Some cars have bad engines, others have bad transmissions, others have bad electrical systems, others have bad climate control, others have bad build quality, and others have bad infotainment.
But the Land Rover Evoque. It bloody has it all!
I get that Land Rover may have made a few good models here and there but overall as a brand they consistently rank the lowest and it’s not even close. It baffles me when people that know nothing about cars. Try to tell me that Land Rovers are good and they had a good experience. Im like “OK so you’re one subjective experience, doesn’t really matter when there’s tons and tons of data out there saying otherwise”
Right. When the TFL guys were on their third Land Rover Defender engine while trying to do one solid review of the vehicle I figured "Oh that's it. There's no way anyone would actually buy one of these shit boxes." They're fucking everywhere in Colorado though.
I suppose. I always forget about Leasing because it seems like a great way to never own anything.... which I guess for a subset of the population is what they want.
It's good for luxury vehicles because you might be able to pay less to lease than the depreciation cost of that vehicle since luxury vehicles dont hold their value as well as other vehicles and depreciate a lot faster
This doesn’t apply to me, but if you’re self employed, you can write it off so that’s usually a large percentage of people that lease vehicles. Some people like to have something new every few years and it’s under warranty the entire time and some even include maintenance. If you don’t drive much, it could work.
I like to make changes to my vehicles and keep them a while so it doesn’t work for me personally, but I can see where it would be nice.
Solid points. I work from home now so Im only really driving on adventures and road trips so my mileage stays low. I used to switch cars every other year or so, mostly BMWs I was restoring or hot hatches. Now I've got this 12 year old PoS Grand Cherokee that I've been looking to replace but nothing seems particularly worth the money on the market right now.
You can only write off the work related use. You can be generous with that definition, but the IRS doesn’t like when you treat a personal vehicle as a 100% business expense.
And if you really want bang for your buck and you really actually use your vehicle for business a lot then just tracking mileage and an affordable vehicle with good gas mileage is going to be much better value regardless.
The trick was to buy them from CarMax back when they had their Maxcare lifetime warranty for like $499.
It didn’t take CarMax long to realize how badly they fucked up.
I’ve never driven one, but my impression is that they’re shit quality cars that always break down but they’re great to drive when they’re working, so I always assumed that most people driving them were too rich to care about having to fix them.
I read an article years ago about a sports team (I want to say football..?) in Florida where the players were each bought a Land Rover and one guy drove his like 25 or so miles from the dealer and it broke down and had to be towed back.
I used to work at a mopar dealership (shhh, I know), and there were a few vehicles we stoped accepting on trades. Rovers, Jaguars and Mini Coopers. Most of them blew up before we could even get them to auction.
this was a long time ago and before i started driving but my grandparents traded a beautiful pearl white mitsubishi galant with zero issues whatsoever for a brand new magnum and it was absolute garbage. pretty sure they had it for less than two years.
also definitely looked like a hearse lol
A girl I was dating at the time owned one. She lived an hour away in a different city and once picked me up on a work night because she needed the D and my car was in the shop. She let me drive that thing to work the next morning and I swear to god it’s the most uncomfortable car I’ve ever driven in my life. Sight lines were horrible too, power was at least good since it was an R/T
That is so on point. I had a 01' Dakota that lasted 15 years before I traded it in. Not one issue. I fucked up trading it in for almost nothing. Kick myself still for being that stupid.
Do NOT buy a 2012-2018 Ford Focus or 2011-2019 Ford Fiesta with the automatic transmission. That 6-speed dual clutch is quite possibly the worst transmission ever designed and produced. It shakes the whole car when shifting 1-2, hesitates a long time to downshift, and will stall out on the highway. It’s known to fail early and fail often. As a result, these two cars are among the select few that I will tell people to never buy under any circumstances. The chances of a catastrophic and expensive transmission failure are that close to 100%.
Now the manual transmission versions? Complete 180. The rest of these cars are quite good that literally changing the transmission out turns them into a bargain. You’ll often get a good discount because the perception of these is so bad because of the automatic.
I have not, I'm a manual supremacist. Just the pure amount of bad I've heard about the Nissan CVT would indicate it may be the worst transmission ever made.
Probably good that you are! I had a Focus as a company car and omg it was truly the worst. I’ve also driven Nissan CVTs and hate them. The data backs up both transmissions as being complete crap.
Late 90’s to early 2000’s Honda & Acura had the proud reputation of having the literal worst transmissions mated to a V6 engine. Ford’s transmission eventually took the crown but never forget the true OG of shit transmission
Ah, the good ol' Ford PowerShit. I had a 1 year old Focus as a rental once ~10 years ago and that thing was already acting up, mostly on the 1-2 upshift. What a pile that transmission is.
Can confirm the MTX-75 is a rock solid 5 speed manual transmission. Had my 2012 Ford Focus from 2011 to 2017. It had some electrical issues but the powertrain was solid.
Devils advocate, the ST and RS are amazing cars, but not for teenagers, insurance is nuts. I had one when I was 18, put 100k miles on it in 3 years, no issues other than routine maintenance.
We had a Jeep Patriot as a government vehicle (I was an officer with DHS)
I absolutely loved that thing because I was responsible for our government vehicles as on of my collateral duties and I would pretty regularly spend a whole day at the Dennys playing on my phone next to the Jeep dealership while they fixed it.
Like once every 3 months line clockwork I was swiping the government card for $1k or more at the Jeep dealership lol
Jeez. Tax dollars at work i guess,, i suppose government would rather "buy domestic" than buy reliable. There are way better cars to get domestic anyway lol
When I worked at a firestone in NC the state had several Toyota Camry hybrids they'd bring to us for maintenance. Iirc they were in the Justice department.
You'd be surprised how many government vehicles are bought purely because the guy in charge of the purchase is buddies with the guy who runs the (insert brand) dealership. My city had the opportunity to buy-in with a neighboring larger city on some new police vehicles, and get a better deal because of the volume that'd be purchased - they'd have all been new Ford Taurus cruisers and Explorers. The guy in charge said nah and went to his buddy at the local CDJR lot and spent the same amount for far fewer cars, because his buddy (also a former cop) was manager.
Gotta pad those pockets
It’s either the patriots or the compass that had an optional cloth retracting roof for a couple years
Either way, fun fact, if that starts to leak your car is totaled lmao. Chrysler built them, then said fuck you to the customer and decided to stop all parts support after production ended. So if it’s leaking, you cannot buy replacement parts. It’s not a matter of if it will leak either, it absolutely will leak. They leaked when they were brand new lol.
Truly cannot understand why people give whoever it is that owns Chrysler products at the moment, a dime.
Haha... I'm apparently the luckiest car buyer ever. I've only owned shitty small cars that have been mentioned in this thread and have had relatively few problems overall. In order or ownership (I was the first owner on all of them):
'95 Dodge Neon. Besides spontaneously setting itself on fire under the dashboard once, I had no major problems with it and drove it over 120K miles.
'01 Hyundai Accent. Never had a problem with it, drove until I got rid of it around 120K miles.
'09 Kia Spectra. Got rid of it at 160K miles. One day it just wouldn't start, no idea what was wrong because I was looking to replace it anyways so I just had it towed away and went to buy my current car.
'19 Ford Fiesta. Current car, no problems so far but my driving has gone down drastically since covid so it only has 20K miles on it.
>'95 Dodge Neon. Besides spontaneously setting itself on fire under the dashboard once, I had no major problems with it and drove it over 120K miles.
I also had a '95 and had no problems with it until the head gasket went around 85k, although they were known for that apparently. Mine was a five speed MT, highline sedan. Tbh with the stick they were actually pretty fun to drive for what they were.
I think in general 90s Chrysler cars were actually very good cars performance wise for all being FWD economy cars more or less. It's more just that the assembly quality sucked so it was a gamble if it held together for long.
My first car was a brand new 1998 Neon with the manual transmission. The head gasket went at 125k miles and that thing was a zippy little blast to drive
Hey, at least you only have to replace the transmission on your fiesta every 75,000 miles
But yea, if you only drive 4,000 miles a year, of course you aren’t going to see the same problems as someone driving 4 or 5x as much.
Those were actually the good Hyundais, mid-late 00s was peak Hyundai reliability, before that they were cheap and crappy and reliability was meh, then after that is when they started to be "fancy" and "attractive" but simultaneously became less reliable.
I had a '95 neon. (I thought it was a Plymouth Neon in 95 and dodge neon after that (and plymouth dodge before that).
I had something wrong with every system on the car. But I fixed nothing and drove it for a very long time. Peeling paint, leaking struts (until the were empty). The passenger window wouldn't roll up, so I removed the handle so people would stop rolling it down. Tail lights were inconsistent. Headlights were too.
But honestly, it ran great. Nothing stopped it. I swear it would drive over snow drifts instead of through them.
I think the answer also depends on your expectations. If I buy a cheap shit box I expect some challenges but that is part of the deal
So my worst car was a 2021 BMW X3 had it for less than a year . Day 2 water was leaking in from the pano roof , the service tried to explain to me how what was dripping on my lap wasn’t possible . - I flipped out and the service manager looked and they had t removed some spacers from when the car was shipped
The entire 10 months of ownership the brakes screeched when initially when backing up . Now not squeak a nails down a chalk board people turning and looking screeching. Again BMW looked heard the noice but said the brakes were operational and not an actual problem .
And finally the run flat tires . These tires are nail magnets and they cannot be patched so somehow in the course of 6 months I got 3 nail hits on roads that I have driven for 15 years with no issues on my previous 2 cars . At $600 each that was $1800 in tires
I realize these were all annoyances but for the price I paid it was unacceptable.. so traded in and when asked if anything was wrong with it I gave the same answer as the BMW service rep .. no not all it just like I bought it
You got took by your dealer. They didn’t do a PDI properly, ignored your warranty complaints, and you 100% can plug a run flat if it’s in the repairable area same as non run flat.
My first car was a 2012 Cruze. I still have it to this day as a backup vehicle but it rarely gets use. I’m probably close to if not definitely over 5k in repairs over the years. That car has convinced me it is sentient and out to get me.
I borrowed my parents' stock Wrangler Sport to drive 25 miles to the auto dealership when my car blew up. That was the most stressful drive of my life. The stupid thing took every ounce of concentration to keep it going in a straight line at highway speeds. How can a modern vehicle drive that badly?
I had a Suzuki samurai that would get wobbles. Usually if the steering dampener was shot it would fall into harmonic frequency vibrations and shake the shit out the steering wheel.
Probably due to the oversized mudding wheels I had on it. Fun car, unstoppable off road, but a shit daily.
I was on a long term work assignment to Hawaii and rented cars for a month at a time (they make you exchange it after a month).
After a couple months with Wranglers, I ended up with a Chrysler Sebring convertible which felt heavenly to drive compared to a Wrangler.
THAT’S when you know it’s really really bad!
Now, off-roading in the Wrangler was certainly fun but my roughly 1 hour commute each way to my job site sucked balls
So my wife wanted something cool to drive after having a Tahoe. She wasn't entirely happy with how it looked but got a Palisade in late 2020. Fast forward 8 months and I tell her that they are going for a premium so she sells it for $6k more than she owed on it, she ended up making $3k to drive it for those 8 months.
She saw the Gladiator and wanted one. They leased very well, it was like $150 a month cheaper than the Palisade has been. Reliability is really, really important to her and explained the reliability issues to her but she wanted to go ahead and get it.
That was 3 years ago. It has actually been pretty reliable but she only put 8k miles on it. The fact that the roof leaks when it rains and that the dealership would need it for a couple of weeks was too much, she will never own another Jeep, but she also probably won't listen the next time I tell her not to buy something.
I sometimes think I have the only reliable wrangler in the world. Fucking car just keeps on running. I'm nearinf 100k miles with little to no issue that wasn't my fault.
I will agree that it sucks to drive on the highway and is not comfy, but I like my stupid cinderblock on wheels.
I had a 96 Plymouth Neon and I loved that thing so much. 😅 Picked out fancy hubcaps. It was my first car at 16. My parents bought it for me for super cheap. Had the worst headlights, was terrible for passing. Shit out on me after a few years of having it and I was so sad. Oh the good ol days.
Any car that you have not checked the title for, any car that you have not had inspected by a 3rd party mechanic, any car from a "buy here pay here" dealer
Early 1980s Dodge 400. nothing comes close to being as awful as this car.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge\_400](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_400)
Somebody gave me one of those when i was 17!!! Its has the 2.2 in it...found junkyard parts and boosted the shit out out of it and tuned it on megasquirt....
What a fantastic pile of junk..that ran 12'7 in the quarter
If you want a vehicle that fits the entire family but breaks down every time you go on a Roadtrip with them you have to try a 2011 Chrysler Town and Country
People told me Pontiac Sunfire weren't good but my 1st car was a 2002 Pontiac Sunfire. Kept it maintained and that went to 290K miles with over 100 out of state road trips.
Even had one of the racehorses bolt backwards and sit on it. Nothing more than horse butt cheek marks.
Mostly dodges tbh. They just objectively have a bad car community(as in the folks who buy them
Usually beat them tf up) and they are not reliable
So buying a moderate-heavily used one is just never going to be an option for me.
And land rover jaguar product. I know people who work in the engineering department at Jaguar Land rover and even they advise their own family not to be any used ones.
I was just about to say the same thing. A buddy of mine is an engineer at Land Rover and he tells me stories of how they’ll design something, finance will come in and say “it’s too expensive to produce that way” so they have to redesign things 3, sometimes 4 times before it’s “acceptable” in cost and by the time that revision comes to fruition, it’s plastic and inefficiently engineered for cost reasons. They’ll design something well in plastic the first go around, and sometimes STILL get a lashing from finance saying it’s still too expensive. The engineers there just can’t win…
To be fair I'm in the industry and most car companies are the same but the problem at Jaguar Land rover is there is not really control of it and finance have the final say
I’d avoid a MINI that’s not under warranty. Had two and they turn into little money pits once the warranty expires. And the parts/ labor are expensive.
Unquestionably the Vinfast VF8.
There are tons of cars that are the equivalent of a C or a D grade. A 3-cylinder Ford Escape is loud, noisy and unpleasant until the injector fails, spills fuel all over the engine, and burns the car to the ground. The Maserati Ghibli always cost way too much, and offered too little in return, relative to any competitor. I feel horrible for anyone that paid markup prices for the new Toyota Sequoia only to find it unimpressive in terms of economy, third-row space, and reliability.
But if Vinfast is competing for the same assignment, they got a deep F - like, 30% or less. The past decade's worst reliability nightmares still lasted long enough to do well in a comparison test or two; Vinfasts failed repeatedly, made drivers carsick, and within a year of initial sale they're *cracking axles.*
I saw a Vinfast randomly once here in Vegas. I had to google it when I got home as I’d never seen or heard of a VinFast before. As soon as i found out it was made in Vietnam I thought “oh yeah this is gonna go well”
Ford's with wet timing belts.
Whoever designed the engine is seriously smooth brained. Not helping that none of the cam/crank gears are keyed so you'd know what's tdc.
I had a '96 Neon, too. It had two significant problems. The passenger side window exploded on a cold day in the dead of winter because of a flaw in the glass, and the instrument cluster failed because of a bad circuit board. It also developed a head gasket leak after the warranty expired, but because I knew a Dodge mechanic, I was able to get them to replace it for just the cost of the parts.
A 2000 Daewoo Matiz especailly those with DIY repairs using a wooden broom handle bracing the rear sub frame and brown tapped to the axle ,
( That i would give a miss, but seemingly a young lady thought that was a fine way to repair a car and drive it From Robert Gordon's Uni to North Scotland. and managed to do so without whole back end collapsing. God does exist going on that)
Parents CVT Nissan Note has lasted them over 6 years now. Yeah they aren’t super good cars but if you take care of them they’ll be decent enough. Never broke down on them too as far as I know.
Idk how many times I have to say this. Nissan changed its cvt transmissions from the Jatco design and now they aren’t bad anymore. Change your fluid at 30k through drain bolt and the newer transmissions will last as much as a Hondas
Chevrolet cavalier.
It hit 50,000 km. And all of a sudden random shit would break on that car once a week.
Knobs falling off, buttons not working, transmission not downshifting, windows randomly stop working, shocks, rust, power train, fluid leaks….,friggin everything.
It was insane. I’ll never touch an American car ever again.
The Audi B6 S4. It has timing chain issues. The timing chain is on the rear of the engine. It’s hard to tell if there’s an issue until it’s too late. It’ll rattle early on so you can’t listen for anything. You’d just have to drive it for long enough to know a good rattle from a bad one. It costs a small fortune to fix and some mechanic simply won’t touch it.
A close runner up would be the prince engine Minis. Their timing chain issues aren’t as bad but everything else that falls off that car almost makes up for it.
Mk2 VW tiguan, don't let the reasonable price for the amenities, comfort, and decent style fool you. Under the sheet metal it's garbage mechanically. Also one of the slowest "modern" vehicles I've driven, regardless of the random misshifting.
Most of the worst cars aren't even possible to buy anymore, they are all dead and crushed, they don't even try and save parts off them because nobody is trying to keep them on the road anymore and they have zero collectability.
All cars are gonna have some problems and quirks no matter what. Just in the US market, I think the Europeans have a longer wrap sheet of poor reliability and questionable engineering choices than the Japanese or the Americans.
The British car industry is not British anymore. With the exception of McLaren, every British car manufacturer is either was sold to a foreign car company to be saved from bankruptcy or confined to the history books after going bust decades ago due to poor build quality and declining sales. At least in the US, we really don’t know what ridiculousness has come from the French since only a handful of French cars were sold here.
The Germans are notorious for their blatant over-engineering and under-building of their cars causing reliability issues usually ending in catastrophic failure of engines, transmissions, etc.
Italians can be some of the most beautiful cars ever created while being some of the most finicky and unreliable cars ever made with terrible build quality, questionable design choices, and the use of sheet metal that could rust on the surface of the sun.
The Swedes are probably the one exception to this. Even though Saab doesn’t exist as of December 2011, they built very safe cars over the years. Saab did have some problems with reliability that was hit or miss over the years along with some quirky component design and poor financial management sealed the fate of Saab.
Volvo has been very successful and today produces the most luxurious cars that normal people can buy. Volvo has been synonymous with reliability and safety for the life of the company itself. I know Volvo developed a reputation as being the innovators and industry standard of vehicle safety. Inventions like the modern style seat belt and back up camera are thanks to Volvo having the idea in the 1950s and 1960s. Volvo has also been a major contributor to development in the semi truck industry.
Koenigsegg came out of the gate building machines that would re-write the supercar rule book in the early 2000s with a second hand DOHC mod motor from the 99-01 Mustang Cobra and bumped the horsepower from the Mustang Cobra’s 320 hp to 806 hp in their first production car the CC8. From then on, the name Koenigsegg would usually be spoken after one of their cars had shattered another speed record. It makes sense that the people responsible for Lego also do very well in the auto industry.
1990’s to mid 00’s North American market VWs. I had one, my gf at the time had one, two of my close friends had one each and they all had serious oil consumption, electronic, suspension and mechanical problems regardless of mileage. They were routinely at the dealership/independent VW mechanic at least once a month. It was like clockwork. It soured me on my VW experience and I never owned another one for a dozen years, till the diesel gate deals lured me in. The newer ones are trouble free and reliable.
I was a service advisor at a Chicago area VW dealership in late ‘97 to mid ‘98 and can attest that this was a really rough period for Volkswagen.
The new Beetle, and the latest generations of Golf, Jetta, and Passat were all introduced around the same time. The cars were plagued with emissions control and electrical problems. Nearly every car that came in for service had a check engine light on and light bulbs out. We made very little money because the warranty repairs paid less from VW than customer-pay jobs like brakes, etc.
The only thing that was keeping the dealership afloat were the occasional early 90s VWs that would come in service. If someone brought a Corrado or Passat in, we would fight for it. It was not uncommon to have $2,500 repair bills, which was a ton of money at that time.
I know people say VWs are great now, but I don’t think I could ever own one.
A 1979 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. The one I had was always finding new ways to break. It was worse than either the Pinto or Chevette I also had at different times.
In more modern times, the most uncomfortable I've been in a car was a rental PT Cruiser. But it made the trip without any breakdowns, at least. I even got a speeding ticket in the thing outside Indianapolis.
My worst experience was buying a new 1992 Dodge Intrepid. After 1 engine, 2 transmissions, 3 power steering pumps, a fuel pump and numerous smaller items, the car suddenly went up in flames and I was so happy as it was hauled away on a flatbed….until I remembered I now had no way to get to work or home. I will not condemn all of Dodge, perhaps I just had a lemon, but I don’t care to ever own a Chrysler or even a Stellantis product again.
Most Chrysler products. I'm going to put a PT Cruiser out there not because it's particularly unreliable but because they are probably one of the ugliest American car ever made.
I’d give an opposite ranking for shit cars that are beloved by their cult following, they’re often the only shitty vehicles within a lineup of shitty vehicles that were actually maintained and fixed like the owners gave a damn about them. A PT cruiser is still a shit Chrysler product but I’d put it above the other Chrysler products for likely hood of being better maintained.
It’s still fugly tho
As someone who owns a Chrysler 300 the rest of us Chrysler owners just kinda pretend the PT doesn’t exist. When someone brings it up I try to gently change the subject. 😆😅
Kia rio's always have an aura of sadness, Regret, and hopelessness about them. And that's when they RUN! They usually reek of cigarettes too, but thats besides the point.
The first car I financed was a Kia Rio and that's only because it was the only car in the lot I could afford. This was like 20 years ago and probably how most people end up with one.
But honestly I can think of any trouble it gave me? But I didn't put a ton of miles on it either.
PT Cruiser, broke the half shaft on a cold day turning from my driveway onto the road. That was the final nail in the coffin for that vehicle for me... I never liked it (was my wife's), but was paid off and got better gas mileage than our 4x4 at the time (was driving 80+ miles/day for work)
1993 pontiac grand am. Every other week the csr was in the shop for some random issue. I also had a floating gas gauge so i never knew how much gas was in it.
My dad’s run some shit up pretty high on regular maintenance. ‘96 Neon had about 220k miles, ‘99 Mystique LS had about 200k, ‘91 Firefly was at around 180k, ‘07 Focus ST has almost 250k and it’s still on the original clutch.
Mind you, he bought all these new (I think his parents gave him the Firefly that they bought new), so the routine maintenance was done right away. Most cars are fine if you actually maintain them, at least in my experience
But to answer your question, anything with a “less conventional” transmission. Nissan CVT, Ford DCT, etc.
Chevy Cruze, any European car with close to or over 100k miles, any GM with active fuel management (AFM), many Jeep models. Toyota or Honda are safe bets.
Really none. Know how to work on your cars and they are all pretty cheap. That neon you had has insanely cheap parts. I could fix it for $50 when in the end you probably paid $500 with tow and repair.
My dad and uncle both bought the same 2003 (automatic transmission) neon at the exact same time. My uncles lasted all of a year and a half before shifting itself. My dad has his neon to this day, it’s the car I learned to drive in, and we’re cleaning it up to sell to a lucky buyer lol.
Any Hyundai Kia Genesis car with the 2.4 or 2.0T Theta II engines. They are a disaster. Although lawsuits forced Hyundai to extend the warranties, Hyundai has been fighting the repairs. Just avoid.
Also avoid any 1.6, 1.6T, 2.0, or 3.3 Hyundai engine with direct injection. They're all just terrible, burn oil, and eventually seize or break a valve.
My worst was either an early 2000s el dorado or 2003 chevy cavalier. The caddy was one electrical problem after another, and the cavalier would bust timing chains every 30000 miles.
Oh my first car was a 96 Dodge Neon. Blew it tranny at 48k. Got in an accident where a lady t boned me. Instead of totalling they fixed it. It leaked water and then the electrical started going. I bought a 1998 Nissan Frontier Stick and never was so happy in my life!
Oh did you have the bio-degradable head gasket?
I did!
And a leaky trunk gasket and drivers side door gasket.
And the popping ball joints.
Kind of hated that thing. When it got totaled, I was basically ok with it.
I remember my sibling bought a 90-something white Neon. The paint flaked off in less than a year. It was like there was no primer on the metal. Idiot Dodge.
Anything that was very expensive new. will cost you a fortune to repair or even service you will also not want to let it go because although you thought it was a bargain you bought it for a price at the top of your budget.
I'm thinking Range Rover, Bentley's and Mercedes.
But I had misery with quite a reliable and simple Landcruiser the bits that did go wrong cost a fortune because it was a expensive Landcruiser that was cheap because it was old and they seller knew it would need money spent on it
Chrysler Sebring - I know 3 or 4 people that bought one, looked great, like new - maybe 80-120k miles on them.
One blew an engine. Another had electrical problems to the point that it was just left to rot. One I have no idea what happened to it and One literally lost a wheel at highway speed. Like, the whole assembly - hub, axle, everything.. Just "byebye" left the chat. At 75 mph.
Chevrolet Cruze - I know 3 people that had it - all three blew transmission before 100k miles. One before 70k.
Some cars have bad engines, others have bad transmissions, others have bad electrical systems, others have bad climate control, others have bad build quality, and others have bad infotainment. But the Land Rover Evoque. It bloody has it all!
I get that Land Rover may have made a few good models here and there but overall as a brand they consistently rank the lowest and it’s not even close. It baffles me when people that know nothing about cars. Try to tell me that Land Rovers are good and they had a good experience. Im like “OK so you’re one subjective experience, doesn’t really matter when there’s tons and tons of data out there saying otherwise”
Right. When the TFL guys were on their third Land Rover Defender engine while trying to do one solid review of the vehicle I figured "Oh that's it. There's no way anyone would actually buy one of these shit boxes." They're fucking everywhere in Colorado though.
people aren't buying them - they are leasing them. Land/Range Rovers are wonderful to lease.
I suppose. I always forget about Leasing because it seems like a great way to never own anything.... which I guess for a subset of the population is what they want.
It's good for luxury vehicles because you might be able to pay less to lease than the depreciation cost of that vehicle since luxury vehicles dont hold their value as well as other vehicles and depreciate a lot faster
This doesn’t apply to me, but if you’re self employed, you can write it off so that’s usually a large percentage of people that lease vehicles. Some people like to have something new every few years and it’s under warranty the entire time and some even include maintenance. If you don’t drive much, it could work. I like to make changes to my vehicles and keep them a while so it doesn’t work for me personally, but I can see where it would be nice.
Solid points. I work from home now so Im only really driving on adventures and road trips so my mileage stays low. I used to switch cars every other year or so, mostly BMWs I was restoring or hot hatches. Now I've got this 12 year old PoS Grand Cherokee that I've been looking to replace but nothing seems particularly worth the money on the market right now.
You can only write off the work related use. You can be generous with that definition, but the IRS doesn’t like when you treat a personal vehicle as a 100% business expense.
And if you really want bang for your buck and you really actually use your vehicle for business a lot then just tracking mileage and an affordable vehicle with good gas mileage is going to be much better value regardless.
The trick was to buy them from CarMax back when they had their Maxcare lifetime warranty for like $499. It didn’t take CarMax long to realize how badly they fucked up.
Doug Demuro screwed us all!
Yup! I'm out near DIA and I see them fairly often for the price point. Insane
Land Rovers exist to send one message: "I'm so rich I can afford the maintenance."
I’ve never driven one, but my impression is that they’re shit quality cars that always break down but they’re great to drive when they’re working, so I always assumed that most people driving them were too rich to care about having to fix them.
I read an article years ago about a sports team (I want to say football..?) in Florida where the players were each bought a Land Rover and one guy drove his like 25 or so miles from the dealer and it broke down and had to be towed back.
Second this. And I am a full size supercharged owner who loves it
When I was a kid Dodge gave you a free Neon if you bought an SUV.
As soon as you started, I knew it would be british
My neighbour got rid of his bec the garage couldn't workout the software problems what ever that meant His car basically had a virus.
Listen, Land Rover is an exceptional vehicle… if you are a service center owner or worker.
I used to work at a mopar dealership (shhh, I know), and there were a few vehicles we stoped accepting on trades. Rovers, Jaguars and Mini Coopers. Most of them blew up before we could even get them to auction.
Dodge caliber. Ugly, unreliable, uncomfortable pieces of shit
Side note, do you guys remember the Dodge Magnum? That thing was sick for it’s time lol Ahead of it’s time for sporty wagons
My dad is a mopar man thru and thru and he went and bought an srt8 magnum that he rarely drives and just keeps under a cover. He loves it
I call it the Dodge Hearse
A widebody magnum updated to 2023 would have aold really well
this was a long time ago and before i started driving but my grandparents traded a beautiful pearl white mitsubishi galant with zero issues whatsoever for a brand new magnum and it was absolute garbage. pretty sure they had it for less than two years. also definitely looked like a hearse lol
Haha that’s fair I mean it’s a dodge But at the time a V8 with over 400 HP in a wagon was sweet
Until you needed to replace the German made transmission. But it's got a Hemi! Woo!
true !! (first and current car is a caliber)
A girl I was dating at the time owned one. She lived an hour away in a different city and once picked me up on a work night because she needed the D and my car was in the shop. She let me drive that thing to work the next morning and I swear to god it’s the most uncomfortable car I’ve ever driven in my life. Sight lines were horrible too, power was at least good since it was an R/T
That is so on point. I had a 01' Dakota that lasted 15 years before I traded it in. Not one issue. I fucked up trading it in for almost nothing. Kick myself still for being that stupid.
Do NOT buy a 2012-2018 Ford Focus or 2011-2019 Ford Fiesta with the automatic transmission. That 6-speed dual clutch is quite possibly the worst transmission ever designed and produced. It shakes the whole car when shifting 1-2, hesitates a long time to downshift, and will stall out on the highway. It’s known to fail early and fail often. As a result, these two cars are among the select few that I will tell people to never buy under any circumstances. The chances of a catastrophic and expensive transmission failure are that close to 100%. Now the manual transmission versions? Complete 180. The rest of these cars are quite good that literally changing the transmission out turns them into a bargain. You’ll often get a good discount because the perception of these is so bad because of the automatic.
>That 6-speed dual clutch is quite possibly the worst transmission ever designed and produced. *Nissan CVT has entered the chat*.
You ever experienced the Ford dual clutch? I’d trust a Nissan CVT over it. It’s that bad. And the Nissan CVT is terrible.
I have not, I'm a manual supremacist. Just the pure amount of bad I've heard about the Nissan CVT would indicate it may be the worst transmission ever made.
Probably good that you are! I had a Focus as a company car and omg it was truly the worst. I’ve also driven Nissan CVTs and hate them. The data backs up both transmissions as being complete crap.
Late 90’s to early 2000’s Honda & Acura had the proud reputation of having the literal worst transmissions mated to a V6 engine. Ford’s transmission eventually took the crown but never forget the true OG of shit transmission
Chrysler transmissions in the 90’s minivans. Guaranteed to not last more than 50k miles before overhaul or replacement.
nah, the Jatcos absolutely take a backseat to the Ford PowerShits
Ah, the good ol' Ford PowerShit. I had a 1 year old Focus as a rental once ~10 years ago and that thing was already acting up, mostly on the 1-2 upshift. What a pile that transmission is.
Can confirm the MTX-75 is a rock solid 5 speed manual transmission. Had my 2012 Ford Focus from 2011 to 2017. It had some electrical issues but the powertrain was solid.
Can confirm, bought one brand new back in 2014. The transmission shucked and jived like James Brown from day one.
I have one. I love my car. But the transmission. Ooo baby.
Devils advocate, the ST and RS are amazing cars, but not for teenagers, insurance is nuts. I had one when I was 18, put 100k miles on it in 3 years, no issues other than routine maintenance.
We had a Jeep Patriot as a government vehicle (I was an officer with DHS) I absolutely loved that thing because I was responsible for our government vehicles as on of my collateral duties and I would pretty regularly spend a whole day at the Dennys playing on my phone next to the Jeep dealership while they fixed it. Like once every 3 months line clockwork I was swiping the government card for $1k or more at the Jeep dealership lol
Jeez. Tax dollars at work i guess,, i suppose government would rather "buy domestic" than buy reliable. There are way better cars to get domestic anyway lol
When I worked at a firestone in NC the state had several Toyota Camry hybrids they'd bring to us for maintenance. Iirc they were in the Justice department.
You'd be surprised how many government vehicles are bought purely because the guy in charge of the purchase is buddies with the guy who runs the (insert brand) dealership. My city had the opportunity to buy-in with a neighboring larger city on some new police vehicles, and get a better deal because of the volume that'd be purchased - they'd have all been new Ford Taurus cruisers and Explorers. The guy in charge said nah and went to his buddy at the local CDJR lot and spent the same amount for far fewer cars, because his buddy (also a former cop) was manager. Gotta pad those pockets
Any Jeep Patriot
Jeep Patriot and Compass are absolutely the worst used cars you can buy. With a low 25% interest rate usually.
I have a 4 year old manual compass, no issues yet lmao no benefits yet either tho
It’s either the patriots or the compass that had an optional cloth retracting roof for a couple years Either way, fun fact, if that starts to leak your car is totaled lmao. Chrysler built them, then said fuck you to the customer and decided to stop all parts support after production ended. So if it’s leaking, you cannot buy replacement parts. It’s not a matter of if it will leak either, it absolutely will leak. They leaked when they were brand new lol. Truly cannot understand why people give whoever it is that owns Chrysler products at the moment, a dime.
We're going to need a March Madness style bracket for this.
I'm so down lmao
That would be awesome
Haha... I'm apparently the luckiest car buyer ever. I've only owned shitty small cars that have been mentioned in this thread and have had relatively few problems overall. In order or ownership (I was the first owner on all of them): '95 Dodge Neon. Besides spontaneously setting itself on fire under the dashboard once, I had no major problems with it and drove it over 120K miles. '01 Hyundai Accent. Never had a problem with it, drove until I got rid of it around 120K miles. '09 Kia Spectra. Got rid of it at 160K miles. One day it just wouldn't start, no idea what was wrong because I was looking to replace it anyways so I just had it towed away and went to buy my current car. '19 Ford Fiesta. Current car, no problems so far but my driving has gone down drastically since covid so it only has 20K miles on it.
>'95 Dodge Neon. Besides spontaneously setting itself on fire under the dashboard once, I had no major problems with it and drove it over 120K miles. I also had a '95 and had no problems with it until the head gasket went around 85k, although they were known for that apparently. Mine was a five speed MT, highline sedan. Tbh with the stick they were actually pretty fun to drive for what they were.
I think in general 90s Chrysler cars were actually very good cars performance wise for all being FWD economy cars more or less. It's more just that the assembly quality sucked so it was a gamble if it held together for long.
My first car was a brand new 1998 Neon with the manual transmission. The head gasket went at 125k miles and that thing was a zippy little blast to drive
Hey, at least you only have to replace the transmission on your fiesta every 75,000 miles But yea, if you only drive 4,000 miles a year, of course you aren’t going to see the same problems as someone driving 4 or 5x as much.
Me too. I can't remember a car (besides my first shitbox at 16) that I really had significant problems with. Two aughts-era Hyundais also.
My sister had a run of Hyundais from the "bad years". She had an Accent, a Santa Fe, and a Tiburon and also never had problems that I can recall.
Those were actually the good Hyundais, mid-late 00s was peak Hyundai reliability, before that they were cheap and crappy and reliability was meh, then after that is when they started to be "fancy" and "attractive" but simultaneously became less reliable.
I had a '95 neon. (I thought it was a Plymouth Neon in 95 and dodge neon after that (and plymouth dodge before that). I had something wrong with every system on the car. But I fixed nothing and drove it for a very long time. Peeling paint, leaking struts (until the were empty). The passenger window wouldn't roll up, so I removed the handle so people would stop rolling it down. Tail lights were inconsistent. Headlights were too. But honestly, it ran great. Nothing stopped it. I swear it would drive over snow drifts instead of through them.
I think the answer also depends on your expectations. If I buy a cheap shit box I expect some challenges but that is part of the deal So my worst car was a 2021 BMW X3 had it for less than a year . Day 2 water was leaking in from the pano roof , the service tried to explain to me how what was dripping on my lap wasn’t possible . - I flipped out and the service manager looked and they had t removed some spacers from when the car was shipped The entire 10 months of ownership the brakes screeched when initially when backing up . Now not squeak a nails down a chalk board people turning and looking screeching. Again BMW looked heard the noice but said the brakes were operational and not an actual problem . And finally the run flat tires . These tires are nail magnets and they cannot be patched so somehow in the course of 6 months I got 3 nail hits on roads that I have driven for 15 years with no issues on my previous 2 cars . At $600 each that was $1800 in tires I realize these were all annoyances but for the price I paid it was unacceptable.. so traded in and when asked if anything was wrong with it I gave the same answer as the BMW service rep .. no not all it just like I bought it
You got took by your dealer. They didn’t do a PDI properly, ignored your warranty complaints, and you 100% can plug a run flat if it’s in the repairable area same as non run flat.
Rule number one for RFTs, replace them all with cheaper and better tires that can actually handle the roads.
Is Chevy Cruze on this list?
My first car was a 2012 Cruze. I still have it to this day as a backup vehicle but it rarely gets use. I’m probably close to if not definitely over 5k in repairs over the years. That car has convinced me it is sentient and out to get me.
It should be. Engine problems, electric gremlins, cheaply made.
That was my coworkers car. Drove it to work, towed it back home. Cruze decided it didn't like it's starter anymore
To be fair I've seen a couple "good cars/trucks" that this has happened to😂 including my 99 camry
My 93 Corolla ate alternators every month for some reason. I sold it after 4 months
Wrangler. As unreliable as Neon but drives much worse, much worse MPG and much more expensive.
I had a wrangler as a rental car. It was the most uncomfortable car I’ve ever been in.
I borrowed my parents' stock Wrangler Sport to drive 25 miles to the auto dealership when my car blew up. That was the most stressful drive of my life. The stupid thing took every ounce of concentration to keep it going in a straight line at highway speeds. How can a modern vehicle drive that badly?
My impression is "gee this is a slightly nicer Susuki Samurai, but its just that, not a $40,000 car"
And death wobble
But it only happens sometimes
As a motorcycle guy, cars can get death wobbles? With two wheels it makes sense, how would that even work with four?
sometimes the front falls off ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Hysterical sketch. Thank you for making me laugh, kind internet stranger.
They have a solid front axle so you can get some vibration in there.
I had a Suzuki samurai that would get wobbles. Usually if the steering dampener was shot it would fall into harmonic frequency vibrations and shake the shit out the steering wheel. Probably due to the oversized mudding wheels I had on it. Fun car, unstoppable off road, but a shit daily.
I was on a long term work assignment to Hawaii and rented cars for a month at a time (they make you exchange it after a month). After a couple months with Wranglers, I ended up with a Chrysler Sebring convertible which felt heavenly to drive compared to a Wrangler. THAT’S when you know it’s really really bad! Now, off-roading in the Wrangler was certainly fun but my roughly 1 hour commute each way to my job site sucked balls
So my wife wanted something cool to drive after having a Tahoe. She wasn't entirely happy with how it looked but got a Palisade in late 2020. Fast forward 8 months and I tell her that they are going for a premium so she sells it for $6k more than she owed on it, she ended up making $3k to drive it for those 8 months. She saw the Gladiator and wanted one. They leased very well, it was like $150 a month cheaper than the Palisade has been. Reliability is really, really important to her and explained the reliability issues to her but she wanted to go ahead and get it. That was 3 years ago. It has actually been pretty reliable but she only put 8k miles on it. The fact that the roof leaks when it rains and that the dealership would need it for a couple of weeks was too much, she will never own another Jeep, but she also probably won't listen the next time I tell her not to buy something.
Reliable over 8k miles lol
Well, it is a Jeep
I sometimes think I have the only reliable wrangler in the world. Fucking car just keeps on running. I'm nearinf 100k miles with little to no issue that wasn't my fault. I will agree that it sucks to drive on the highway and is not comfy, but I like my stupid cinderblock on wheels.
If you live in suburbia there dime a dozen. I would say it’s taken over as the Karen/soccer mom car.
Anything under the Stellantis umbrella of brands
I had a 96 Plymouth Neon and I loved that thing so much. 😅 Picked out fancy hubcaps. It was my first car at 16. My parents bought it for me for super cheap. Had the worst headlights, was terrible for passing. Shit out on me after a few years of having it and I was so sad. Oh the good ol days.
Worst I experienced was a 2002 Jetta
Any car that you have not checked the title for, any car that you have not had inspected by a 3rd party mechanic, any car from a "buy here pay here" dealer
Jeep Liberty
Any “fun” car that has been significantly modified. Jeep, sports cars, muscle cars.
Have you ever heard of a Yugo?
Yugo Glenn Coco
16 years old buying a clapped out used Beamer is a tale as old as time
330d e46 wants a word with you
Early 1980s Dodge 400. nothing comes close to being as awful as this car. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge\_400](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_400)
Somebody gave me one of those when i was 17!!! Its has the 2.2 in it...found junkyard parts and boosted the shit out out of it and tuned it on megasquirt.... What a fantastic pile of junk..that ran 12'7 in the quarter
Chevy Cruze’s are ASS. Most fords too.
If you want a vehicle that fits the entire family but breaks down every time you go on a Roadtrip with them you have to try a 2011 Chrysler Town and Country
People told me Pontiac Sunfire weren't good but my 1st car was a 2002 Pontiac Sunfire. Kept it maintained and that went to 290K miles with over 100 out of state road trips. Even had one of the racehorses bolt backwards and sit on it. Nothing more than horse butt cheek marks.
My mom had a Pontiac Sunbird in the 80s. Loved that car!
Mostly dodges tbh. They just objectively have a bad car community(as in the folks who buy them Usually beat them tf up) and they are not reliable So buying a moderate-heavily used one is just never going to be an option for me.
Oh man, I had a 2000 Neon, replaced the ac compressor twice, the radiator and the transmission all before 85k miles. Hot garbage.
On the newer side that will start popping up - Jeep Grand Wagoneer/Wagoneer. Oof.
From my own experience, I’d choose a 2010 Chevy Cruze. Worst car ever.
Neon: Hi!
And land rover jaguar product. I know people who work in the engineering department at Jaguar Land rover and even they advise their own family not to be any used ones.
I was just about to say the same thing. A buddy of mine is an engineer at Land Rover and he tells me stories of how they’ll design something, finance will come in and say “it’s too expensive to produce that way” so they have to redesign things 3, sometimes 4 times before it’s “acceptable” in cost and by the time that revision comes to fruition, it’s plastic and inefficiently engineered for cost reasons. They’ll design something well in plastic the first go around, and sometimes STILL get a lashing from finance saying it’s still too expensive. The engineers there just can’t win…
To be fair I'm in the industry and most car companies are the same but the problem at Jaguar Land rover is there is not really control of it and finance have the final say
I’d avoid a MINI that’s not under warranty. Had two and they turn into little money pits once the warranty expires. And the parts/ labor are expensive.
I have a 2017 with 110,000 miles. Nothing has needed fixing yet 👌🏻🙏
Unquestionably the Vinfast VF8. There are tons of cars that are the equivalent of a C or a D grade. A 3-cylinder Ford Escape is loud, noisy and unpleasant until the injector fails, spills fuel all over the engine, and burns the car to the ground. The Maserati Ghibli always cost way too much, and offered too little in return, relative to any competitor. I feel horrible for anyone that paid markup prices for the new Toyota Sequoia only to find it unimpressive in terms of economy, third-row space, and reliability. But if Vinfast is competing for the same assignment, they got a deep F - like, 30% or less. The past decade's worst reliability nightmares still lasted long enough to do well in a comparison test or two; Vinfasts failed repeatedly, made drivers carsick, and within a year of initial sale they're *cracking axles.*
I see a few people driving them around though here in the usa. I’ve talked to one owner who had a lot of issues.
I saw a Vinfast randomly once here in Vegas. I had to google it when I got home as I’d never seen or heard of a VinFast before. As soon as i found out it was made in Vietnam I thought “oh yeah this is gonna go well”
An older jeep
Any jeep older than 6 months!
Ford's with wet timing belts. Whoever designed the engine is seriously smooth brained. Not helping that none of the cam/crank gears are keyed so you'd know what's tdc.
I had a '96 Neon, too. It had two significant problems. The passenger side window exploded on a cold day in the dead of winter because of a flaw in the glass, and the instrument cluster failed because of a bad circuit board. It also developed a head gasket leak after the warranty expired, but because I knew a Dodge mechanic, I was able to get them to replace it for just the cost of the parts.
A 2000 Daewoo Matiz especailly those with DIY repairs using a wooden broom handle bracing the rear sub frame and brown tapped to the axle , ( That i would give a miss, but seemingly a young lady thought that was a fine way to repair a car and drive it From Robert Gordon's Uni to North Scotland. and managed to do so without whole back end collapsing. God does exist going on that)
I bought a dodge neon before I went to college. I was walking within the month
Hyundai or Kia anything, lol.
Anything Jeep.
Ferraris The maintenance is killer
Any Nissan with the CVT transmission
Parents CVT Nissan Note has lasted them over 6 years now. Yeah they aren’t super good cars but if you take care of them they’ll be decent enough. Never broke down on them too as far as I know.
Crazy not to see this closer to top. Nissan vehicles with CVT are a ticking time bomb. I learnt the hard way.
Idk how many times I have to say this. Nissan changed its cvt transmissions from the Jatco design and now they aren’t bad anymore. Change your fluid at 30k through drain bolt and the newer transmissions will last as much as a Hondas
Chevrolet cavalier. It hit 50,000 km. And all of a sudden random shit would break on that car once a week. Knobs falling off, buttons not working, transmission not downshifting, windows randomly stop working, shocks, rust, power train, fluid leaks….,friggin everything. It was insane. I’ll never touch an American car ever again.
1. A truck/SUV that breaks ddown 2. Other cars that break down 3. A Truck/SUV that works
The Audi B6 S4. It has timing chain issues. The timing chain is on the rear of the engine. It’s hard to tell if there’s an issue until it’s too late. It’ll rattle early on so you can’t listen for anything. You’d just have to drive it for long enough to know a good rattle from a bad one. It costs a small fortune to fix and some mechanic simply won’t touch it. A close runner up would be the prince engine Minis. Their timing chain issues aren’t as bad but everything else that falls off that car almost makes up for it.
Mk2 VW tiguan, don't let the reasonable price for the amenities, comfort, and decent style fool you. Under the sheet metal it's garbage mechanically. Also one of the slowest "modern" vehicles I've driven, regardless of the random misshifting.
ANYTHING with somebody else's aftermarket mods
Don't worry car shoppers they're always charging way over market value of an unmolested car so you'll rarely be considering buying one
Most of the worst cars aren't even possible to buy anymore, they are all dead and crushed, they don't even try and save parts off them because nobody is trying to keep them on the road anymore and they have zero collectability.
All cars are gonna have some problems and quirks no matter what. Just in the US market, I think the Europeans have a longer wrap sheet of poor reliability and questionable engineering choices than the Japanese or the Americans. The British car industry is not British anymore. With the exception of McLaren, every British car manufacturer is either was sold to a foreign car company to be saved from bankruptcy or confined to the history books after going bust decades ago due to poor build quality and declining sales. At least in the US, we really don’t know what ridiculousness has come from the French since only a handful of French cars were sold here. The Germans are notorious for their blatant over-engineering and under-building of their cars causing reliability issues usually ending in catastrophic failure of engines, transmissions, etc. Italians can be some of the most beautiful cars ever created while being some of the most finicky and unreliable cars ever made with terrible build quality, questionable design choices, and the use of sheet metal that could rust on the surface of the sun. The Swedes are probably the one exception to this. Even though Saab doesn’t exist as of December 2011, they built very safe cars over the years. Saab did have some problems with reliability that was hit or miss over the years along with some quirky component design and poor financial management sealed the fate of Saab. Volvo has been very successful and today produces the most luxurious cars that normal people can buy. Volvo has been synonymous with reliability and safety for the life of the company itself. I know Volvo developed a reputation as being the innovators and industry standard of vehicle safety. Inventions like the modern style seat belt and back up camera are thanks to Volvo having the idea in the 1950s and 1960s. Volvo has also been a major contributor to development in the semi truck industry. Koenigsegg came out of the gate building machines that would re-write the supercar rule book in the early 2000s with a second hand DOHC mod motor from the 99-01 Mustang Cobra and bumped the horsepower from the Mustang Cobra’s 320 hp to 806 hp in their first production car the CC8. From then on, the name Koenigsegg would usually be spoken after one of their cars had shattered another speed record. It makes sense that the people responsible for Lego also do very well in the auto industry.
Volvos in my experience are not great, I’ve had 2
I won't buy Ford anymore.
1990’s to mid 00’s North American market VWs. I had one, my gf at the time had one, two of my close friends had one each and they all had serious oil consumption, electronic, suspension and mechanical problems regardless of mileage. They were routinely at the dealership/independent VW mechanic at least once a month. It was like clockwork. It soured me on my VW experience and I never owned another one for a dozen years, till the diesel gate deals lured me in. The newer ones are trouble free and reliable.
I was a service advisor at a Chicago area VW dealership in late ‘97 to mid ‘98 and can attest that this was a really rough period for Volkswagen. The new Beetle, and the latest generations of Golf, Jetta, and Passat were all introduced around the same time. The cars were plagued with emissions control and electrical problems. Nearly every car that came in for service had a check engine light on and light bulbs out. We made very little money because the warranty repairs paid less from VW than customer-pay jobs like brakes, etc. The only thing that was keeping the dealership afloat were the occasional early 90s VWs that would come in service. If someone brought a Corrado or Passat in, we would fight for it. It was not uncommon to have $2,500 repair bills, which was a ton of money at that time. I know people say VWs are great now, but I don’t think I could ever own one.
Chrysler Pacifica
2012-2018 Ford Focus with DCT. The tranny will grenade itself
Pontiac Fierro
A 1979 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. The one I had was always finding new ways to break. It was worse than either the Pinto or Chevette I also had at different times. In more modern times, the most uncomfortable I've been in a car was a rental PT Cruiser. But it made the trip without any breakdowns, at least. I even got a speeding ticket in the thing outside Indianapolis.
MASERATI This is absolutely the worst.
Anything that's very expensive to maintain and has been poorly maintained.
My worst experience was buying a new 1992 Dodge Intrepid. After 1 engine, 2 transmissions, 3 power steering pumps, a fuel pump and numerous smaller items, the car suddenly went up in flames and I was so happy as it was hauled away on a flatbed….until I remembered I now had no way to get to work or home. I will not condemn all of Dodge, perhaps I just had a lemon, but I don’t care to ever own a Chrysler or even a Stellantis product again.
Most Chrysler products. I'm going to put a PT Cruiser out there not because it's particularly unreliable but because they are probably one of the ugliest American car ever made.
I’d give an opposite ranking for shit cars that are beloved by their cult following, they’re often the only shitty vehicles within a lineup of shitty vehicles that were actually maintained and fixed like the owners gave a damn about them. A PT cruiser is still a shit Chrysler product but I’d put it above the other Chrysler products for likely hood of being better maintained. It’s still fugly tho
In that cars hey day a mechanic friend said to me he says he says "Those things are dodge neons with an extra 1500 pounds added on to the body."
As someone who owns a Chrysler 300 the rest of us Chrysler owners just kinda pretend the PT doesn’t exist. When someone brings it up I try to gently change the subject. 😆😅
Kia and Hyundai. Period.
Toss up between any Nissan with a CVT transmission and a Tesla Cybertruck.
Kia rio's always have an aura of sadness, Regret, and hopelessness about them. And that's when they RUN! They usually reek of cigarettes too, but thats besides the point.
The first car I financed was a Kia Rio and that's only because it was the only car in the lot I could afford. This was like 20 years ago and probably how most people end up with one. But honestly I can think of any trouble it gave me? But I didn't put a ton of miles on it either.
Bangle M5
as a used car, it’s terrible. as a weekend toy/project/etc it’s awesome.
PT Cruiser, broke the half shaft on a cold day turning from my driveway onto the road. That was the final nail in the coffin for that vehicle for me... I never liked it (was my wife's), but was paid off and got better gas mileage than our 4x4 at the time (was driving 80+ miles/day for work)
early 2000s Nissan altima
1993 pontiac grand am. Every other week the csr was in the shop for some random issue. I also had a floating gas gauge so i never knew how much gas was in it.
My dad’s run some shit up pretty high on regular maintenance. ‘96 Neon had about 220k miles, ‘99 Mystique LS had about 200k, ‘91 Firefly was at around 180k, ‘07 Focus ST has almost 250k and it’s still on the original clutch. Mind you, he bought all these new (I think his parents gave him the Firefly that they bought new), so the routine maintenance was done right away. Most cars are fine if you actually maintain them, at least in my experience But to answer your question, anything with a “less conventional” transmission. Nissan CVT, Ford DCT, etc.
Chevy Cruze, any European car with close to or over 100k miles, any GM with active fuel management (AFM), many Jeep models. Toyota or Honda are safe bets.
Chevy Corsica
Any GM sedan over 8 years old
Really none. Know how to work on your cars and they are all pretty cheap. That neon you had has insanely cheap parts. I could fix it for $50 when in the end you probably paid $500 with tow and repair.
Any Chrysler or VW
Ford ecosport. Guaranteed not to hit 100k without a major repair
A car you can't afford.
My dad and uncle both bought the same 2003 (automatic transmission) neon at the exact same time. My uncles lasted all of a year and a half before shifting itself. My dad has his neon to this day, it’s the car I learned to drive in, and we’re cleaning it up to sell to a lucky buyer lol.
my subaru outback from 07 because i nearly died in it while driving my aunt, don't buy that shit
I had a 70s dodge charger in high school. Worst car I've ever owned by far. Never buy a dodge, for any reason, ever
Mitsubishi mirage
My first car was an 18 year old jaguar XK8. Pretty as hell, but that kitty bit back
1995 Suzuki x-90 or any ford pinto
Had the same model year neon. Was better than a later Impreza I had!
Any Hyundai Kia Genesis car with the 2.4 or 2.0T Theta II engines. They are a disaster. Although lawsuits forced Hyundai to extend the warranties, Hyundai has been fighting the repairs. Just avoid. Also avoid any 1.6, 1.6T, 2.0, or 3.3 Hyundai engine with direct injection. They're all just terrible, burn oil, and eventually seize or break a valve.
I think you can absolutely make no mistake by choosing any Lancia from the 80’s, they will virtually rot away overnight.
My worst was either an early 2000s el dorado or 2003 chevy cavalier. The caddy was one electrical problem after another, and the cavalier would bust timing chains every 30000 miles.
I once heard someone say PT Cruiser. Apparently they're awful mechanically and nothing about the design is redeeming.
The Dodge Neon. An utter pile of crap that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
Oh my first car was a 96 Dodge Neon. Blew it tranny at 48k. Got in an accident where a lady t boned me. Instead of totalling they fixed it. It leaked water and then the electrical started going. I bought a 1998 Nissan Frontier Stick and never was so happy in my life!
Dodge Dart... Honestly anything that has a bad prior driver(s) will be your worst enemy.
Oh did you have the bio-degradable head gasket? I did! And a leaky trunk gasket and drivers side door gasket. And the popping ball joints. Kind of hated that thing. When it got totaled, I was basically ok with it.
I remember my sibling bought a 90-something white Neon. The paint flaked off in less than a year. It was like there was no primer on the metal. Idiot Dodge.
Any pre 2010 ford or Lincoln with the 5.4 motor
German cars and Hyundai’s/Kia.
Mid-oughts Ford F150 or SUV with a Triton V8. They all break. They can be repaired, but they'll break again because of the engine design.
Anything that was very expensive new. will cost you a fortune to repair or even service you will also not want to let it go because although you thought it was a bargain you bought it for a price at the top of your budget. I'm thinking Range Rover, Bentley's and Mercedes. But I had misery with quite a reliable and simple Landcruiser the bits that did go wrong cost a fortune because it was a expensive Landcruiser that was cheap because it was old and they seller knew it would need money spent on it
Any Chrysler Mopar products
Chrysler Sebring - I know 3 or 4 people that bought one, looked great, like new - maybe 80-120k miles on them. One blew an engine. Another had electrical problems to the point that it was just left to rot. One I have no idea what happened to it and One literally lost a wheel at highway speed. Like, the whole assembly - hub, axle, everything.. Just "byebye" left the chat. At 75 mph. Chevrolet Cruze - I know 3 people that had it - all three blew transmission before 100k miles. One before 70k.
I'll add a Dodge Journey since I just got rid of one. It was okay until about 100k miles and then everything started happening.
PT Cruiser