Did you recently take on (or consider) a loan of 84 months or longer on a car purchase?
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My worst car ever!
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Sure its showing its age, rides a bit rough, road noise is a little louder that when I bought it but its been the most reliable car I ever had. And I haven't been the kindest to it.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
Check the Lada Cosack out, cheapest 4x4 on the market at $5000 bought new, it looks unique like a Russian jeep. Come on, you really want it...I know you do, rush out and buy one today.:)
Yep they are still in business, if you can read Russian click here.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
I've honestly loved all the cars I've owned...I don't have a best or worst.
I can, as well as millions of other owners. That's why they buy them.
2009 BMW 335i, 2003 Corvette cnv. (RIP 2001 Jaguar XK8 cnv and 1985 MB 380SE [the best of the lot])
Yes but is it a case of perception creating its own reality. Case in point, my sister is a big Toyota fan and only had one non Toyota in her life. She is convinced she has the best built most reliable cars on the face of the planet. Yet her cars go back for work more often than anything I ever had. Her current Toyota has been in the shop for warranty work 3 times so far. I have had 7 new cars in my life and out of all of those I have had warranty work done twice.
My current daily drive had its first non routine maintence at around 120K miles. My sister told me thats what I get for not buying a reliable car like hers. But her car has less than 70K miles on it and has had work done on it three times.
So basically her perception doesn't match reality.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
Yes why? It starts right away even on the coldest mornings, It runs fine, gets decent gas mileage, nothing going bad on it, so far no money out of my pocket other than routine maintence to keep it running. As long as it stays that way I am keeping it.
In short its the best kind of car to have, It runs and its paid for. :P
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
I test drove it but didn't like it, unfortunetly she was with me and fell in love with it.
My roommate's sister had an Elantra...1999 I think. It was used and she didn't have any problems with it that I know of, but she didn't keep it very long because it got wrecked. Her Mom bought a used '02 Sonata around the same time, and AFAIK she's never had any problems with it.
Thinking of worst cars...I guess my worst would be my first, the 66 Galaxie. Technically not "mine" as I didn't legally own it...it was always having some kind of carb problems, was very cold blooded, got horrible mileage...but it was loud and would burn the tires easily, so I dealt with it.
Tell me what did the police think of that? :P
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
2016 Audi A7 3.0T S Line, 2021 Subaru WRX
Then I proceeded to buy my second worse car. Believe it or not, an 86 Honda Accord bought new. Except for minor issues, the motor was great, but other issues ... such as a flimsy body structure causing windshields to snap, plastic pieces I never touched that would crack suddenly, an appetite to burn out headlamps every 12,000 miles, lousy seats for the long haul, and a virtually unreachable oil filter ... drove me crazy. Plus I would not write home about my dealership experience.
My best car is actually my current 2002 Ford F150 (5.4 liter). Yeah, it drinks a bit of gas (I average 19.5 mpg mostly highway) but it starts, goes, doesn't break, never complains, has only required routine maintenance and the cruise control recall, is comfortable as hell, the dealers are friendly to me.
Big in Europe? Must be a different Europe than the one I visit a few times a year. In my travels through most of the European countries (including Eastern Europe) I have yet to see a single Lada Niva (or whatever other name they may be selling it under).
Or did you mean, "big in the European portion of Russia"?
I am sure it could have been purchased very reasonably.
Fast forward from 11-75 to 11-81, and from Illinois to L.A. I thought I was clever, because I didn't buy the Corolla some Hollywood scammer jump-started as I rolled up to his house and saw him running away, jumper cables trailing behind him. Instead, I drove over to Silverlake and sprung for a battleship gray Pinto wagon that smoked and wouldn't downshift when I floored it. Reason? it had a broken cylinder shaft, as the young mechanic who took it off my hands for less than half of what I paid for it kindly informed me after he repaired it to where, in his words, "it ran like a sewing machine." Where was my thimble when I needed it? :confuse:
Now, 25+ years later, after living much of that time in SFrancisco without owning a car - the one remaining good thing about that city-gone-crazy - I'm the happy owner of a 2003 Forester, which has treated me well since I bought it 3 1/2 years ago. :shades:
Sorry to be posting serially here, folks, but I just found this thread and it's putting some humor back in my life after the Bears lost today!
Illinois Triangle: Imports die, promising football teams wither, good food from the farms turns lousy when it gets in local cooks' hands. Aliens at work? "Chariots of The Gods?" Draw your own conclusions! :confuse:
Where can I get a back issue? :shades:
Silly you! Those are "passenger assist straps" and they're there to help you break your tailbone or sprain your wrist when they snap!
It is the only car I've owned that had gone through 3 computers and 4 transmissions in 4 years.
Gee, that's something to rival Windows! Maybe Bill Gates will give you a free upgrade to Service Pack 2!
Look at it this way, they lost to Miami. Thats the only team that beat them when they last went to the Super Bowl.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
Wow, I had to go back and re-read what I wrote originally to jog my memory. In a twisted sort of way I miss my Newport. That's probably the reason why, a few years after I got rid of it, I bought a 1979 New Yorker I found on eBay. Same car, just more luxurious and with a bigger engine.
Thinking back on it, my Newport did have its troubles though. But to be fair I bought it from the junkyard for $250, and found out that it had 230,000 miles on it! Originally I thought it only had 130K on it, but when the junkyard gave me the title, I saw that the previous owner bought it around 1985 with 105K on it, and this was late 1996.
It made it home just fine under its own power, but cost about $900 to get it through inspection. It needed new front brake pads and rotors, rear shoes, subframe bushings (the labor there was a killer) and I forget what else. Then, about a month after I got it on the road, the tranny died. Oddly, about a half mile from a local transmission shop.
The guys at the shop asked me if I really wanted to put a transmission in it and I said yeah. They also asked me how much I paid for it. I told 'em $250. The owner told me that if I had stopped by their place about 5 months earlier, I could've had the car for free! Turns out the previous owner had it in there, but didn't want to put the money into a rebuilt tranny, so he just left it with them. While it was there, they gave the nice 15x7 road wheels to someone who wanted to put them on a horse trailer, and then put some junk Ford wheels on it (same bolt pattern, but the hole in the center is smaller on a Ford wheel, so they just cut the opening bigger to make 'em fit on flush), and had the junkyard take it away. I thought that was a strange coincidence.
Lessee, what else was wrong with that car? The a/c didn't work. The stereo had speakers that were just about shot, so I put in a set that I had lying around. Even though it was just the cheap AM/FM stock 1979 stereo, it sounded pretty good with those speakers. While I had the car, the parking brake cable broke, the starter went out (I think that's standard equipment on all smallblock Mopar V-8's), fuel pump went out (again, a standard feature), the steering column, of all things broke (my mechanic found another from the junkyard that didn't have cruise control, but its interval wipers worked wheras mine didn't). The power steering pump went out. One of the teeth in the lift mechanism for the passenger side window broke off, so you couldn't roll the window all the way up unless you grabbed it and pulled it all the way. Then you couldn't put it down unless you gave it a push first. Thankfully it had frameless door windows, so you could do that easily with the door open. The last straw on that car was when, around the 250,000 mile mark, the water pump went out. I'd had enough.
Oh, one other feature that car had, which I thought was pretty cool, was full gauges AND idiot lights. However, the overheat light for the coolant temperature had a mind of its own and seemed to come on independently from the gauge. It would come on even at times it was physically impossible for the car to overheat...like the moment I would start it up on a cold winter morning. Oh, and the little tab that held the glovebox closed would rotate sometimes, causing the glovebox and all of its contents to dump on the passenger side floor! This car also had pull straps on all 4 doors, but not the little recesses in the armrest to grab. The front two were pulled loose, and you could tell where in the past someone had tried to put screws in at other spots, but it just wouldn't hold.
Now, after all that ranting, someone remind me again why I missed this thing enough that I went out and bought another? :P Actually, to the car's credit, it got good highway mileage...about 22, with its 318. It was a great highway cruiser too. 0-60 wasn't so hot, but it had plenty of power at higher speeds. Which reminds me of another problem it had. 73 mph on the speedometer was really 88, at least according to the friendly cop who pulled me over. And that damn thing was so smooth and quiet at those speeds that it just felt slow! It was also a comfortable car, and was a good handler for its size. However, it had something called an "Open Road" handling package, which no doubt helped. At least, it handled better than my NYer does.
In retrospect I probably should have just replaced the water pump and kept driving it. But for about 3 months, I had this Newport and an '86 Monte Carlo concurrently, and while the Monte was up there in miles too, it was more nimble, more economical around town (about the same on the highway though), faster, had a better stereo, and functioning a/c. Alas, it was taken away from me prematurely when I got t-boned while delivering pizzas. 192,000 miles on it. Anyway, that had given me a taste for nicer cars, so when the Newport's water pump went out about a month after my Monte got wrecked, I went and bought an '89 Gran Fury ex-police car. I figured it was 10 years newer and had less than 1/3 the miles (73K versus 250K), so it should be more reliable and cheaper in the long run. NOT! But, this post is getting longer than Hiawatha, so that story is for another time.
It has about 124,000 miles on it now, and I bought it new. I just realized, it'll be 7 years tomorrow (11/6). The only real issues I had with it were a thermostat housing leaking ($210), power lock actuator going bad (that was fixed under warranty), and an oil pressure light that would give me a false reading (fixed for free with TSB). Oh, the door seals shrunk up, but I figured out how to fix them (after buying one), and the power assist for the passenger side mirror failed, but I never fixed it. Other than that, it's just been maintenance stuff like brakes, tires, belts, oil changes, etc.
I guess eventually, if the engine or tranny fails, then maybe I'll feel like the older cars are vindicated, because newer cars are just so cost-prohibitive when it comes to things like that. But I figure hey, it's been paid off for 2 years now, and with its mileage, if something major did go, I wouldn't be pissed at Chrysler for it.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
I think they were Volgas.
2011 Hyundai Sonata, 2014 BMW 428i convertible, 2015 Honda CTX700D
I don't have time. I give you license to "steal" my idea.
I always hate hearing these kinds of stories about a fairly new vehicle (regardless of the brand) but I wonder if the problem might be more dealership/shop than actual vehicle? Dealerships can be notorious for just doing the bare minimum to get a job rushed in and out, especially if it's warranty work.
When I keep having the same problem over and over again, that makes me really leery of a vehicle. But if the dealership/repair shop fixes it right in the first place, I'd probably have a better feeling about the vehicle.
For instance, my Mom and stepdad have a 1999 Altima that chewed up its transmission at 35,000 miles. However, the dealer replaced it, under warranty, with no fuss, and now the car has about 220,000 miles on it, and never again any tranny problems.
But then one of my friends had a 1998 Tracker, with a 60,000 mile powertrain warranty, and just like clockwork, that thing would need some major transmission work about every 20,000 miles. I guess it's lucky for him that the third time the thing failed it was just before 60K, and not after! Anyway, the next time around, it died around 86K. I took it to a local tranny shop I've dealt with in the past, and they got it running for 60 bucks, but couldn't guarantee how long it would last. At 92K, it crapped out again. We had a used tranny out of a wrecked 95 Sidekick with 55K miles put in. And that tranny never gave a bit of trouble, right up until 135,000 miles when he traded that thing.
So in this case, the Nissan experience was much better than the GM. Oh, and guess what my buddy traded his Tracker in on? A NISSAN! :P
In a similar vein, my uncle has a '97 Silverado that had to have its tranny rebuilt around 70-80,000 miles, and again about a year ago, at around 109,000. The first rebuild was under warranty, at the dealership. The second rebuild was by the local tranny shop...I have a feeling it'll last a bit longer.
I can often trust a competent local mechanic to fix a problem right the first time rather than the dealer. Some goober in the service bay of the Megadealer isn't going to put them out of business, but the independent mechanic's reputation is on the line if he performs shoddy work. I recall a guy with a 3-Series BMW who was having a recurring problem with his car and kept taking it to the dealer only to have the problem show up again. He took the car to an independent mechanic who specialized in German cars and the problem never reoccurred. The repair cost about 1/3 what the dealer was asking.