Buyers remorse is the worst kind of remorse you can have, far worse than sharters remorse as it tends to be far more long-lasting. When it comes to cars, being disappointed with the choice one’s made is especially bad as it’s often an expensive proposition to get out of that entanglement.
Still, it happens. You think that perhaps neon green paint on an F150 will liven up your dull life, only to find that now you need sunglasses just to get in the damn thing, even at night. Or, maybe you bought a Mitsubishi because nobody else is and driving one will make you unique. It’s only after the fact that you discover that’s not the kind of uniqueness you necessarily want to embody, and you take it out on the car.
Has that ever happened to you – not either of those specific scenarios but perhaps something similar? What happened then, did you get rid of the ride, or learn to live with your mistake? Have you ever bought a car or truck and then just plain hated it?
Image: CompareTheBox
Hooniverse Asks: Have You Ever Bought a Car and Then Hated it?
By Robert Emslie
Jun 22, 2015
Jeff Glucker
I bought a car with flipflop paint. It looked fabulous on the dealer’s lawn in bright sunlight. The other 350 days of the year, it was just a muddy not-quite-black.
My project car – that’s the whole point of the song:
|: Fix it, love it, something breaks, hate it 😐
Does a throwaway car count?
When I worked at the dealer we saw so many trade-ins come through that were strictly for wholesale. There was no way our shop was going to put our name on it and sell it.
My favorites of these were the 1987 Nissan Pick-up with 275k on the clock, RWD with a manual and manual steering. The front bench was 98% duct tape. It ran like a top. I bought it from the dealer for $200, drove it for a summer and sold it to a guy for $500.
The one I hated was a Plymouth Laser RS from 1991. The interior was nice enough, it had 167k on the odo, and the A/C worked. Quite the luxury. I drove it for a week and sold it for $300. I was sick of it already. It was garbage. One of the front axles was clearly either broke, or breaking, The engine would surge randomly from a sticky throttle (thankfully manual) and the ride and noise, holy cow it was terrible. So loud in that thing. And I have owned 1980s K-cars.
I had a boss that had a laser. he sent me to get something once and i was shocked how loud it was. basically no insulation at all. How chrysler let those get out the door with that kind of NVH is beyond me.
I swear it’s why loud exhaust is so popular on them. You need that noise to cover-up all of the other road noise and hatch rattle.
My sister had an RS Turbo. I don’t remember it being particularly loud. She bought it new and kept it about 5 years, though, which is probably about the time things start to pick up creaks and rattles.
By the time I drove this one it was driven hard and put away wet for 12 years and 167k miles.
…you didn’t perchance work at a dealer in Vegas, did you? My friend’s dad lived there, drove a Nissan of that vintage for years, up to roughly that mileage before trading in. I remember he (the son) hated driving it because of the manual steering.
EDIT: nope…didnt realize I could click on your username and see where you’re from.
My BMW Z3 from a few years ago. A car that was almost an impulse purchase. It was a 1996 Z3 that had been modified to M Roadster specs, complete with S52. It was QUICK. When your wife tells you to buy a car like that you don’t argue. I test drove the car, agreed to pay the asking price, and left a deposit check with the owner, telling him it would take me a day to two to get the rest of the funds together. He calls me back the next day to tell me he sold the car. Several heated phone conversations later I agree to pick up the car the next day. At this I should have dropped it and let the car go. I didn’t. I get the car. It is FAST, It looks great. I can’t get it titled in the county I live in. It won’t pass emissions. Through some finagling I manage to get it titled in the county where my parents live, no emissions testing there. After about two weeks it drops a cylinder! Time for a new engine. The purchase of the car had stretched my budget really thin. So a “new” junkyard S52 get installed by a local shadetree redneck mechanic. I manage to get most of the issues sorted out. About a year later, it starts to overheat and warps the cylinder head. This time I take it to a supposed actual BMW shop. After many weeks, they finally get the cylinder replaced for more than it cost to have the engine replaced the first time! At this point I have more that I paid for the car in repairs in about 16 months. Now a baby is on the way and a stick shift (wife can’t drive stick, won’t learn) two seater is out of the picture. Time to sell it. It takes me about 4 months to sell it, finally at a loss (it still won’t pass emissions). I REALLY should have just kept the nice E30 4-door I was driving to start with. I’m still paying off that damn Z3, 3 years later! https://scontent-atl1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/3246_1130292024561_4866226_n.jpg?oh=dc0fdc2ee935608dc363f2e7455ebae6&oe=55F26A43
To add insult to injury, after the repair disasters with the used BMW, I ended up buying a new vehicle with a full warranty. We get a pretty decent discount on GM vehicles, because my wife’s grandfather is a GM retiree. I ended up with a 2011 Silverado extended cab WT 6 CYLINDER! While it is OKAY, the 6 cylinder (OLD 4.3L) is pretty gutless and the interior doesn’t look anything like a “new” vehicle.
You bought an impractical, costly car with a stickshift upon your wife’s insistence, and then she wouldn’t even learn to drive it?
I hope you dredge that up every time she attempts to push you to a decision that is contrary to your better judgment.
I have been pushed into decisions that are contrary to my better judgement ever since I said “I do”.
I’ve never been married, but that sounds like an approach that wouldn’t necessarily work in anyone’s favor.
As a warning to anyone, when a standard car gets modified to be “like the performance model of the same car”, it’s asking for disaster. You can increase the horsepower, but a lot of times the transmission, suspension, cooling, and mounts are not up to the task to handle the increased power and torque, resulting in a very fun but short lived vehicle.
Actually most of those things were really done right on this car. The problem came in with things like wiring harnesses and missing emissions equipment. In fact this car stared as a 4 cylinder unflared rear end car, so it was actually a few pounds lighter than a true M Roadster.
Bought a Ford Expedition Eddie Bauer with the 5.4. I liked it but my wife (now ex) had a tough seeing out of it. She hated that thing. So we traded it in 6 months for a C-Class.
I bought a low-mileage 1975 Plymouth Duster 360 in 1978. While at first I was enamored by the straight line performance, over the course of the next 6 years I grew to hate the car. While the Duster was generally sturdy and reliable, the assembly quality was lousy, the handling above 80 mph was decidedly flaky, and of course it rusted with a vengeance. The car was noisy and crude-feeling. Finances prevented me from selling or trading the Duster until 1984, when it got swapped out for a new Honda CRX 1.5 – a car that I loved. I didn’t miss the Duster at all.
Nope. I’ve enjoyed every single vehicle I’ve ever owned. Even the clapped out ’83 Dodge Ram, and the ’88 Park Avenue with 200k plus miles on it. Maybe I’ve just blocked things out of my memory, but I can’t recall ANY mechanical purchase – car, truck, snowmobile, lawnmower, chainsaw, etc that I’ve hated and regretted.
I feel the same about all 10 cars I’ve owned as well, even the Saab that I’m beginning to tire of after 16 years. I’m more likely to wish I still had most of the cars that I’ve owned rather than having gotten rid of them. Since I don’t have a 10-car garage though, that’s actually worked out well.
When my wife got pregnant with our first kid, I had a 1971 Volvo 145 that was…eh…sort if “bottom of the heap” when it came to looks. New brakes and tires, but you get the picture. We easily agreed that we needed something modern. For reasons no further elaborated, I ended up with a 20001 or 2004 Citroën Xsara wagon, like this one:
http://bilde.dinside.no/test+citro%EBn+xsara+16+sx+stasjonsvogn.jpg
It was decently powered (well, coming from a half dead 40 year old dinosaur, everything might be), looked clean and nice. My only car ever with remote-controlled doors. Wowza. Anyway, our driveway is 35 degrees steep, at times, thus it’s technically avalanche-prone. The Citroën had a looong first gear and some electronics that made only a fraction of its power available when cold, supposedly for environmental reasons. It didn’t get up the driveway without massively abusing the clutch or waiting for a warm engine. It had to go. I had failed my unborn child. Earned a solid 1200$ on reselling the crapwagon and bought a 1993 245 on reflex.
That’s a steep driveway! Must be a nightmare if you get any freezing rain down there.
Just out of curiosity, what engine was in your Xsara. I remember PSA’s HDi engines were pretty well received back then.
In the winter, we usually don’t dare to park down at the house. It was the Xsara N6/N8 1.6 16V – gasoline engine. I’m not a big fan of diesels. This is the car at the bottom of our driveway:
http://data.motor-talk.de/data/galleries/0/0/125/27127194/203594492-w500-h375.jpg
It looks mint! Shame that you had that problem with the gearing
It was, and a fantastic deal. The former owner showed me a folder of maintenance and repair bills equalling four times the price she asked over four years. It was dirty. When cleaning it out, I found money, books, lots of garbage, a couple (!) of glasses etc. The fact that the car was so nice made it very easy to sell it off quickly with a markup – in Norway, registration of ten year old cars was ca 650$ at the time. If you resell within two weeks, you won’t have to pay the registration fee.
http://data.motor-talk.de/data/galleries/0/0/125/27127194/203594496-w500-h667.jpg
http://data.motor-talk.de/data/galleries/0/0/125/27127194/203594497-w500-h375.jpg
Cute looking house with what seems like a nice view!
I was in a vulnerable position, with the fuel pump on my truck having died 3 blocks from home on my way to work. I called into work, but I needed a car to get to work the next day. My roommate at the time didn’t have to work until the afternoon, so she drove me to several car dealers that morning.
I wound up paying too much for a Maxima. It was more than I wanted to spend, but it was $1k under book, so I thought I was getting a reasonable deal. It died on the drive home from the dealership. It started right back up, so no big deal, right? Little did I know that that would be the tip of the iceberg. Honestly, it had more good days than bad, but that that is even a question tells you how many bad days it had. It would randomly go into limp mode without throwing any codes. That was annoying, and often dangerous. Imagine thinking you had plenty of time to make that turn, but halfway through, the car just cuts the power. That happened a lot.
The power locks also sometimes decided that they didn’t want me to unlock the door.
It wasn’t the worst car that I’ve ever owned. I have owned some real shit boxes. It holds the crown for shittiest relative to its purchase price, though.
I have not felt remorse when buying a car but when selling it. My wife wanted to sell her 2005 Hyundai Tucson. And although we did get a much nicer car – a C-Class – the tucson was in such great shape inside and out when we sold it (it was the limited edition with leather and moonroof) that I still get a little bit of remorse when I see one in the road the with same color as mine was.
I love our MB, but there was no real reason to sell the Tucson other than it was getting a little old.
2004 Malibu Maxx. Loved the layout, small-ish car with huge carrying capacity. Passenges liked the reclining rear seats and rear sunroof. I came to hate how badly every single part of the car was made – wavy body panels, wavy side glass, fading head and tail-lights, interior plastics by Fisher-Price, seats that get dirtier the more you clean them. When it need a brake-job I realized I was paying way too much to maintain this (albeit reliable) POS. Traded it on a 2000 Lexus GS, wow what a difference, that car is my sanctuary.
I was drawn to them for the same reasons. but those seats, No one at GM did any kind of testing on that material? a family member had a Saturn which had the same problems. you looked at it and it stained. drop a drop of water and a huge ring showed up. try to clean them and the dirt just moved to a different area making rings and lines.
Yes, my first car, the 1984 Chrysler 5th Avenue. Had leather interior and sheep skin seat covers, however the AC didn’t work, the windows didn’t work, the radio barely worked, and the mechanics never seemed to get it to pass emissions. And this was bought in Florida, in the summer as a way to get to work at my first job. That thing was a sweat box. I think the sun roof and windows were only fixed a couple of weeks before I sold it. Only bought it for $400 and somehow sold it six months later, after it overheated and had a weak battery, for $700.
It looked very similar to this.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Chrysler_Fifth_Avenue_1983.jpg
Not surprised to see that many of the posts so far involve a little surplus upon sale, no matter the respective car’s condition. I like the cubism I see above, but wouldn’t dare to touch one of these after all I’ve read
I loved driving my ’78 Audi Fox, at least when it wasn’t sitting in the shop at the local Porsche+Audi dealer, for K-Jet fuel injection or electrical problems. After three years and 49,000 miles, I traded it in, and got $2800 (it was $7400 new). Fortunately, I only owed $1900, so $900 went toward the $1300 ’68 Pontiac Bonneville I traded it in for.
The Bonneville was great for the first summer, with no problems. Then the next year, the oil companies (insert conspiracy theory here) changed the vapor pressure of gasolines, at least in the DFW area, so that summer gasoline was like winter gas, and the Bonneville started experiencing vapor lock problems, stranding me on a regular basis. I tried everything I could to try to fix the problem (new fuel pump, carb rebuild, carb spacer, fuel tank cleaning, etc.). After a summer and a half of dealing with it, I sold it to a friend, who added a Holley electric fuel pump and regulator. It was a blessing in disguise, since I was tired of 9-11 mpg and paying for leaded premium.
The 93,000 mile ’76 Vega I bought next turned out to be way more reliable, for the next 11 years and 125,000 miles.
K-jet is a demon! I never got my ’80 Rabbit to run quite right, right up until the day I sold it.
Still loved that little basket and wish I’d had more time and money to fix it up.
I had been driving a leased 1995 VW GTI VR6 with a stiffened suspension. I absolutely loved the car, but I really hooned around a lot in it. At lease end, my oldest son said “dad, it’s time to get a more grownup car.” So, I leased a 1998 VWQ Passat V6 with manual transmission. Bigger, comfy, powerful V6. I hated it the minute I drive it off the lot. Worst motor ever. Absolutely no connection between the go pedal and the throttle. Step on gas. Wait. Accelerate.I used to enjoy driving Ford Taurus rentals better.
Finally turned it in 3 months early, paid a huge penalty and bought a proper car: 2002 Subaru WRX
Acura Vigor owned by a teenager. Not sure why I disregarded all the obvious issues, and found many more once I had it. Really can’t explain why I bought it at all. Last straw was the heater valve breaking so the heater was always roasting you in combination with the black leather interior. Traded in for a few hundred bucks towards a nice dull mitsubishi galant with ice cold A/C ( only car I’ve ever bought from a dealer )
Picked up a new ’01 Chevy Silverado for reliable wheels. The only option it had was A/C. I looked for one with a manual tranny on principle, but that turned out to be rather a mistake. The agriculturally inspired NV4500 5 speed was about as engaging and satisfying to the driving experience as hand operated windshield wipers, especially when mated to the wheezy 4.3L V6. The 6 hp you freed up when you turned of the a/c accelerating on to the freeway could actually make a difference, until you tried to shift quickly, which wasn’t going to happen, and your momentum went back in the crapper where it really wanted to stay. Dumb reliability issues too.
my brother in law picked up a new 02 silverado short bed with the same set up. with the huge rebate i think he got it for 16K so it was hard to pass up. The gearbox was a bang and crunch deal. raise the rpms. let off the gas. dip the clutch and the whole drive line shuddered because the rpms didn’t fall fast enough and the clutch release wasn’t smooth. you had to learn to shift Very slowly. I even tried double clutching to see if that would help. just got use to waiting for the rpms to fall before trying to shift. The only other thing that was bad with it was the “soft ride” standard rear springs. which pogo sticked over ripples in the highway.
Maybe a big surprise, but mine is a 1988 Rx7 convertible manual trans. Sounds good, right? Bought off ebay, so no test drive, oops!
The car itself is perfect, runs like a top.
However, the most lifeless steering I’ve ever felt, a 70s Cadillac has more feel and rebound. Mazda put a higher axle ratio into a heavier car that has no torque, so you can guess how it drives.
Add in under 20mpg everywhere, and not a good choice.
There’s a reason you can find these all day on CL.
Got a Miata now, and yes, the answer is always Miata.
I’ve had two cars that were impulse buys and both were ” what the $#$% was I thinking” moments. The first was a 1977 MGB in green with tan interior. wire knock offs…but this was before the internet and before i was smart enough to read about british reliability. Every Lucas story you have ever heard is totally true. Years later I would be fooled by an American company that was getting rave reviews of its new sub compact with a cheeky ad on TV that said ” HI ” …I bought a white 2 door just like the TV commercial. The problems I had with that car would have embarrassed the French and British auto industry combined. I had a warranty folder three inches thick of repairs. two years in and a new problem that caused it to be in the shop for 30 straight days trying to find a electrical short. the service rep called saying the car was done. I picked it up and it made it half a block from the dealer. I left it setting in the road and walked back…called the dealership owner…he had them pull a wiring harness out of a new car on the lot. when I picked the car up I got about five miles from the dealer and the check engine light came on. I pulled into the next dealer I came to and traded that POS off. taking a loss was better than living a nightmare.
http://fasel.org/bla/neon-hi.jpg
I’ve had several that I should regret, but don’t. there’s always a but …
1980 Chevy Monza – Crappy build quality, hinge pins that fall out, rust, leaks, etc. But – it looked good, handled well and I learned a lot wrenching on it, so it’s still got a soft spot in my heart.
1988 Nissan Pulsar – Always broken, and the SE engine meant that everything was double what it should be to fix. Ate tires and exhaust. Bought it for $5K, put $5K in repairs in it over 3 years and traded it with a bad speedometer, steering rack, bald tires and another bad exhaust. But – Boy was it a hoot to drive, plus T-tops!
1993 Escort LX – Poverty spec with crank windows, 13″ tires and fridge white paint. Boring, boring, boring. But – Darn thing just kept running despite me flogging it within an inch of it’s life every time I drove it. Very little trouble over 160K+ miles.
2007 Prius. It’s a Prius. Slow, numb, buzzy. But -The wife loves it, 45+ MPG and drives almost like new at 150K miles.
not my worst car because it was trouble free for the first 35K miles of it’s life. After that it was a total let down. 3.2 V6 suffered sludging even though I changed the oil every 3k miles. At about 35K miles it started having lifter tap only after my commute on the expressway. I’d exit and come to the stop light and it would be tapping really bad. once it cooled down it would stop tapping. The dealer was pretty much useless. They replaced an oil pressure sending unit but said they could find noting wrong. At about 37k I was coming home from work and on my exit i expected to hear the tapping but what I got was a low knock of rods. The engine was toast. wafts of blue smoke up the rear window told me things were over with that engine. upon opening the engine up they found the drain holes in the head were almost closed so at high rpms…say 3k like you get on the highway oil wasnt able to get back to the pump fast enough…not good.
I bought mine with 76K on it in 1986.I put another 50K on it over the next 5 years of college. Mom and Dad had the top end of the engine rebuilt at some point and I attempted to stop or at least slow its gradual disintegration. My sister had a ’79 too.
1991 Toyota Camry V6, refrigerator white.
I bought the car new as a present for my dad– I figured he’d be OK with the numb steering and overall appliance-like demeanor of the thing. It was $2K-$3K less expensive than the other option — a BMW 325.
Well, dad drove the car for a few years, but then decided that it was time to give up driving. He gave the Camry back to me. I drove it around for about three years after that– it was dead reliable, only needed oil changes, and every bulb, system and accessory worked perfectly. But that car was the epitome of boring– I bought a new car and sold the Camry to a brother-in-law with under 67,000 on the odo. The brother-in-law still has it as a commute beater. I have been a much happier driver since dumping that toaster of a car.
Chevy/Toyota Nova. I didn’t actually own one, but I went out with a girl who had one. I never called her after I learned what she drove. Maybe if she had a different car, we might have gotten married.
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/11-1987-Chevrolet-Nova-Down-On-the-Junkyard-Picture-courtesy-of-Murilee-Martin.jpg
Other than that, no real regrets. I’ve had garbage cars, but only when I’ve paid sub-garbage prices and had realistically low expectations.
1999 Subaru Forester S. When I got it, it had 120,000 miles on it and was immaculate. The logic behind the purchase was that I was moving cross-country into an indeterminate employment situation, and in the medium term it would suit my situation better than the 2000 Cherokee Limited that it was replacing. The Forester was about the same overall size, was loaded with virtually the same level of equipment, and had enough AWD that while it wouldn’t have the ultimate off-road capabilities of the Jeep, it could at least deal with some crappy weather and light trails.
Even before the engine blew at 125,000 miles (not due to the infamous EJ25 head gasket issue; the exhaust valves burned out on the #2 and #4 cylinders, which also decided to let their rings go), it was a complete letdown.
It didn’t drive appreciably better than the XJ, which drove more than well enough for a vehicle of its type. It had similar dimensions and cargo capacity but in a less-usable package, particularly in the cargo area. Parts were stupidly expensive, even when buying through the usual online sources. Fuel economy was, both pre- and post-engine replacement (which, I hasten to add, involved a new catalytic converter and oxygen sensors), 1mpg worse than the Jeep in town and 1mpg better on the highway. And it didn’t have the power or brakes to tow anything, which further limited its capabilities – and while I quite honestly didn’t have much in the way of expectations for it as a tow vehicle, it was just one more item to add to the list of Things It’s Not Very Good At by the time I was completely fed up with it.
On the plus side, the Cold Weather Package that it came with was very effective at de-icing the mirrors, heating the seats, and unsticking frozen wipers from the windscreen.
I eventually sold it to a schoolteacher who was utterly thrilled with it, and I truly hope it worked out better for her than it ever did for me – but this is the vehicle that put me off post-1992 Subarus for life. It should have been better than it was, but it just wasn’t. Compared to the three Brats I’d had before it, all it really served to do was leave me wondering where Subaru’s engineering abilities had wandered off to somewhere in the mid-’90s.
Here’s one I suppose will shock the Fanbois – a bought-new-from-the-dealer 1997 Acura Integra. I dumped it to CarMax with 10,000 miles on it and was thrilled to see the back of it. It was my fourth, and last, purchased-new Honda product. My first was a 1986 first-year-of-production Integra. My greatest purchase ever. The advertising for Acura hadn’t started yet and nobody (except us car-mag readers) knew what they were. The salesmen were starving. You laugh, but I bought it for less than a CRX, with no mop n’ glow…in fact with no radio (I bought one from the parts department for half the option price and installed it myself in 30 minutes flat). I had gotten that car for essentially dealer cost from a very angry but hungry salesman. THAT Integra was the greatest car ever. love, love, love! Which led to purchasing an 88 for the wife and a replacement for my 86 in 92. Then we left the country for my work (sold both cars) and didn’t get back till late 1997.Coming home I literally had to get off the plane and take a taxi to the dealership and buy a car. No time to screw around shopping. Anyhow, after three great cars, it was a no-brainer to buy another Integra. They had changed the styling to a frog-faced look I didn’t like, but I figured I could live with that. Test drive? Why bother? I’d owned three of them before, remember? Did a decent deal and the wife and I drove off to a friend’s house for a welcome-home party. It stalled on the way. It did finally restart but our relationship was off to a bad start that never got much better.
As nearly as I can tell, the exchange rate for the Dollar/Yen had changed dramatically while we were overseas and rather than raise the price of the car, Acura decontented them. The interior panels were GM-worthy slabs of plastic. The digital clock lost 2 minutes a week. There was -zero-soundproofing. The “Alpine” stereo would drop stations. The headlights fogged. The seats were brick slabs and the material was showing wear at 10,000 miles. Handling was OK but nothing special. I had bought the Acura name and ended up in a penalty box economy car. To cap things off, a friend bought a new Civic and it was a MUCH better and nicer car than my Integra in every way. The handwriting was on the wall. Honda had abandoned Acura; it was no longer the “face of Honda” image maker. The division had been set it adrift to live or die on profit margin alone. In a panic, they had saved EVERY penny, er, yen possible. I came to hate that car during my brief ownership. It was as the brand name had been purchased by a cheap Chinese company cashing in on the label. I was disappointed enough to write a letter to Acura, and tell them they had managed to turn a true-fanboi into a hater. They didn’t answer.
Early 2009 – I bought a 2006 Solstice, before I was also supposed to test drive a ’06 Miata. The car ran out of gas on the test drive, which should’ve been a sign. As a past Miata owner, I don’t know why I didn’t at least test drive the ’06 Miata.
No trunk space, suspension way too soft, transmission (5 spd) nowhere near as smooth, having to get out of the car to put the top up and down, and the interior felt tight.
How much did I hate the car? I traded it in on a 2008 Focus sedan after 8 months. And I eventually picked up a ’03 Miata to sit next to it in the driveway
I bought a Chevy HHR because I thought it would be a fuel efficient SUV-like vehicle to replace our GMC Envoy. WORST VEHICLE EVER. Super cheap plastic interior would scratch up from the slightest touch, the 2.4L V4 had about as much horsepower as a lawn tractor, and to accommodate the bubbly-retro body panels, they had to make the interior very narrow, meaning everyone was squished together.
TERRIBLE TERRIBLE vehicle. After years of therapy I can finally put that part of my life behind me.
Wow, there are some painful ones….
The worst for me is a toss up between the ’80 ultra-base model Ferd F-100 pickup and a 1999 Suckazuki Grand Lametara.
Long bed, rubber floor, no radio, no rear bumper, 300 cid “big” I-6, three-on-the-tree…my male parental unit bought it new, $5,250, IIRC.
Hated. That. Truck. I had to put a floor shift in it because the column shift would routinely hang between 2nd and 3rd, resulting in 2nd, and 2nd only.
It ate clutches, too. They’d break, and why I have no idea. 6 clutches in 135K miles, and it wasn’t like either of us didn’t know how to drive a manual…it’s all we’d had, previously.
It broke windshields, too. 7 of those over its 8 year life with us. I think the frame was tweaked, or something. Eventually, every single body panel had damage…it was a work truck as well as my DD…and when the driver’s side window fell in the door and broke, I left it that way until it got cold. About six months.
Tended to have thermostats stick closed as well, and it wasn’t pleasant to replace. I even left it running to take a college exam because the starter was toast, yet all my regular roll-start spaces were taken. Parked it, running, took my exam, came back 90 minutes later and the damned thing was still there. It was only 7 years old at this point, but was that undesirable.
The other one, though…sigh.
It’s 1999, we’re still pretty new to 9K feet of elevation in Colorado, have a nice new house…and I a 92 mile RT commute to work. I have a ’94 Grand Cherokee Limited. V8, Quadra-Trac, leather, everything but a sunroof. Loved that truck, until the transmission started acting up…then the T-case viscous coupler. When what appeared to be a rear main seal leak appeared, and this was all before 70K miles, it was time to replace it, which pained me.
That’s not the one I hated.
I replaced it with a brand-new 1999 Suzuki Grand Vitara. I found one built the exact way I wanted. Manual, silver, otherwise loaded with every option. Only car I’ve ever purchased new.
By week three, it started to grate on me. Sometimes the shift lever would get really difficult to move, and finding a gear was a challenge. Like the linkage was in almost-frozen molasses. Then it’d be fine. Completely random, did it for a couple of years.
Then the hood started to squeak…constantly. I wound up putting one of the adjusting stops all the way up, didn’t care it looked like the hood wasn’t closed.
It’s off-road and snow prowess was marginal, even with BFG A/Ts on it. Making matters even more annoying, it didn’t have the power to get into the mountains without almost constantly shifting between 3rd and 4th. MPG was about 20. Even the V8 ZJ managed 18, and was damned nice.
It had a left rear axle seal fail at about 5K miles. Took it in, they repaired it, but broke a piece of interior plastic when also addressing a bad SRS sensor. Didn’t so much as mention, much less fix it, until I went to pick it up, got in, saw the bottom of the dash half hanging off.
Really?
After 55K miles, it got interesting. This is when rear differentials started failing.
Don’t know why the first one did, but it was a broken pinion gear. Flat-out cracked. This is shortly after it broke the LR axle. At least with 4WD, I made it home with front-wheel drive.
I threw a used diff in there. That one lasted about 8K miles. What?!
Then it broke rear diffs more often than I changed the oil. I eventually cleaned out Oregon salvage yards of them, but could change a diff with three wrenches and about two hours of work. I think I put six diffs in it between 55K miles and when I sold it with 72K.
Oh, and the A/C’s expansion valve stuck open…when we lived in Vegas.
I tried to sell it after only about two years because, due to a motorcycle accident, I couldn’t drive a stick for about three years. Because this was right after 9/11/2001, even at less than 50% of its original cost, with only about 30K miles on it, with not so much as a scratch, no takers.
Eventually, my left leg healed enough to drive it, and I’m kinda glad it didn’t sell, because it became the towed car (toad) behind the 40′ diesel motorcoach.
I thought I wanted a nice toad, but I had this, already, so why not.
It got the living crap beat out of it after several hundred miles of gravel road in the Yukon and Alaska.
Sold it in Colorado in 2008, after putting the final rear diff in it. Never was so happy to see a vehicle leave my possession.
I replaced it, just a couple of years back (towed car and all), with a 1998 Grand Cherokee 5.9L.
Sure, 15 MPG…maybe, but it’s nice, and will go anywhere I point it.