Worst Car Lists

Status
Not open for further replies.
People don't talk about the 1977 ish honda accord that literally rusted the front fenders in two years. There was a fold "way up there" by the cowl where road junk/ salt collected. Some nerd came up with a plastic shield/ inner liner and honda copied that idea!

For all its foibles, Vega was GM's attempt to try a bunch of new tech all at once. It had an overhead cam, for example. And they came out with those upright shipping containers as they acknowledged that freight expense was a big deal-- IIRC this lead to the invention of the maintenance free unvented battery.

The car started out in 1970 and as awful as it was they made it worse with labor relations in the mid 70's-- They sold every Vega they could make and were working 24/7 stamping them out, and sped up the assembly line speed as well. The UAW stomped their feet over the topic and the quality suffered through intentional or unintentional error.

Pontiac managed to get the "iron duke" in the astre, sorting out the oil burning unlined aluminum motor, but the damage was done.

My mom had two vegas and they were as lousy as any other 70s car but not worse. Remember they were from the smog years with huge 5 mph bumpers. Going FWD with the J-body was a huge engineering step up from there.
 
I remember another Cadillac that was a Chevy Nova. I never understood what prompted people to purchase those cars. The Yugo was hands down the worst vehicle ever sold in this country. A Fiat design. Chrysler K cars are right up there too.
 
That was the Seville...and a pretty good car. Decent handling, good brakes (4-wheel discs!), good room inside...even had standard EFI!
 
When I was stationed in U.K. During the 80's ,the worst car there was the FSO . It was an older Fiat design made in eastern eupope . Our credit union wouldn't finance them for three years even if they were new . They wouldn't get all the way through the loan before they were trashed .
 
The vast majority of ALL car makers from 1980-1985 if not the 70's.

Once carb's left the picture and fuel injection was figured out cars ran properly. In between awful just plain awful. Even Honda was garbage in 1980's with carbs.

I owned one carb vehicle the CJ-7 with 4.2L and the carb made it run so awful and not fixable due to sticking choke plate.
 
Originally Posted By: Jarlaxle
That was the Seville...and a pretty good car. Decent handling, good brakes (4-wheel discs!), good room inside...even had standard EFI!


My Dad had one. Nothing at all wrong with that car, as long as you liked smooth and smooshy.
 
Originally Posted By: nixon
When I was stationed in U.K. During the 80's ,the worst car there was the FSO . It was an older Fiat design made in eastern eupope . Our credit union wouldn't finance them for three years even if they were new . They wouldn't get all the way through the loan before they were trashed .


That's not a car, it's a heavy quadricycle.
 
Originally Posted By: rjundi
The vast majority of ALL car makers from 1980-1985 if not the 70's.

Once carb's left the picture and fuel injection was figured out cars ran properly. In between awful just plain awful. Even Honda was garbage in 1980's with carbs.

I owned one carb vehicle the CJ-7 with 4.2L and the carb made it run so awful and not fixable due to sticking choke plate.


Some Hondas had carbs to at least 1991!

But seriously: there were and are several fixes for the lousy emissions Carter on the Jeep 258, none of them especially difficult. (Sounds like yours had a bad choke assembly.)
 
We had three carburated Hondas and they were flat great cars in every way.
You gave the carb a rebuild after around 100K and the engine ran as new again. The carbs had lots of parts but weren't all that hard to take down, clean and put back together.
If I could find a nice early CVCC Civic or a mid-eighties Wagon, I'd buy either or even both since both models proved durable, reliable and useful in our ownership.
We liked the '86 Wagon so much that we bought two of them.
I'm not sure how these myths get started, but there were no problems generic to carburated Hondas. They ran well, started easily in the coldest weather and delivered great fuel economy.
The 1.5s in these cars were also incredibly smooth and rev-happy and the shifters were very nice. You could also drive these cars pretty easily without using the clutch. Handling was pretty sporty with minimal understeer.
We have nothing but happy memories of our old Civics.
 
Originally Posted By: fdcg27
We have nothing but happy memories of our old Civics.


Ah, yes, the original Hondas. Special to be sure.

It seems they were very different from today's offerings...
 
Our first Honda was a '76 Civic 1500 CVCC hatchback.
Four speed manual, manual choke, which you didn't need unless it was a really cold morning and an electric fuel pump that could be accessed through a plate under the back seat.
It weighed about half what our '12 Accord does and had little more than a third the engine output.
It was a fun and sporty little beast to drive and I recall wondering why my MGB had an engine nowhere near as rev-happy as this little Honda. The Civic handled like a go-cart and it rode like one too.
I thought at the time that the powertrain would have made an excellent package for a little mid-engine two seater.
Not a lot of power, but very willing to rev and really pleasant shifting.
The thing was also geared short enough that you could exceed redline in fourth. The optional five speed would have been worth the money.
We liked the '76 enough that we replaced it with an '86 Civic Wagon, which we liked enough that we bought a second.
After that, we had a first gen Ody, which was more of a tall Accord wagon than a minivan, a '96 Accord coupe five speed, a '99 Accord four door five speed as well as the '02 and '12 Accord automatics we still have.
Back in the day, if you bought a Honda, you generally bought a stick.
Today, manuals are really hard to find.
 
Originally Posted By: fdcg27

It was a fun and sporty little beast to drive and I recall wondering why my MGB had an engine nowhere near as rev-happy as this little Honda.

The MGB engine was an OHV engine, whereas the Honda used a SOHC design. That is one reason.
The other reason I can think of is related to smog equipment. Many of the 70s MGB engines were hastily fitted with poorly designed smog devices, but the Honda CVCC engine was built so that it could meet California smog without using a catalyst. I'm sure the MGB would struggle to breathe out of a 1970s cat converter.
 
My worst car list contains everything that is not involving to drive.
Fast or slow, big or small, expensive or cheap, if I don't get feedback through the steering wheel it's rubbish. If its too insulated from NVH it's not worth looking at. Over-assisted anything (pedals, steering, shift etc) and I wouldn't drive it if you paid me.

Any car that beeps or bongs at you when a door is open, lights are on, keys are in etc and I won't even go near the thing...basically any car that assumes I'm fat/old/stupid/lazy/bothered about comfort/unable to drive off my own initiative is a hateful carbuncle of a thing that doesn't deserve to be on the road.

I sound like an extremist fundamentalist car terrorist! Lol! But I have such a well formed idea of what I want in a car that anything that doesn't fulfil my criteria is instantly worthless and hateful.
 
There have been a number of pushrod engines with higher redlines than either the BMC B series or most SOHC or DOHC Hondas.
The Chevy 302 used in the first gen Z-28 comes to mind.
The BMC B series was a fairly old design and was used in various displacements in everyhting from sports cars to vans, although the same could be said of the SBC.
The Honda was a fresh design that was apparently developed with smoothness in mind, something that can't be said of either the BMC A or B series engines, although it is probably true of the SBC.
 
I would put early CVCC engined Honda's on my worst list too. I had several college friends bring them to me, by 120K miles the heads were DONE. Up to that point they were very good cars.
smile.gif


Putting the Henry J on the list is just an example of one hipster writer putting down another's favorite old car.

No list is complete without the Vega, leaving it off just indicates pure ignorance. The list of things wrong on that vehicle is huge. Rust and oil burning is just the start.

As a young guy I tagged along with my older brother to rescue a friend whose car had broken down. Unlike his other beater-owning friends, this was bought as a new car by a recent college graduate. The breakdown was at less than 2 years old with a little less than 30K miles. It had just had its engine rebuilt 2 weeks previous. It was a Vega.

Rust and oil burning was mentioned. The silica-in-aluminum engine block just didn't work out for the wear protection the silica was supposed to provide. In addition the head gasket was GONE after one overheat, and by the way, the cooling system was WAY undersized.

Despite that GM sold every one that made as quickly as they could make them... creating a whole generation of GM haters, paving the way for Japanese small car dominance in the 80's and 90's.
 
IDK.
Not sure what your mean by early CVCC heads being "done" at 120K.
The engine of our '76 CVCC wasn't done at 120K nor was it done at 160K when we sold it. Never had the head off of it.
Might have adjusted the valves (all twelve of them) a couple of times.
The Vega would develop cylinder bore scores at relatively low mileage and would then burn copious amounts of oil. No problem as long as you kept it topped up. Mine ran for a long time with regular fills of Citgo 10W-40, around .29/qt on sale from Kmart, IIRC. Idle it very much and the plugs would oil foul, requiring removal and cleaning or replacement. The head was iron, so no worries about damaging anything by removing the plugs from a warm engine.
Rust wasn't that horrible aside from the front fenders.
The radiator was pretty small for a 2.3 liter engine.
The Vega had really good handling as long as the road was fairly smooth and rode pretty well. The cabin was fairly quiet in highway use, probably thanks to the tall gearing. Fuel economy averaged in the upper twenties, not bad for the an early 'seventies car.
Not nearly as bad a car as it's sometimes made out to be. It was cheap to buy and was certainly a better and safer car than something like the early Corolla, Datsun B-210 or the deathtrap Beetle.
 
I loved my dark bronze '73 Vega GT but I don't keep cars more than a year or two. The only issue I had was that first gear was hard to engage at a stop. The '73 had the iron Saginaw 4-spd box, way too heavy for the 85 hp Vega engine.

I've also owned an early diesel Rabbit and a '75 Skoda Coupe, two more widely-derided vehicles. Most of you won't know the Czech-made Skoda but it was far worst than the Vega in terms of engine problems, but it was a fun car to drive and cost me nearly nothing in depreciation.
 
The Vega engine/drivetrain story is another Fail. The drivetrain came out over 200 lbs heavier than the original design called for, it was supposed to be a lightweight engine for a lightweight car. Then they had to add more weight to fix the problem. As a result it didn't make GM's target fuel economy targets.

Said DeLorean: "The front end of the car separated from the rest of the vehicle. It must have set a record for the shortest time taken for a new car to fall apart." Engineers had to add 20 pounds in understructure to remedy the problem, and that was just the start of the Vega's "ponderous proportions in weight and price compared to the original car," he said.

from- http://www.autonews.com/article/20111031/CHEVY100/310319922/the-vega:-an-unmitigated-disaster
 
Friend of mine in high school had a Ford Maverick. That car was the biggest TOTAL POS I've ever seen.
 
Also mentions would be any of the big 3 vehicles from the mid 70s to early 80s that came pre-rusted from the factory... I never saw so many vehicles that rusted out so quickly...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top