What is the absolute worst car YOUR DAD ever owned ?

Telejester · January 2018

My dad when he was alive ( R.I.P dad ) had some crummy cars, in the early 90s he owned an immaculate and well cared for 2.1 Volvo 240 and without warning one day my brother who was 16 at the time opened his bedroom blinds and sitting in our driveway was a red 1.2 Lada Riva.

My bro let out such a yell. I nearly corpsed from laughing. To say that car was a pile of shit is an understatement. My mum used the cig lighter and the electrics blew, to overtake you needed 1 mile of no traffic coming the other way, the gearstick came off in dads hand, bro,'s mate when in the car wore a shopping bag on his head etc etc and the list goes on and on...

What was the biggest pile of shit your dad drove and tell us about that car.

JezWynd · January 2018

A blue mini estate. My Dad lived under the bonnet of that car trying to get the carburetter to work. He used to pick me up from school in it and I regularly had an extra hour at school. Funny thing is, it always worked in the mornings to get me there on time. Strange...

We had a very cool old Morris with a tailgate and canvas hood. Sitting in the passenger seat you could see the road rushing by underneath through the huge rust holes in the cabin floor.

Here they are

Image: https://i.imgur.com/lAKFsvn.jpg?1

VimFuego · January 2018

in the 70's my dad had a VW estate (can't recall the name) with a rear mounted engine. It had vinyl seats which got skin searing hot in the summer, and it wallowed around so bad I had permanent car sickness. Oh, and no rear seat windows, so in summer I also got boiling hot.

Phil_aka_Pip · January 2018

Reliant 3-wheeler pre-1964 (no year letter). Grey, rounded corners. Wasn't desperately unreliable, but there was only about 1" of foam padding in the seats, it was slower than a milk float, and dad had to take corners very carefully.

EDIT I think the most difficult to get started on a cold morning must have been the dull green Morris series Z van

CHRISB50 · January 2018

Ford Sierra Sapphire 2000E.

It went wrong. A lot.

Jalapeno · January 2018

A DAF 33, you'll recall they morphed into East German Trabants

ICBM · January 2018

From some of the stories he's told me, one of the 1930s/40s deathtraps that were considered just throwaway cheap cars in the 60s, bought for next to nothing and run into the ground - no MOT or anything in those days - but would now be fully restored as 'vintage classics', probably...

Of the cars I remember as a kid, the 1970s British Leyland Triumph 2500 estates he had three of in succession as company cars were fairly shit - he worked for a BL subcontractor so there was no choice, and it was pretty much the only estate model available - they were great when they went well, but all had fairly major faults and were unreliable. The most hilarious was the second one - the fuel injection was quite primitive in those days, and on this particular one if he pressed down slightly too hard on the accelerator it would take off like you'd engaged afterburners, and then the tailgate would pop open because the bodyshell didn't fit properly

.

dhj · January 2018

No, these are all luxury cars. My dad had a Wartburg 2 stroke car. I remember clouds of smoke as he drove off each afternoon for his overtime stint as a postman. He later upgraded a few years later to a Lada. Ah happy, cold, days.

Kilgore · January 2018

Two contenders:

1 Austin Maxi. Death trap, big holes in the floor. Put kids in something like that these days and Social Services would get involved.

2 Triumph Stag. A fine example of 70's British engineering. It broke down everytime we went anywhere in it. It lasted about six weeks.

VimFuego · January 2018

JezWynd said:

A blue mini estate. My Dad lived under the bonnet of that car trying to get the carburetter to work. He used to pick me up from school in it and I regularly had an extra hour at school. Funny thing is, it always worked in the mornings to get me there on time. Strange...

We had a very cool old Morris with a tailgate and canvas hood. Sitting in the passenger seat you could see the road rushing by underneath through the huge rust holes in the cabin floor.

Here they are

now that morris is something I want. Mrs f is more keen on a morris traveler though.

EricTheWeary · January 2018

My paternal grandfather died when I was about ten. He certainly wasn't a rich man but somehow he'd scraped together the money for a new Cortina MK3 ( green, vinyl roof) but then got ill and died . So we had quite a decent car for a while, despite the tinge of sadness. I think the worst of it's successors was an Austin Ambassador.

My first car was a MK1 Viva that my sister couldn't sell so she gave to me. I had it for a bit then,IIRC, got £50 in scrap value. My mate Pete had a Triumph Dolomite that was so rusty the passenger foot well had basically gone. You had to sit cross legged and could see the road underneath. The 80s wasn't all shoulder pads and anti poll tax rallies.

rlw · January 2018

VimFuego said:

in the 70's my dad had a VW estate (can't recall the name) with a rear mounted engine. It had vinyl seats which got skin searing hot in the summer, and it wallowed around so bad I had permanent car sickness. Oh, and no rear seat windows, so in summer I also got boiling hot.

Type 3 - great fun to drive in wet weather.

webrthomson · January 2018

Austin Princess in brown FFS - I mean I know it was the 70's but seriously:

He also had some totally crap Fiat - I don’t remember the model but it didn’t like the cold and would break down if it got below a certain temperature - we lived at the top of hill in Scotland - so that went well!

Oh and of course the Saab 99 - no rear seatbelts since it was the 70's and the back doors randomly opened when cornering, eventually one of the front wheels came off while he was driving this portable death trap. Looking back it’s a bloody miracle I made it to adulthood

JezWynd · January 2018

ICBM said:

From some of the stories he's told me, one of the 1930s/40s deathtraps that were considered just throwaway cheap cars in the 60s, bought for next to nothing and run into the ground - no MOT or anything in those days - but would now be fully restored as 'vintage classics', probably...

We had an old Crossley which fitted that description. Beautiful car, although we treated it as a beater, runaround rather than a classic car. It got traded for the Morris pickup as house building was happening and a tailgate was v useful. It had that lovely old leather interior smell. It was like this one only in green drab.. I must have a few pics somewhere as we used to take it to car rallies in wet fields on weekends.

rlw · January 2018

Take your pick

My dad's first to last cars - 1959-1977

Standard 8
Vauxhall Victor Mk1
Triumph Herald 12/50
Triumph Herald 13/60

Image result for standard 8

EricTheWeary · January 2018

That sounds like every Fiat ever made. My mate Chris had a Strada ( the one in the famous built by robots ad, lampooned as Leyland built by Roberts by Not the Nine o'clock News) and that's in the running for biggest piece of crap with four wheels.

Telejester · January 2018

i remember my dad in floods of tears from laughing. He had been reading the sunday paper in a deck chair that sunny morning out in the front garden His neighbours were loading up their car to take their baby daughter to the beach. 30 mins later they were all set to go.

Whilst dad sat with the paper up covering his face, He heard from the car as the key was turned..A rum rum rum rum rum......A rum rum rum rum......A rum rum rum rum rum rum......A rum rum rum rum rum rum rum rum rum rumrum...skreeeeeech.....dpppfffffftttdd.

As dad sat in convulsions behind the paper, he heard loud swearing from inside the car, the thud of a car door slamming shut that sent a shockwave around the globe and the sound of a family going back indoors before their front door whammed shut behind them.

Dad could harcly speak as he was telling me about it, wish i had been there to see it happen..

Majorscale · January 2018

Probably my dads old Citroen BX... so bad I tried to kill it by putting it into a ditch.

Funkfingers · January 2018

Toss up between two Renaults, methinks.

A rust bucket 16TS hatchback. The death knell sounded after the rear silencer blew a big hole in itself about forty five minutes into a five hour journey to visit relatives.
An 18GTL saloon. Electric windows are only a luxury feature if they close properly. When paying at the Severn Bridge tolls, it was preferable to open the door to hand over the money. The alternative was two hours or so of wind noise through the crack between the door frame and the ill-seated curved glass. (Proper closure required one hand on the button and the other pressing against exactly the right spot on the glass. A shoulder would not do. I never fancied steering with my knees.)

guitars4you · January 2018

I hear stories of me as a kid in 1959/1960 sat on my mums knee, in the front seat, with her legs wide open as the floor had a hole in it

just about recall my dad having an Anglia

When we took over the family business in 1974 (music shop) my dad purchased a Fiat 900T van (think that is the model) - about as powerful as a lawn mover - I called it a hamster wagon as it was just about larger enough to get a hamster in it - But for deliveries in the early stages of the business it did its job - he went from that to a used 4.2 Jag - chalk n cheese

Bucket · January 2018

Well, it was shared between my mum and dad as the family car, but the Chrysler PT Cruiser we had between 2000 and 2007 must be a low point. Was replaced by a 2007 Mercedes A-class which was a significant improvement. They still have it.

My dad also had a Porsche 911 for a while - a 996, which was a rather careworn high-mile example. It was riddled with faults and spent more time off the road being fixed than on it. It was awesome when it worked though. His current "fun" second car is a Mercedes SL350 which, again, is a significant improvement - if not in performance, then certainly in reliability

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What is the absolute worst car YOUR DAD ever owned ?

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