I’ve daily’d many shitboxes of dubious functionality, but the most broken car I’ve ever driven regularly was a 1974 Volkswagen Super Beetle.
I acquired it well-used, of course, as high school transpo in 1985. And to its credit, it was actually very reliable in terms of always getting me where I needed to go. It was less reliable at getting me to stop where I needed to stop, however.
At its best, the Beetle required the foresight of Nostradamus to drive safely. Thinking two moves ahead was not enough; I had to have a complete driveway-to-destination plan at all times. At its worst, the car basically had no brakes save for the parking brake, or as I called it, “the brake.” Which, honestly, worked OK enough if I was the only one in the car (more passengers = more mass = more inertia) and kept my head on a swivel. Hard braking, however – let alone emergency braking – was out of the question.
But what if I really needed more brakes? I once instructed a buddy in the passenger seat to open his door as I did the same while we were hurtling through an off-ramp that caught me off guard with a surprisingly aggressive decreasing radius. I figured deploying the doors like the dive brakes on an F-86 Sabre couldn’t hurt. Did they help? They must have done something, as it sure was hard to hold the doors open. The Beetle’s skinny tires barely held and we were halfway on the grass by the time we stopped inches short of the guy in front of us, but we did stop. I learned my lesson and got the brakes fixed immediately a month later.
The Beetle broke further soon after when its heater boxes rusted through, but I considered this an improvement as the Bug’s whistling exhaust note was now raucously loud with wonderful pops as I let off the gas. That’s my most-broken story; let’s hear what Mercedes and Torch have to say:
Mercedes
Oooh, it’s a toss up for me between a 2005 Volkswagen Passat TDI and a 2004 Nissan Maxima. First, the TDI. The transmission slammed each gear, eventually locking itself into second. The engine made no oil pressure, but somehow still ran, and the turbo was inoperable. Top speed was 60 mph and it took over a minute to get there.
The Maxima was worse. Each wheel had just two nuts, not even genuine lug nuts, just hardware store nuts that were hand-tight. The transmission valve body was shot, the engine made no oil pressure at idle thanks to a bad timing chain, the electrical system was barely hanging on, no power steering, bald tires, a melted rear bumper, and no coolant. I handled the lug nut situation by following a country boy back to his farm, where he had a table sitting outside with a bucket full of lug nuts. Problem solved. As for the other stuff: the car still went 100 mph, so those fixes could wait!
Torch
I either drove an extremely broken car OR I survived a very cunning murder attempt at the hands of our own David Tracy. When David was starting Project Postal, where he got an old mail Jeep and made it capable of driving to and tackling Moab off-roading, he offered me the chance to drive the thing a bit.
Now, this was before he’d done any real work on it, so it was in its worst possible state. And holy shit was that worst possible state the WORST possible state. Nothing on the chassis seemed to be really connected to any other thing, other than by wads of brown, flaky rust and vague concepts of intent. The thing ran, but the steering seemed to be operating on a sort of lackadaisical, whimsical idea of steering, where the direction the wheel turned only had the vaguest impact on the direction the car was pointed.
The whole body wallowed and swooned on the chassis like a tower of Jell-O on the saddle of a horse, and the brakes were like trying to slow yourself down on a slide by holding a piece of bread against the surface. This thing was an absolute nightmare deathtrap, and I drove it about 10 miles from David’s house to a karting track. It was the slowest, most terrifying drive I’ve ever experienced.
Your turn! What’s the most broken car you’ve driven?
The worst car I had was also my funniest car story: When I had a 70’s Audi Fox wagon I got for $100 total.
The accelerator cable broke so I hooked some small rope up to the throttle from the engine, out the hood, through the driver’s window and pulled it to accelerate. I drove it home on back roads the whole way and the brakes weren’t very good either…6 months later I sold it to the junkyard for $25 so it was a $75 car
My college roommate’s…. 1974 Super Beetle! We shared the car between all of us in the house. This was in the early 2010s. It (deservedly) earned the nickname “The Death Beetle” for its innumerable flaws. A non-exhaustive list:
-The starter died, so for about a year we roll started it everywhere
-The passenger seat’s rails rusted out, so for a while it just moved forward and backward under braking until it finally totally came loose and it became a three-seater
-Multiple rust holes through the floor
-The heater tubing to the dash rusted out, so at first we kept a rag for defogging the windshield. Then we decided to “fix” it with cardboard and duct tape.
-Another roommate cracked the engine block by driving after breaking a fan belt. We drove with said cracked block for about a month, at which point it got a second nickname “The Hippie-Friendly Exxon Valdez”
-The throttle could lock open if you pressed it to the floor. This was a particular problem as we lived on a hill and, well, Beetles and hills.
-There was a battery drain that was “solved” by adding a cutoff switch to the battery, which meant you had to reach under the rear passenger seat to turn the car on.
He still has it and has been working on making it a real car again, but I’ll always cherish that little death trap.
Well I just drove about 1000 miles with my freshly reassembled Datsun. It’s fine in my mind, but I tossed the keys to a friend. The following dialogue ensued:
– anything I should know?
– no, it’s basically perfect! You juste need to give her a lot of gas when cranking her up, I think the fuel pressure regulator is dying
– dude, the key won’t turn!
– you have to pull it juuuust a little. See?
– alright, she started
– oh, and the left blinker is dead. Also, try and keep her under 110kph, otherwise there’s a weird vibration in the steering wheel
– the speedo’s isn’t moving
– yeah I know, just aim for 2500rpm in 5th
– 5th just jumper out of gear
– yeah I’ve got to fix that. Want some tunes?
– there’s no radio
– that’s why I brought a bluetooth speaker!
So I guess my 280Z is the jankiest car I’ve owned!
That’s a good kind of janky. The driver is in control. There’s no by-wire controls. There’s no touch screens or haptics. There’s minimal digital components of any kind in the car, and any car radio made within the last 20 years would result increasing the total computing power installed onboard the car to many orders of magnitude vs stock. It’s also repairable with a basic toolset.
Amen!
I still need to get off my butt and fix the last niggles. Getting the speedo to work and the heater will be very satisfying.
Fixing the weird vibration is also a must for long term reliability and safety.
I also need to finish installing all the weather stripping and interior trim.
My 1975 Chevrolet Scottsdale 10 longbed, and it’s not even close in spite of how many shitboxes I’ve owned over the years.
It had been my grandfather’s since 1982, and growing up (born in 1984) for some damned reason I loved the rusty old thing, and when I was six I asked my papaw if I could have it when I turned 16 and he said that if it still ran and he still had it, it was mine. It was rusting out pretty badly, and the engine blew in 1995 while my mother was driving it, and it got a junkyard-fresh 350 of unknown vintage then. My dad cracked the engine block over-tightening a starter in 1998 or so, resulting in the starter bolt backing out every 3-5 cranks (I kept a 9/16″ wrench on the dash). The hood folded over like a taco in 1999 and was simply bent back to the approximate shape and closed more gently from then on. In 2000, the summer before I turned 16, my papaw used sheet metal screws and a piece of leftover aluminum siding to repair the rusted out floorboards. We covered that with a denim-covered carpet remnant from a home improvement store. We bondo-ed over the rust (I didn’t know any better) and painted over the original Willoway Green with GM med. Bahama Blue Metallic sprayed with an electric Wagner paint sprayer that he’d previously used to paint the house (it turned out every bit as bad as you’d expect), and he had a local welder weld some flat steel to the bottom of the hood to reinforce it. I drove it for three months after my 16th birthday, with no heat or A/C and a crappy Koss stereo from Kmart in it before the transmission gave up. In the meantime the passenger window regulator started binding and I took apart the door, not knowing what I was doing and made it worse, but I got the window closed. I ended up giving it back to him and he kept and used it until he died with a junkyard-fresh transmission. Not long after he died, I graduated high school, and since I was now 18 and my parents couldn’t tell me to get rid of it again, my grandmother gave it back to me because she knew how much it meant to me, and I promptly wrecked it that night, rear-ending someone who stopped short because they’d been cut off. I drove it home with the hood bungee-corded shut, and installed hood pins rather than fix the destroyed latch. The grille was shattered and was never replaced. I was in another accident later that destroyed the bed, bent the rear axle, and dented the driver’s door, and drove it with no bed, a smashed cab, and bent rear axle for quite awhile before I saved up the money to start restoring it correctly with all of the knowledge I’d accumulated over the decade leading up to 2010. Then reality set in. By the time I was done fixing everything that was wrong with papaw’s truck, the only thing that was going to be left that had been his would be the frame rails. So I parted the old girl out that year. I loved that poor old truck, but it had just been a beater/work truck and badly worked on project for too long to save it at that point, I have a lot of great memories of finally replacing the cracked 350 with a 400 small block bought from my mentor at the first shop I worked at, changing the transmission in the dark with hand tools to keep a nosy neighbor from knowing that I was working on it again since she’d reported me to to the city a few times, my papaw and I painting it, that first drive home with my license, the freedom it brought, all the miles down backroads with the vent windows open and main windows down blaring classic rock… One of these years I’ll own another square-body Chevy, and I’m going to paint it GM Med. Bahama Blue Metallic with Willoway Green pinstripes.
First car was a 1961 Oldsmobile 98. Super prone to vapor lock and sketchy brakes. I was able to sort out a few things. Managed to milk that bastard for 6 years, though.
First car, 1967 Impala SS, this was around mid 2000s. Was super fun but what a rough pile it was. Brakes failed a couple times, throttle jammed open, running out of fuel, blew a motor, fan and wipers failed constantly so often had no wipers and a foggy windshield…it really tried to kill me a variety of ways. I don’t want it back but I’m glad I had it!
I really struggle defining “most broken” as nearly all my earlier cars seemed to be just as broken. I think it would perhaps be my Nissan Patrol. It had a lift-kit made of flat-iron,half of the exhaust missing,no heater and the glow-plug relay comprised of two wires i had to touch together to start in the cold. It was never road-legal,so I had to take a less conspicuous route to work every day.
One of my boss’s old work trucks. 1995 f350 dually single cab 12ft flatbed 5 speed 4×4. The headlights were held in by packing tape, the grill by baling twine, the overflow reservoir was replaced with a one gallon gas can, three lugs missing on the left front, permanently in 4×4 so it could be used as front wheel drive because the drive shaft fell out, only working guage was the temp, which was good, because it constantly overheated, remove the glove box to operate heater, clutch slipped, headache rack half broke off and banging against cab, back fuel tank smashed, singled out rear wheels, and no lights on the back of the truck. He always wondered why I refused to drive his perfectly good truck on the road and only used it as a feed truck. Scariest thing was he WOULD DRIVE IT DOWN THE EFFING ROAD!
It’s a toss up between: a 1987 Lada Niva with fat tyres, questionable shock absorbers and Russian welding; a 1976 Land Rover Series 3 cab chassis with an engine from a Rover 200, partly functional brakes and utterly non-functional shock absorbers; or one of my current daily drivers, a Massey Ferguson 65 tractor from the mid 1960s with shot rings, many leaky oil seals, a broken generator, questionable brakes and inconsistent steering due to a worn out steering box.
Back in 2010, I drove my aunt’s 2000 Yukon XL around the block so that my grandmother could get her car out of the garage. I had never driven anything that size before, but noticed the brakes seemed awfully underpowered – I was having to push the pedal all the way to the floor. I got out and noticed fluid everywhere. We were fortunate enough to have a mechanic a block away, so my uncle and aunt drove it there very carefully. It turned out to be a rusted brake line, a common GMT800 problem.
This is kind of a tossup, but I’m going with my first “college” car, a rusty 1978 Buick Skyhawk with a V6 I paid $275 and a half-way decent radar detector for.
It was extremely rusty throughout, but was surprisingly reliable, even with the oil smoke coming through the console while idling, the taillight routinely blowing fuses, and the automatic that acted up from time to time, not wanting to go in gear. I did actually like the way it drove down the highway as well – it felt like a car bigger than it really was and with the hatch I could carry a bicycle as backup.
Towards the end of my freshman year the rear brake-line had developed a nasty leak. With the transmission leaking and not getting any better, and the tin-worm creeping into nearly every portion of this thing, I decided to let it go. Besides, I had put around 7,000 miles on it and if you saw this thing, you’d be absolutely astounded to made it that far. In addition, there was a big campus-wide party coming up and I needed beer money.
To the scrap yard! Well, first I went to the regular old automotive junk yard where they’d only give me $50. Then, to the scrap-metal yard, conveniently located next door. They too, would only give me $50. I wanted more. So, Mr. Main Guy instructed his underling to take this lovely Buick out for a test drive. I patiently explained that this would require some delicate maneuvering. You see, when I drove it down there I was pretty sure the master cylinder had given up as I had to downshift the failing transmission from drive to second, and then to first, and then apply the e-brake to stop, just after throwing it back in neutral. Of course, this needed to be done while still pressing the brake pedal in order to activate the lights – safety third!
Joe Dude (not his real name) proceeded to baaaawaaaaaawaaaawaaaammmmm the car out and down the adjacent road until I couldn’t hear that sweet Buick V6 note from the straight-piped exhaust anymore. And then, there it was… slowly at first, building.. until around the corner he came a hauln’. I swear I could see his face through the windshield in slow motion at the exact moment he pressed that brake pedal and nothing happened. It was a look of… alarm, as if just maybe there was something he should’ve said to his significant other that morning. Then he managed to drive up a stack of pallets straight into a big metal fence-wall.
Something must’ve gotten screwed up in the transmission linkage when he hit the pallets, as the car sat there on the pile still running and still bumping repeatedly into the side of the fence. Finally the guy shut it off and climbed on out and down the side of the pile. He described how the brakes worked “okay” when he stepped on the pedal on the first part of the drive, but there was nothing left when he went to pull in and park.
At this point, my friends who had followed me there were just laughing their collective asses off. Main Guy didn’t bat an eyelash. He just said “Alright – I’ll go higher. $60.00”. I said okay, collected my grease-smeared bills, and proceeded to buy a whole weekend’s worth of Miller Lite Ice. Seemed like a fair trade.
It depends on your definition of “driven.” I bought a 1988 Mazda MX-6 GT with 124k miles, sight unseen, on eBay, for my first car. I drove it 6 miles before it was donated to charity for scrap.
It was in rough cosmetic shape, but I knew that, and it was supposed to be mechanically sound. The seller delivered it, and the only inspection it got was my father driving it around the block. It seemed okay. The brakes were a little soft, he said. And it obviously needed exhaust work. But I already knew that too.
Except that the second time I went to start it after the seller had departed, it was dead. He said he had put a new battery in it. After confronting him on the phone, he copped to it having been a used battery. Or, I think, never actually replaced at all. And also there was a puddle developing on ground that smelled like gas.
It was towed to a shop courtesy of my mother’s AAA membership. The mechanic charged the battery, but said it needed replaced. Oh, and that the unibody was so rotten that he could poke a screwdriver all the way through it in places where it still existed, and that there were in places nothing separating the interior from the exterior but the carpeting. It turned out that buying a 15-year-old 1980s Japanese car that had spent its entire unwashed life in Buffalo, NY, wasn’t the brightest idea. The gas and brake lines were also rusted out. And two brake calipers were seized. Also the radio and power mirrors didn’t work, both likely due to the seller doing an absolute hackjob on the wiring to install an aftermarket radio. The A/C worked great, though!
What to do after receiving that news? Well, get a second opinion, of course, because I was in denial. So my father drove it home, leaking gas and brake fluid, and with only two wheels actually braking, and the entire car likely to just evaporate in cloud of rust in the event of a collision. He almost made it, too! It died and wouldn’t stay running only a half-mile away. Fortunately (?) it turned out that the air intake tube had simply fallen off the throttle body because the seller had done some work necessitating its removal and apparently not felt that it needed a clamp on it again. So, one clamp later, it was sitting in my parents’ driveway again, leaving rust spots that, 21 years later, are still there.
I eventually bought it a new battery, hoping that the gift would appease the car gods, and then had it towed to another mechanic. Who, naturally, concurred that it was a deathtrap. This time, I drove it the 6 miles back to my parents’ house – the only time I ever drove it. The temp tags had expired, so we picked it up after dark and took side streets home. A good thing, too, because the fuel leak had reached the point that more of it was ending up on the ground than in the engine, and it would stall if you tried to rev it past 2500 RPM or so. I also discovered that the neutral safety switch didn’t work, so it wouldn’t crank in neutral, and I accidentally slammed it into park (yes, it was an automatic, don’t hate me) at like 15 MPH while trying to restart it. Fortunately it started right back up once it was in park, and I drove on. At least the power windows worked, because I needed them down so as not to asphyxiate from the leaking exhaust fumes that were coming into the car through the nonexistent floor pan. As I continued along the longest 6 miles I’d ever driven, I noticed the headlights becoming dimmer and the CHARGE warning light on the dashboard becoming brighter. Apparently the reason the original battery died was a bad alternator. Not sure that I was going to make it, I proceeded to drive the rest of the way with only the parking lights on down streets with no streetlights.
Fortunately, I made it home without any explosions or collisions or arrests, and the car was dispatched to its final resting place. The tow truck driver drove it onto the flatbed. I was sad. I then proceeded to take completely the opposite tack for my second first car, and bought a brand new Protege5.
Toss-up between driving my beater (every suspension bushing cracked, mismatched panels and wheels) 740 Turbo wagon 30 miles home after the turbo seals completely gave up, burning three quarts of oil in the process and barely making it onto ramps in my garage, because the cost of a tow would’ve matched the value of the car, or commuting in the five-speed 850 wagon that was meant to replace it with a hand-operated throttle for a bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKiOhuGbKIE
(The fast turn signal is because the previous owner had rear-ended a truck and I only had the front end mostly back together. I haven’t even touched on the coolant I found in the oil, nor the amount of creeping rot from a sheetmetal-screw bumper-cover bodge I didn’t notice when I bought the damn thing in the dark, in Maine, in January, like an idiot. Drove beautifully, though. Mostly.)
My first car was a Rover SD1 that hadn’t been properly maintained for a few years before I had it. We had to replace the indicator stalk assembly, because the high-beam switch had broken and the highs would come on when you went uphill and the stalk flopped back. Then the power steering went out. Then a hose for the trans cooler blew. Then a fuel injector died. The AC compressor was locked tight, so if you turned the AC on the belt would scream around the locked pulley. The radiator sucked, so I had to drive with the heater on at all times, and I had to park it for at least half an hour before trying to start it again else the fuel evaporated in the lines. The last straw was when it stranded me with a dead alternator and a flat battery. I only had it 8 months and it was broken for at least a week every month.
Later I had a 1965 Mini panelvan that had all sorts going on. When I first got it, one of the front wheels would just move back and forth because a bushing has just disintegrated in the front end. The shocked looks on the tyre shop guys when I pulled in and stopped in front of them were great. Also the tyre on that side was so bald, one of the guys pricked his hand on the the steel poking out of it from the belts I guess. The water passages in the block were clogged so it only cooled about half the engine, and the water in the radiator would just piss out the overflow hole. When it got hot I’d just refill it from the large plastic juice bottle I kept full of water in there at all times and keep going. It would cut out in the rain until I made some plastic shields for the distributor and coil, which were inexplicably mounted right up front where the water would spray up on them. One time the driver side wiper just snapped near the base, fell onto the bonnet and slid off the side of the car while I was driving along, leaving a stubby little arm just waving back and forth. It didn’t matter that the screen wasn’t clear as I was laughing too hard to see anyway. By the time I sold it, the ignition key barrel was dead, so I’d run a jump lead from the battery (mounted behind the driver seat) to the necessary wires dangling down from the dash. It started with a floor mounted starter button that was permanently powered so it was fine, until I’d hit a bump hard enough to dislodge the large jumper lead clamp from the itty bitty wires. Also the crank bearings were probably non-existant by that point.
I miss both of those cars and would love to own them again, now that I can afford to fix things.
I’ll give it to the 80something K-car–can’t even remember if it was Aries or Reliant–that I bought out of desperation for $400. The seller was a cop, and he said he couldn’t let me road test it without plates. Sure, buddy. As soon as I drove it off his lawn as the new owner, it was evident that the power steering was shot. Also, there was a leaky fuel line that continually surrounded the car with a heady gasoline aroma.
“Best” of all, it had an issue where the transmission would get stuck in second or third as I came to a stop. The car would buck and generally protest and often stall, at which point it had to sit for a bit to collect itself. I learned to nurse it along after a while.
I later learned that it shared this issue with my next car–an ’89 Calais of all things–something way over my head about the torque converter and a solenoid, and the cure was to unplug something under the hood. This “repair” saved the Calais from a premature trip to the crusher. But yeah, that K-car takes the prize.
We fixed up an old Grumman box truck (more or less a UPS truck). It had a Chevy 454 swapped in with a 4 speed on the floor. The steering shaft lower bearing mount has rusted off so steering was challenging and more of a suggestion of where it might go. The only functional electronics where the starter wired to the horn button and a hard wired headlight. The shock absorbers were shot. To our surprise we learned that with the torque of the 454, one could goose the throttle a couple times and bounce the front end, popping a wheelie with about 1 ft of air under the front tires and the back bumper would scrape the ground. We drove it around a cornfield, I think 6 or 7 of us just standing in the cab with the driver. It was a hoot.
Knew a guy when I was in college who wanted a cheap (like $300 cheap, this was in 2014) car to drive around town on the days he didn’t want to ride his motorcycle. He wanted me to come look at a car with him, so we met the owner in a Dollar General parking lot. It was a Mitsubishi Galant and he wanted a laughable $1,200 for it. Mismatch dented body panels. A couple bullet holes. Cardboard over a window. And a donut spare on the front, and the tires were bald of course. Under the hood the core support had been badly repaired. Driving it was sketchy as hell. Of course there was an exhaust leak, and you had to hold the steering wheel over 90 degrees to one side to get it to go in a straight line. The suspension was completely worn out. Tons of warning lights on the dashboard. The brakes weren’t…confidence inspiring.
Naturally he passed and got a $300, 350k mile Corolla from a friends uncle instead. It wasn’t in great shape either but miles ahead of the Galant.
1997 Dodge Intrepid
It barely ran. It not only had ECU problems, but head gasket failure. I used a bottle of gasket sealant to “repair” it and keep it running. 2nd gear didn’t work and it skipped straight from 1st to 3rd. The seat rails were long gone from rust(as was most of the drivers’ side floorboard, with holes allowing me to see the pavement below as a result of flood damage) and a cinder block held the drivers’ seat down with gravity. The blue paint was mostly peeled away from UV damage. It had one donut spare on the left front wheel, and another on the right rear wheel. The rear main seal leaked various fluids. The interior had a cockroach infestation and I always had them crawling on me when I drove it, and it had that distinctive roach feces smell with copious brown/black specs inside to match. The radio crackled with the sound of an electrical short and randomly turned on and off, and only at full volume. The front brake rotors were warped. All of the power windows had failed, open, and the car had been soaked from repeated rain. I think the exhaust leaked, because it had an exhaust smell coming through the AC vents. The front windshield had bulletholes in it, as did both drivers’ side doors.
It wasn’t my car. I did get it up to 103 mph near Falfurrias, TX.
My current car, a 2500 dollar 350z vert with a cool quarter million miles on it, was in absolutely horrible shape when I first picked it up. Lemme detail the worst/critical parts (there was much more wrong with it then the list shows)
– Almost no pads left, rotors were extremely warped
– Professional convertible top “fix” using bathroom caulking
– Tires absolutely dry rotted and bald
– Bad catalytic converters
– Intense exhaust leak, huffing fumes wasn’t pleasant
– front suspension was wasted, creating horribly vague steering
– Suspension clunks and bangs over every bump
– Many, many oil leaks
– Non functioning power seats
There’s more, but those were the ones that were pretty critical. I’ve been able to fix all its maladies and now it’s an awesome driving and looking car 🙂
Mercedes’ Maxima sounds like the best possible condition for a Maxima. Don’t they come from the Nissan spawning zones like that?
Well I was asked to transport my nephews Chevy cavalier. No problem I’m a family guy. Well this vehicle had steering that suggested the direction for the vehicle. I kid you not an entire 360 degree rotation maybe moved the car 3 inches. Hitting the brakes on this vehicle slowed the vehicle less than a head front. It was like driving a an egg.
I’ve three good stories. First was in high school, when I drove a buddy’s early 60s beetle from Philly to NYC to pick up my girlfriend after her train was canceled by snow. The tires were about four inches wide and bald and there were no brakes except the emergency brake. It was okay, though. We were driving so slow it didn’t really matter.
Second was my dad’s 66 Bonneville convertible. My brother drove it through high school and wrecked it pretty hard. It sat at the car dealership where my dad worked until I was sixteen. I was determined to drive it. I used a come along to pull the left quarter panel out, but the drivers door still didn’t open. The top was shredded so I just put it down. The frame was bent so the front tires would scrub constantly. I drove it around Philly after work one summer while I was working at the dealership. I put a dealer tag on it, and the first night I brought it home to mom and dad’s that was the ending of that. I thought it was fine.
Third was a 32 foot cigarette boat that my dad’s boss bought in Maryland and asked us to bring to New Jersey. It was absolutely trashed. It leaked, and the bilge pump didn’t keep up so we had to bail. The power steering didn’t work, so changing course was like doing two pushups. I remember looking back at dad jumping up and down on the left trim tab while I was doing about 30 knots outside Delaware. Once it got dark we realized there were no running lights. We fished around for wire, but the leak was too much to spend time so we got it to the dock in Jersey drug runner style with no lighting. Boss was completely unfazed, had it pulled out that night and bought a trailer. I swear he spent double what he paid for the boat turning it into a Miami Vice boat.
Peter’s Beetle experience reminds me of a high school friend whose 69 Beetle had a leaking sunroof in addition to rotted out heater boxes so he would have to scrape ice off the inside of the windshield.
The worst I recall driving were the 1990 Subaru wagon when my son was car shopping, very sketchy clutch sloppy steering and tired engine and an eye watering repair estimate from a specialist. He bought a high mile Buick we still have. I also have a sketchy car test drive story of a 2001 Chevy 1/2 ton with a squeaky steering column loose steering and a terrifying brake pedal, very soft and almost to the floor before stopping. I passed and bought a Ford with a rock solid brake pedal and taught steering, although it did launch a spark plug.
My grandma (and sister’s) audi a4 was given to me after it had died in the mountains and required a full engine rebuild. For some reason grandma said sure and I had to pay it back to her monthly. After that was every battery and brakes going bad. It was when I had to jumpstart it every single morning that I’d had enough, scrapped it and got a 2003 civic. It’s closing in on 200k miles and that’s with a wheel bearing actively trying to kill itself. I nicknamed it “honda-chan”
Tragically I have nothing so extreme to share.
A sibling’s early-aughts Impala, in its dying days before we traded it in, required opening the windows and cranking the heat when going uphill to prevent overheating.
My own van typically worked or didn’t work as a binary matter, rather than your adventures.
Only time it completely crapped out from under me and required a tow was when the serpentine belt snapped.
Otherwise, there was a brief period with intermittent electronics failures, which turned out to be some rusting connector on the alternator that took a while for the dealership to hunt down for some reason. But it was very much “everything works” or “everything doesn’t work”.
Can’t say I’ve felt like I was about to die like described, due to mechanical condition of the vehicle.