The worst car ever sold in the UK?

Am surprised no-one has mentioned the Maxi as a candidate. Can't think of a worse car... apart from those already mentioned!

 

probably was - I think it had a round steering wheel rather than the early square variety!

 

Reliant Robins werre officailly classed as a motor bike, so thats out. The Reliant Kitten can be classed as a car so thats another one. Reliant also made the Scimmiter, load of rubbish.

 

They used to stretch the A frame causing door closing problems.

 

Nowt wrong with either the Lada Niva, Riva or Skoda Estelle...
All of them were pretty reliable, and incredibly cheap - which meant that invariably they weren't serviced, which meant they broke down a few years down the way. A m8 of mine's still got a Skoda Estelle I had 10 years ago, and it's still running fine. And the handling on the Estelle was something you very quickly got used to.
Those who scoffed obviously hadn't seen it winning the Rally F2 champeenship year after year.
The FSO POlonez was a different story - not only was it badly built and unreliable, but not cheap to fix - unforgiveable for a car like that!

But my vote for the worst car is still the original Vectra. The standard one had no go at all (unless you spent lots), virtually no engine braking, rolled very scarily in corners and gave you a bad back after 20 miles. Abysmal motor, especially as it was supposed to be a "decent family car"..

 

Oh, and not a fan of the Micra - handling like a roller skate...

 

My dads Lada was reliable until about 60,000 miles and everything started to fail, but even to get to that 60,000 miles it needed two clutches, a starter motor and a new alternator.

If any of them failed on a car thats done just 100k people will complain yet alone 60k.

My dad never had his Lada serviced in the 6 years though, so its no wonder the gearbox failed, it was probably starved of oil. In the end it was so bad that a load of blue smoke could be seen coming out of it, he got stopped by the coppers twice, when it was time for its final MOT we decided not to bother as would have needed at least £4000 spending on it (i.e a new car).

The interior wasn't too bad, the seat snapped but other than that not much fell off, it was no worse than the average FIAT of 80's in this respect.

 

peugot 206 gti

 

I wholeheartedly apologise on behalf of the British People.

 

Aye, there's the rub...
5-10 minutes checking your motor per week will help it survive.
Myu Landy only gets serviced by me (then it's just gearbox, engine and diff oils - I replaced the CV joint oil with grease ages ago!), and it sails through it's MoT every time..

 

My dads Escort is now serviced properly and its still running sweet and 90k. The white smoke problem seems to be caused by the short journeys, everything seems fine with regard to the oil and water.

The main things that go wrong with my dads Escort are exactly the same problems we had with the Punto and it all stems back to the Lambda sensor, they seem to fail a lot on mid 90's cars.

 

I learned to drive in an Allegro. The gearbox was like stirring rocks The wheels often used to fall off of them too

All versions of the Vectra are dreadful. Amazing that Vauxhall could have go it so wrong after the Cavalier. I had a Cavalier CDi and loved it (although it did have bad torque steer in 2nd gear and the central locking had to be replaced under warranty).

Marinas used to eat clutches, had dreadful brakes and lousy handling. The Allegro at least could be made to go round corners.

We had a Maxi for a short while - a 1750 Auto. It was gutless and wallowy and didn't stay long.

 

OMG... No-one has yet mentioned this horror...



A mate's dad had one. One it's less endearing faults was loss of the steering wheel (yes, the wheel came away altogether) whilst driving at 60. Lucky there was a field at the end of the road...

 

Is it fair to say that BL was probably the worst car company in the western world?

 

Another beauty...



As a kid, I used to do a milk-round. The milkman had one of these - in putrid green. It looked like a demented frog. I have no idea whether it was reliable or not, although he did buy an Estelle when this one died. He was EXTREMELY tight-fisted though.

 

It certainly seems like it now. They had a few choice ones, didn't they!

 

What I love about that pic of the Skoda is that there are people out there crazy enough to cherish these mad cars, and polish them up into concours(?) condition. And despite how crap all the BL cars were I still enjoy seeing the odd surviving example still running, especially when it's been maintained regardless of all their problems.....nuts.

I used to have a Mk1 1964 Triumph 2000, which was not a crap car, but relative to all the cheap 2nd hand cars that I could have had that would have been much more reliable, frankly it was a pain in the arse. But, it was great driving it around (when I could start it), and hear that straight six purring.....

 

One of the best truck companies though

 

And you all moan because we (England) have no motor industry left. Perhaps if you had been a little more patriotic we would still be the Worlds super power.

Many of you sound like the typical press journalists of the era, slating the BL name and jumping on the band wagon, because you think it is cool !

I spoke with a journalist sometime ago who was at the launch/test drive of the Austin Maestro. He actually admitted to me that the car was far superior to the Ford/Vauxhall equivalent, but did not want to sound ‘uncool’ thus therefore slating the BL cars in order to further his career !

Some of the cars you mentioned won awards for their leading technological advances, performance some are still in use today.

The MG Montego Turbo won third in sportscar of the year in 1987, the Montego diesel estate won most economical car two years running ! The Montego was the first mass production car to have and electronically controlled ignition. The MG Montego Turbo was the fastest four door saloon car until the unveiling of the Lotus Carlton. Despite more design and manufacturing advances than most cars ever designed !

In addition, the MG Maestro Turbo was actually the ‘Hottest hatch’ in the 80’s. IIRC, an MG Maestro 2.0i advert, which was banned because it promoted fast driving, read ‘The VW Golf will be along in a second’ this was because the 0-60 time of the Maestro was over a second quicker !

The three m cars as they are quite often known, kept BL going for over ten years, how many other car firms can lay claim to three production models keep the company trading ?

Some of the English (BL) cars you have mentioned are superb pieces of kit, and very often better designed than many of their rivals.

http://www.austin-rover.co.uk/index.htm?homepage.htm

Take a look

 

We had a 1972 Austin 1800 for a while; it's what went on to become the Marina IIRC. The hydrolastic suspension busted on us THREE TIMES between when we got it, in 1981, and when it was scrapped in 1987. However, that was the only thing to go wrong - the engine and gearbox etc were tip top.

The same component on the suspension went every time btw - some kind of design fault...

As for Yugos, our aunty had one. The car was crap, but the factory fitted stereo (a Sparkomatic, whoever THEY are) was ace! Strange but true... Helloween never sounded so good