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OK - confession time....
I have owned, over the years, a Lada, Skoda (old type), and a Trabant - thankfully not at the same time.
All have been as bad as rumoured, and good for building up one's mechanical skills.
Can anyone top this list of motoring dog toffee 
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Well I would say that every Ford (all from new) I have ever owned has been mean in every respect @Projectionist
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I have owned the old Skoda and two Ladas all at the same time...
Mind you, I was service manager at Bolton Car Centre at the time and I even made my wife have one of the Ladas 
She had arms like Geoff Capes after struggling with the steering for almost two years! All the better to use the starting handle on the flaming thing 
Being an apprentice motor vehicle mechanic technician back in the sixties, I've had all manner of vehicles. In my hey-day I used to do stock cars (competed for a while until I busted my ankle and collar bone!), converted VDubs to beach buggies and made trailers.
And an award that I don't boast about....The 1979 Lada Technician of the Year. You remember the old Lada advertising campaign that was based on African wild animals?...you know the ones where a hippo was shown opening it's mouth in close up and then cut to the Lada 1500 Estate opening it's tailgate.....
Well my prize was to attend the Lada Convention held at the Nairobi Hilton and to watch the advert being made and being unveiled. The evening was a cabaret starring Dickie Henderson, Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen and wait for it......prizes, including my own, presented by the one and only John Hewer (better known as Captain Birdseye :smileywink:)
Better yet, they were all on the plane going to Nairobi....how the other half live, eh!!
I'm available for autographs and signed photos.......
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Where's the "Kudos" button when you need it, eh 
Well do I remember the whiff of glue every time the door was opened - and as for the starting handle, I couldn't even manage it with a warm engine ( it was good for threatening the car with, though...)
I did pass my test in the beast, however 
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This is a difficult one as my husband did banger racing in the 70's, so we used to tour scrapyards picking up old cars, ready to paint them up, only to scrap them the following weekend.
So going on banger racing, I would have to say a Vauxhall Viva. Racing at Hednesford, even with roll cage, the car just crumbled and crushed. I was watching from the sidelines.
The race was stopped and they carried my husband out on a stretcher. (He was unharmed but lost his breath when the seat belt tightened and he couldn't release it
For normal purposes, the worst one we had was another Vauxhall (the Zafira) As my dad would say, he wouldnt pay for another one in washers!!
We have had some brilliant ones though.
A Triumph Stag, which we sold when the engine finally went and we couldn't afford to get it fixed. Bought by a dealer who did it up totally... and it now appears in every classic car convention.
It is probably worth about £40,000 now.
We have never had a problem with any new Ford we bought over the past 15 years.
Just ordered this beauty today.
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Well now @Cleoriff
that looks like a "bobby dazzler"
Happy motoring ~ is that THE one for the trip shortly?
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The Fiat 127 was a temperamental beast... Not tolerant of damp, the one I first drove as a teenager needed a blanket over the engine at night to stand a chance of it starting on a damp, misty morning...
The most fun vehicle has to have been the long wheel-base Mercedes G-Wagen we had for a few years. Slow, but rugged as a rock, with a high-up view enabling you to see over hedges and the car in front! And the 4x4 helped us out of a few slippery spots in the winter too.
Here's a write-up I did on the G-Wagen some years ago:
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Dunno about the worst car. But my dad must have been a Boisy car dealer`s dream. He bought a Lada on trading in a Morris Oxford for a helluva of lot less than he would have got against a Lancia.
As if that wasn`t bad enough he got me my first car, a three-tone Mini (two shades of handpainted green and rust) - with my cash (and I didn`t go with him to see it, like an idiot - well trusted me dad, didn`t I) - which had such massive holes in floor well that Fred Flinstone could`ve used it.
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I forgot about the first car my son bought. He didn't want any advice or help from us.
It was a Mini. It was also a 'cut and shut' as they call it. No-one realised till it went for it's first MOT.
Needless to say it was scrapped.
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@TallTrees wrote:Well now @Cleoriff
that looks like a "bobby dazzler"
Happy motoring ~ is that THE one for the trip shortly?
No @TallTrees
We don't get it till June. So our other Kuga will be doing the trip to Yarmouth. We had a Kuga before that and before that a Mondeo. None of those Fords ever let us down once.
When I drove more (on my own), I was into the 'foreign cars' as my neighbour called them. I had a Honda Civic, a Mazda 323 and my last one was a Toyota Celica.
All great cars.
