The Biggest Shitheap You’ve Driven?

[Smokeahontas]

Had this chat with a friend…I think most people have had an A to B at one stage, some worse than others. My highlights

The Corsa that had to be switched off in stationary traffic as it overheated & the passengers side window that would only wind down so far or else it came loose & fell off the rail

However, my £500 Clio with no power steering & questionable bodywork never let me down. 7 years I had it & it started first time every time.

What are your bangers?

A cut-and-shut 2CV.
The handbrake came off in my hand once.

An old Focus estate that lost nearly all its cylinders on the Dartford Crossing.

Ugly gold Ford Focus that lost its heating on the motorway in the middle of winter at 6 am

I currently drive a twenty year old honda...had it years now... flies through its mot with no advisories every year and has never once let me down...touch wood. Bloody love her. She's not the prettiest but I don't care

A very old ( even then) original mini, whose accelerator cable continually froze and revved the engine while I was out of the car, scraping ice off at early o’clock. Neighbours must have loved me.
The joys of Scottish winter.

A Nissan Micra that would randomly cut out. Breaks, steering, ignition, it would all go. It happened quite a few times.

The worst was on a single lane slip road getting on to the M5 near Bristol with a great big articulated lorry behind me. The bloody thing just died and I had very little control. I nearly got shunted into portishead docks. I scrapped it the following day. Bloody deathtrap.

I drove my Smart Fortwo into the ground. It was written off in two accidents and each time I bought it back from the insurance for a pittance, fixed it up and put it back on the road - it passed an MOT but I’m still not convinced the chassis was quite straight and various things didn’t work or were a bit weird as a result. The rear boot hatch wouldn’t release because the whole structure was misaligned and jammed.

In its last five years I never had it serviced because there was just no point. All four tyres were different brands because I was too cheap to get good new matching ones. By the time it finally failed its MOT with repairs required which were beyond economical justification, the wipers didn’t work at all, and the central locking would go on and off at random - not a particular problem in terms of security as nobody was ever going to try to steal it, but a massive problem because it meant several times I had to break into my own car using a range of implements.

My husbands Toyota Starlet circa 1992 .We were wondering why the floor was wet and when we looked the drivers seat had broken through the floor of the car due to rust .He got a plank of wood and put under the seat and off we went.The car lasted another year or so before it finally packed in.

An ancient Polo which was ok but you could either have the lights on or heating not both.
Then I had a fiesta where the sunroof leaked and in bad weather you had to drive with your hood up. Loved them both.

I saw some celeb had got his 17yo a brand new BMW and it made me sad. Driving an old banger is a rite of passage. Character building!
And then the joy you feel when you finally get a god car is amazing.

When I worked on Crete I occasionally drove the owner of the business I worked foe’s car. He called it a Daihatsu Zebra, though googling now tells me it wasn’t. It was like a mini moke. No seatbelts, no roof, dodgy brakes and I doubt it had ever been serviced. If I’d have crashed it - as I did one of the minibuses - I doubt I’d still be here.

@Coffeeonmytoffee I think the same as you. All these 17/18 year olds getting brand new cars. What!!
My car was about 14 years old when I passed my test. Still loved it all the same. Spent hours cleaning it and buying Feu Orange air fresheners

My dad had a succession of Leyland Marina vans which had been used in the Cowley works, and which as soon as they were exposed to the outside world basically dissolved. My dad, equally, cared absolutely nothing for his vans which he used to cart round various animals, straw, hay etc and they were filthy.
When I passed my test, they kindly let me borrow either mums Fiesta, or dads van (depending on what their needs to do that day) to drive to my holiday job or whatever. So I would be driving round in a van where you could see the floor through the passenger footwell (it did have a piece of hardboard covering it up normally), towels on the drivers seat (roof leak), wheat growing up between the outer body and the plywood lining in the back, and dads resident spiders in the front.
I am strangely nostalgic for those vans, and of course no one took a photo of one

My first car, an Austin Metro. Absolute shit heap.

I had to put a whole bottle of oil into it every few days, and I couldn’t drive it if the weather was really cold and the windows were iced over as it had absolutely no heating - so even if I cleared the ice from the windscreen before setting off, within 10 minutes of driving it’d be completely iced over with no visibility again.

We got DS his first car this summer and found it hysterical that he was that the clock didn’t automatically change the time when the clocks went back in October.

Some of these are hilarious!

Have to agree with @MondeoFan and @Coffeeonmytoffee, at least one car you own has to be subpar. Imagine the insurance on that BMW for a first time driver!

Bright yellow hyundai amica.

It was ridiculous. It looked like a roller skate

A Hillman Hunter without a functioning second gear, and which needed the revs keeping high so it wouldn't stall - I had to put it into neutral approaching red traffic lights in order to have one foot on gas and the other on the brake....

An absolute shocker of a Rover 200. The battery drained if you left it connected while the car was parked, so every time we left it anywhere for more than an hour or two we had to disconnect one terminal. It was a real Friday afternoon car, I think every bit of it failed us at some point before we finally got rid of it. (Someone ran into the back of it and it was an insurance write-off.)

These days we have a Honda, nothing's ever gone wrong with it apart from us backing it into bollards and cracking the rear lights.

Escort mk2, with dodgy electrics that meant I sometimes had to do hand signals because the indicators were unreliable. It failed its MOT for rust so bad it was 'a danger to passersby', at which point I got it towed away by the scrap man.

Our 2016 Land Rover Discovery. Vile, unreliable piece of #£&*

Very happy when DH decided enough was enough and got rid.

Aw I've inherited my grandma's old car which is a 2000 corsa that is a sort of brown colour.

It's still going, passed its MOT no bother, struggles to go above 60mph so sits happily at 50ish.

It's a shit heap compared to DHs flashy car and quite embarrassing to be seen in (it's so loud!) but it's very handy and obviously has sentimental value.

On what would have been her 100th birthday I went out for a drive in it and felt like I was with her.

A triumph herald whose ignition key would fall out when you went around a corner but it didn't matter as the engine didn't cut out...

A mini clubman estate bought for £15 in 1985. Could only get in the car via the boot.
Was driving in the rain and the wipers failed. So I opened the ‘quarter light’ window (remember them?) to put my arm through it to wipe the screen … the quarteright window fell into the road. happy days!

In the 1990s we were given the in laws old Lada Riva...... Dh used it for getting to work! The steering wheel was huge and it was so heavy... best driven by a Russian shot putter! I drove it one night for some reason and had to do a three pount turn.... Nightmare. The only good thing was the heater.

Oh gosh, a few when I was a student. A Renault 5 that was like the flintstones car, it had holes in the footwells where it had rusted through and the carpets were always soaking. Made de-misting in the mornings a very arduous task. Another Renault 5. This time a GT turbo. Looked amazing but would randomly accelerate at full throttle for no apparent reason. The only way to stop it was to switch it off!! Death trap that one! An escort that used to boil over onto your feet periodically and the wipers would get tangled up when it rained. A Peugeot GTi. Another beautiful car and mechanically sound but the previous owner kept bloodhounds. In hindsight I reckon they used it as a kennel as it really REALLY smelt awful. Summer was the worst 🤢🤮.

My first car was also an Austin metro cost me £350
Leaked oil and someone actually stole it ! Was found set on fire the other side of London . I occasionally found random wrappers in it so I’m sure someone was breaking into it at night before that