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What is the absolute worst car YOUR DAD ever owned ?

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  • A brown Morris Ital saloon with tan coloured seats. As well as looking awful, the clock made a horrible noise and I frequently vomited in the back seat. 
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  • DominicDominic Frets: 16001
    my uncle had an Austin Princess in Hearing - Aid beige with caramel velour seats 
    my mum had a Ford Zodiac
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  • VimFuegoVimFuego Frets: 15475
    I recall the 1st family in our street (small hampshire commuter village all occupied by middle manager types, so this was important) to get a Princess. They were the envy of the street, they were clearly on the road to "making it". How little we knew back then.

    I'm not locked in here with you, you are locked in here with me.

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  • FuengiFuengi Frets: 2849
    edited January 2018
    My Dad bought a wreck of a house on The Medoc in the 80's and became a bit of a Francophile. 

    He then went through a series of Citroen's, by far the worst of which was a burgundy Ami 8.

    He stuck my sister, mum and me in it and filled a trailer up with building materials and set of for the ferry. Driving all night we got a few hours across France before the Ami gave up the ghost and we trundled down through a French village. Dad turned the car off the main road and it came to a stop outside a large set of wooden doors.

    We went to sleep in the car, only to be woken at 8am by the large wooden doors opening to reveal.... the village garage! 

    The sight of the head mechanic opening the passenger door and wondering where the steering wheel and pedals were will never leave me. 
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  • KKJaleKKJale Frets: 982
    A Morris Oxford, in brown... with an auto box. The throttle communicated with the engine by second-class post. The acceleration was glacial. There were species of bamboo capable of passing it by simply growing. 
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  • chillidoggychillidoggy Frets: 17136
    edited January 2018
    Oh, woe is me. Where do I start?

     Arguably the absolute worst was a secondhand BMW Isetta bubble car with 3 wheels, that he bought on HP. The whole front was the only door, and when you opened it to reveal the less than luxurious interior, the steering wheel remained attached. Either there was no reverse gear, or it was broken, because I can remember him shoving it backwards into parking spaces. On the day he bought it, the HP company went tits-up, and he never paid a penny for it. Sadly, instead of punting it into touch, mum and I had to suffer the hateful thing for some time until the next pile of junk arrived. A journey of any length was akin to having been over Niagara Falls in a barrel. As for reliability, well let’s just say that for every hour’s driving, he probably spent another hour or so fixing it.

    But a very, very, close second, due to even more shocking reliability than the bubble-car, was a 1960’s Renault R8, the engine of which would die on an intermittent basis, usually at the most inopportune moment. On one occasion it did so in the pissing rain when he and mum were on their way to a posh dinner-dance (they never made it, dad ruined his dinner-jacket laying underneath it trying to fix it, and he still had to pay for the tickets). I also remember it breaking down at set of traffic lights somewhere on the A20.

    As dad was too tight to pay for AA membership, we spent a lot of time pushing it off the road so dad could tinker with the thing. He was quite stubborn, but he eventually admitted defeat, sold it, and bought an A55 ex-butcher’s van. It was at this point that my mother decided she’d had enough of old bangers, and I reckon the old man was either going to get booted out, or buy a decent motor, which he did when he arrived with a Morris 1100.


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  • CHRISB50 said:
    Ford Sierra Sapphire 2000E. 

    It went wrong. A lot. 
    I once had the misfortune to be given one of those as a company hire car for a business trip. Gutless wreck, no grunt at all. Sloppy suspension, wallowed round corners
    "Working" software has only unobserved bugs. (Parroty Error: Pieces of Nine! Pieces of Nine!)
    Seriously: If you value it, take/fetch it yourself
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  • mudslide73mudslide73 Frets: 3049
    My dad worked in the motor trade so we never had anything he knew would be unreliable. Loads of Cortinas and Sierras came and went without any problems other than the dreaded rust. He was a Ford guy basically (still is).

    I think the worst was a Citroen Palas with the pneumatic suspension which was all flashy lights and gizmos. It was quite cool but very temperamental generally. We didn't have it long from what I can remember. 
    "A city star won’t shine too far"


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  • RaymondLinRaymondLin Frets: 11799
    Vauxhall Astra.
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  • not_the_djnot_the_dj Frets: 7306
    Morris Marina followed by a Morris Ital. 
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  • ThorpyFXThorpyFX Frets: 6089
    tFB Trader
    A Ford Grenada that had been painted black with a paintbrush That or a triumph dolomite.
    Adrian Thorpe MBE | Owner of ThorpyFx Ltd | Email: thorpy@thorpyfx.com | Twitter: @ThorpyFx | Facebook: ThorpyFx Ltd | Website: www.thorpyfx.com
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  • NeillNeill Frets: 941
    edited January 2018
    I started a thread on breakdown insurance a day or two ago, bemoaning the days when most cars could be fixed at the roadside by the village blacksmith and now we have complex electronics you need a bank of computers.

    But reading this thread reminds me just how desperately unreliable cars were BITD.

    My dad never learned to drive but I was car mad when I was a kid so I was always obsessed by our neighbours/relatives cars.  One had a diesel Austin Cambridge, probably the worst British car ever made - and that's saying something.  I remember another had a Ford Consul that rusted so badly he couldn't even get it towed away so he buried it in the garden. 

    My candidate for the worst car ever made though is the Alfa Romeo Alfasud. (It was also possibly the best car ever made. As they used to say about the original Mini, a great idea badly executed.)  I had one in the early 80's and still wake up in the night sweating because of it.  It is not possible to overstate how badly made these cars were.  In short, during my ownership I had to learn to drive it with no brakes and just in third gear and couldn't use the drivers door to get in/out.  I could go on but I'm starting to have a panic attack.
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  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71950
    Probably my dads old Citroen BX... so bad I tried to kill it by putting it into a ditch. 
    Ha, I had a 1.9 petrol estate one of those. It was actually a great car in many ways - very fast, huge load capacity with totally straight sides and floor and no lip on the boot, so it was brilliant for gigging, and because of the hydraulic self-levelling suspension it would drive just as well when full to the roof with cases and cabinets as empty.

    However, I still have flashbacks about the distinctive smell of LHM hydraulic fluid... it leaked the stuff with monotonous regularity. After a couple of times I learned to limp it home with no suspension, power steering or rear brakes - Citroen have to be applauded for putting the front brakes on a separate non-pressurised system!

    Apart from that it was actually totally reliable, and when I eventually gave it away - it was worth nothing - the new owner used it for towing a racing car trailer for a couple of years until it eventually got written off when someone went into the back of it.

    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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  • cpcompanycpcompany Frets: 126
    My dad had a red Lada when I was in middle school in the mid 80s. He would sometimes park right at the front gates to pick me up. He used to find it quite funny to watch my mates taking the piss out of me for having a shit family car. Half the time I would refuse to get in and spend 20 minutes walking back
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  • Two Austin Land crabs - you literally NEVER see one of these - the furthest thing from a classic ever built. 

    Later he hada Daimler Double Six - basically a posher XJ12. One night on the M3 the engine exploded - bits of broken crank case, con rods and pistons everywhere - nothing blows up quite as spectacularly as a V12. Car was two years old! 
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  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71950
    Two Austin Land crabs - you literally NEVER see one of these - the furthest thing from a classic ever built. 
    My dad also had two of those before the Triumphs. The first one blew up its engine spectacularly apparently, although I was too young to remember it. The second one wasn't bad, and I still remember how huge it was inside - although I must have been about 3 or 4 at the time. The company he worked for was Hardy Spicer, who made the CV joints for the front-wheel drive on all the BL cars.

    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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  • BarneyBarney Frets: 614
    A pink avenger ...
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  • StuckfastStuckfast Frets: 2393
    My Dad was an early classic car enthusiast, and had some lovely sports cars that he bought for a song in the 60s. But the one he chose to use as a runaround was something called a Gilbern Invader, primarily known for being the only car ever (at the time) designed and manufactured in Wales. The body was made of purple fibreglass, and for some reason, the owner who'd originally bought it had decided not to opt for the standard walnut trim, and had instead had the entire interior fitted out in black vinyl.

    It was probably a great car if you were not a child crammed into the minute back seat on a July afternoon. The only question was whether the car itself would overheat in a cloud of steam before we lost the skin on our legs.
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  • Jalapeno said:
    A DAF 33, you'll recall they morphed into East German Trabants

    We had a DAF 44. If I remember correctly, it didn't have a drive shaft but used what was basically a big rubber band.

    I remember my dad going ballistic when the rubber band broke going through the Dartford tunnel and having to be towed through it with a police escort.
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  • TheMarlinTheMarlin Frets: 7743
    Peugeot 406. Pile of crap. Had the worlds most lethargic 2L engine, slow as hell.  No guts, bits started dropping off it. Just a terrible heap of junk. 
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