The most unreliable car you've owned?

[cjb]

The worst car I owned was a Volvo 480. Rusty, electrically complex, Renault engine and gearbox (and the gearbox used to **** all it's oil out the breather). It broke as fast as you could fix it, and was a ****** to work on. Best thing I ever did was smash it into a tree.

[cjb]

An (original) Mini, a complete and utter dog. I am still amazed at the high regard these crap cars are held in by some......?

You have to remember Minis are (1)an old design, and (2) British, so built badly. SWMBO had one, and it caused her more trouble than any of our VAG cars, but it was great fun.

[Titanium_Man]

Well my most and least reliable car is a vauxhall!

My old dear bought a '98 1.5td corsa when it wad 6 months old and was in the family until Xmas eve '10 when the engine seized on me.

Had the corsa on 2 seperate occasions in it's life, the only problems it had was when I owned it, altenator, new sump and water pump... Literally nothing else wrong in all those years....

Where as I bought an '05 astra 1.7 cdti 100bhp in '09 and had to get rid cost it kept breaking... Egr, alternator, radiator, split pipes several times. Got rid after 6 months.

[LexVRS]

Vauxhall DIS- Astra haha broke down more times than fat girl trying to climb Everest

and I only had it a month on loan!!

[davekmoore]

1958 Standard 10.

[ukcruiser]

1995 Ford mondeo 1.8 TD - Bought new by my Parents - LX Saloon model - owned until 2000 when i passed my test - had 28k miles on it in 5 years!

Passed test in September...

... May - Timing belt fell off and cracked cylinder head

... August -Injection pump went out of sync

... May the year after - new cylinder head collapsed and fell into engine (complete engine under warranty of head job)

... August - Turbo bearing collapsed

Smidge over 50k in under 7 year - NEVER owned a Ford since...

2006 Kia Sorento - Bought new by me

3 years in, i extended the warranty...

It needed a Seal on the steering rack at 51k miles - "No Seal Kit available" - Complete new rack fitted under warranty... (£1,502.00)

... heading for Barcelona in April 2010 (With 60k miles and a caravan on the back) the Gearbox collapsed... just under £3k to fix if not under extended warranty! - Superb was already on order! - Fortunately, we never got out of the UK before it let us down! - only 300 miles away from home....!

Al.

[Newera]

I like small hot hatches and had a great looking so-called Astor Gray (just 60 in that colour made) Peugeot 306 gti 6. It looked the business and always had something more to give when driving it. But having said that something was always going wrong with it. I can't start to tell you how much hassle I had with it but cam belt slip, replacment engine, head gasket, various electrical faults - i spent a hell of lot of money keeping it one the road - gives you an idea. My Rallye was hugely better. On the other hand I bought the little Fabia nearly 18 months ago mapped it immediately and have had very little hassle so far - touch wood, which I just did.

[curleybar]

Probably because it was the blueprint for every front wheel drive car since 1958 ?

Err... slightly overstating its place in car history chap but each to his own......

[EoinM]

I've been pretty unlucky with the VAG cars that I have owned. I honestly can't see me buying another.

1) 1999 Ford Fiesta 1.25 zetec. Completely unbreakable, and a proper little go cart.

2) 2004 Focus 1.4 zetec. Great car, thoroughly reliable and extremely likeable.

3) 2006 Seat Leon 1.6 stylance sport-up. Lovely cars bar the back breaking ride. Air conditioning compressor went after two years, gearbox after 3 years and 100k km and a MAF at 4 years old. Still find myself eyeing up Cupras at the moment.

4) 2009 Octy vrs CR170. Bought it the end of Jan last year but it was about a month before it got used. Since then it's covered about 55k km and been off the road for about 5 weeks in that time. DPF went, air con, temp sensor in exhaust, front shocks leaked and the aux belt fell off. Bit annoying missing work and have the car gone a lot after spending bones of €20K on it. Very disappointing but fingers crossed from here on in.

Realistically its going to be replaced with a nice late ST as soon as I figure out how to reduce my mileage...

[lemonyellowVRS]

My worst car out of the ten I have owned was easily my 1999 Fiat Bravo. Luckily bought it from a main dealer so had a warranty and boy did I need it. In the garage just about every weekend with mainly electrical glitches. Was nice to look at and ok to drive but I sold it after about 6 months and lost £1200 on it.

One of my fav cars was my 1998 Pug 306 D Turbo. Fab car. Put diesel in it every month, take it to local diesel specialist garage every 6 months for an oil change and just hammer it inbetween

[Redboy]

BMW523i SE

4 years old. New engine at 50K, electric window motors, power steering leak, ABS sensors, electric fan, cat just out of warranty. Ultimate Rubbish Machine. Never ever again will I buy a Bayerische Mullwagen. Bavarian rubbish truck.

[Willsvrs]

A 9 year old Triumph Dolomite 1850, head gasket, clutch, timing gear, alternator (requires radiator removal), starter motor and I nearly set it alight one day after fitting a bit electrical equipment.

Awesome! I don't know why, but i have a soft spot for triumphs even though they are typical British Leyland sh1te! We had 3 triumph 2000 mkII's and a dolomite sprint! One of them nearly went on fire when the fuel pipe split and leaked onto the exhaust manifold. close one for sure! the diff went on that one as well! loved the sound of the 6 cylinder engine in the 2 litres though!

I must be the only one who misses manual chokes, rich exhaust fumes, distinctive interior smell, no power steering, rock hard brakes! chocking up the windows cause the winder mechanism had broken. All adds character

[keystonedriving]

Renault Scenic dci - we got to know our local breakdown people very well, they were out to us 6 times in 12 months! Just about everything electrical went wrong at some point and when the auxiliary drive belt shredded it took out the cam belt as there is no cover to protect it. We were lucky, there were 2 valves which didn't touch the pistons!

Would we buy another Renault? Not flaming likely........

Otherwise my cars have tended to be pretty reliable, Sunbeam Rapier, Armstrong Siddeley Hurricane, Vauxhall Viva (although a gearbox oil seal failed when it was 500 miles out of warrantee), Ford Cortina, Lada Riva, Rover 420 (it needed two new head gaskets though, crap Honda engine design - the main oil way to the head was outside all of the securing studs in the corner of the block so it was bound to go) Vauxhall Corsa, Skoda Fabia SDi, VW Polo SDi and now Roomster.

It would take a lot for me to go anywhere other than VAG these days, I can see me sticking to Skoda for the future.

[cheezemonkhai]

Had a various fords, a toyota, a citroen (with the hydro-pneumatic suspension), a peugot, a MK I and a MK II Octavia.

The octavia spent the most time with the dealers and must have spent the best part of a couple of months being 'fixed' inside the warranty period for faults alone.

I really don't believe VAG are any more reliable than most and I'd actually say that friends and family who have owned cars, those with the most faults have on the whole been VAG. They are usually faults that would be expensive outside of warranty, but are fairly stupid faults when you think about the design.

Half a million miles on fords and there have been far less issues (1 new DMF + new clutch) and 1 fuel injector issue, vs > 10 DMF and all the other assorted sillies for vag on about 250k miles.

Edited 10 January, 2012 by cheezemonkhai

[john_y]

Beat this - impossible:

1980 Fiat 127 Sport 70HP 1050cc Bought in 1981 scrapped in 1982 - cheap steel rusted - bad design - exhaust pipe routed through a cut out channel in the petrol tank which leaked.

Car flew like the wind - well it did in 1981. Just wished it didn't oxidise like it had been dipped in a bath of hydrochloric acid - NEVER bought a fiat since.

john

[cheezemonkhai]

Sounds like Fiat and Alfa shared a steel works

[Latte]

Awesome! I don't know why, but i have a soft spot for triumphs even though they are typical British Leyland sh1te! We had 3 triumph 2000 mkII's and a dolomite sprint! One of them nearly went on fire when the fuel pipe split and leaked onto the exhaust manifold. close one for sure! the diff went on that one as well! loved the sound of the 6 cylinder engine in the 2 litres though!

I must be the only one who misses manual chokes, rich exhaust fumes, distinctive interior smell, no power steering, rock hard brakes! chocking up the windows cause the winder mechanism had broken. All adds character

I bought a 75 Dolly sprint in 89 as a runabout after I had totalled my car. The engine sound was wonderful but drowned out by the enormous engine-driven fan that probably consumed 10hp all by itself. It had a manual choke to flood the engine, rich exhaust fumes due to unburnt petrol, a distinctive smell from all the damp wood, leather and velour, 200 turns lock to lock as no power steering, and you had to pack a parachute and an anchor and throw them out the window to try and stop the thing. Oh and yes wind-up windows that weren't fit for purpose.

Classic? Classic junk. Modern engineering please. Ta muchly. See ya.....

P.S. You have impeccable taste in your current cars Wills!

Edited 11 January, 2012 by Latte

[deecee]

I really don't believe VAG are any more reliable than most and I'd actually say that friends and family who have owned cars, those with the most faults have on the whole been VAG. They are usually faults that would be expensive outside of warranty, but are fairly stupid faults when you think about the design.

I think the supposed VAG quality is a myth generated by the press , all the problematical cars i have owned have been VAG products . According to a friend who is an AA breakdown tech they attend more broken down VWs than any other make and usually they are silly minor faults.

Edited 11 January, 2012 by deecee

[Chris GB]

Metro turbo, turd on wheels, more stuff broke in 3 months than has broken in long term ownership of any other car I have owned.

Chris

[SkodaTC]

Punto - various faults including random no headlights, sunroof that would open on its own, failure to start, central locking only working on passenger side - dealer wouldn't/couldn't fix these without the faults being present despite them being intermittant problems. Eventually led to an early return to lease company.

Peugeot 406 - nice comfy car for sitting in whilst waiting on recovery. Wheel of fortune electrical issues, never could guess what was going to fail next. It's favourite trick was pretending to only have 12bhp when making progress on the M-way.

Peugeot 407 - I'm the boss traction control and 80's style turbo lag, didn't keep it long enough to find out what else was going to go wrong.

[Mike Wrightson]

My worst one so far:

Suzuki Swift Sport, bought brand new.

When I got shot of it after a year, it had many dealer visits and the following replaced:

2 ABS sensors

ABS controller

Body control module

Mechanically it was awesome, but that was not what I expected from Japanese electrics.

[Delcac]

A Triumph Dolomite Sprint!

Game over, nuf sed.

[rwbaldwin]

I had a "Swiss" 260HP Lancia Delta HF integrale Evo.

It's speed on the road was only matched by the speed it started to disassemble itself. The electrical problems were never ending.

[andy68]

Of all the cars i've had there are 2 that were always going wrong

1- Vauxhall Omega 2.5V6 CD, always electrical faults, not starting or stopping soon afterwards, but that's if it hadn't locked me out first.soon got rid of that.

2- BMW 528iSE (E28) Mechanic's were fine just that everything else was fragile, sold it for more than i paid for it so there was a slight upside.

[hellyfast]

06 vauxhall astra 1.7 cdti... under warranty ended up having a 3 turbos a new engine, alternator, clutch and loads of other bits.....

it was in a vx garage for 6 months, while i was in a ****1.2 petrol corsa courtesy of them... it was still fooked when it finally came out of the garage but luckily....

someone crashed into me:)))))