A little while back, I wrote a piece on the cars I wish I still had from the 46 or so that I have owned over the years, among them a Volvo 850R. These were the cars that in looking back meant something to me. They gave me a glow associated with good times from my past. This piece is the sequel. It's about the cars we hope to forget. We have all had at least one car that made the list of Cars I Wish I Had Never Had.
Thinking back, you can still see it. It looked pretty good the first time you saw it. It struck that cord. Maybe it was the color or the shape of the body. That curve of a fender; the look of the wheels. Maybe you had to convince yourself of the practicality of it. Perhaps it was the cargo space or the gas mileage that finally got you to open your wallet and purchase this thing of beauty.
For a little while, all was good. There might have been a few things to get used to or to fix to get it to your liking, but it was going to work out. Then bad things started to happen, and they just kept coming until that day you just couldn't take it any longer. Unlike other cars, especially those that you still remember fondly today, it had to go. In fact, you would have taken anything just to get rid of it and the sooner, the better.
The car I would have done anything to get rid of (and kind of did, actually) was a 1987 Porsche 924S. Conceptually, it was a neat car. Basically a 944 mechanically. It had the body and a somewhat upscaled interior from the old 924. It also was a bit faster than a Porsche 944, thanks to better aero, but it wasn't a great handler due to skinnier wheels and a narrower track. This was the poor man's Porsche for 1987 and they were fairly rare with less than 3000 imported in that year, in all of North America.
Taking a Friday-off stroll through my favorite used car lot, I bought it on a whim. It was black with cream interior, had only 55K miles on it and a really decent price. The car was an absolute hoot on the drive home. Even my wife thought I had made a good purchase. We drove it all over the place that weekend. But that following Monday, the joy stopped and the downward progression began to the point that I now call the car, “The Raven", in honor of Edgar Allen Poe's poem and the fact that the car was black and certainly evil.
While traveling back from lunch, an elderly driver ran a light and I t-boned her old Pontiac. Fortunately, no one was hurt and the damage was confined to the 924's front bumper, hood, and one fender. Not enough damage to total the car. The damage was sorted soon enough, but on the way home from the body shop, I ended up being stuck behind a salt truck laying down a healthy quantity of road salt in preparation for a coming ice storm. My newly painted front end, especially the hood, was now badly nicked up and road-scarred.
The following extremely cold winter resulted in the dash top cracking in multiple places. The subsequent spring saw the gears in the sunroof mechanism strip. The final straw was an intermittent no-start with no rhyme or reason. I spent a month with test gear and the official Porsche shop manual trying to sort what was going on . A new fuel pump, ignition wires, distributor cap and rotor, did no good. Frustrated, I did something I never do and had the car put on the truck to the dealer. This car was so evil that even the dealer was stumped, taking a week of diagnosis before I was presented with the classic, “Thomas Edison” bill for $1000. $998 shop time and $2 for the part to fix, which was a cold solder connection in the injector harness. That single and memorable event moved the car to my most hated list.
There have been others, not quite so dramatic. A 1975 Opel Ascona that had the gearbox shear bell housing bolts, I literally had to back away from the engine. A 1984 Wasserboxer VW Vanagon that loved to chew up its cleverly hidden and hard to replace water pump. A 1984 Honda Civic Wagon that had enough body flex to crack the windshield if you took a speed bump wrongly. A 1976 Volvo 265 that drank gas like it was going out of style in the winter and didn't even come close to getting its officially-rated 16mpg in the summer. Oh yes, there are some real winners in my list of "Cars I Wish I Had Never Had."
So how about you? What is on your list of infamous rides?
About the Author: Uilleam Ross
Uilleam (Bill) Ross is a 60 year-old retired 30-year veteran of the IT industry and a 45-year car guy. Living in Western Head, Nova Scotia, he now indulges his passions for landscape photography and cars, principally Volvos and Land Rovers.
