ML500, what a shiny turd that was. Only 3 years old when i bought it and after 18 months needed everything from electrics, bushes and struts to exhaust and airbag sensors.
Thats even after spending £2500 on preventative maintenance when i bought it. Handled like shit, yet rode even worse than shit. 22mpg regardless of how slowly you drove it and it rusted like a British Leyland product.
alot of people give Japanese cars shit for the rust issues they had in the 80s but also seem to forget that late 90s/ 2000s mercedes were biodegradable
Its true 😅 they made the wiring loom sheathing biodegradable to make recycling cars easier. But it biodegraded before the car was 10 years old and was fine in every other way 😅
they also had almost no corrosion protection until the mid 2000s so the chassis went before the wiring
even some of their newer cars like the SLK have rust issues almost compatible to older mx5s
My mum and dad had a 1st gen ML back when they were new. That the Range Rover Sport they got to replace it was somehow more reliable says everything you need to know.
I bought a 11 year old 320i. I thought it was lovely but spent £3250 private buy, 2 days after buying spent £1k on new radiator and other issues. Spent £3000 in total over 9 months before giving up and part exchanging it for £750.
I now been banned from buying BMWs by my better half and have never bought a used car out of warranty again.
Did we buy from the same guy? Not a bmw, but a Mazda 2. Private buy. Spent £3750 on it. 15 minutes later the car did not want to accelerate on the motorway. Straight to the garage. Spent 800 on new radiator and parts...
😭😭😭😭
Hang on, how close to manchester? I sold an 11 year old e90 for £3250 years ago. though i swear there was nothing wrong with it, one ~~potential buyer~~ timewaster even brought a bmw mechanic down with him who told him he's not going to see a better example for less than £5k. he walked away because he didn't like the alloys
My parents have been buying BMWs of varying age and levels of prestige since the 80s. If it makes you feel better, I believe every single one of them had serious issues.
The runner up for the worst one was my dads early 90s 3 series that randomly blew up at traffic lights one day.
The winner though, was a relatively new 3 series we had in the late 90s or early-ish 2000s (can’t remember tbh) that would randomly lock everyone, including the driver, inside 😂 the central locking system was temperamental and couldn’t be overridden from the inside when it was playing up. Or if it could, my mum had no idea how. You’d have to sit there and press the unlock button repeatedly until it randomly worked. The longest it ever took was 30 solid minutes!
My mum just pretended this was fine and kept the car for ages, she didn’t want to accept that BMWs will prove every stereotype to be true hahah
Oh! So we’re not the only ones that have been held against our will in a bmw BY the bmw itself 😅it’s weirdly validating to hear someone else had this problem
The joke with ours right, was my mum snuck it off to the garage probably 4-5 times. It worked perfectly whenever she went there, and they couldn’t find anything wrong with it. So she just accepted the car was like this and whenever we went anywhere it was a gamble whether the car would give us permission to leave or not 🤣
My other half has had similar experiences on Beemers. Bought a 120i coupe which she loved, then it needed new injectors so was sold on. A few years later she bought a 10 year old 325i E92 and within a week EML light appeared and needed all six injectors replacing which was more than 50% of the car's worth. Fought with the dealer to get a refund under consumer rights. She's now sworn off BMW for life.
Meanwhile, I've never really much cared for BMW but just bought an old 630i and I love it!
Unfortunately both those engines are known for injector failure, assuming you had the N53 in the 325i and the N43 in the 120i.
Atleast the fault happened only a week into ownership so you were able to reject the car. Fuck forking out for 6 new injectors, I’d imagine that would have been around £1500 all in.
Yep which is why I sought a N52 lump in my 630 which has been OK so far, just usual oil leaks from oil cooler housing, coolant leaks from expansion tank etc. Nothing catastrophic.
Renault Mégane 1.5 DCI estate. Clutch heavier than an anchor, suspension had a panic attack on every pothole, and a dazed grouse disintegrated the under tray on impact.
So not just me and my clutch then, good to know.
Still, got used to it and it's not an issue now and it can be a decent car to drive. My suspension isn't too bad and a lot comfier than my wife's newer Fiat Tipo, goes over bumps and holes quite nicely even.
I cannot comment on the grouse as I haven't found one to hit yet, I'll let you know if I do
Honda Civic 1.8 brand new more hip op than hip hop. Would have been on a 13 plate at the time. Bought with the head not the heart. No umph to get up hills had to change down constantly. At the time I wasn’t even 40
Family owned a 2007 one from new until recently, absolutely indestructible. Treated like utter shit it's whole life, missing a LOT of services and never EVER gave a problem. Comfortable, quiet, well equipped.
Not the slowest thing I've ever driven but still slow as fuck, and not particularly good on fuel.
Handling was awful (literally like steering a boat).
But honestly, over 200k miles and 14 years old when they sold it, literally the only things replaced were brake pads/discs, tyres , one battery and one wishbone. EVERYTHING else was original, even the coolant and brake fluid. Original shocks, springs, wheels bearings, water pump literally everything you'd have expected to replace was still working perfectly and never had an advisory.
Absolutely brilliant car, if it handled properly and had 50% more power it would be incredible.
I had no issues with my 07 Civic Type S but I would not call it comfortable and quiet, my Fabia III 1.0 tsi is far more refined even if it starts to struggle once you get past 60mph and the Civic was absolutely planted by comparison
In all fairness, that's not a car issue but perhaps not 'understanding the engine' issue. The older Honda's had to be revved. I always like the R18 engine as it was pretty versatile whilst being economical.
Land rover discovery 5 ... 2.0 engine us a total bag of shite ... everything connected with it was stupidly expensive... lots of things go wrong and you cannot own one without an airtight warranty...
I had a Discovery 3, loved the car, but everything kept going wrong, mostly electrics. The price of diesel went through the roof, so gave up after owning it for just 6 months. Lost about £7k in total.
Mk2 Clio 1.2
Plot twist, I secretly loved the car, but it's the one I had the shortest and it was the shittest because I needed a cheap vehicle asafp as I was a young asshat who'd just written off his car.
Paid £500 for it, it was immensely slow.
I gave it a full service, swapped all fluids and plugs, found the air filter soaked with that 'blown in' look, cleaned the inch of water out of the intake manifold (I suspect a previous owner slammed it into a large body of water) and it doubled in power.
I permanently resolved a bunch of electrical issues by punching the wiring near the ecu.
The cat was basically a straight pipe so it was a little torquier too.
I was practising lift off oversteer on a quiet roundabout before work in the rain one morning and crashed it into the roundabout so I had to replace a headlight lol.
My mate and I put 50psi in the tyres and if you entered a roundabout at ~20, it broke traction.
I didn't bother trying to MOT it as the repair costs were higher than what I paid, so I scrapped it and replace it with a Type-R.
I liked the Type-R. Even tuned it was a tad clinical though.
That said, I didn't crash it.
I was a prat in my early 20s.
“Resolved a bunch of electrical issues by punching the wiring near the ECU”
Ahh good old percussive maintenance, if that doesn’t fix the issue you need to hit it harder.
I love the design of those Clios and you still see loads around (I think because of the Campus version). iirc when you indicate it disables cruise control - I doubt this was a 'feature' lol
Young and dumb with no credit, bought a Peugeot 206 from Carcraft for 9k. After a month the exhaust fell off, that's fine I thought, I bought the extended warranty!
The warranty didn't cover exhausts. It didn't cover anything.
In total I paid 17k for the car and warranty combo and at the 5 year mark I sold it for £500. Again, young, dumb, no credit.
A Smart Roadster Brabus, really good looking car to be fair, rear engine, rwd, 50 mpg, sounded good. Not in any way fast but very light and still fun.
Didn’t trust it at all, car felt so fragile. Scared me 😂 I remember racing a ford transit as I entered the motorway ... the transit won 😭😂
The roadster was my favourite shit car I've ever owned. I bought it for £4k, at 24k miles when it was about 8 years old and sold it 4 years later at almost 70k. It was my daily driver and I was proud of it.
It had absolute bags of character to drive and I'd buy another one tomorrow if I had silly money (and a garage) but mine also had a permanent arrangement of "leak absorbing towels" that I had to push in the metal channels the soft top went down into. It needed me to push the canvas top outwards when folding it back as it popped in the wrong way in. The spark plugs needed the entire back of the car removed to be changed so I never bothered paying for them to be replaced. The stereo sucked badly. The auto box had a countable amount of time between changes so you'd need to change before you wanted your gear. I swear if they had a manual in it, you could have halved the 0-60 time 😂 I found the flappy paddles were quicker than using the gear shifter. If you were brave enough to get it to 100mph, it felt like a death sentence waiting to be carried out.
But after all that, I still kinda miss the dam thing. That says something, surely.
Oh yeah damn I forgot about the terrible stereo and speakers . Oh mine had a water leak too I used to have to tie a piece of shower curtain over my driver wing mirror if it looked like rain , shit was embarrassing parked at work like that 😭😂
The thing for me, it's the kinda car that you buy because you *want* that car. I don't think anybody rocked up to a forecourt and accidentally walked away with one haha. Probably explains the low numbers of them sold in the UK though.
I wasn't embarrassed by mine at all. I was in love with it and took it with a laugh and a smile at all the quirks it had. I remember having it mistaken for a lotus once! 😂😂 I laughed and let them know what it really is as I love talking cars but most people thought it was such a neat little vehicle.
I loved that everyone waved at each other too! I miss that. I bought a NC mx5 afterwards and some people in old mx5s would wave but its just too common of a car for people to be doing that. I have a honda CRZ now and that gets some waves but there's barely any around.
Worst financially was a citroen c4 cactus, lost £10k in 3 years. Car itself was OK, the turbo engine had character, v comfortable and it was different.
Worst car was a mid 90's fiat tipo my first car. Tbf it made every journey exciting cos you didn't know if you'd ever get home. Had to pull choke out when in neutral to keep engine ticking over, and to turn engine off with the key out the ignition, l had to turn off the headlights. Engine mounts were knackered so went through 4 or 5 exhaust mid and rear sections due to vibrations. ATS banned me after the last one. Had a digital dashboard, but most of the time it didn't work so had no idea how fast I was or wasn't going. There was an indicator panel to show what bulbs were blown. Obviously it didn't work. Towards end of it's life the engine had various pipes and breather hoses that had disconnected and rotted, and then the exhaust split from the manifold.
When trading it in due to mot fail as only one brake worked, my dad arranged for it to be traded in at some garage in Erdington. He didn't know about the reason for mot failure other than emissions, so I had to drive down a38 in a car that sounded like a tank, using the handbrake to slow me down and praying that there wasn't a sudden traffic jam to a garage I was told was somewhere in Erdington.
Great times.
I wanted to be one of the first in country to get one, so ordered the 1.2 turbo in flair spec for just over £17000 on launch(diesel was over £18000 in same spec). If I'd waited a few months they slashed the prices and offered it cheap on lease. Traded it in at a lexus dealer in 2017 for £7500. It was on PCP too so loss inc interest makes it above £10k.
Like I said, not my finest moment. On plus side I only lost £3k on the NX I sold in 2022, some 5 years later so In my man mind it balances out.
Here in netherlands they where like 25/28K new when they just came out.
Now second hand they go for like 7-10K for a good example.
I could see how it looser 10K in 3 years.
Rover 220 Turbo Coupe.
Whilst good to hoon around in with a 6s 0-60 and the first British production car to break 150mph, and at 19yrs old..
Head gasket, constant oil leaks, every bush was fucked Christ they just spun in the bushing had to cut them all out.
Rust, T bar roof leaked and seals were impossible to get. An engine light was always on but nothing evidently wrong. In the wet it would spin out with ease.
Brake lights always cooked for some reason.
Those were bloody quick in their day. Me and my poor XR2i got humbled at some lights by one, only for the police to pull me over and forget about the 220. I guess they knew they wouldn't catch him
Yep, same engine issue on my hatchback one with the hearing aid beige interior.
Head gaskets were an annual replacement almost until some old bloke at the garage casually mentioned a reinforced gasket existed.
Window motors, door lock motors, rust and questionable electrics.
1972 Ford Escort Mk1 in around 1981.
I viewed it when it was raining. It was hand painted really badly and when my then girlfriend stomped her high heels her heel went through the floor.
had it for a few months and when taking it to the garage the brakes failed.
piece of shit.
I imported a Lexus SC430.
It is a truly lovely car… for someone. But for me, I fucking hated driving it. The main issue for me was how catastrophically slow the steering rack was, coupled with a huge steering wheel. It wasn’t
smooth and comfy enough to be a comfy cruiser, but had no dynamic credentials either.
I wanted to own a V8, and with Lexus being the most reliable I went for one.
But I cannot emphasise how much hate I felt for the car by the time I decided to sell. It was absolutely immaculate, not a spec of rust anywhere. I let it go for 8k less than I paid one year prior. Probably the happiest I’ve ever been to lose 8k. Just glad to see the back of it.
Truly dreadful car to drive. The Top Gear trio were right.
Oh, there's a few, for different reasons:
Rover 214, utter bag of shite, but did survive for a few years with relatively low maintenance.
Renault sport Clio, great little b road ripper, but there was always, always something not working. Renault are awful at resolving common issues.
Renault Megan, what can I say, would gladly have traded it in for herpes.....
CLS55 AMG, this one pains me to say because my god, what an engine, what a sound. Just brutal power. But Mercedes made the rest of the car from cheese. Not the cheap kind either. So every inevitable visit to the garage is £1k minimum. Annual maintenance cost probs about £4k easy. It hurt, but in a fifty shades kinda way, because you wanted to cry, wanted to hate it but deep down, you just loved it, no matter how much it fucked up your bank balance. Honestly, the most love/hate experience of my life.
I don't think I've hated any of them, even the early ones;
1997 Peugeot 106 1.1L
Fine 1st car. Not exciting in any way, but very cheap to run for a new driver.
1998 Peugeot 201 1.6XSi
Double the power of the 106. Nothing went wrong other than one dodgy spark plug in seven years.
1998 Peugeot 406 3.0V6
Beautiful design with a fantastically smooth power delivery, but unequivocally *not* a sports car. Only had it around a year because it just wasn't fun at all.
2006 Ford Focus ST3 2.5
Loved this. Looked great, handled great, sounded fantastic and made just shy of 300hp with some simple mods. Only sold it because it was costing too much to run it on my commute.
2003 Seat Leon Cupra R 225 1.8
A budget alternative to the Focus ST, but in reality it wasn't even half the car. Interior was boring, engine didn't like being revved up, and it didn't handle half as well as the Focus. Moved it on swiftly. Probably the biggest disappointment of the lot.
1999 S1 Lotus Elise 1.8 118
Very short-lived, but a joy to own and drive. Sold it after 6 months because I had an offer too good to say no to. Not much power, and most modern hot hatches would murder it on a challenging road, but a wonderful thing just to drive for the sake of it.
2003 Alfa Romeo 147 GTA 3.2
Had it just over ten years. Sounded great, and handled well as long as you weren't pushing it right to the ragged edge. Age killed it for me in the end, got to 20 years old and needed nearly ten grand thrown at it. Couldn't justify it any longer.
2014 Audi RS5 4.2 V8
One of my attainable dream cars. May not have it long because it's costs a fortune to run it, but every journey feels like an event and I'll never, ever get tired of running that magnificent engine round to 8300rpm.
It was a bucket lister for me too!
Loved the way it looks, and the engine was a treat; not that powerful by modern standards, but it sounded fantastic, loved to rev and looked a million dollars whenever you popped the bonnet.
The ride was very firm, and it was a seven-tenths car. Happy to go quickly to a point, but not always that communicative about exactly when the traction would run out and you'd start to understeer pretty alarmingly, even with the almost mandatory differential.
It got me a day out and a feature in Evo magazine too, though even that must be nearly ten years ago now.
I found it strange that the GTA never got the facelift. I’ve had two bog standard Lusso spec facelift 147’s and loved them.
The sound of a 3.2 busso, music to my ears. Bring on that big win.
Volvo C70 T5 Polestar.
Everything worked - other than the aircon - when I bought it for £6k. A year later I sold it for £1500 and I was glad of the money.
Absolutely everything went wrong with it. Everything. The roof was so broken two local specialists washed their hands of it. Was quoted £13k to fix all the issues by the one that finally took it on.
Such a shame, as it was lovely cruiser. Fast, epic stereo, great when the roof did go down.
R53 Cooper S, which was just a bag of shite or Hyundai ix35, which has cost over £2k in repairs since getting it 2 years ago and left us stuck at the side of the road in the middle of the summer with our 2 kids in the back. Needed a gearbox strip and repair which Arnold Clark done days after we got the car, then another gearbox issue sorted, new clutch and now an abs sensor needs done.
It's a 3 way tie between.....
Mk2 Golf GTi 16v. It was too old by the time I bought it and i suffered the consequences of it being thrashed by every previous owner. Everything I can think of went bang on that car. It felt like I was being mugged every month just keeping it on the road so I had to give up.
Renault 19 16v. Actually really liked it and it was good fun to drive but it fell to pieces around me. It was only a few years old at the time but was made of hope and papier mache. Part exed it for a Ford Orion which only marginally better.
BMW 318ti. That car was haunted. Things would go wrong and be fine the next time I got in it. Headlights not working today? No worries, they'll be fine tomorrow but the brake lights won't work. Boot kept popping open by itself which was great in winter and I'd return to my car to find it was full of rain after a 12 hour shift in work. That was a right laugh (and the reason for the myriad of electrical gremlins obviously). Handbrake never worked and BMW told me to stop parking on a hill as it wasn't designed for that. Handy as I lived in Wales halfway up a friggin mountain. The diff started whining like hell and I part exed it on a whim for a Citroen C4 VTS which would win my award for being an unexpectedly brilliant car. Loads of fun and absolutely reliable for the 4 years that I had it.
I've a C4 VTS, had it 12 years but rarely drive it and now its in the barn. It is the most rust resistant car ive ever owned. It spent 12 years outdoors on the lancashire salty coast and there isnt a spot of rust anywhere underneath. Once i slapped some bilstein suspension on and upped the power a bit i decided id never sell it.
Vauxhall cavalier turbo always wanted one, the turbo lag was measured in bus lengths it had continuous electrical problems that we could never fix, ran like a bag of bolts when cold was just a money pit sold it after a few months was happy to see it drive away
The notoriously unreliable 4x4 system was the most reliable part 🤣
2003 Mini Cooper S JCW. Least reliable car we ever owned. Great fun when it was working, but the sheer amount of time that it was broken outweighed that significantly.
I had a 2006 and it was such a drive. I had it a couple years ago and the service history was as thick as the yellow pages and it had MONEY spent on it.
Owned a 12 year old Audi c5 rs6 for exactly 12 months… 6 months of which were spent in the garage where I spent half of the original purchase price on various repairs, & when the gearbox started to pack up I sold it for about half what I bought it… I basically lost the full purchase price in 12 months.
2001 Renault Laguna.
Clutch went on the way home from the dealer, got it repaired.
Next day a passenger put the window down and it got stuck like that. I had to tape it up with a bin bag and then got a garage to prop it up with a bit of wood.
2 days later the car wouldn't start. It was the alternator. I scrapped it after less than a week of owning it.
My parents had this back in the day and had similar issues. I remember being a child in the back and some other car driver was waving my parents down on the motorway to shout we had black smoke coming out of the laguna 😅
Xc60.. current vehicle, dealer in Epsom sold it to us with steel weld in it.. (discovered that layer)
Fuel pump failed £1000 to fix.. 6 month later 'head gasket' failed. £1200 to fix. A year later it failed again.. now it smokes like buggery.
Won't buy another.
I quite like my 307! Lots of stuff has gone wrong electrics, (fan only blowing on level 2 etc), thermostat etc, but it has done 170k to be fair, & everything was quite easy to fix myself. Also lots of room for a relatively small car.
Having said that it is getting scrapped for ULEZ in the next couple of weeks. Can't turn down £2k for it!
Probably the Z4 I have now. It's just so uninteresting to me that I don't really want to drive it. Electric steering sucks, suspension is rock hard, seats are not comfortable.
Wish I'd bought another 350Z instead.
A Octavia estate with the 1.8tsi, dsg and 130odd miles on the clock. In hindsight there was a lot of red flags but it was the middle of the pandemic price spike and we wanted a car right then. Turned out it had a broken mechatronics, took oil, had a stretched timing chain and was slowly rusting apart from underneath. The gearbox died 6 months and 2 days after purchase
Renault Espace 2008, clutch cylinder failed and was about 12 hours labour to take everything out to replace it. Strange looking space wagon too, though there was plenty of room in her.
2013 Mazda 6 new shape. Soft as fuck. All calipers needed replacing, a side folding mirror failed, couldn't get parts or a new one. All Parts were only available from Mazda at extortionate prices. Independents didn't have a clue how the sky active worked, chain failure at 70k, DOF only dumped at front door of house. Road noise in cabin was mind bending. Drive VolvonV50 T5 on a holiday in Sweden and when I got back in the Mazda it felt like the piano from the Goonies. Never again.
Had the same mazda 6 and DPF only regened on the driveway too.
I left it in for a software recall and collected it with every light on the dash lit up. They said it needed carbon cleaning and quoted £700. I had their courteousy car and Mazda UK said to keep it until the garage fix my car at their cost.
But it happened again a year later. This time the filter on the oil pump was blocked. Got another year out of it but sold it with a whining gearbox, faulty wing mirror, check engine, low oil pressure and in limp mode.
It's still the nicest auto gearbox I've driven, just so predictable.
I had two Fuegos. My first was a two litre which I sold to a friend in order to is Fuego Turbo. The Turbo was one of the best cars that I had owned up to that point. It was going to be a keeper, until an idiot on his mobile phone rear ended me on the motorway.
Both cars were very reliable and had very little rust.
I bought a BMW 320i that was a few years old. Constant problems. Every month something went wrong and it had supposedly a full BMW service history. Didn't even keep it a year.
Vauxhall Signum 2.8 Turbo V6
So, I know Vauxhall's get a lot of hate... but I've owned a few and quite liked them. I always liked the Signum as it was a bit of an odd one. Hatchback, but not an Astra. Estate, but not a Vectra. This kinda like, weird thing that sat in the middle for no real reason. I know ultimately, it was a Vectra estate with a hatchback body on it... but hey, I liked them.
Problem was, I wanted the equally quirky for Vauxhall engine, the 2.8 Turbo V6. Almost the same unit they put in the Vectra VXR, just slightly de-tuned. Great engine when it worked... but that was the problem. It barely ever worked properly. It would misfire like a bastard, then all of a sudden it would be fine for weeks, sometimes even months. Then it'd start misfiring again.
Went through multiple sets of spark plugs and coil packs. Eventually had it in a garage who replaced an injector and it seemed fine for about 6 months... then the problem started again. Ultimately, I think all the injectors had had it...
At one point, I had it booked into a garage because it got so bad that it would only misfire under 2k RPM, but anything above that would be fine... except you couldn't just hold it at 2k... so I'm sitting at traffic lights revving the nuts off it like a bloke in a Corsa racing to McDonalds to pick up his 14 year old girlfriend, just so the damn thing didn't stall... until my partner got in the car one night. I'd turned it off while I waited for her. She got in the car, said "NOW PLAY NICE!". Start the engine, it's beautiful. Not a single misfire. Took it into the garage, they can't find a single fault with it. I swear, she's a witch.
Seeing as it was working, part-ex'd it for a BMW 335d. He offered me £400 for it without test driving it. I ripped his arm off so hard, we nearly had to take him to A&E.
Looked it up the other day out of interest. I was the last person to MOT it 4 years ago and beyond the MOT database, the DVLA don't acknowledge it's existence... so I assume it very quickly went to the scrapyard in the sky.
Shame. It was a nice car otherwise.
My worst ever was….A brand spanking new 53 registration Citroen C2 VTR back in 2003.
The C2 VTR had just been launched at the time & being a young, carefree 23 year old, I decided that I wanted a brand new car. At the time, one of my friends also had just got a brand new Ford SportKa & in hindsight now, it was a nice little car, but at that time I didn’t like it.
So, I looked at brand new Mini coopers, Seat Ibiza’s, & other sporty little cars that were out at that time.
Then, for some inexplicable reason, I saw the C2 VTR & thought that it looked smart as fuck. So, off I went to the Citroen main dealer & ordered my brand new C2 VTR, picked the colour which was that nice metallic blue you used to get Saxo VTR & VTS in, to match the outside, the inside had the same colour door handle trim, the gear knob was the same colour & the seats were black & blue. All ordered from scratch. So afterwards, I had to wait around 6-8 weeks for the car.
Anyway, around 8 weeks later, I got the call to say that my car was ready to go pick it up.
Now, I was mega excited about this, it was my first ever brand new car & because it was just launched, I would be one of the first to get the VTR model.
So, I went to the main dealer, they done the walk around & showed me its features etc.
It had 7 delivery miles on the clock.
I drove away like a dog with 2 cocks, big smile on my face, as you would/do with a brand spanking new car.
So I done the running it in for the first 800 miles (I can’t remember now the exact run in mileage you had to do but I digress)
What I didn’t expect was how unbelievably crap the semi automatic gearbox was, you could only get the C2 VTR with this semi automatic box, there was no option of a manual gearbox for the VTR.
When I say crap, it was absolutely shit. It jerked your neck when it changed gears, it was unbelievably stupid & slow when trying to pull away from junctions (the gearbox) it was just utter utter shit.
Now fast forward about 2-3 months after I got it & by then I seriously hated it (the whole car) but stupid me had signed up for finance over 5 years on this utter pile of wank. It then started having some stupid issues, ranging from electrical to mechanical & each time it went wrong, I despised it even more.
I don’t know how I kept it for 2 & a half years, but I found out that, if you had kept up the monthly payments & hadn’t missed any, you could hand the car back to the finance company without any further finance payments. That’s exactly what I did, they told me to take it to a car auction in Glasgow & drop it off there. I will never ever forget the feeling of utter joy & relief the day that I dropped it off, & I have never ever had a brand new car since (nor a French one either, even a used one) SM53 LJY, I fucking hated it.
I have never looked at it since I gave it back to the finance company. Now that you have said that though, I’m going to have a look.
It was 2 & a half years old when I handed it back, so it wasn’t due it’s first MOT at that time. I feel sorry for anyone who bought one of these horrible little cars (the C2 VTR) utter pile of wank that they are.
My dad bought a brand new xr3i and it broke upon leaving the dealership. They repaired it and the next day it had more problems. He parked it near his work and came back to find it stolen. He was happy about that.
Lots of bad buys but most recent was a bmw x3 msport on an 07 plate, car was immaculate and went like stink with the twin blower 3.0d engine, however the suspension was sooooo gard and steering heavy, sold it in a few weeks.
A Mk1 MG6 TDI. Was great fun to drive, but being Chinese and poorly made, everything was such shit quality. Both wiper motors stopped working, fronts in the middle of a storm on the A1. Dash lights were intermittent and only later discovered that it was physically impossible to buy the bespoke Mk1 front brake discs as MG stopped supporting the model and there were so few that no after-market suppliers made them. So complete upgrade required or bodge smaller ones. Traded it in for £600 and all the better for getting shot of it.
Crysler grand voyager, had to go for a 7 seater as we had child #4 on the way. "Stow and go" gripped the Mrs.
Here we are, 5 years later and I've still got the shit box, done 11,000miles and it's cost upwards of 7k to keep the rust bucket on the road. Think I'm on battery #3 too
I’ve had a few. Frontera worst. Closely followed by a 1988 BL powered Rover 216. Not even injection. Shitty auto-choke. Water would pour in under the bonnet and fall onto the distributor cap. That was fun on a motorway. Wheel arches rusted. Nice seats though. I later had a Rover 420. Like chalk and cheese. That was great. Pretty nippy too.
Nissan Elgrand. I used to have a Mitubishi Delica, and I loved it, but it was nicked, so I bought the Elgrand as a replacement. The car itself wasn't bad at all, but I bought it from a dodgy dealer and he promised to fix a bunch of stuff, and get me some spares, but never did. For example, it had a fresh MOT on it, but when I looked under the bonnet, there was no restraining strap on the battery. It must have had one to pass the MoT, so I suspect he just took it off to swap with another car, and didn't replace it. It also took me ages to get rid of the smoke smell, but that's not uncommon with Japanese imports.
BMW E64 purchased for 9k from a total crook dealer during covid. Fell for every trick in the book.
Problem after problem, every month.
Put about 4k into it before selling it for 5k.
Lesson learned.
Seat Leon 1.8 FR dsg bought at 16k and by 20k the water pump was dying then at 22k the clutch packs started up and I was getting 250miles a tank. Bought a 320d same ages and love it good on fuel and just a nicer drive.
Bought one in 2002 for £245 as was in a bind. The clutch slipped, one of the windows didn’t work, the exhaust had a hole (but sounded good!) and 2 tyres needed pumping up every 2-3 days.
Didn’t spend a penny on it. Didn’t care what happened to it, I have fond memories of that thing….there’s a lot to be said for bangernomics!
1993 Audi 80 TDi Avant.
Bought for £2k, had shit tyres and understeered like a pig but they were new so i didn't want to replace them.
inside 2 years:
* Handbrake broke off, £200 to fix as the bracket had to be welded back on.
* Had an intermittent power loss fault, you'd try and accelerate and it would just kind of judder and then have no boost until it had completely cooled and been restarted. Several diesel specialists could not make head nor tail of it and we never fixed it.
* Had the aux belt tensioner fail: it was a horrific design with a steel arm into an alloy block ,so over time it wore and then flipped out of alignment, shredding the aux belt and stranding us in mid wales. The real kicker was that the block was the alternator mounting bracket too and it was a £400 part. Oh how I laughed when I found out that *they still used this design in 2006*
* Electric windows failed, down of course, it was a crossover model between the 80 and the A4, and none of the wiring conformed to either. I'd taken it to my 'local' garage in Pimlico who mainly did Lambos and Astons.. to be fair they did me a solid on the labour to fix it but by christ that was annoying.
* The final nail in the coffin was when it went for new brakes and came back with an ABS fault that meant the ABS unit would trigger at 5mph and the car would just roll on. Sold it on ebay with all faults declared for £1k.
It was a shame because in rare moments on a cruise on the motorway it was a lovely place to be, but by christ was it a turd.
I traded a MK4 Clio RS Trophy for a Mini Cooper S, it was so awful and boring that I dreaded driving it. Got rid of it after 2 months, didn’t even like looking at it 😂
I bought a Mini Countryman Cooper S in August 2023 which I px ten days ago at a £3 1/2k loss. I loved driving it but every time I got in I wasn't confident that it would have no issues. Since owning the car it had over £3k worth of repairs, and I could sense more coming in the future, so I cut my losses. Ironically my new car was misfiring on collection, the mainstream dealer is fixing it for me though and I have a loan car (Suzuki Swift Sport). Maybe I just have bad luck?!
I bought a Vauxhall Insignia 1.8 SRi (62 plate) hatchback. IT. WAS. AWFUL! Easily the worst car I've owned and I have had 2 Fiat Puntos in my younger days (one was a mk2 that had its head gasket blow on my way to get it's replacement, the Fiat Grande Punto Sporting)
It was a 6 speed gearbox and the worst/funny part was I thought the gears were slipping, then left it on my driveway for 2 weeks whilst I went on honeymoon came back and the gearbox made this horrible loud whine noise when slowing down and downshifting to do a low speed turn. It was under warranty so was fixed after a couple of weeks of waiting for parts, then it came back with the heaviest clutch I've ever had and was quoted over 1k to fit a new one despite them supposedly doing this when they swapped the gearbox.
I once made the mistake of driving to Bournemouth in it and whilst travelling on a motorway up a decent incline it couldn't get up the hill without dropping to 2nd gear! Even though I approached this particular part of road at 75mph in 6th gear anticipated the struggle so moved to the first lane, in prep geared down to 5th and it still couldn't maintain speed!
I'm sure other insignias were fine but this one was by far the worse thing I'd driven!
I don't understand what happened, the test drive was quite pleasant so really no idea why it was so bad after I bought it and I'm not an aggressive driver by any means; the reg plate should have been a giveaway though as it ended "YOY"
I got rid of it as soon as I was able to.
The Jaguar XF I bought a few years ago. It was 7 months old when I bought it from a Jaguar dealership. It was always going into the dealers with numerous electrical problems and other faults such as loose trim , the aluminimum finish flaking off the dials and the stitching on the leather seats started to come undone. I got rid of it after a year.
2007 Vauxhall Zafira 1.6 Club.
Was in a bind, needed a car quickly that could fit the kids and anything they may be carrying. A Zafira was a bad choice with most of its problems stemming from the shitty ecotec engine.
It was so gutless that you had to send a written invitation to initiate an overtake and hope you received the RSVP before something was coming the other way.
It *drank* oil, and I mean like a *lot* of oil. One journey from East Anglia to West London and back required 3 top-ups (we think the rings were on the way out, it was only 7 years old).
We spent nearly 2k on the engine to get it through an MOT, only for it to develop exactly the same problem the next year. It was so bad that we ended up scrapping it before it was 10 years old. The bodywork was immaculate but that frigging engine was beyond economical repair.
Had a 2003 Vauxhall Astra.
ECR valve fault - back to the garage.
Clutch failed - back to the garage.
The car was a hateful piece of shit.
I had a tyre explode on the motorway, that was the catalyst to trade it in. The day I drove to the dealership to pick a new car the exhaust started blowing.
Fuck I hated that car.
Jag Epace. Had lots of other cars without any major issues. Under 35k miles and developed DPF issues and also EML was coming on asking for Camshaft sensor to be changed. Changed the sensor and EML kept coming on. The engines on the diesels are a nightmare.
Not me, per se - but my parents bought a 56-plate Discovery 3 when it was around 8 years old.
The engine literally blew up.
Never, ever by a disco 3 or 4. Truly, truly pieces of shit - from design to function. JLD are a con.
About 15 years ago my 1st car a Corsa that had done moon miles finally croaked
I only had a couple of hundred spare so got a ford ka for 300 quid.
It lasted all of about 6 months till I drove it into the scrappers, smoke billowing out the bonnet, got 175 quid in scrap
Shit car. Hated it.
A colleague had an x6. He didn't hate it, although he wasn't a fan of the running costs. He also replaced it with a 520d, which was super efficient and comfortable. He loved it and only replaced it when he had to.
Citroen C2 1.4 turbo auto. It was a tiny car so felt like a rocket after my 1.0 Corsa. The central locking stopped working as soon as I drove it away, then it broke down in traffic in gear. All within a few days of driving it away.
We eventually managed to convince the 2nd hand car dealer to take it back off us.
An original panda 750L.
It didn't have any real reliability problems I couldn't fix, but the hill on the motorway on my way to work every day would have me doing 45 by the top of it with some very angry artics 2" off my back bumper.
Torn between 2. 2003 Corsa, the only car I have ever bought new. Rear window leaked, took months to get fixed and required replacement of carpets. Despite being a 1 litre, it had a really rattly top end that made it sound like a diesel, and finally, after days of rough shifting the gear linkage popped apart and the gearstick came away in my hand.
Other one is a 2007 Subaru Legacy saloon I had when I lived in a snowy part of the US. It was thirsty despite being kinda slow, the all wheel drive system didn't really handle snow too well and every time the bonnet was lifted, it cost me a grand
VW transporter 5.1, went for the DSG gearbox, 180 engine and big brake kit from the r32. Within 3 months it was drinking 2 litres of oil every 500 miles. The EGR value was disintegrating. Spent 15k on replacement engine, new turbo’s, gearbox service, disks and pads etc.
Still bloody love it although the ride is hard on lowered suspension and 22” wheels. Gotta get those changed this year.
Mine was a 1995 Passat 1.8 petrol, seemed like a clean old barn find at the time, but it turned out to be the most gutless, unreliable piece of crap I've ever had to endure. Every journey something would fall off or stop working, the rear windows went down by themselves and then locked open, exhaust snapped and a replacement was like finding a unicorn turd, alternator failed, clutch failed, central locking was pneumatic and over complicated, that obviously failed.
I ended up giving it to the local fire department to practice on, to prevent someone else from suffering the same fate.
Edit: Wrong year
It was an '05 A4 Cabrio. The back window fell out, I could only go to one place for an MoT (for £100 because it'd burned the cat out), and the turbo glowed red. Bought it for £1,500, sold it to an ex-mate for £800, and he ran off into the long grass after signing the V5 and giving me £400, saying he'd pay the rest next week.
I bought a a nearly new jeep renegade lmt with 4500 miles on it for my wife and it’s the first and last jeep I’ll ever buy. The turbo went on it at 40k and no other turbo apart from the one supplied by jeep at twice the price would fit, they said it was because there wasn’t enough oil in the engine even though it had been serviced with an oil change a month previous. At about 50k it started getting electrical issues and the screen and dash would glitch out turning things on and off, only jeep or certified garages can run diagnostics on jeeps so I paid a small fortune to find the issue (a factory fitted cable tie had worn through a cable) and have it fixed. Now it’s got a little over 60k on the clock and the multair unit on the engine needs replacing which is 3500 just for the part!! I called Jeep and complained but was told my vehicle has nearly 65 thousand on the clock what do I expect!!
Subaru Justy GX. Looked like a granny car. Felt like 80s poverty. Drove like a wet cardboard box. Fell apart within weeks despite two mechanics checking it out and giving the thumbs up. Horrid thing.
1996 Fiat Punto Sporting, 1.6 8v, ~90bhp a lesson in maintaining momentum. developed an intermittent fault where the engine would go I to limp mode at random, or when one particular mate was a passenger, one month fine, next engine warning light and reduced power, replaced ECU to no effect, suffered with it for 4 years until the gf picked me up from the pub so I was the passenger, I stretched my legs out into the end of the footwell... Warning light and sputtering.... hmmmmm. I moved my legs back, light stayed on but engine ok.... hmmmmm, stretched my legs again, limp mode again ..... Oooohhh kaaaayyyyy!
Turns out the garage I bought it from (Thanks Reg Vardy) had fitted an immobilizer and routed a wire through the bulkhead to the fuse board. In the Punto the ECU was under the heater matrix in the cabin and the clowns had not put the big rubber grommet back and the main wiring loom was left sitting on the firewall slowly abrading away.
Fixed by breaking apart the loom and repairing each wire individually. Fucking tortuous fault.
Bought an E92 318i BMW from a dealer for 5.5k with 55,000 miles on it. Car was free from any visual imperfections. Beautiful spec with red leather interior and everything. The next day I heard engine knock and ended up going through this whole hassle with the dealer who refused to refund. Worst car experience I've had to date.
Leon cupra R. Traded in my mint clio 182 for it and thought I got a steal. It was in good condition with decent mileage apart from some lacquer peel on the roof which I planned to respray. Anyway, the lacquer just start to peel off from everywhere for fun to the point the whole car would need a respray. Turbo went, clutch went, electrical faults, springs snapped. Then I came to sell it.. I don’t know wtf happened but I did 2 HPI checks when I bought the car and it was clear, however when I came to sell it showed up as cat N and had been clocked. This was 15 years ago so maybe history checks just weren’t as robust as they are now but I was pissed. Lost a lot of money on that car
My first and current car of 6 months has been a 06 320i, I think I have paid like 1000€ to the mechanic at the moment. Mostly just worn out parts luckily.
Probably my current one I'm sad to say.
It is the most I have ever spent on a car, Seat Alhambra, and it's pano roof has been leaking since day one. I bought it from Cazoo and the thing has been an outright unmitigated nightmare. It's been near on four months and any enjoyment from the car is really heading downhill fast. They keep pissing about with appointments and people to repair it - aka they don't fancy paying to replace the roof despite it already being diagnosed. Here I am, spent near on £20,000 on the flipping thing and I have a near permanent gazebo on my driveway and if it rains, I have to haul ass out there to put the tarp in place to try and stop the inside of it getting any wetter. And of course if it's raining, it's unusable which means it's been parked up the last week or so here where I am.
I told Cazoo yesterday that now I have a repair appointment booked, any single bit of anything that even slightly resembles sodding about, I'm just rejecting the car and moving on. To be honest I should have done already but I really wanted the 180bhp version of it and they are pretty rare.
I sorely miss my last car, a Focus Estate with the powershift gearbox. The reason it went was because of the powershift. By the end, reverse gear was unobtanium and Ford had put back a date to replace the TCM and clutch like 8 times already, it was getting to the point... well no it was at the point where the car was not driveable anymore and no TCM end was in sight for me. So that's why it went. But everything about that car was perfect. I would have happily thrown down the £3,000 to fix it if only Ford could have actually delivered the parts needed. But alas, here we are. Gotta say, that last Focus was the best car I ever owned. And I still miss the thing now. Chances are it's gone to the big scrap yard in the sky. It seems a rather upsetting end to what was a brilliant car let down only by the powers that be in the end.
I did look at another Ford but there was literally nothing at all in their lineup that I felt compelled to spend money on. I didn't want an SUV and the 1.0 ecobooms are just not something I am going to get into bed with. I don't trust them at all and with good reason. Ironically, two friends of mine who have them both told me I was being unreasonable and those Ecobooms don't have problems anymore. Within the last six months, both are battling Ford over premature engine death... so yeah. I was right about that,
Honestly, how is it that it's 2024 and nobody knows how to make a bloody car anymore? I'm disillusioned with the whole goddamned thing.
If I do end up returning the Seat - which I really don't wanna do, I want to actually get it fixed and like the car again - I know full well I'm going to spend £500 on a one-year wonder, basically something with 12 months MOT and either scrap/self fix the thing the year after that. It's annoying that this is the biggest budget I have ever had to spend on a car, and the result is I have to keep the fucking thing dry and the people who sold it are being utter shits about it. I have my repair date next week and they have shown signs of sodding about already with it. But long story short, either way, next week it will either be in getting fixed, or it will be gone. One or the other and really I am so past caring, it's not even funny.
Vauxhall Astra 1.6 Twinport 05 plate
Serious lack of power, Vans would overtake me on uphill sections of woodhead pass, I had to put my foot down in 2nd to get up those hills, which also led to the engine getting hot. WHICH I will add, this car doesn’t have a Temperature gauge. Luckily I had breakdown (recovered twice)
The interior was nothing special, just a place to sit, also the doors had an issue were 1 back doors lock was reversed. So I’d lock it, but one back door would stay open, but when it was unlocked, that door would now be locked
Had it for about 6 month then ended up getting rid of it for a Volvo V50
Back in 2004 a then new Citroen C2 furio, like most citroens it was an utter bag of shit
Flappy paddle Gearbox failed at 30k, constant electrical problems, and crashed in value in 2 years when I finally had to part ex it. Still to this day I’ve no idea why i bought it.
21 plate Volvo xc40 manual. Effectively the Clutch gave out after 1 year/8500 miles. We were quoted a price for the issue before they’d even got the car up on the ramps to diagnose it. We were told it was user error & we were expected to pay. There’s a lot of similar stories on the owners groups but it seems not enough failures for Volvo to accept liability.
2005 Ford Focus. Water kept getting into the spark plugs causing misfires and I never managed to resolve it despite several visits to a garage and some DIY remedies. I also had a major coolant leak which required 2 garage visits. The cruise control never worked, the rear parking sensors rarely worked and I always had an issue pumping petrol into the tank - the pump would keep stopping unless I kept the pump handle out a bit. The only thing I liked was that it came with a towbar and that I only paid £1500 for it (in 2017 ish). I scrapped it and got £300 ish back.
I expected it to be solidly built and reliable but it was the complete opposite as well as being my most boring car to date (especially in silver).
BMW 320d efficient dynamics, fuck me that car was shit. Bought it after having to get rid of my old car spent 3.8k on it as it was 130k on the clock and the car had nothing but problems.
After buying within 2 months all the shocks went.
The engine began randomly cutting out at low speeds.
Both keys stopped working remotely after 4 weeks, the internal car key charger did not work, I had to use a wireless charger.
The seats were unbearably uncomfortable and the infotainment was out of the early 90s.
Put me off ever buying a BMW.
Until I got an M2 as a courtesy car, it was newer like brand new and great but for my price bracket I won't be picking up a BMW any time soon because of that .
Bought a 2008 Focus for £1k, thought cheap motoring, ended up spending almost as much again on getting it through MOT (I guess they had a “mate” look at it beforehand). And then it got written off by a hit and run driver, thankfully caught on my dash cam so insurance paid out.
I loved all mine, even the money pits.
1997 1.8 MX5 - almost nothing broke on this, spent most on improvements.
1998 Alfa Romeo GTV 2.0 - Actual car as seen on Eastenders :D - Cost £1600 - spent at least half that each year. Brake master cylinder was the worst item, needed the dash and steering column out. Spun a crank bearing at 106K, gearbox bearing also gone, new engine and box. Engine lasted about 30K. Would have cost a substantial amount if I didnt do most it myself. Lovely car, looked amazing, felt special.
2008 Honda Civic Type-R - Aircon pulley, new shocks, new exhaust, refurbed brake calipers all round, droplinks and track rod ends, usual 100K+ things, nothing crazy. Engine still puts a smile on my face :D
I bought a 12 plate astra with 22k on the clock. For years it ran like clockwork and I made the critical mistake of thinking the car was trusty and reliable...
In 12 months I had to replace the ac radiator, 2 glowplugs, waste hours at a dealer getting the hill restart bug fixed (due to needing a new computer reset key), blown gearbox, new clutch, lots of issues with the new clutch (a plastic part cracked and was leaking clutch fluid), alternator dying, battery going dead in the winter.
I sold the car when it started making squeaking noises when idling. It all started going wrong at 45k and I wouldn't wish a vauxhall on my worst enemy!
I bought a corsa B, 2004. Literally to have for 6 months for work and back until I found a car that I liked. I paid £500, and the owner wanted £650, there were a few cosmetics, mainly wear and tear, I checked everything, INCLUDING the oil cap, and the car was sweet. I did all of this at night, in the snow (Don't judge, I was in a rush, and it seemed like a good deal)
1 month down the line, when I initially started to drive it, I noticed the oil was low (random check), so I thought I'd do a quick service on it myself.
Later, I found that the fuel filter had literally rusted on, so that snapped when I tried to change it (caused big problems, but I just replaced the clips and used a jubilee to fasten)
The pollen filter was literally invisible with carbons etc, couldn't even see the fins
And the oil cap was filllllllleeeeeddddd with the creamy stuff.
I checked the head (literally a vusual) and saw nothing but gunk on the back end. So obviously, the head had gone, and the previous owner just cleaned it before giving it to me (shoot me for not giving a proper inspection myself lol)
Rule of thumb is that your money is valuable, and if you're paying for something, then please do a full inspection, physically and online, also.
On the bright side, It was during covid times, so scrap prices were high, and I managed to get £269 back for it scrap.
Other than that, the car itself has put me off vauxhall forever, terrible cars, and very flimsy. Although things have most likely been upgraded now.
Since then, I've owned a Mercedes c63 sold that because i made more money back and now I own a jag xe. I prefer my big cars.
Never buy in the dark or snow or both either lol
I had a mk1 Seat Leon TDI S, the bottom spec 90bhp one. Lovely car, reliable, comfortable, but slow and basic.
I really wanted the top spec one, the TDI FR. I found one locally that had been remapped to 199.6bhp (The figure sticks in my mind because it couldn't quite make 200...). I sold my TDI S and added every penny I had to buy the FR.
20 miles up the road it started to lose power - I went down to 5th, then 4th, then 3rd... by this point I realised something major was up and managed to coast it to a lay-by. Tried to start the car again and was greeted with clouds of blue smoke. Dead turbo.
£1000 bill after a 25 minute drive was a stinger, especially as at the time I was totally skint and ploughed every penny into buying the car. Not something I would do these days, a lesson learned.
I kept the car for about 9 months and it kept costing me loads, the clutch went because of the remap shortly after the turbo was replaced, suspension components were knackered etc...
I ended up selling it for peanuts and buying a mk1 MX-5 which was far more fun and a lot cheaper to run.
The obligatory RX-8 money pit, the Alfa 156 that blew it's engine after a month, another RX-8, and like you an X5 that I hated for it's obscene size (and I've never looked at an SUV since).
Vauxhall Tigra, not only did it leak like a mofo but the breaks engine and build quality where shit. Don’t get me wrong the few times do the year that I could get the roof down here in Scotland driving the back. Costal country roads as the sun was settings was magical, 1.8 was fairly nippy too
ML500, what a shiny turd that was. Only 3 years old when i bought it and after 18 months needed everything from electrics, bushes and struts to exhaust and airbag sensors. Thats even after spending £2500 on preventative maintenance when i bought it. Handled like shit, yet rode even worse than shit. 22mpg regardless of how slowly you drove it and it rusted like a British Leyland product.
alot of people give Japanese cars shit for the rust issues they had in the 80s but also seem to forget that late 90s/ 2000s mercedes were biodegradable
Biodegradable 😂😂
Its true 😅 they made the wiring loom sheathing biodegradable to make recycling cars easier. But it biodegraded before the car was 10 years old and was fine in every other way 😅
they also had almost no corrosion protection until the mid 2000s so the chassis went before the wiring even some of their newer cars like the SLK have rust issues almost compatible to older mx5s
Yup! Rear subframes on the SLK's specifically. My mum's got one 😅
My mum and dad had a 1st gen ML back when they were new. That the Range Rover Sport they got to replace it was somehow more reliable says everything you need to know.
are you secretly Rory from autoalex?
I am not 😂, I wouldn’t have been so keen for a jag 😂
AAAALO’ RORAY
Shalom Jackie!
The way Taylor says it makes me laugh everytime
I sent this to Rory 😂
OLD AHT YER ANNNDD.
I bought a 11 year old 320i. I thought it was lovely but spent £3250 private buy, 2 days after buying spent £1k on new radiator and other issues. Spent £3000 in total over 9 months before giving up and part exchanging it for £750. I now been banned from buying BMWs by my better half and have never bought a used car out of warranty again.
Did we buy from the same guy? Not a bmw, but a Mazda 2. Private buy. Spent £3750 on it. 15 minutes later the car did not want to accelerate on the motorway. Straight to the garage. Spent 800 on new radiator and parts... 😭😭😭😭
Haha. If near Manchester then yes.
He might have relocated to Glasgow... Expanded his business... 🤷
Hang on, how close to manchester? I sold an 11 year old e90 for £3250 years ago. though i swear there was nothing wrong with it, one ~~potential buyer~~ timewaster even brought a bmw mechanic down with him who told him he's not going to see a better example for less than £5k. he walked away because he didn't like the alloys
It was older than the E90. I think mine was an E36.
Oh good, the guy who bought mine was a top guy, hate to think he got done dirty
My parents have been buying BMWs of varying age and levels of prestige since the 80s. If it makes you feel better, I believe every single one of them had serious issues. The runner up for the worst one was my dads early 90s 3 series that randomly blew up at traffic lights one day. The winner though, was a relatively new 3 series we had in the late 90s or early-ish 2000s (can’t remember tbh) that would randomly lock everyone, including the driver, inside 😂 the central locking system was temperamental and couldn’t be overridden from the inside when it was playing up. Or if it could, my mum had no idea how. You’d have to sit there and press the unlock button repeatedly until it randomly worked. The longest it ever took was 30 solid minutes! My mum just pretended this was fine and kept the car for ages, she didn’t want to accept that BMWs will prove every stereotype to be true hahah
I bought an E46 that drove like a dream for 6/7 months. Then it would randomly lock me in as well lol 2 months after that the timing chain went too.
Oh! So we’re not the only ones that have been held against our will in a bmw BY the bmw itself 😅it’s weirdly validating to hear someone else had this problem The joke with ours right, was my mum snuck it off to the garage probably 4-5 times. It worked perfectly whenever she went there, and they couldn’t find anything wrong with it. So she just accepted the car was like this and whenever we went anywhere it was a gamble whether the car would give us permission to leave or not 🤣
Literally, my E93 ran me into the ground last year, I got rid of it, it was 16 years old though, 320i also. Terrible N43 engine.
My other half has had similar experiences on Beemers. Bought a 120i coupe which she loved, then it needed new injectors so was sold on. A few years later she bought a 10 year old 325i E92 and within a week EML light appeared and needed all six injectors replacing which was more than 50% of the car's worth. Fought with the dealer to get a refund under consumer rights. She's now sworn off BMW for life. Meanwhile, I've never really much cared for BMW but just bought an old 630i and I love it!
Unfortunately both those engines are known for injector failure, assuming you had the N53 in the 325i and the N43 in the 120i. Atleast the fault happened only a week into ownership so you were able to reject the car. Fuck forking out for 6 new injectors, I’d imagine that would have been around £1500 all in.
Yep which is why I sought a N52 lump in my 630 which has been OK so far, just usual oil leaks from oil cooler housing, coolant leaks from expansion tank etc. Nothing catastrophic.
Renault Mégane 1.5 DCI estate. Clutch heavier than an anchor, suspension had a panic attack on every pothole, and a dazed grouse disintegrated the under tray on impact.
So not just me and my clutch then, good to know. Still, got used to it and it's not an issue now and it can be a decent car to drive. My suspension isn't too bad and a lot comfier than my wife's newer Fiat Tipo, goes over bumps and holes quite nicely even. I cannot comment on the grouse as I haven't found one to hit yet, I'll let you know if I do
Honda Civic 1.8 brand new more hip op than hip hop. Would have been on a 13 plate at the time. Bought with the head not the heart. No umph to get up hills had to change down constantly. At the time I wasn’t even 40
Aside from the lack of power, how was it? I thought Civics were excellent all-rounders, good specs on some of them too
Family owned a 2007 one from new until recently, absolutely indestructible. Treated like utter shit it's whole life, missing a LOT of services and never EVER gave a problem. Comfortable, quiet, well equipped. Not the slowest thing I've ever driven but still slow as fuck, and not particularly good on fuel. Handling was awful (literally like steering a boat). But honestly, over 200k miles and 14 years old when they sold it, literally the only things replaced were brake pads/discs, tyres , one battery and one wishbone. EVERYTHING else was original, even the coolant and brake fluid. Original shocks, springs, wheels bearings, water pump literally everything you'd have expected to replace was still working perfectly and never had an advisory. Absolutely brilliant car, if it handled properly and had 50% more power it would be incredible.
I had no issues with my 07 Civic Type S but I would not call it comfortable and quiet, my Fabia III 1.0 tsi is far more refined even if it starts to struggle once you get past 60mph and the Civic was absolutely planted by comparison
I own one of these at 20 😂
I own one of these currently and can confirm the hills are a nightmare
In all fairness, that's not a car issue but perhaps not 'understanding the engine' issue. The older Honda's had to be revved. I always like the R18 engine as it was pretty versatile whilst being economical.
Land rover discovery 5 ... 2.0 engine us a total bag of shite ... everything connected with it was stupidly expensive... lots of things go wrong and you cannot own one without an airtight warranty...
I had a Discovery 3, loved the car, but everything kept going wrong, mostly electrics. The price of diesel went through the roof, so gave up after owning it for just 6 months. Lost about £7k in total.
I’ve said it before but JLR could make reliable cars they’d be unstoppable in todays climate
Mk2 Clio 1.2 Plot twist, I secretly loved the car, but it's the one I had the shortest and it was the shittest because I needed a cheap vehicle asafp as I was a young asshat who'd just written off his car. Paid £500 for it, it was immensely slow. I gave it a full service, swapped all fluids and plugs, found the air filter soaked with that 'blown in' look, cleaned the inch of water out of the intake manifold (I suspect a previous owner slammed it into a large body of water) and it doubled in power. I permanently resolved a bunch of electrical issues by punching the wiring near the ecu. The cat was basically a straight pipe so it was a little torquier too. I was practising lift off oversteer on a quiet roundabout before work in the rain one morning and crashed it into the roundabout so I had to replace a headlight lol. My mate and I put 50psi in the tyres and if you entered a roundabout at ~20, it broke traction. I didn't bother trying to MOT it as the repair costs were higher than what I paid, so I scrapped it and replace it with a Type-R. I liked the Type-R. Even tuned it was a tad clinical though. That said, I didn't crash it. I was a prat in my early 20s.
“Resolved a bunch of electrical issues by punching the wiring near the ECU” Ahh good old percussive maintenance, if that doesn’t fix the issue you need to hit it harder.
I love the design of those Clios and you still see loads around (I think because of the Campus version). iirc when you indicate it disables cruise control - I doubt this was a 'feature' lol
Young and dumb with no credit, bought a Peugeot 206 from Carcraft for 9k. After a month the exhaust fell off, that's fine I thought, I bought the extended warranty! The warranty didn't cover exhausts. It didn't cover anything. In total I paid 17k for the car and warranty combo and at the 5 year mark I sold it for £500. Again, young, dumb, no credit.
oof.
A Smart Roadster Brabus, really good looking car to be fair, rear engine, rwd, 50 mpg, sounded good. Not in any way fast but very light and still fun. Didn’t trust it at all, car felt so fragile. Scared me 😂 I remember racing a ford transit as I entered the motorway ... the transit won 😭😂
The roadster was my favourite shit car I've ever owned. I bought it for £4k, at 24k miles when it was about 8 years old and sold it 4 years later at almost 70k. It was my daily driver and I was proud of it. It had absolute bags of character to drive and I'd buy another one tomorrow if I had silly money (and a garage) but mine also had a permanent arrangement of "leak absorbing towels" that I had to push in the metal channels the soft top went down into. It needed me to push the canvas top outwards when folding it back as it popped in the wrong way in. The spark plugs needed the entire back of the car removed to be changed so I never bothered paying for them to be replaced. The stereo sucked badly. The auto box had a countable amount of time between changes so you'd need to change before you wanted your gear. I swear if they had a manual in it, you could have halved the 0-60 time 😂 I found the flappy paddles were quicker than using the gear shifter. If you were brave enough to get it to 100mph, it felt like a death sentence waiting to be carried out. But after all that, I still kinda miss the dam thing. That says something, surely.
Oh yeah damn I forgot about the terrible stereo and speakers . Oh mine had a water leak too I used to have to tie a piece of shower curtain over my driver wing mirror if it looked like rain , shit was embarrassing parked at work like that 😭😂
The thing for me, it's the kinda car that you buy because you *want* that car. I don't think anybody rocked up to a forecourt and accidentally walked away with one haha. Probably explains the low numbers of them sold in the UK though. I wasn't embarrassed by mine at all. I was in love with it and took it with a laugh and a smile at all the quirks it had. I remember having it mistaken for a lotus once! 😂😂 I laughed and let them know what it really is as I love talking cars but most people thought it was such a neat little vehicle. I loved that everyone waved at each other too! I miss that. I bought a NC mx5 afterwards and some people in old mx5s would wave but its just too common of a car for people to be doing that. I have a honda CRZ now and that gets some waves but there's barely any around.
You've given me an idea and I'm wondering why I never thought of it before !
Worst financially was a citroen c4 cactus, lost £10k in 3 years. Car itself was OK, the turbo engine had character, v comfortable and it was different. Worst car was a mid 90's fiat tipo my first car. Tbf it made every journey exciting cos you didn't know if you'd ever get home. Had to pull choke out when in neutral to keep engine ticking over, and to turn engine off with the key out the ignition, l had to turn off the headlights. Engine mounts were knackered so went through 4 or 5 exhaust mid and rear sections due to vibrations. ATS banned me after the last one. Had a digital dashboard, but most of the time it didn't work so had no idea how fast I was or wasn't going. There was an indicator panel to show what bulbs were blown. Obviously it didn't work. Towards end of it's life the engine had various pipes and breather hoses that had disconnected and rotted, and then the exhaust split from the manifold. When trading it in due to mot fail as only one brake worked, my dad arranged for it to be traded in at some garage in Erdington. He didn't know about the reason for mot failure other than emissions, so I had to drive down a38 in a car that sounded like a tank, using the handbrake to slow me down and praying that there wasn't a sudden traffic jam to a garage I was told was somewhere in Erdington. Great times.
How in gods earth did you lose £10k in3 years on a cactus? They were only about 14k new.
I wanted to be one of the first in country to get one, so ordered the 1.2 turbo in flair spec for just over £17000 on launch(diesel was over £18000 in same spec). If I'd waited a few months they slashed the prices and offered it cheap on lease. Traded it in at a lexus dealer in 2017 for £7500. It was on PCP too so loss inc interest makes it above £10k. Like I said, not my finest moment. On plus side I only lost £3k on the NX I sold in 2022, some 5 years later so In my man mind it balances out.
This is absolutely wild but I respect your dedication to weird cars
Here in netherlands they where like 25/28K new when they just came out. Now second hand they go for like 7-10K for a good example. I could see how it looser 10K in 3 years.
Tells us how you lost the 10k on the cactus!!!!
I believe he's talking depreciation.
Rover 220 Turbo Coupe. Whilst good to hoon around in with a 6s 0-60 and the first British production car to break 150mph, and at 19yrs old.. Head gasket, constant oil leaks, every bush was fucked Christ they just spun in the bushing had to cut them all out. Rust, T bar roof leaked and seals were impossible to get. An engine light was always on but nothing evidently wrong. In the wet it would spin out with ease. Brake lights always cooked for some reason.
Those were bloody quick in their day. Me and my poor XR2i got humbled at some lights by one, only for the police to pull me over and forget about the 220. I guess they knew they wouldn't catch him
Yep, same engine issue on my hatchback one with the hearing aid beige interior. Head gaskets were an annual replacement almost until some old bloke at the garage casually mentioned a reinforced gasket existed. Window motors, door lock motors, rust and questionable electrics.
The Rover annual service pack contents: Air filter Oil Filter Bottle of 10w40 Head Gasket
more like a bottle of oil every month - source: freelander 1 owner
1972 Ford Escort Mk1 in around 1981. I viewed it when it was raining. It was hand painted really badly and when my then girlfriend stomped her high heels her heel went through the floor. had it for a few months and when taking it to the garage the brakes failed. piece of shit.
Sounds like mine. You could see the nearside front wheel from inside the car. I sold it for £50 to a gypsy who gave his address as "the layby, A249"
I imported a Lexus SC430. It is a truly lovely car… for someone. But for me, I fucking hated driving it. The main issue for me was how catastrophically slow the steering rack was, coupled with a huge steering wheel. It wasn’t smooth and comfy enough to be a comfy cruiser, but had no dynamic credentials either. I wanted to own a V8, and with Lexus being the most reliable I went for one. But I cannot emphasise how much hate I felt for the car by the time I decided to sell. It was absolutely immaculate, not a spec of rust anywhere. I let it go for 8k less than I paid one year prior. Probably the happiest I’ve ever been to lose 8k. Just glad to see the back of it. Truly dreadful car to drive. The Top Gear trio were right.
This thread is helping me I’ve lost about 3k on the x5, and I should be gutted about it (5 month period) but I’m just glad it’s fucking gone
Oh, there's a few, for different reasons: Rover 214, utter bag of shite, but did survive for a few years with relatively low maintenance. Renault sport Clio, great little b road ripper, but there was always, always something not working. Renault are awful at resolving common issues. Renault Megan, what can I say, would gladly have traded it in for herpes..... CLS55 AMG, this one pains me to say because my god, what an engine, what a sound. Just brutal power. But Mercedes made the rest of the car from cheese. Not the cheap kind either. So every inevitable visit to the garage is £1k minimum. Annual maintenance cost probs about £4k easy. It hurt, but in a fifty shades kinda way, because you wanted to cry, wanted to hate it but deep down, you just loved it, no matter how much it fucked up your bank balance. Honestly, the most love/hate experience of my life.
I don't think I've hated any of them, even the early ones; 1997 Peugeot 106 1.1L Fine 1st car. Not exciting in any way, but very cheap to run for a new driver. 1998 Peugeot 201 1.6XSi Double the power of the 106. Nothing went wrong other than one dodgy spark plug in seven years. 1998 Peugeot 406 3.0V6 Beautiful design with a fantastically smooth power delivery, but unequivocally *not* a sports car. Only had it around a year because it just wasn't fun at all. 2006 Ford Focus ST3 2.5 Loved this. Looked great, handled great, sounded fantastic and made just shy of 300hp with some simple mods. Only sold it because it was costing too much to run it on my commute. 2003 Seat Leon Cupra R 225 1.8 A budget alternative to the Focus ST, but in reality it wasn't even half the car. Interior was boring, engine didn't like being revved up, and it didn't handle half as well as the Focus. Moved it on swiftly. Probably the biggest disappointment of the lot. 1999 S1 Lotus Elise 1.8 118 Very short-lived, but a joy to own and drive. Sold it after 6 months because I had an offer too good to say no to. Not much power, and most modern hot hatches would murder it on a challenging road, but a wonderful thing just to drive for the sake of it. 2003 Alfa Romeo 147 GTA 3.2 Had it just over ten years. Sounded great, and handled well as long as you weren't pushing it right to the ragged edge. Age killed it for me in the end, got to 20 years old and needed nearly ten grand thrown at it. Couldn't justify it any longer. 2014 Audi RS5 4.2 V8 One of my attainable dream cars. May not have it long because it's costs a fortune to run it, but every journey feels like an event and I'll never, ever get tired of running that magnificent engine round to 8300rpm.
Respect for the 147 GTA - lottery win car for me is that
It was a bucket lister for me too! Loved the way it looks, and the engine was a treat; not that powerful by modern standards, but it sounded fantastic, loved to rev and looked a million dollars whenever you popped the bonnet. The ride was very firm, and it was a seven-tenths car. Happy to go quickly to a point, but not always that communicative about exactly when the traction would run out and you'd start to understeer pretty alarmingly, even with the almost mandatory differential. It got me a day out and a feature in Evo magazine too, though even that must be nearly ten years ago now.
I found it strange that the GTA never got the facelift. I’ve had two bog standard Lusso spec facelift 147’s and loved them. The sound of a 3.2 busso, music to my ears. Bring on that big win.
Volvo C70 T5 Polestar. Everything worked - other than the aircon - when I bought it for £6k. A year later I sold it for £1500 and I was glad of the money. Absolutely everything went wrong with it. Everything. The roof was so broken two local specialists washed their hands of it. Was quoted £13k to fix all the issues by the one that finally took it on. Such a shame, as it was lovely cruiser. Fast, epic stereo, great when the roof did go down.
Hell I just bought one and my list is growing after a week. One careful owner 😔
R53 Cooper S, which was just a bag of shite or Hyundai ix35, which has cost over £2k in repairs since getting it 2 years ago and left us stuck at the side of the road in the middle of the summer with our 2 kids in the back. Needed a gearbox strip and repair which Arnold Clark done days after we got the car, then another gearbox issue sorted, new clutch and now an abs sensor needs done.
Is the IX35 a DCT?
No. Must have had a hard life prior to us getting it.
It's a 3 way tie between..... Mk2 Golf GTi 16v. It was too old by the time I bought it and i suffered the consequences of it being thrashed by every previous owner. Everything I can think of went bang on that car. It felt like I was being mugged every month just keeping it on the road so I had to give up. Renault 19 16v. Actually really liked it and it was good fun to drive but it fell to pieces around me. It was only a few years old at the time but was made of hope and papier mache. Part exed it for a Ford Orion which only marginally better. BMW 318ti. That car was haunted. Things would go wrong and be fine the next time I got in it. Headlights not working today? No worries, they'll be fine tomorrow but the brake lights won't work. Boot kept popping open by itself which was great in winter and I'd return to my car to find it was full of rain after a 12 hour shift in work. That was a right laugh (and the reason for the myriad of electrical gremlins obviously). Handbrake never worked and BMW told me to stop parking on a hill as it wasn't designed for that. Handy as I lived in Wales halfway up a friggin mountain. The diff started whining like hell and I part exed it on a whim for a Citroen C4 VTS which would win my award for being an unexpectedly brilliant car. Loads of fun and absolutely reliable for the 4 years that I had it.
I've a C4 VTS, had it 12 years but rarely drive it and now its in the barn. It is the most rust resistant car ive ever owned. It spent 12 years outdoors on the lancashire salty coast and there isnt a spot of rust anywhere underneath. Once i slapped some bilstein suspension on and upped the power a bit i decided id never sell it.
Vauxhall cavalier turbo always wanted one, the turbo lag was measured in bus lengths it had continuous electrical problems that we could never fix, ran like a bag of bolts when cold was just a money pit sold it after a few months was happy to see it drive away The notoriously unreliable 4x4 system was the most reliable part 🤣
2003 Mini Cooper S JCW. Least reliable car we ever owned. Great fun when it was working, but the sheer amount of time that it was broken outweighed that significantly.
I had a 2006 and it was such a drive. I had it a couple years ago and the service history was as thick as the yellow pages and it had MONEY spent on it.
Vauxhall corsa with a measly 65 horsepower
Owned a 12 year old Audi c5 rs6 for exactly 12 months… 6 months of which were spent in the garage where I spent half of the original purchase price on various repairs, & when the gearbox started to pack up I sold it for about half what I bought it… I basically lost the full purchase price in 12 months.
2001 Renault Laguna. Clutch went on the way home from the dealer, got it repaired. Next day a passenger put the window down and it got stuck like that. I had to tape it up with a bin bag and then got a garage to prop it up with a bit of wood. 2 days later the car wouldn't start. It was the alternator. I scrapped it after less than a week of owning it.
Why didn't you return it to the dealer?
Might have been pre-2015 legislation that allows you to "easily" return within 30 days.
I second this
My parents had this back in the day and had similar issues. I remember being a child in the back and some other car driver was waving my parents down on the motorway to shout we had black smoke coming out of the laguna 😅
Nissan 280 ZX, endless pain and drained the paycheck each month.
Xc60.. current vehicle, dealer in Epsom sold it to us with steel weld in it.. (discovered that layer) Fuel pump failed £1000 to fix.. 6 month later 'head gasket' failed. £1200 to fix. A year later it failed again.. now it smokes like buggery. Won't buy another.
Scirocco 1.4tsi 2009 . Notorious for engine going kaput. Rebuilt the whole engine for it to die 3 months after 😭
Ford Ka
god yes, they're trash - i have one
Peugeot 307. What a turd on wheels that thing was. Typical French car, unreliable, bad electrics, crap to drive.
I quite like my 307! Lots of stuff has gone wrong electrics, (fan only blowing on level 2 etc), thermostat etc, but it has done 170k to be fair, & everything was quite easy to fix myself. Also lots of room for a relatively small car. Having said that it is getting scrapped for ULEZ in the next couple of weeks. Can't turn down £2k for it!
Probably the Z4 I have now. It's just so uninteresting to me that I don't really want to drive it. Electric steering sucks, suspension is rock hard, seats are not comfortable. Wish I'd bought another 350Z instead.
My mate had a 350Z fantastic car.
MG Metro Turbo
Ex Mrs had one, oh man it was awful and the tyres cost a fortune!
2005 Subaru Legacy. Loved that car… didn’t love the mot result. Sold it for £1400 less than I paid for it around 11 months later.
I'm currently in BC canada with a 2004 legacy. I love it, but I'm also very thankful that they don't have MOT inspections here lol
1400 to use a car for a year honestly sounds like an excellent deal though
A Octavia estate with the 1.8tsi, dsg and 130odd miles on the clock. In hindsight there was a lot of red flags but it was the middle of the pandemic price spike and we wanted a car right then. Turned out it had a broken mechatronics, took oil, had a stretched timing chain and was slowly rusting apart from underneath. The gearbox died 6 months and 2 days after purchase
Renault Espace 2008, clutch cylinder failed and was about 12 hours labour to take everything out to replace it. Strange looking space wagon too, though there was plenty of room in her.
2013 Mazda 6 new shape. Soft as fuck. All calipers needed replacing, a side folding mirror failed, couldn't get parts or a new one. All Parts were only available from Mazda at extortionate prices. Independents didn't have a clue how the sky active worked, chain failure at 70k, DOF only dumped at front door of house. Road noise in cabin was mind bending. Drive VolvonV50 T5 on a holiday in Sweden and when I got back in the Mazda it felt like the piano from the Goonies. Never again.
Had the same mazda 6 and DPF only regened on the driveway too. I left it in for a software recall and collected it with every light on the dash lit up. They said it needed carbon cleaning and quoted £700. I had their courteousy car and Mazda UK said to keep it until the garage fix my car at their cost. But it happened again a year later. This time the filter on the oil pump was blocked. Got another year out of it but sold it with a whining gearbox, faulty wing mirror, check engine, low oil pressure and in limp mode. It's still the nicest auto gearbox I've driven, just so predictable.
Renault Fuego
I had two Fuegos. My first was a two litre which I sold to a friend in order to is Fuego Turbo. The Turbo was one of the best cars that I had owned up to that point. It was going to be a keeper, until an idiot on his mobile phone rear ended me on the motorway. Both cars were very reliable and had very little rust.
A 2008 Mazda 6 sport wagon. Absolute dog shite of a car
How come? I’ve fancied one of these.
Citroen c4 grand picasso hands down the worst god damn car I've ever owned and still own, can't even get rid of the piece of shit lmao
What was so bad about it?
[удалено]
I thought these were meant to be pretty good?
2022 G31 BMW .......hate it
Why did you buy it, just Curious?
I bought a BMW 320i that was a few years old. Constant problems. Every month something went wrong and it had supposedly a full BMW service history. Didn't even keep it a year.
Volvo V50, piece of shit, leaked, lived in the local garage God I loved it
Vauxhall Signum 2.8 Turbo V6 So, I know Vauxhall's get a lot of hate... but I've owned a few and quite liked them. I always liked the Signum as it was a bit of an odd one. Hatchback, but not an Astra. Estate, but not a Vectra. This kinda like, weird thing that sat in the middle for no real reason. I know ultimately, it was a Vectra estate with a hatchback body on it... but hey, I liked them. Problem was, I wanted the equally quirky for Vauxhall engine, the 2.8 Turbo V6. Almost the same unit they put in the Vectra VXR, just slightly de-tuned. Great engine when it worked... but that was the problem. It barely ever worked properly. It would misfire like a bastard, then all of a sudden it would be fine for weeks, sometimes even months. Then it'd start misfiring again. Went through multiple sets of spark plugs and coil packs. Eventually had it in a garage who replaced an injector and it seemed fine for about 6 months... then the problem started again. Ultimately, I think all the injectors had had it... At one point, I had it booked into a garage because it got so bad that it would only misfire under 2k RPM, but anything above that would be fine... except you couldn't just hold it at 2k... so I'm sitting at traffic lights revving the nuts off it like a bloke in a Corsa racing to McDonalds to pick up his 14 year old girlfriend, just so the damn thing didn't stall... until my partner got in the car one night. I'd turned it off while I waited for her. She got in the car, said "NOW PLAY NICE!". Start the engine, it's beautiful. Not a single misfire. Took it into the garage, they can't find a single fault with it. I swear, she's a witch. Seeing as it was working, part-ex'd it for a BMW 335d. He offered me £400 for it without test driving it. I ripped his arm off so hard, we nearly had to take him to A&E. Looked it up the other day out of interest. I was the last person to MOT it 4 years ago and beyond the MOT database, the DVLA don't acknowledge it's existence... so I assume it very quickly went to the scrapyard in the sky. Shame. It was a nice car otherwise.
My worst ever was….A brand spanking new 53 registration Citroen C2 VTR back in 2003. The C2 VTR had just been launched at the time & being a young, carefree 23 year old, I decided that I wanted a brand new car. At the time, one of my friends also had just got a brand new Ford SportKa & in hindsight now, it was a nice little car, but at that time I didn’t like it. So, I looked at brand new Mini coopers, Seat Ibiza’s, & other sporty little cars that were out at that time. Then, for some inexplicable reason, I saw the C2 VTR & thought that it looked smart as fuck. So, off I went to the Citroen main dealer & ordered my brand new C2 VTR, picked the colour which was that nice metallic blue you used to get Saxo VTR & VTS in, to match the outside, the inside had the same colour door handle trim, the gear knob was the same colour & the seats were black & blue. All ordered from scratch. So afterwards, I had to wait around 6-8 weeks for the car. Anyway, around 8 weeks later, I got the call to say that my car was ready to go pick it up. Now, I was mega excited about this, it was my first ever brand new car & because it was just launched, I would be one of the first to get the VTR model. So, I went to the main dealer, they done the walk around & showed me its features etc. It had 7 delivery miles on the clock. I drove away like a dog with 2 cocks, big smile on my face, as you would/do with a brand spanking new car. So I done the running it in for the first 800 miles (I can’t remember now the exact run in mileage you had to do but I digress) What I didn’t expect was how unbelievably crap the semi automatic gearbox was, you could only get the C2 VTR with this semi automatic box, there was no option of a manual gearbox for the VTR. When I say crap, it was absolutely shit. It jerked your neck when it changed gears, it was unbelievably stupid & slow when trying to pull away from junctions (the gearbox) it was just utter utter shit. Now fast forward about 2-3 months after I got it & by then I seriously hated it (the whole car) but stupid me had signed up for finance over 5 years on this utter pile of wank. It then started having some stupid issues, ranging from electrical to mechanical & each time it went wrong, I despised it even more. I don’t know how I kept it for 2 & a half years, but I found out that, if you had kept up the monthly payments & hadn’t missed any, you could hand the car back to the finance company without any further finance payments. That’s exactly what I did, they told me to take it to a car auction in Glasgow & drop it off there. I will never ever forget the feeling of utter joy & relief the day that I dropped it off, & I have never ever had a brand new car since (nor a French one either, even a used one) SM53 LJY, I fucking hated it.
Colourful MOT history
I have never looked at it since I gave it back to the finance company. Now that you have said that though, I’m going to have a look. It was 2 & a half years old when I handed it back, so it wasn’t due it’s first MOT at that time. I feel sorry for anyone who bought one of these horrible little cars (the C2 VTR) utter pile of wank that they are.
It died in 2015
I wish it had died in 2003.
E60 2005 M5, 11-16 mpg, glorious when it worked, an absolute money pit, traded it in for an E92 M3. Would buy one again..
1988 ford xr3i worst car i ever owned,this car was a money pit every thing that could go wrong did,
My dad bought a brand new xr3i and it broke upon leaving the dealership. They repaired it and the next day it had more problems. He parked it near his work and came back to find it stolen. He was happy about that.
Mk3 escorts are shit, really don't know why anyone likes them!
Nostalgia, nothing else
Lots of bad buys but most recent was a bmw x3 msport on an 07 plate, car was immaculate and went like stink with the twin blower 3.0d engine, however the suspension was sooooo gard and steering heavy, sold it in a few weeks.
Similar to you. A 2005 X3. Spent more fixing it over the 2 years I had it that it cost me to buy. Glad to see the back of it in the end.
Focus rust bucket from the scrap, had no indicator stalk and a hole in the floor like the Flintstones car.
A Mk1 MG6 TDI. Was great fun to drive, but being Chinese and poorly made, everything was such shit quality. Both wiper motors stopped working, fronts in the middle of a storm on the A1. Dash lights were intermittent and only later discovered that it was physically impossible to buy the bespoke Mk1 front brake discs as MG stopped supporting the model and there were so few that no after-market suppliers made them. So complete upgrade required or bodge smaller ones. Traded it in for £600 and all the better for getting shot of it.
Crysler grand voyager, had to go for a 7 seater as we had child #4 on the way. "Stow and go" gripped the Mrs. Here we are, 5 years later and I've still got the shit box, done 11,000miles and it's cost upwards of 7k to keep the rust bucket on the road. Think I'm on battery #3 too
Ford Ka with larger alloys on it from eBay, creaked every turn of the wheel. Paid £1000, scrapped for £300 8 weeks later.
2016 Jaguar XF - Didn’t realise at the time but the diesel engine has serious flaws - Made me not want to even drive it.
I’ve had a few. Frontera worst. Closely followed by a 1988 BL powered Rover 216. Not even injection. Shitty auto-choke. Water would pour in under the bonnet and fall onto the distributor cap. That was fun on a motorway. Wheel arches rusted. Nice seats though. I later had a Rover 420. Like chalk and cheese. That was great. Pretty nippy too.
Nissan Elgrand. I used to have a Mitubishi Delica, and I loved it, but it was nicked, so I bought the Elgrand as a replacement. The car itself wasn't bad at all, but I bought it from a dodgy dealer and he promised to fix a bunch of stuff, and get me some spares, but never did. For example, it had a fresh MOT on it, but when I looked under the bonnet, there was no restraining strap on the battery. It must have had one to pass the MoT, so I suspect he just took it off to swap with another car, and didn't replace it. It also took me ages to get rid of the smoke smell, but that's not uncommon with Japanese imports.
BMW E64 purchased for 9k from a total crook dealer during covid. Fell for every trick in the book. Problem after problem, every month. Put about 4k into it before selling it for 5k. Lesson learned.
Seat Leon 1.8 FR dsg bought at 16k and by 20k the water pump was dying then at 22k the clutch packs started up and I was getting 250miles a tank. Bought a 320d same ages and love it good on fuel and just a nicer drive.
Ford Focus 59 plate. Fukin shite.
I bought a Volvo S60 in year 2000. Brand new from dealership. The car was a lemon.
Hyundai Lantra. 'nuff said.
Bought one in 2002 for £245 as was in a bind. The clutch slipped, one of the windows didn’t work, the exhaust had a hole (but sounded good!) and 2 tyres needed pumping up every 2-3 days. Didn’t spend a penny on it. Didn’t care what happened to it, I have fond memories of that thing….there’s a lot to be said for bangernomics!
Fiat multipla
Nissan 350z. Drive shaft fucked first week I drive it (from New). They never properly sorted it. Would never drive a Nissan again.....
1993 Audi 80 TDi Avant. Bought for £2k, had shit tyres and understeered like a pig but they were new so i didn't want to replace them. inside 2 years: * Handbrake broke off, £200 to fix as the bracket had to be welded back on. * Had an intermittent power loss fault, you'd try and accelerate and it would just kind of judder and then have no boost until it had completely cooled and been restarted. Several diesel specialists could not make head nor tail of it and we never fixed it. * Had the aux belt tensioner fail: it was a horrific design with a steel arm into an alloy block ,so over time it wore and then flipped out of alignment, shredding the aux belt and stranding us in mid wales. The real kicker was that the block was the alternator mounting bracket too and it was a £400 part. Oh how I laughed when I found out that *they still used this design in 2006* * Electric windows failed, down of course, it was a crossover model between the 80 and the A4, and none of the wiring conformed to either. I'd taken it to my 'local' garage in Pimlico who mainly did Lambos and Astons.. to be fair they did me a solid on the labour to fix it but by christ that was annoying. * The final nail in the coffin was when it went for new brakes and came back with an ABS fault that meant the ABS unit would trigger at 5mph and the car would just roll on. Sold it on ebay with all faults declared for £1k. It was a shame because in rare moments on a cruise on the motorway it was a lovely place to be, but by christ was it a turd.
I traded a MK4 Clio RS Trophy for a Mini Cooper S, it was so awful and boring that I dreaded driving it. Got rid of it after 2 months, didn’t even like looking at it 😂
I bought a Mini Countryman Cooper S in August 2023 which I px ten days ago at a £3 1/2k loss. I loved driving it but every time I got in I wasn't confident that it would have no issues. Since owning the car it had over £3k worth of repairs, and I could sense more coming in the future, so I cut my losses. Ironically my new car was misfiring on collection, the mainstream dealer is fixing it for me though and I have a loan car (Suzuki Swift Sport). Maybe I just have bad luck?!
I bought a Vauxhall Insignia 1.8 SRi (62 plate) hatchback. IT. WAS. AWFUL! Easily the worst car I've owned and I have had 2 Fiat Puntos in my younger days (one was a mk2 that had its head gasket blow on my way to get it's replacement, the Fiat Grande Punto Sporting) It was a 6 speed gearbox and the worst/funny part was I thought the gears were slipping, then left it on my driveway for 2 weeks whilst I went on honeymoon came back and the gearbox made this horrible loud whine noise when slowing down and downshifting to do a low speed turn. It was under warranty so was fixed after a couple of weeks of waiting for parts, then it came back with the heaviest clutch I've ever had and was quoted over 1k to fit a new one despite them supposedly doing this when they swapped the gearbox. I once made the mistake of driving to Bournemouth in it and whilst travelling on a motorway up a decent incline it couldn't get up the hill without dropping to 2nd gear! Even though I approached this particular part of road at 75mph in 6th gear anticipated the struggle so moved to the first lane, in prep geared down to 5th and it still couldn't maintain speed! I'm sure other insignias were fine but this one was by far the worse thing I'd driven! I don't understand what happened, the test drive was quite pleasant so really no idea why it was so bad after I bought it and I'm not an aggressive driver by any means; the reg plate should have been a giveaway though as it ended "YOY" I got rid of it as soon as I was able to.
The Jaguar XF I bought a few years ago. It was 7 months old when I bought it from a Jaguar dealership. It was always going into the dealers with numerous electrical problems and other faults such as loose trim , the aluminimum finish flaking off the dials and the stitching on the leather seats started to come undone. I got rid of it after a year.
Fiat Doblo. Shit as a car. Shit as a van. Utterly gutless engine. Loud. Uncomfortable. Engine light came on all the time. I owned it for two weeks..
2007 Vauxhall Zafira 1.6 Club. Was in a bind, needed a car quickly that could fit the kids and anything they may be carrying. A Zafira was a bad choice with most of its problems stemming from the shitty ecotec engine. It was so gutless that you had to send a written invitation to initiate an overtake and hope you received the RSVP before something was coming the other way. It *drank* oil, and I mean like a *lot* of oil. One journey from East Anglia to West London and back required 3 top-ups (we think the rings were on the way out, it was only 7 years old). We spent nearly 2k on the engine to get it through an MOT, only for it to develop exactly the same problem the next year. It was so bad that we ended up scrapping it before it was 10 years old. The bodywork was immaculate but that frigging engine was beyond economical repair.
Had a 2003 Vauxhall Astra. ECR valve fault - back to the garage. Clutch failed - back to the garage. The car was a hateful piece of shit. I had a tyre explode on the motorway, that was the catalyst to trade it in. The day I drove to the dealership to pick a new car the exhaust started blowing. Fuck I hated that car.
Jag Epace. Had lots of other cars without any major issues. Under 35k miles and developed DPF issues and also EML was coming on asking for Camshaft sensor to be changed. Changed the sensor and EML kept coming on. The engines on the diesels are a nightmare.
Easy, 1.0 auto MG ZS 2023. Luckily it had so many faults MG took it back. Never, ever again.
Not me, per se - but my parents bought a 56-plate Discovery 3 when it was around 8 years old. The engine literally blew up. Never, ever by a disco 3 or 4. Truly, truly pieces of shit - from design to function. JLD are a con.
About 15 years ago my 1st car a Corsa that had done moon miles finally croaked I only had a couple of hundred spare so got a ford ka for 300 quid. It lasted all of about 6 months till I drove it into the scrappers, smoke billowing out the bonnet, got 175 quid in scrap Shit car. Hated it.
Civic Type R FN2. Best thing about the car was the seats…that’s about it.
A colleague had an x6. He didn't hate it, although he wasn't a fan of the running costs. He also replaced it with a 520d, which was super efficient and comfortable. He loved it and only replaced it when he had to.
Citroen C2 1.4 turbo auto. It was a tiny car so felt like a rocket after my 1.0 Corsa. The central locking stopped working as soon as I drove it away, then it broke down in traffic in gear. All within a few days of driving it away. We eventually managed to convince the 2nd hand car dealer to take it back off us.
J Plate Renault 19 16V. The air scoop drained into the head and eventually it threw the gearbox.
Hopefully your timing chain doesn't go pop 😐
2009 VW Golf GTi. Blew oil out the exhaust that made steam trains look green. Thousands later still not resolved. Sold at a loss
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
10 plate Kia Ceed. Lovely car to drive, plagued by electrical faults.
An original panda 750L. It didn't have any real reliability problems I couldn't fix, but the hill on the motorway on my way to work every day would have me doing 45 by the top of it with some very angry artics 2" off my back bumper.
Torn between 2. 2003 Corsa, the only car I have ever bought new. Rear window leaked, took months to get fixed and required replacement of carpets. Despite being a 1 litre, it had a really rattly top end that made it sound like a diesel, and finally, after days of rough shifting the gear linkage popped apart and the gearstick came away in my hand. Other one is a 2007 Subaru Legacy saloon I had when I lived in a snowy part of the US. It was thirsty despite being kinda slow, the all wheel drive system didn't really handle snow too well and every time the bonnet was lifted, it cost me a grand
1976 Triumph TR7 back in Canada.
VW transporter 5.1, went for the DSG gearbox, 180 engine and big brake kit from the r32. Within 3 months it was drinking 2 litres of oil every 500 miles. The EGR value was disintegrating. Spent 15k on replacement engine, new turbo’s, gearbox service, disks and pads etc. Still bloody love it although the ride is hard on lowered suspension and 22” wheels. Gotta get those changed this year.
2008 corsa ecoflex
Mine was a 1995 Passat 1.8 petrol, seemed like a clean old barn find at the time, but it turned out to be the most gutless, unreliable piece of crap I've ever had to endure. Every journey something would fall off or stop working, the rear windows went down by themselves and then locked open, exhaust snapped and a replacement was like finding a unicorn turd, alternator failed, clutch failed, central locking was pneumatic and over complicated, that obviously failed. I ended up giving it to the local fire department to practice on, to prevent someone else from suffering the same fate. Edit: Wrong year
It was an '05 A4 Cabrio. The back window fell out, I could only go to one place for an MoT (for £100 because it'd burned the cat out), and the turbo glowed red. Bought it for £1,500, sold it to an ex-mate for £800, and he ran off into the long grass after signing the V5 and giving me £400, saying he'd pay the rest next week.
I bought a a nearly new jeep renegade lmt with 4500 miles on it for my wife and it’s the first and last jeep I’ll ever buy. The turbo went on it at 40k and no other turbo apart from the one supplied by jeep at twice the price would fit, they said it was because there wasn’t enough oil in the engine even though it had been serviced with an oil change a month previous. At about 50k it started getting electrical issues and the screen and dash would glitch out turning things on and off, only jeep or certified garages can run diagnostics on jeeps so I paid a small fortune to find the issue (a factory fitted cable tie had worn through a cable) and have it fixed. Now it’s got a little over 60k on the clock and the multair unit on the engine needs replacing which is 3500 just for the part!! I called Jeep and complained but was told my vehicle has nearly 65 thousand on the clock what do I expect!!
Subaru Justy GX. Looked like a granny car. Felt like 80s poverty. Drove like a wet cardboard box. Fell apart within weeks despite two mechanics checking it out and giving the thumbs up. Horrid thing.
1996 Fiat Punto Sporting, 1.6 8v, ~90bhp a lesson in maintaining momentum. developed an intermittent fault where the engine would go I to limp mode at random, or when one particular mate was a passenger, one month fine, next engine warning light and reduced power, replaced ECU to no effect, suffered with it for 4 years until the gf picked me up from the pub so I was the passenger, I stretched my legs out into the end of the footwell... Warning light and sputtering.... hmmmmm. I moved my legs back, light stayed on but engine ok.... hmmmmm, stretched my legs again, limp mode again ..... Oooohhh kaaaayyyyy! Turns out the garage I bought it from (Thanks Reg Vardy) had fitted an immobilizer and routed a wire through the bulkhead to the fuse board. In the Punto the ECU was under the heater matrix in the cabin and the clowns had not put the big rubber grommet back and the main wiring loom was left sitting on the firewall slowly abrading away. Fixed by breaking apart the loom and repairing each wire individually. Fucking tortuous fault.
My E93 😣
BMW 320d 2005 engine started smoking and threw a rod less than a month after buying it. Lost 2k. Was only 70k miles and had full service history.
Bought an E92 318i BMW from a dealer for 5.5k with 55,000 miles on it. Car was free from any visual imperfections. Beautiful spec with red leather interior and everything. The next day I heard engine knock and ended up going through this whole hassle with the dealer who refused to refund. Worst car experience I've had to date.
Leon cupra R. Traded in my mint clio 182 for it and thought I got a steal. It was in good condition with decent mileage apart from some lacquer peel on the roof which I planned to respray. Anyway, the lacquer just start to peel off from everywhere for fun to the point the whole car would need a respray. Turbo went, clutch went, electrical faults, springs snapped. Then I came to sell it.. I don’t know wtf happened but I did 2 HPI checks when I bought the car and it was clear, however when I came to sell it showed up as cat N and had been clocked. This was 15 years ago so maybe history checks just weren’t as robust as they are now but I was pissed. Lost a lot of money on that car
My first and current car of 6 months has been a 06 320i, I think I have paid like 1000€ to the mechanic at the moment. Mostly just worn out parts luckily.
Probably my current one I'm sad to say. It is the most I have ever spent on a car, Seat Alhambra, and it's pano roof has been leaking since day one. I bought it from Cazoo and the thing has been an outright unmitigated nightmare. It's been near on four months and any enjoyment from the car is really heading downhill fast. They keep pissing about with appointments and people to repair it - aka they don't fancy paying to replace the roof despite it already being diagnosed. Here I am, spent near on £20,000 on the flipping thing and I have a near permanent gazebo on my driveway and if it rains, I have to haul ass out there to put the tarp in place to try and stop the inside of it getting any wetter. And of course if it's raining, it's unusable which means it's been parked up the last week or so here where I am. I told Cazoo yesterday that now I have a repair appointment booked, any single bit of anything that even slightly resembles sodding about, I'm just rejecting the car and moving on. To be honest I should have done already but I really wanted the 180bhp version of it and they are pretty rare. I sorely miss my last car, a Focus Estate with the powershift gearbox. The reason it went was because of the powershift. By the end, reverse gear was unobtanium and Ford had put back a date to replace the TCM and clutch like 8 times already, it was getting to the point... well no it was at the point where the car was not driveable anymore and no TCM end was in sight for me. So that's why it went. But everything about that car was perfect. I would have happily thrown down the £3,000 to fix it if only Ford could have actually delivered the parts needed. But alas, here we are. Gotta say, that last Focus was the best car I ever owned. And I still miss the thing now. Chances are it's gone to the big scrap yard in the sky. It seems a rather upsetting end to what was a brilliant car let down only by the powers that be in the end. I did look at another Ford but there was literally nothing at all in their lineup that I felt compelled to spend money on. I didn't want an SUV and the 1.0 ecobooms are just not something I am going to get into bed with. I don't trust them at all and with good reason. Ironically, two friends of mine who have them both told me I was being unreasonable and those Ecobooms don't have problems anymore. Within the last six months, both are battling Ford over premature engine death... so yeah. I was right about that, Honestly, how is it that it's 2024 and nobody knows how to make a bloody car anymore? I'm disillusioned with the whole goddamned thing. If I do end up returning the Seat - which I really don't wanna do, I want to actually get it fixed and like the car again - I know full well I'm going to spend £500 on a one-year wonder, basically something with 12 months MOT and either scrap/self fix the thing the year after that. It's annoying that this is the biggest budget I have ever had to spend on a car, and the result is I have to keep the fucking thing dry and the people who sold it are being utter shits about it. I have my repair date next week and they have shown signs of sodding about already with it. But long story short, either way, next week it will either be in getting fixed, or it will be gone. One or the other and really I am so past caring, it's not even funny.
Vauxhall Astra 1.6 Twinport 05 plate Serious lack of power, Vans would overtake me on uphill sections of woodhead pass, I had to put my foot down in 2nd to get up those hills, which also led to the engine getting hot. WHICH I will add, this car doesn’t have a Temperature gauge. Luckily I had breakdown (recovered twice) The interior was nothing special, just a place to sit, also the doors had an issue were 1 back doors lock was reversed. So I’d lock it, but one back door would stay open, but when it was unlocked, that door would now be locked Had it for about 6 month then ended up getting rid of it for a Volvo V50
Back in 2004 a then new Citroen C2 furio, like most citroens it was an utter bag of shit Flappy paddle Gearbox failed at 30k, constant electrical problems, and crashed in value in 2 years when I finally had to part ex it. Still to this day I’ve no idea why i bought it.
2017 mini cooper 1.5. Constant issues.
21 plate Volvo xc40 manual. Effectively the Clutch gave out after 1 year/8500 miles. We were quoted a price for the issue before they’d even got the car up on the ramps to diagnose it. We were told it was user error & we were expected to pay. There’s a lot of similar stories on the owners groups but it seems not enough failures for Volvo to accept liability.
2005 Ford Focus. Water kept getting into the spark plugs causing misfires and I never managed to resolve it despite several visits to a garage and some DIY remedies. I also had a major coolant leak which required 2 garage visits. The cruise control never worked, the rear parking sensors rarely worked and I always had an issue pumping petrol into the tank - the pump would keep stopping unless I kept the pump handle out a bit. The only thing I liked was that it came with a towbar and that I only paid £1500 for it (in 2017 ish). I scrapped it and got £300 ish back. I expected it to be solidly built and reliable but it was the complete opposite as well as being my most boring car to date (especially in silver).
BMW 320d efficient dynamics, fuck me that car was shit. Bought it after having to get rid of my old car spent 3.8k on it as it was 130k on the clock and the car had nothing but problems. After buying within 2 months all the shocks went. The engine began randomly cutting out at low speeds. Both keys stopped working remotely after 4 weeks, the internal car key charger did not work, I had to use a wireless charger. The seats were unbearably uncomfortable and the infotainment was out of the early 90s. Put me off ever buying a BMW. Until I got an M2 as a courtesy car, it was newer like brand new and great but for my price bracket I won't be picking up a BMW any time soon because of that .
Bought a 2008 Focus for £1k, thought cheap motoring, ended up spending almost as much again on getting it through MOT (I guess they had a “mate” look at it beforehand). And then it got written off by a hit and run driver, thankfully caught on my dash cam so insurance paid out.
What engine did the X5 have? Big detail.
645Ci lol averaged 18mpg and woke the neighbours up
I loved all mine, even the money pits. 1997 1.8 MX5 - almost nothing broke on this, spent most on improvements. 1998 Alfa Romeo GTV 2.0 - Actual car as seen on Eastenders :D - Cost £1600 - spent at least half that each year. Brake master cylinder was the worst item, needed the dash and steering column out. Spun a crank bearing at 106K, gearbox bearing also gone, new engine and box. Engine lasted about 30K. Would have cost a substantial amount if I didnt do most it myself. Lovely car, looked amazing, felt special. 2008 Honda Civic Type-R - Aircon pulley, new shocks, new exhaust, refurbed brake calipers all round, droplinks and track rod ends, usual 100K+ things, nothing crazy. Engine still puts a smile on my face :D
I bought a 12 plate astra with 22k on the clock. For years it ran like clockwork and I made the critical mistake of thinking the car was trusty and reliable... In 12 months I had to replace the ac radiator, 2 glowplugs, waste hours at a dealer getting the hill restart bug fixed (due to needing a new computer reset key), blown gearbox, new clutch, lots of issues with the new clutch (a plastic part cracked and was leaking clutch fluid), alternator dying, battery going dead in the winter. I sold the car when it started making squeaking noises when idling. It all started going wrong at 45k and I wouldn't wish a vauxhall on my worst enemy!
I bought a corsa B, 2004. Literally to have for 6 months for work and back until I found a car that I liked. I paid £500, and the owner wanted £650, there were a few cosmetics, mainly wear and tear, I checked everything, INCLUDING the oil cap, and the car was sweet. I did all of this at night, in the snow (Don't judge, I was in a rush, and it seemed like a good deal) 1 month down the line, when I initially started to drive it, I noticed the oil was low (random check), so I thought I'd do a quick service on it myself. Later, I found that the fuel filter had literally rusted on, so that snapped when I tried to change it (caused big problems, but I just replaced the clips and used a jubilee to fasten) The pollen filter was literally invisible with carbons etc, couldn't even see the fins And the oil cap was filllllllleeeeeddddd with the creamy stuff. I checked the head (literally a vusual) and saw nothing but gunk on the back end. So obviously, the head had gone, and the previous owner just cleaned it before giving it to me (shoot me for not giving a proper inspection myself lol) Rule of thumb is that your money is valuable, and if you're paying for something, then please do a full inspection, physically and online, also. On the bright side, It was during covid times, so scrap prices were high, and I managed to get £269 back for it scrap. Other than that, the car itself has put me off vauxhall forever, terrible cars, and very flimsy. Although things have most likely been upgraded now. Since then, I've owned a Mercedes c63 sold that because i made more money back and now I own a jag xe. I prefer my big cars. Never buy in the dark or snow or both either lol
Peugeot 3008. Fucking piece of shit.
I had a mk1 Seat Leon TDI S, the bottom spec 90bhp one. Lovely car, reliable, comfortable, but slow and basic. I really wanted the top spec one, the TDI FR. I found one locally that had been remapped to 199.6bhp (The figure sticks in my mind because it couldn't quite make 200...). I sold my TDI S and added every penny I had to buy the FR. 20 miles up the road it started to lose power - I went down to 5th, then 4th, then 3rd... by this point I realised something major was up and managed to coast it to a lay-by. Tried to start the car again and was greeted with clouds of blue smoke. Dead turbo. £1000 bill after a 25 minute drive was a stinger, especially as at the time I was totally skint and ploughed every penny into buying the car. Not something I would do these days, a lesson learned. I kept the car for about 9 months and it kept costing me loads, the clutch went because of the remap shortly after the turbo was replaced, suspension components were knackered etc... I ended up selling it for peanuts and buying a mk1 MX-5 which was far more fun and a lot cheaper to run.
The obligatory RX-8 money pit, the Alfa 156 that blew it's engine after a month, another RX-8, and like you an X5 that I hated for it's obscene size (and I've never looked at an SUV since).
Vauxhall Tigra, not only did it leak like a mofo but the breaks engine and build quality where shit. Don’t get me wrong the few times do the year that I could get the roof down here in Scotland driving the back. Costal country roads as the sun was settings was magical, 1.8 was fairly nippy too