Flip a coin but my Olds Omega was the lousiest cat I ever had as far as quality goes.

Oldsmobile Alero. HORRIBLE car.

i'm kinda likin' the white converible

GM was worst. K Car for all it's faults carried the water for basic transportation for a decent window of time and delivered the profits Chrysler needed.

Pontiac Aztec. From the same company that produced the 389 GTO and the 455 SD Trans Am?

Ford Pinto perhaps?

AMC Pacer?

It was almost like the American companies got together and said "Let the sh-tbox wars begin"

Geno

When they came out with the GM X Car, i was working in a Pontiac dealership. Me and another guy that worked there, used to laugh at them because we thought they were the ugliest car ever built.

That...

I see it as a draw! Should’ve never left the “draw-ing” board with either one! memtb

Didn't Ford come out something similar to the K car about the same time?

We bought a K-car from a rental company in 1985. Drove it from Florida to Utah with a full trunk, our two daughters in the back, and a roof rack for the reloading supplies the moving company wouldn't take. All went fairly well until we got to I-25 from New Mexico to Colorado, and then the Rockies to Utah. Car could not climb hills with the A/C running - and it was the end of July. Miserable two days, for sure. Truly crappy gas mileage with that roof rack, besides. It was tuned for sea level; the Rockies are not sea level.

Didn't take us long to trade it off.

Still quite a few K-Cars on the road today. Not many X-Cars. That should tell you something...........

Edsel

I had a K car! Loved it. We took a trip to Florida with it , problems at all with the car!!

Cadillac Cimmaron

A Chevy Cavalier by any other name



doing schit like that is why people stopped buying American

[and it was the end of July. Miserable two days, for sure. Truly crappy gas mileage with that roof rack, besides. It was tuned for sea level; the Rockies are not
sea level!

This should tell you something!

The Ford Fairmont feels slighted.

my sister bought a ford fairmont 4 cylinder with I think a 4 speed manual. Even with that it would barely drive over the mountains - not even real mountains, I'm talking Maryland Mountains back in the early 80s

I had a K car! Loved it. We took a trip to Florida with it , problems at all with the car!!


Their intire. Lineup!!!!

I believe the Vega was the worst ever from the Big 3. The Yugo was the world champ POS, though.

I am embarrassed to say the first new car I ever bought was a Chevy Citation in 1981. I blame my sister, she had bought one two years earlier and couldn't stop raving about it.

Couldn't wait to get rid of that piece of crap as soon as it was paid off...…..

Every auto maker has its duds.



Honda airbags kills you.

Toyota sudden acceleration kills you.

Might as well follow OUR PRESIDENT and BUY AMERICAN!



By the way, OrangeOkie - what do you drive? Is this thread just to make you fell good about your Asian junk?

Had an 84 Citation X-11. Pretty darn good car. Sold it at 280,000, last I heard, it had another 100,000 on it. Good handling, fast for the time. Good looking, too, to my eye.

That thing looks like a miniature garbage truck

That silver Citation above was not a bad looking car for that time. Kind of reminds me of the old AMC Eagle 4wd cars of the 80's. Remember those?

I always thought the eagle was kinda cool

Mine was white, went around 125 top end, 28 mpg, and cornered very well. They did about .83g on a skidpad.135hp, 2.8 liter v6, 2550 pounds.

My Uncle had a citation when i was a kid. It had a TON of miles on it and developed a knock. He sold it to a guy that drove it with the knock for seriously I dont know how many years. At one point I was sitting at a stoplight and I hear a car knocking next to me I look over and its the citation and I figured it had died cause I hadn't seen it in a few years. Hell its probably still running

had one of these i bought for 200, drove the chit out of it for 2 yrs then sold it for 500.

Ford Tempo.

The Chrysler K car pulled them out of bankruptcy, and paid off govt loans at Lee Iooccoa's helm.

Like the look of that Eagle.

When my wife and I were in college, she had a Mercury Topaz 2dr, which was supposed to be a sportier version of the Tempo. It was a slug, but I'll be danged if it wasn't a solid car for as long as she owned it. Cheap car too. Had those terrible motorized seatbelts though. They'd groan and grumble along the doorframe and I was always hitting my head on them.

we had a ford escort that my mom bought new, between her my dad, me and my brothers driving it, it had over 400,000 miles on it and was still running when we got rid of it.

The Chevy Vega had to be about the biggest piece of shyt in my memory. Followed closely by the Chevette and Ford pinto. I had a Tempo and while slow it was a good, dependable car. My own personal award for biggest piece of shyt goes to the Chevy S-10 Blazer I had. Something went wrong with that heap every other week. It was so bad I've never bought another GM product since I got rid of it in 1996 and I never will.

I think the X-car was the worst but very, very close behind was the Chevy Vega. I was forced to park my Suburban and drive my brother's Vega while he spent a year in Europe for school. The idea was to save on gas and I was OK with that. But I HATED being seen in that crapmobile! I remember the clutch went "Ka-Blooey" at 20,000 miles. What a heap!

RS

The original clutch on my X11 was still functioning at 280,000. Musta gotten a good one.

Aztec was Pontiac brand, made in south america IIRC.
Kinda looks like all the other crap SUVs nowadays

buddy in high school had a vega with a 454 in it, ran pretty good.

Going down, instead of up

You shoulda hung onto it for a while...looks like they're going for $2500 these days.

How? A buddy and I shoehorned a 350 into one and that was bad enough.

I'm surprised they didn't tip over onto the front bumper!

RS

his dad traded a Kawasaki 900 for it, it was a all out drag car that was street legal but not very streetable. tubbed, tube chassis.

If you bought 'em used, in reasonable condition, it was hard to beat a K-car for basic trans. Low initial purchase price. Low cost of operation. Reasonable fuel economy. Bought each of my daughters one when they started driving for approx $1,000 each. Liability insurance. One lasted two years till it got caught in a flood. One slid off a snowy back road into a telephone pole. Both daughters were O.K. afterwards. No worry about the vehicles...

IIRC, with at least one engine-transmission combination on the Citation, it required unbolting an engine mount and jacking the engine up to change the oil filter. BIL had a shop and started using a hole saw to cut an access in the front fender well. Sheet metal screwed a cover plate over the hole. Had to take a wheel off to change the oil. But, beat messing with an engine mount.

Gremlin

I would drive that Gremlin right now! What a babe magnet!

RS

Maybe in a Walmart parking lot.

I work with a guy that hit a deer in WvA with that pile of junk on I77. Nearly killed him and his entire family.

You very dumbphuck...You do realize that GM,Dodge and Ford all use Takata airbags.

So, why are all the deaths occurring in Honda's and not other brands, Einstein?

Click Here

Because they sell more of them Dumb Phugg and they are actually driven and not sitting in a mechanic shop. They last 10 to 1 .. Easy Peasy

I'd take a gremlin or a vega any day.

I am with you, will not even rent one since early 80's. Cheers NC

Pops had a Blazer S10. Rode like crap but was problem free up to 100K then engine died.
Put a reman in it and some bimbo swerved to miss a cat and trashed it (parked on street).

Chevette............Pops had one of those too. I beat the living snot out of it.
Broken shifter bushing was the only prob in 165K miles. Floorboard rusted out, had to make a new one.
Sold to a kid that drove it for years til a truck backed into it.

I had a well worn one, drove it for a few yrs, pushing 200K. Finally had the head crack.
Did a pretty deep gulley crossing on Jeep trail in my deer woods with it, to fetch a deer.
Amazingly, all the glass stayed in.

My brother laughed his arse off.

Back in my youthful days I had a Vega, Gremlin, and a several different K-Cars. The Vega was a good idea gone bad. It would rust while you were looking at it, and the interior fell apart as fast as the paint job. The Gremlin was a giant step up from the Vega, and was actually a fun, functional car. I also had a Plymouth Reliant, Dodge 400, and a Chrysler New Yorker -- They were all head and shoulders above the Vega and Gremlin.

In your dreams. Next time, try responding with facts - not fiction.

We had an 82 and a 91 escort. Or an 81 and a 92? NO matter. They wont win any races, but manual trans were fast enough to get to school or work good mileage and ran forever. Great car for transportation. The 91 had . a crap ton of miles, and it wasnt all highway, lots of city in there. Just under 300k, and the guy who bought it kept driving it for years.

if we are talking cheap reliable gems, the escort is way up there.

Ha ha ha . . . I consider myself a car connoisseur . . . I currently own five vehicles, and there ain't no junk in the bunch!

Here is a thread with all of the cars I have owned or currently own. I also have a 2012 Ford F-150 Boss 302 and 2016 Audi A7 TDI not shown.

https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbt...828773/re-cars-i-have-owned#Post13828773

K cars were decent basic transportation. i don't know much about the X car but there was a schit ton of those running around about 25 years ago. when i was but a lowly E4 i went out and bought a brand new 1986 ford escort. the base model pony. manual steering and brakes and 4 speed, no a/c. it cost me 5400 bucks. i proceeded to drop a 400 dollar bad ass stereo in that thing and drove the schit out of it for 12 years and 160k miles. i even ran that thing plumb out of oil one time and it still ran for several years. it still ran when i sold it to my neighbor for 200 bucks.

Those K cars had all the class and character of a washing machine, but they were never designed for class. Basic, cheap running transportation, for that they couldn't be beat. The K car and the mini van saved Chrysler's bacon.
No experience with the GM X body cars. I did have a Chevy Celebrity I drove for work, but every other Chevy I had were V-8 powered Novas or Monte Carlos.
Buddy of mine had a Vega POS, and another had the Pontiac version called the Astre. We called it the ashtray. The metal in those things was cheap. They'd rust in the showroom!
I always thought Chevy should have made them a little better and offered a small V-8 like the Ford Maverick.
I had a Maverick for a while. With the 302, they would really scoot. Also had one with the straight 6. That thing would go where mountain goats would avoid!
7mm

My folks bought an Aries K station wagon late 80's. I guess that's what you mean by k car? Ran great for a lot of years till my brother cross threaded a spark plug. I think they junked it after that, I don't remember. I wasn't big enough to reach the pedals or drive it so I have no idea except it ran for a lot of miles for us.

Buddy had a chevette in HS. Pulling the e brake and spinning tight turns on dirt was good clean fun for dumbass teenagers.

My dad also had bought an escort, can't remember the year but it was a 1/2 year model, manual transmission. Ran it a lot of miles and it ran good till it didn't. And getting parts was a mofo, because it was some odd year model. I want to say 85 1/2 maybe?

If I had a million dollars I’d buy you a K car.....a nice reliable automobile.

The Cimmaron was a Chevy Nova not a Cavalier.

Haha, speaking of cheap transportation, early in our marriage my wife and I had a Dodge Colt Vista wagon which I think was basically a Mitsubishi. We were broke starting out and wanted to pay cash. That turned out to be a pretty good little car! It would haul a ton of crap, including sea kayaks on the top, got good gas mileage, and ran OK with the manual trans. Only issue we had was the A/C compressor went out out right before a trip from NM to Kansas City in July. That sucked but it never let us down.

I submit for your consideration the turdlike Ford Grenada for the chittiest automobile of all time.

I've had a lot of cars by most standards.
My "Old Man"'had a salvage, hence dealer license.
When I was younger, I had a nice '72 Monte Carlo with a big block. Wasn't worth a damn in the winter, so I'd get something running decent and switch tags and insurance when it got ugly. Mavericks made pretty good winter beaters, usually sporting flames or "ZZ Top" stripes.
After I had a family and got out of the service, I kept a good car for Sunday "Go to Meeting" for Wifey 1.
I ran a cheap beater to work. I'd go with Dad to a dealers auction, buy something (always American, but no Brand loyalty) for 4 or 6 hundred bucks, and run it till something that cost money broke. Then I'd buy another.
I did that for probably 30 years or more. Most of them, I wouldn't drive them where I couldn't tow them home!
Only one that didn't pay for itself was an Olds Cutlass that blew shortly after I bought it.
After Dad went on and I married Wifey 2, I can't do it now. I drive a 16 year old Ranger now. She's on her 3rd Subaru. She drives 40 miles to work, and had 2 Forresters that ran over 250 thousand miles with very little repair.
Worst I've had was front wheel drive GMs with 4 cylinder. Just kinda crappy cars.
Had 3 K cars over the years but for the most part I bought stuff I could work on. V-8s with drive shafts.
I'm not claiming to be an expert, just sharing my experiences.
7mm

I don't think it is. Read up on the Chevy J-Body

The Nova was a cross project between Chevy and Toyota - it was closer to a Corolla and because of that it was probably a decent little car.

The ultimate junk was the Cadillac Catera. NOt only was it junk but seriously overpriced Junk. The Cadillac product manager must have been laughing his nutz off after they launched that. No one mentioned the Yugo

Prove otherwise or STFU. Ford is no longer selling sedans or will be shortly. Chevy keeps discontinuing sedans and cars. Oh the Horror, think of all the aggravation they are saving consumers.

Different Nova, not the re badged Toyota. You know, the real Nova. I hear Chevy couldn't sell them in Mexico, Nova sounds like no va that means doesn't go.

I had a Renault LeCar. i think I gave $300 for it. I hated it and flogged on it but it just kept on ticking. What a piece of doo. It made the Dodge Colt look like a prize.

I think I swapped it for two 10 speed bicycles.

I know the Pinto was a cheap get by car, but it was about all I could afford when I got out of high school in 1979. I ran the wheels off of that thing, Turned out to be solid dependable transportation for many miles and years.

Not even in the same ballpark with the likes of a Vega. My brother and my friend Carl both drove Granada's for alot of years and alot of miles wth little trouble. The unsleeved aluminum engine in the Vega was absolute junk with a useful life of about 40,000 - 50,000 miles. By that time they were so worn they burned more oil than gas.

Dad always had a company provided car, was sales for a division of JNJ. I remember dad talking about a bunch of his counterparts ordering K-cars w/turbos. The turbos proved unreliable and very quickly made the non-approved list. I can also remember him being very unhappy when he had to go from a "Full-Size" RWD 3.8L V-6 Buick Century to the newer model w/3.0L and FWD.

My aunt, best buddy in high school, and my sister all had Citations. They were all pretty reliable.

Sister had a Dodge Omni and mom had a Plymouth Horizon, both were reliable and got around in the snow pretty well but uff-da were they ugly.

Chevette , Chevrolet designers of the time must have been on drugs.

That Catera was actually an Opel built in Germany.

Surprised no one has mentioned the Opel Manta.

In high school we stuffed a 351 Cleveland into a Pinto.
We also built two Vegas. One had a 350 in it the other we put a 454 in.

My first new car was a 1980 Buick Skylark.X-car.4 door.
Best car ever.
2.8 transverse mounted V6.
I kept it for 4 years and then gave it to my dad.
My dad kept it ..honed it.. until the mid 90s.
Had over 2500000 and never used a drop of oil.
Finally just rotted away.
dave

I drove beaters for years - never paid more than $3600 for a car until I was 45 years old. Back in the day I owned & drove three Chevettes and bought two others for spare parts. I found an easy way to patch a rusted out floor board was to use a kick panel out of an old aluminum storm door, tin snips, rubber mallet and some roofing tar.

I’m glad I did it. I saved a lot of money and was debt free at 50. I would not want to do it now.

Bought my wife a new Dodge Aries in '87 A metallic rose color with a red interior with the 2.6 I4, automatic. Was the perfect travel car for us and good on gas. Put more than 180,000 on it and the only thing I ever had to do to it was replace a bad motor mount after about 8 years. Replaced the brakes once and then the regular oil changes. Had it for 10 years and then gave it to my niece without a scratch on it. She allowed it to develop an oil leak which resulted in a vehicle fire a year later.

Phil

I guess no one ever rear-ended it? We used to call them Trunk Bombs.

The Caddilac Cimmaron was indeed a rebadged Nova, I rebuilt one that was hit hard in the front and ordered NOVA parts to replace the overpriced Caddilac parts.

You mean like GM's '73-'87 pick-ups... that was a major kabash and one GM was held liable for, BIG TIME.

Link


Phil

The Feds bought a lot of K-Cars to help keep Chrysler afloat. In the late 80's or early 90's the AF Base here auctioned off some, 2 or 3 friends bought one each and all drove them for many miles.

AMC Pacer? What do you expect from Rambler?

I had a Vega, it was fun and at least looked pretty good. It just had that tiny problem with the original engines...

The worst ever for me was a LeCar. As ugly as a Citroen 2CV without all that pesky dependability.

They actually had to load the tank with an explosive to get it to blow.

One thing you guys are all forgetting as you lambast the cars like the Chevette; they were in response to Toyota and Nissan gaining a significant market share after the late 70s fuel crisis. Those econoboxes were just whipped together quick to get american made vehicles on the market that could compete with Japanese brands in the mileage department. They surely weren't pretty, but they were only supposed to be a stop gap measure until better stuff could come out of the design shops.
We had a Chevette when I was growing up. I took my drivers test in it. Parallel Parking was so easy....

Have you guys seen todays Chevy Spark? Yuck!

Maybe so but I think they were equipped rear window defrosters, "hand warmers" if you will, for the unfortunate passengers that had to push them.

And sold to people who couldn't afford the Jap cars which were so much better. Ever try to drive a Maverick?

My Grandma had one o' those. I was shocked at how fast it was.

She didn't keep it long enough to tell how well it might have held up.

FC

Don"t forget AMC Pacer..

I used to work with an old man who traded a single shot shotgun for a red Yugo. He drove that thing to work every day for at least 10 years!

My 1977 Olds Omega was the worst car I ever encountered, except for my Plymouth Horizon and my Chrysler LeBaron.

About everything we made in Detroit from 1970, through the 1980s was junk.

Is there perhaps one too many zeros there?

I knew a couple of guys who had those Skylarks, they loved them.

my buddy has a 80 something dodge shadow in his storage building, has a 500ci bigblock mopar 1000hp, hemi 4 speed and a aftermarket ford 9inch.

What, no one mentioned the Yugo! That thing was a death trap. My sister in-law almost lost her life in a car wreck when they were in a Yugo, back in the day. Any other car and it would have only been a minor fender bender probably.

Does anybody read the thread anymore?

Pontiac X car was the least reliable vehicle I have owned. A number of problems when in warranty and they escalated once out of coverage. Service needed every few months, even before it had 40,000 on it.

Looks like a cavalier to me:





And similar to a late 80's Nova




But, more like the Cavalier to me.

Chevrolet Corsica, Renault Alliance.. One see's ton of them on the road these days

The Nova of that vintage was a rebadged Toyota Corolla..........

My late uncle bought one of the 1991 (I think) Olds Cutlass with the Quad-4. That thing was a lot quicker than what I expected a 4-banger to do in those days. Little bastard would FLY!

Seems like the appeal of the subject cars depended on the driver's needs. Two daughters in University studies in the 80s were "assisted" into having used Chev Citations because the lower price and good condition yielded them a lot of driveable miles for the cost. They didn't love the things - not at all stylish compared to what classmates/friends were driving - but they sure liked the dependability, gas mileage, less expensive tires and parts, etc., and the fact that Dad would do the service and repairs.No serious repairs needed. Theirs ran the "Iron Duke" which was one nice development of that series. Upon graduation and first professional jobs, one bought a new Saturn and the other an S10 pickup. Both were good to them.

Ha! Hadn’t thought of the Iron Duke in a while. A buddy’s dad bought an old 80 something S10 a while back for $250, smokes like a biotch and uses about as much oil as gas. He went to the salvage yard to look for a pulled motor to rebuild while he drove it with the old smoky motor in it and then do a weekend swap.

We walked into the office at the salvage yard and asked the dude if he had an Iron Duke. Guy pointed to a pile about the size of a boxcar and says, “you can have all you want, $50 apiece”!

Yep one to many zeros.
dave

The most interesting aspect of this thread is how many truly lousy cars we have collectively driven! And lived to tell about it!

RS

Correct. Built at the NUMMI facility in Fremont, CA...