The demise of British Leyland might be evidence that God is good.
While we are on the subject of bad things, I want to tell you about something that is criminally bad.
Criminally Bad Elf is an outstanding barley wine from the UK. The Brits got this thing right. Yum! I’m drinking one right now.
I assume the Brits are drinkin the wine warm due to the Lucas refrigerators. I’m not a wine fan or a beer fan for that matter, or an alcohol fan I guess either, but Dam Red or something like that (don’t want to get censored) is a good wine. Might be California or African-can’t remember.
Late 70’s VW Rabbit.
I haven’t owned that many cars. Of the ones I’ve owned, an early 60’s Ford Galaxy, early 70’s Ford truck, late 70’s VW Rabbit, and early 90’s Corolla, of those, the VW Rabbit caused me the most grief. On the plus side it was fun to drive, had good acceleration, good suspension. When it ran, it ran well. But it really wasn’t designed for the long haul. I’d have been better off to sell it when it got 10 years old. If I had done that, it probably wouldn’t be at the bottom of my list.
Over the years though seats started to break down, electrical system had an assortment of weird problems, cooling system too, fuel injection system wasn’t robust. Edit: Forgot about the brakes. Oh, the brakes! end edit … And when it failed, it failed without warning, somehow managing strand me away from home. One time I was on vacation and one of the cv-joints failed without warning way out in the boondocks of far north eastern California. Not a pleasant experience.
I really have been happy with all my cars, but the worst would be the 72 f100, High pressure steering hose too expensive for me to replace, so it was my exercise, turning the steering wheel, and loved being able to pull up the floor mats to watch the road go by, not to mention in a turn feeling your truck go 2 different directions. But it served me well for 15 years.
Strange about the Vegas,my friend had one that was an excellent little car-but let me add something to that he had the oil changed religiously at 3k I believe and used Havoline,he didn’t abuse it,it had an automatic trans,when he drove it home from the dealer he left it in second gear(do you think that may have broken that engine in right?) have nothing but good things to say aboutTauruses,but the worst new car I ever had was a 2000 Focus.having a bad dealer made it worse a close second was a 95 Honda Passpor(new) -and close behind was a 99 Honda Passport(used, that the wife had to buy{to get back at me I think-because I made Her get rid of the 95 Passport] not to mention the gamut of used Volvos.Joner city-Kevin
the same mountainbike
My Vega problem had nothing to do with the differential. A large chunk of engine cylinder wall broke out jamming the piston and seizing the engine which caused the rear wheels to lock. Being 25 years old at the time my reactions were good enough to hit the clutch in about 1 second. I was able to safely coast to a stop and tow the vehicle with no differential problems.
“Late 70’s VW Rabbit. Over the years though seats started to break down”
It’s interesting that you mentioned that, George.
In the late '70s-early '80s, I knew a guy who had a VW Rabbit of that era, and I can recall looking into the car and seeing a driver’s seat that was little more than a steel frame and some springs–particularly on the area nearest the door.
This guy was a newspaper reporter, and he was a big, heavy guy, so I assumed that his “city beat” necessitated a lot of in & out on a daily basis, and that his large frame may have had something to do with the decay of the driver’s seat. Still, I don’t recall ever seeing a car whose seat upholstery & padding had worn away in only about 3 years.
Your observation makes me think that other people–besides this reporter acquaintance of mine–had a problem with the seats in a VW of that era.
Worst: 1981 Pontiac Firebird. 301 V8 and “Metric 200” transmission. Slow, rusted quickly, had bizarre electrical problems. When I got it (used) the tachometer didn’t work. I found the electrical connector unplugged so I plugged it back in. Now the tach worked, but it and all other gauges would “boogie” in time to bass beats from the stereo and gauges would go up and down as battery voltage fluctuated when you came to a stop. Finally ran a new ground wire and fixed it. Tail lights would burn out every other week. Headlights every few months. Leaf springs separated. Door hinges sagged. Turn signal stalk fell off. Master cylinder failed. Heater core started gushing coolant into the passenger footwell. Door handle ripped in half. HVAC blower went out–this is when I discovered that to change it, you must cut a hole in the wheel well to access it. (GM thoughtfully provided markings on where to cut)
Still, it never really left me stranded. Just drove me crazy and I had bad luck while driving it. Locked my keys in that car 3 times–something I’ve only ever done one other time in my life with any other car. Someone backed into both sides of it somehow in parking lots.
Oblivion’s comments about problems with an '81 Firebird refreshed my memory on that generation of car.
A dealer used to take those Firebirds and Camaros in on trade and send them back to service for repairs. I don’t think that I ever saw one car that did not have broken inner arm rests. Same goes for door hinges. Those long doors just leveraged their way to problems.
I don’t know if they still carry the item or not, but AutoZone does or used to sell a blower replacement install kit for those cars. It was a handful of screws, a patch plate, and a paper pattern to be used as a guide for sawing it open…
A large chunk of engine cylinder wall broke out jamming the piston and seizing the engine which caused the rear wheels to lock.
The Aluminum block design was pathetic…however easily correctable. Mine was burning oil at 40k miles (typical). I rebuilt the engine…After complete disassembly I took to this machine shop in Nashville (Grooms). They steel-sleeved the cylinder walls. That simple redesign made a 1000% improvement over the original engine design. Still had the advantage of aluminum and hit’s heat dissipation properties…but now the cylinder walls didn’t scar or chip easily with the steel sleeves.
I had a nice looking, nice riding, fun to drive 1983 Renault 18i that was an absolute money pit. Starters- alternator- radiator - rear spring and a two muffler system all in 50K. I had the OE mufflers replaced at Midas- lifetime guarantee- and got 9 free replacements. Left me an the family stranded on the Illinois Tollway once (that is not fun) and the engine seized while my wife was driving it. Gave it away.
@Mayday,good after bad,comes a time when its better to walk away.Thats the marketing ploy most of the Asian manus hit on,reliability and dependibility-Kevin
I’m not sure if any of mine could be considered lemons, even, though I could say that when I bought them they were already beat-to-death beaters. The '78 Phoenix had at least one bad valve, I suppose, but the car that gets the designation from me as the worst I had was the '80 Citation, though If I recall, that was the Car and Driver Car of the Year for 1980. My friend had one years earlier, and he talked about it a lot, how he liked it. He said his temp needle started to get too high in traffic jams, and that he’d turn on the heater to try to cool it down (during the heat of the summer).
When I got mine, it had a leaky head gasket, an apparent tooth missing on the steering rack gear, and ground off teeth from the flywheel. To get the car usable, I drained and flushed the cooling system and added “Bars Leak,” which handled that problem OK, and kept it sealed for the several years that I had the car, though I only drove it maybe ten thousand miles total.
I addressed the stripped flywheel problem by removing the starter cable from the starter and running it though a Ford-type starter relay, which had a resistance assembly that I added across the main power terminals. When the key were turned to start, the starter would get enough of an electric current jolt (until the resistance wire heated up and got more resistive) to move out the starter teeth and engage them with the flywheel teeth, but then stop and remain locked in a frozen state until I pushed a button dangling from the steering column cover that energized the starter relay. Then the engine would turn over and start. That Rube Goldberg assy. never let the teeth grind anymore, and always worked very well.
What finally totally killed the Citation was the effect of a locked up inner CV joint. It’s sideways pounding on the output shaft of the transmission caused it’s bearing and seal to fail and the fluid to leak out. It had become apparent that the output area of the the transmission case had acquired an elongated opening, rather than round.
1988? Plymouth Voyager. It had an underpowered 2.2 engine and Chrysler knowingly put in bad cams that had lobes that rounded off prematurely. Also the heads were machined improperly so the cams that were installed had oversized journals which caused other problems.
It was a beautiful garnet red which proves beauty is skin deep but ugly goes to the bone.
Regarding those X Body (Citations, etc) cars and transmission leaks, there was a design flaw on them. The trans case bushing was not long enough or large enough to continually support the stress of a halfshaft and the bushing would elongate which then lead to fluid leakage. Replacing the seal was a waste of time as the root cause of the problem still remained.
My memory is fuzzy on this due to the passage of time but there was a repair part offered for this problem that would essentially beef that bushing up. I’ve installed several of those parts way back when and it seems to me they were referred to as “Trans Savers” or something like that.
1971 Toyota Corolla OHV 1600 with a four speed trans and rear drive. I bought it used at around 55k miles from a neighbor who bought it new. I ran it for an additional 40k miles. Things broke on that car, giving me some repair lessons that I didn’t need previously and have not needed since. I have posted comments about this car before but it’s hard to resist doing it again.
The cylinder head sealing surface was unbelievably roughly machined and so the head leaked antifreeze into the oil and oil to the outside. It was repaired with a large file and a new head gasket; easy to do as the head was aluminum.
One of the valve springs broke and needed replacing as did the valve that was found to be burned.
The lower “A” frame ball joints were worn out so the “A” frames that included the ball joints were replaced. The neighbor said that he had it serviced regularly. Fortunately parts were cheap, even at the Toyota dealer.
The front struts leaked their oil out so a quick and dirty repair took care of it. Drilled a small hole with a magnet in close contact to catch the chips near the top of each front strut to squirt in some power steering or auto trans lube, I have forgotten which, and then closed each hole with a trilobular thread-forming screw and a small “O” ring under the head. I can recall adding oil to the struts two or three times. This could be a useful repair now for someone with little money to spare.
The side gears in the differential stripped due to poor heat treating as per the metallurgist where I worked. As can be recalled, he could determine that by looking at the surfaces where the teeth broke off. That gave me a little exposure to differential assembly including shim adjustment of ring and pinion gear engagement with Prussian Blue.
The clutch slave cylinder leaked and was inside the bell housing so the trans had to be pulled to replace the cylinder; threw in a new friction disk and TO bearing while convenient. A new clutch friction disk did not eliminate the clutch chatter.
No matter how carefully done, it was not possible to get the front wheels in balance; have balanced wheels for years before and since with no problem. I finally stumbled on removing one front wheel, turning it 90 degrees and then remounting it. That got the front wheels into balance and to this day I don’t know why it worked.
The final gear ratio was grossly undergeared, probably due to Japanese homeland needs but for the US it was a problem. The engine sounded like it would self-destruct at 60 mph so I drove it during my 40k miles ownership at around 52-53 mph on freeways, in the right lane, of course.
About once a week the starter would make an awful gear clashing sound instead of starting the engine. The start attempt would be abandoned and repeated and the clash would not happen again for a while. Inspection of the starter revealed nothing obvious. The starter behaved like that during my entire ownership time and seemed to cause no apparent damage to the gears.
This car was so badly done that I still feel that Toyota cheated me. I find it hard to imagine how they managed to stay in business after producing a car such as this.
If I’m having a devil of a time balancing a rim, or if it needs 3 or 4 ounces of weight per side, I just break it down again and spin it a 1/2 turn
It is actually a common practice and considered acceptable
It often does the trick, as long as the tire or rim haven’t taken a big hit
I had a Mazda which also had that same problem with the starter . . . it only did it once in awhile, and the starter never did fail on me.
I’m too young . . . 41 years old . . . to have worked on those early Corollas, but from what I hear, those Japanese cars from the 70s weren’t considered very high quality at the time.
“those Japanese cars from the 70s weren’t considered very high quality at the time.”
My brother had the misfortune to own a 1967 Datsun SPL-311, and it was even worse than my '74 POS Volvo. It is possible that Japanese quality improved a bit by the '70s, but in the late '60s it was C-R-A-P!
My brother’s worst car was an X car, an Oldsmobile Omega V6. It had ll the problems already mentioned plus the rack and pinion steering wore out very quickly and started leaking. It was a really nice little car to drive with power everything, but very shot-lived.
His next car was a Honda Accord, which turned out to be virtually indestructable by comparioson.
It proved that GM thought nothing of foisting untested, mediocre cars on the public. It took them a full decade to get the FWD with rack & pinion steering right.
The great thing about Japanese and Korean car makers is that they can start out with poor products and LEARN and IMPROVE quickly. On a TV car program recently a commentator said it took the Japanese car makers 30 years to catch up with and surpass Detroit, the Koreans about 20, and he wondered if the Chinese could do it in 15 years?
If experience was the only factor, then the Ford Focus and Fusion would be the world’s best cars. After all, Ford has been at it for over 100 years!
I’m not so sure about the Focus, but the Fusion seems to be a pretty good car