Hooniverse Asks: Is there a car or truck you regret buying?

Jeff Glucker

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Our man Ross is in the middle of telling us the story about his summer of regret. It started when he sold his Subaru WRX to buy a Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport. A Centennial Edition Grand Sport nonetheless. But that car brought Ross on a journey that lasted 100 days and ended in misery. Part two will be up later today.

Before we get there, I want to know about any cars or trucks (or bikes, buses, motorhomes, boats, or planes) that you regret buying.

I don’t regret buying my 1984 Mercedes-Benz 300TD wagon. I regret that the project has only seen movement based on the actual flipping of the calendar pages and not the firing up of V8 wonder. I still love that car and plan to see the project turn into my daily driver.

If I regretted buying any vehicle, it would have to be the 1999.5 Audi A4 1.8T I convinced my wife we needed. The story of that car exists on Hoonvierse 1.0, which is seeing all of its old posts migrated to the new site. Yes, we know we’re missing many old tales. We still have them, and they’re on their way up. Back to the car. We bought it used off a coworker and it seemed to be in great shape.

But the prior owner was a rich kid who didn’t really give a shit about what happened next to the car. One day, the wastegate shot off and lodged itself into the catalytic converter. It presented as an emissions fault on the scanner. It drove like a very heavy Audi sedan with four cylinders and no back pressure for the turbocharger. I didn’t know better back then, but I do today.

Well, maybe not. My Craigslist search history would suggest otherwise.

What vehicle do you regret buying?

About

Jeff Glucker

Jeff Glucker

Jeff Glucker is the co-founder and Executive Editor of Hooniverse.com. He’s often seen getting passed as he hustles a 1991 Mitsubishi Montero up the 405 Freeway. IG: @HooniverseJeff

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5 responses to “Hooniverse Asks: Is there a car or truck you regret buying?”

  1. SlowJoeCrow Avatar
    SlowJoeCrow

    I don’t regret the car, but I do regret not buying the factory rebuilt transaxle for our Ford Escort instead of letting the transmission shop try to rebuild it since that transaxle was cursed and a dealer ended up rebuilding it 3 times before we got it mostly OK and then had to replace it with a used unit a few years later. That car still lasted 15 years so it wasn’t a waste or a mistake but I could have saved a lot of money and grief.

    Reply
  2. salguod Avatar
    salguod

    No real regrets, although a few I’ve been disappointed in.

    I probably should regret the 1980 Monza I bought in 1986 before college, but I don’t. It was good looking and fun to drive, but generally terribly screwed together. It got me through college, despite catching fire twice, along with a number of other failures.

    My 1988 Nissan Pulsar NX SE was a lot of fun, but very costly. I paid $5K for it after college in 1992 with 75K and put another $5K in it keeping it running for 3 years. Over that 3 years it needed 2 sets of tires, 2 cat back exhausts, a coil pack, the spark control computer, an alternator, a clutch, an exhaust cam (improperly diagnosed, twice, as a slipped timing belt and bad crank angle sensor) and the internal speedometer gear failed. When I traded it, the non-operational odometer showing 124K, it needed another set of tires, another exhaust, shocks and struts and a steering rack. But it looked good, had T-Tops and pop up lights and made me smile driving it.

    I traded that on a 1993 Escort 5 door with almost zero options. A/C and a tape deck were about it. It was ugly, slow and boring but it never broke. I put about 160K miles on that thing with few failures. It was the polar opposite of the Pulsar. I wanted to hate that Escort, but it was just such a good, solid car, so I couldn’t. After the lemon that Pulsar was, it was exactly what we needed.

    My 2010 Saturn Outlook was a disappointment in how thirsty it was (I averaged 17 MPG over 3 years or so) and how space inefficient it was. It towed the pop up camper well, though, which is why we bought it.

    Funny, all of those cars were bought at typical used or new car prices. The last 3 cars have been much, much cheaper ($500, $1,200 and $3,600) and I’ve loved all of them.

    Reply
  3. Tank Avatar
    Tank

    My first car with a payment was a 1994 GMC Sonoma 2wd extended cab black on silver in 2001. I sold my rock solid 1988 Sentra to buy it. Unfortunately this truck broke down more than it ran, the gas gauge was inaccurate (like every other GM vehicle I’ve owned) and Its 4.3v6 was worse on gas then v8’s I’d have later. Eventually I spent more money fixing it (even though at the time I worked as a mechanic and did most of it myself) then I could paying the payments. It was eventually repossessed, I had been driving a 1982 Corolla (which turned out to be one of my favorite cars) since that truck spent most of its time broken. I didn’t have another Car with a payment and didn’t use credit cards up until last year where I got both. I still hate that truck.

    Reply
  4. Lokki Avatar
    Lokki

    Mine was a purchased new 1997 Acura Integra. I had first purchased a ‘nobody-had-heard-of-them’ Integra in 1986. They hadn’t really started advertising yet, and the salesman was -starving- seriously. I, being an avid car-magazine reader, knew exactly what Honda intended with Acura. I paid just over invoice. I’d managed to bring home my Integra less than a Honda CRX because people knew what a Honda was, and the dealer mark-up showed it. But Acura? Who Dat? I won that one.

    Loved that first Integra. Loved it. Loved it so much that in 88 I bought one for my wife, and in 91, I replaced my 86 with yet another Integra. Acura gave me my first experience with good customer service. I felt like a Boss, instead of a punk junior manager which is what I was. Life was good.

    Anyhow, life sent me to Central America for 5 years in 1992. Poof! Both cars sold and gone. When I finally got to come home to the States in 1997, I had to buy a car…immediately. I looked at my options and realized I could rent a car for a month and drive around car shopping, but the cost of the rental would probably eat up most the shopping savings. Or…. I could buy another Integra. Since they were still going for list in those days, prices were pretty well set, so there no advantage to be gained by shopping around. And, I had been very happy with the first three, soooo: It was a no-brainer to (essentially) take a cab from my arrival airport to the Acura dealership and drive home in a new Integra. Really no need to even test-drive one, thanks.

    Big, big mistake. One of the things I missed by being out of touch in the tropics, was the huge shift of the strength of the yen vs. the dollar. To keep prices down on the Integra, Acura had gutted the cars. So, shitty sound-proofing. Cheap upholstery material which started showing wear at 10K miles. Brick hard foam in the seats, one-piece hard plastic interior door panels. An “Alpine” radio that couldn’t hold an FM station. Foggy headlights, fixed twice. A digital clock that lost a minute a day. Where the previous 3 Integras had been entry-level luxury, this was a cheap noisy econobox. Reliable? Sure. But I would have had a much better car if I had spent the same money on a Civic.

    I kept the car for less than a year. Something I had never done before, and haven’t done since. It isn’t in my nature. But, that car pissed me off every time I turned the key.

    Reply
  5. Bob Kuykendall Avatar
    Bob Kuykendall

    Each of the last three Subaru Outbacks. “This one won’t blow its head gaskets. It’ll be different.” But it would always end the same.

    Reply