages. The final straw was the climate control system going insane. Full cold on driver's, full hot on passenger, and surging up and down blower motor.

While it never left me stranded, it was more of a death of 1000 cuts. The car that left me on the side of the road most was a vapor locking 1989 Jeep Grand Wagoneer.

[iwrock]

W215 CL55.

Holy crap batman. I didn't think cars could eat money that fast.

The PSD 6.4 I have is also a spectacular money pit.

[JB3]

1991 mercury topaz lts 5 speed.

[mytmousemalibu]

Originally Posted by iwrock

The PSD 6.4 I have is also a spectacular money pit.

I hadn't payed attention online or anything but was curious about the 6.4L and the newer ones. I know the reputation of the 6.0L, the "Six-Leaker". My fave Ford diesels were still the old IDI 6.9/7.3L engines and the 7.3L PSD's although the IDI's were much more simple and more reliable but at a cost of some power and refinement. The 7.3 IDI Turbo was a good one.

I have driven a lot of crappy cars and come from a family owned car business, there are a LOT of cars I would run away from as fast as possible!

Most of my vehicles have been good to average, nothing too lemony. I did drive a 73' El Camino in high school that failed in a spectacular fashion. It had the original 350ci small block and this car came from the time period that GM experimented with using an aluminum upper timing chain gear with a nylon tooth cover. Well by the time I owned it the car was plenty old and lots of miles. The tooth cover long disintegrated and the chain finally wore the aluminum down enough that one day, it decided to rebel against proper cam timing and hop, skipped and jumped some teeth! Sheared some teeth off the lower gear, bent 3/4 of the pushrods and bent some valves. She's dead Jim!

Mom drove a couple 8th Gen 99-02 Mercury Cougar's with the V6 that I ended up repairing, utter crap and absolute nightmare to work on. I had invented some serious choice words while wrenching on those.

[rocky raccoon]

Early-early mechanical fuel injection and an Italian electrical system that makes Lucas seem bulletproof.

Italians have no problem changing part suppliers in the middle of a model year and while they may arguably be the finest engineers in the world, they are the worst craftsmen.

Oh, and the engine fires. Don't leave home without an extinguisher.

[Air&Road]

I wouldnt call it unreliable, but the most troublesome was the 2001 C240 that i bought new in October 2000. Might have been the first one off the boat.

The most unreliable cars I have ever seen were the fiat 850 in both the little coupe and roadster models ca. 1970. Even when new they often would not start or would have other problems that would strand the driver beside the road. I saw several of them fail to reach the end of their 10,000 kilometer warranty without catastrophic wngine failure. Ridiculous excuse of an automobile.

[Skippy]

For me it was a barn find '63 Dodge Dart. A high school friend did the barn finding and got it running. Then he blew the motor in his '65 Barracuda and pulled the 225 slant six from the '63 to power his 65. I bought the shell from him for $200. I then proceeded to shoehorn in a '79 360 out of a Cordoba, along with a '73 A904 transmission out of who knows what. I kept the six-banger rear end and radiator. It overheated rather easily. The fuel gauge never worked. The transmission modulator linkage that I (very amateurly) fabbed up didn't quite work right. I lunched a rear end and replaced it with the same because that's all I could find in a junkyard. Did I mention it vapor locked like it was going out of style? Quick as all get out when it worked (mostly) right, but a bear most of the time. Also: No seat belts, no padded dash, manual drum brakes that faded quickly in traffic, and the skinny non-collapsible steering column. I finally got rid of it when I joined the Navy and got a boring but reliable Lincoln Town Car with SEFI that I then drove for six years.

[tbomachines]

2011 bmw 135. Absolutely atrocious dealers too.


Sent from an abacus

[SwampYankee]

I'd have to go with my '86 S10 Blazer. Despite the 2.8L's bare minimum adequacy for moving it out of it's own way, it was still too much for the auto transmission to handle. I had the transmission rebuilt twice in the four years I owned it and it was starting to slip again when I traded it in for an '86 Subaru Loyale 4WD.

I loved that Sub. Had a floor shifted transfer case with HI and LO range that you could shift on the fly. It got me a lot of places in a lot of conditions that I had no business being out in. Plus it could haul a lot of stuff (was big into SCUBA diving back then). Sadly it fell victim to a pesky fuel issue that neither I (and my father) were able to figure out towards the end of my tenure with it. I rebuilt the carb once, the dealer got it after the problem wasn't solved. I suspected it was an electronically controlled emissions device of some sort that was intermittently malfunctioning, looking back it could have been a choke issue. It started fouling plugs and running like crap. Rebuilt carb. No change. Determined that if I unplugged something near the carb, it would run ok but was a b!tch to start. Started car with it plugged in, open hood and unplug it, drive around, shut off car, plug it back in and repeat. Brought it to dealer, told them about plug deal near carb, they rebuilt carb, little change. Couple more dealer visits on their dime couldn't solve the problem.

Eventually a couple pieces of wire run to a toggle switch on the dash eliminated the repeated underhood plug-unplug routine. The fuel mileage still wasn't great at that point but it got me through my UConn years and I gifted it to my sister who drove it to NM, filled with all of her wordly possessions and a small bed area for sleeping on the way, and sent it on to it's next owner.

[Angel]

1990 VW Corrado G60 - nice car when it drove. The supercharger grenaded itself, power-seatbelts often drained the battery, the powered rear spoiler blew the inst. cluster fuse, it was a stick-shift VW so the 1st gear synchro was toast... at 156hp it was more powerful than the Golf/Jetta of the time but still slower than its competition from Japan (and for more money).
...and I still see people that want one

-John

[Jim B.]

Unfortunately, a 1977 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale coupe with the AWFUL THM200 "cellophane" GM transmission, that looked slick as my company car, bought at the Olds diller in Oakland, that finally began falling to pieces, bit by bit, @ 100k but still ran great with a 350-4bbl Rochhester carb, and a dual EXHAUST Without a cat (I REMOVED IT IN Nevada AND REPLACED IT WITH A DUAL EXHAUST IN Reno ) and then a 6 cylinder 1977 Buick Skylark sedan, bought for my wife), that looked like sturdy transport for the city, and seemed strong and pretty safe and very nice but ckoking to death so badly on its big smog controls and a huge GM cmonolithic catalytic converter ---- so big, that it could barely make it up the hill to my place on San Francisco's Twin Peaks without stalling, all the time.

(They both werethe last two American cars she ever owned/drove..)

[Simpler=Better]

91 Hyundai sonata. Drank oil, wouldn't engage 4th (ever) so you either drove 50 or screamed at 65. Uncomfortable, low 20s mileage, just a piece of crap.

[865sp300e]

'78 Chevy Monza Coupe, base model with power brakes as only option. Iron Duke 4 cyl was good but the rest was crap. Worst issue was clutch cable tore open flimsy firewall at mount point.

[Nate Stanley]

2.8L pushrod V-6, nice engine, but the rest of the car was garbage.

3 alternators, 2 batteries, 2 CV axles, tranny rebuild, 2 front motor mounts, and those awful reed-valve smog control modules that, when they failed made it sound like a chainsaw running with an open air box.

No exhaust manifold gaskets from the factory, so when the bolts loosened over time, the exhaust gas acted like a laser and cut through 3 of them.

It had that 2bbl progressive Rochester carb that was a first stab at electronic controls. It needed rebuilding at least once.

Shame because it handled and rode quite well..but everything on the engine was placed in such a way that you had to remove something else to get to a failed component. GM engineering at its absolute worst.

[Txjake]

Fiat 124 spider....worse electrics i was ever cursed with. Put on the brakes, it flashed the headlights, etc. Consistent non starter. The subframe separated and it would do a hard left turn if you took your hands from the wheel.

69 Jaguar XKE 2+2: everything broke on this car, except the beautiful body lines.

Chevy 6.5 turbo diesel 3/4 ton 4x4 pickup from the 80s. I still have bad dreams about this truck...never knew when it would not start, constantly ate starters, and other bad habits that eventually led me to trade it, a nice looking truck, for an ugly POS Ford 1 ton with a 351 and C6 transmission 4x4 crew cab, that , while ugly, started and drove very well....