Asklemmy

A fleet/company car. A Chevette. I pressed the accelerator to the floor, the engine went "huh? you want what?"

I once had a loaner from a dealer that was a Dodge Caliber. Ugly as sin and the transmission was definitely on its way out. That car was just a struggle. It was a reminder why I will never buy a Chrysler product.

1994 Ford Taurus.

I went over a speed hump at 5mph and the whole engine fell out of the front.

Apparently it's not supposed to do that.

Jeep. All of them. Rickety. Not built well. Terrible gas mileage. Bad on highways. Bad on city streets. I literally got bruises on my butt on an off road trail in one of them. Just absolute shit cars.

Ooh man, I’ve driven a lot of rentals for work…

I hated hated hated the Nissan Cube. Thankfully the check engine light came on within two hours of me picking it up so I got to swap it.

But I think the one that takes the cake is actually a vacation rental car. My husband and I rented a car when we went to Belgium. It was an Opel Corsa. It struggled to even reach the speed limit on highways and definitely couldn’t go above it. The funniest thing was that all the Audis and BMWs in Belgium didn’t even bother to tailgate us; they saw us ahead of them and moved over to pass well before they got to us. They knew. That thing was hilariously bad at being a car. I was also a new stick shift driver and it was very difficult. We then went to Switzerland where we got a VW Polo and suddenly I got a whole lot better at driving stick, lol.

I rented a 2020 Mitsubishi Outlander in 2022 and it was amazing how unresponsive it was. It's a small SUV with the engine of a hamster. It has a "sport mode" that really struggled to get me up some hills in Colorado.

Also, the rubber seal for the door, on 3 of the doors, was constantly feel off and could be worn as a second seatbelt.

A 1971 Chrysler Newport.

The thing was a boat. You’d hit a bump in the road, and the car would act like you crested a wave and bob front to back a few times. It was wider than most pickup trucks and probably heavier. Not only could it not fit in most parking spots, it could hardly fit in some lanes. Required leaded gas, which was getting hard to find at that point. If you needed to go uphill you had to build up speed because you would slow down, even with the gas pedal floored.

The best part is that when I finally brought it in for service, the mechanic came out and said “You’ve been driving that thing??” Three out of four motor mounts had broken and the last one was about rusted through.

It did have an 8-track though, and came with a bunch of Elvis tapes.

I hated Elvis, but did manage to find an 8-track of Peter Paul and Mary.

A Ford Expedition from a car rental place. It felt like driving around a ten ton brick through molasses. It was the least responsive and awkward shit box I've ever had the displeasure of piloting. It was so bad I literally drove to the nearest rental place to exchange it for a smaller car.

Chevy Suburban. I volunteered to drive for a university course field trip and it's what I got stuck with.

• Unresponsive fatass brick of a vehicle. I mean, come on, a minivan has more cargo space and the same passenger capacity without three light aircraft worth of inertia.
• Dashboard sucked. It took me a solid three minutes to find the button shifts. (I know these can be done well - Honda does them right - but the PRNDL was fucking laid out in a thin row at the side of the dashboard. Huh?)
• Overtaking damn near anything would redline the (very new, less than 10k miles) engine.

Chrysler 200 as a rental after someone smoked my Civic, and I waited to get a new one.

The car was... Jiggly? Like the suspension was unsettling, the brakes needed getting acquainted with lest you rear-end someone, and the steering had too much play. It wasn't enough play to convince me something was wrong, it was just shit quality.

No power. At all. Getting on the freeway was an adventure in noise and hope. Everything lagged. Fuel economy was garbage too.

Looked stupid. And my Civic si that replaced it, the econobox with a hot engine, had a luxury interior in comparison, which is saying something.

Horrible car to add to a horrible week.

A Hyundai Elantra, it let me down in so many ways. Financially, spiritually, etc.

Hyundai Sonata 2019 seats are hard as hell. Rear view mirror is way to low.

Chrysler grand voyager. It was relatively new, but omg it felt borderline dangerous. It was actually funny for the first 10 mins but I had to deliver this POS few hours away. On a straight smooth road it was like driving a sofa, comfy and soft. Once it entered a corner it turned into a boat, and stopping hard twice in a row had limited success. I asked the dealer where I delivered it too about how it handled. Apparently this is standard behaviour for Cryslers, and in the US it is fine (straight roads, limited hard breaking) and they love soft cars. In the UK we expect cars to stop and go round corners so we notice just how bad the Grand voyager is.

I won't drive a Crysler again.

Chevrolet Cavalier. A good engine (L61)... but that's all. Literally everything else was ultra cheap and broke.

2021 gmc Sierra, cant see shit in front of you

Going to be a toss-up between two of my own cars.

1992 Cavalier convertible Z24 I bought for pennies as my first own car. Had 420,000km on it and grabbed it and it's papers from some sketch dealer.

Looked good enough on the outside for it's purpose of having fun. Roof worked. And it had a v6. But it fell apart fast (and a lot due to my own shenanigans). Stearing became so off that I had to turn left to stay straight. The heater died, I live in Canada. The seat's support broke, so I used an old set of goalie pads propped against the back seat to keep my seat upright. The dashboard lights were blown, so I had a ducked tape flashlight on my headrest to light my dash up. More than ounce, I'd have to pull a fuse and put it back in while cruising on the highway.

Second worse was the off the lot brand new 02 Sunfire my parents forced me to buy to replace the above shitbox due to it's safety. For fuck sakes I despised this car. Despite how bad the cavalier was, it was FUN and quirky. The Sunfire was just a poorly made shitbox with zero power, and non-stop electrical failures the day I took it off the lot.

Chevy Malibu I got at a rental place because they didn't have the type of car I requested months ahead of time. Neither my partner nor I could figure out how the fuck to set the cruise control, which had "get up to speed then step on the brake" as one of the instructions. We're also not frequent drivers.

Fuck that car, driving it gave me a panic attack

Some time in 2015/2016, parents had a loaner Ford ecosport. That thing struggled with hills. And by hills, I mean speed bumps and anything not completely horizontal. Nobody even felt like trying to get it on a highway, we knew there was no way it could get up to speed safely.

Chrysler Sebring. Fucking battery.

Two I can think of. The van we had to take as teenagers to work at the flea market. Long ass shifter that started at the floor of the car, so hard to drive and had to do precision driving through skinny aisles between tents.

The truck of my FIL, I had to literally stand up on the pedal , ass off the seat, to get the clutch to engage.

Also had a 1967 mustang that broke often enough I had to learn to fix it and believe me, this is not something that comes naturally to me, nor do I enjoy it. It was interesting in a way, had to do things like get the flywheel machined. But when you need a car for transportation and are poor as heck that is scary and uncomfortable.

Nissan Versa, so many weird blind spots.

We had a brace of rented Nissan cargo vans at work, the small ones. Those were truly terrible. They had CVT transmissions that just would not hook up. I'd get to the top of an SF hill at a stop sign and just sit there with my foot planted, waiting.

We replaced them with Ford Transits. The CVT in that model is only slightly more usable, but we all still fight over who gets the older model, with the torque converter.

Mid 80's Bronco. My ex insisted that she had to have a bronco. It had a 302 in it, but holy hell. I am sure it was the fact that they were still trying out emissions schemes but I bet it had less than a hundred hp. It would barely move out of it's own way, and if you got about 6mpg you considered yourself lucky. Toss in an oil leak and it was like driving the Exxon Valdez. I can't decide if the best day of my life was getting rid of the bronco, or her....

Narrator: Both....

The worst car I’ve ever driven was also the best because it lasted me until I was able to get on my own two feet and afford a new one: Nissan Sentra 97’.

• around 200,000 miles the engine literally began falling out from the bottom of the rusted frame. I took it to a mechanic and they ran a wire underneath to hold it in place. Drove it for 5 more years after that!
• Driver side window would not stay closed during Chicago winters so I glued it shut.
• Dashboard lights burnt out.
• Muffler would scrape across the pavement as I courted my girlfriend (now wife) around town.

My current one: New generation Seat Leon (built on VW’s platform; the shit one with touch control aircon buttons that don’t light up in the dark).

Darwin I hate that car. Shit from tip to tail.

1994 Toyota 4Runner. It should've been good, but ironically (being a Toyota) it's the least reliable car I've ever owned. The engine loses power randomly and I can't figure out why.

I have driven and found joy in many cars: Pinto, beetle, 2CV, original 500s, 1940s Ford tractors, beater pickups including a 1949 International, HMMWV, etc. Mopeds (like 1970s Puch), ratty motorcycles. They all make me giggly.

I had to think a few minutes about one that was just terrible, no redeeming points I could find: first (north american) gen Hyunda Excel What a soul-sucking turd.

Dodge Magnum So little visibility there is about 6" of plastic blocking your view from every tiny ass window and a good so big ya may as well be driving a truck. Absolutely nothing good about that POS

I think it was a 1998-ish Pontiac Grand Prix. I dated two different women that drove that car and so I had to ride around in them and sometimes drive them. Both were just a train wreck of problems. They shook violently sitting at a red light, the brakes always seemed to be failing, and everything that could break was falling off the cars. It’s weird that two women I dated owned the same car but more so that they both had the same problems.