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70's American made cars, the worst being Dodge, Plymouth, Chrysler. Frequently had starting problems. "Chrome" would come off the plastic knobs. I have not bought one since.
But there was worse than that! American Motors 70's cars would fall apart on the interior door panels and such.
Since fuel injection has come out, cars in general are a LOT more dependable. I can't remember the last time a car would not start for me!
Never had a bad one. Always selected high performance USA V8s with rwd. All manual transmission save one with an automatic transmission. Go high performance and you will never be disappointed unless the vehicle is genuinely a QC failure. Plus side is there is always a buyer come resell time.
That's kind of my opinion now after owning the Taurus. Domestic is fine if you go with a full size car or high performance like a Vette, or you buy a truck/van/SUV from them. The small and midsize cars from the domestics are dogs if you ask me.
I don't think younger people realize how good they have it these days. In the 70's and 80's you could buy a brand new car off the lot that was a smoking piece of crap from the start, that would never fly today.
My Mom had a brand new Horizon and a Champ in the 80's and neither made it to 15,000 miles before being traded in due to them being pure junk.
Very rarely do you see someone saying "my 2011 Fusion/Malibu/Whatever started smoking/leaking oil/dropped a valve/Etc. at 7,000 miles". Back then it wasn't that uncommon.
I'm not a Honda fan, but the mid-90's Accords were probably the best one's they ever made. The Accord and Camry both seemed to reach their pinnacle around that time. What were the issues with your Accord?
It's been a long time, but it needed more repairs than I thought made sense for me to keep it, and they were not inexpensive repairs.
1998 Plymouth Neon...Had so many problems with this car. I remember one day I was at the drive thru at McDonalds and the manager came over to the window he saw that I was driving a Plymouth Neon and asked me if it was a 1998..he asked me if I was having any issues..said YES..he had also.
The Mustang CJ of the late 60's was similar, in which the engine had to be pulled to change plugs.
Yeah, but the Mustang did offer mega-power from that big old 428 engine, which anybody who had any business buying one knew was about too wide to fit the engine compartment.
You don't have to pull the engine, you just have to lift it up some, remove one bolt per engine mount, as if you were going to change the engine mounts (and if you had driven it as the guys who built it intended, when you were due for plugs, you probably wanted to take a hard look at the engine mounts as well). Some good Snap-On type plug sockets and etc. make this job a lot easier. But most of the work of doing an engine pull as such - taking all the wires loose, pull the radiator, disconnect from the transmission or make arrangements to pull it with the engine, take the hood off - you don't really have to do all that to do a plug change on a CJ.
The GM POS cars where you have to go through contortions to reach some of the plugs don't offer any upside.
Worst car I ever owned no doubt was an 80 model Diesel Dasher VW. Slow, had big problems with the cam belt lower sprocket working loose, paid a shop to fix that, the valves had hit the pistons but not hard enough to break anything yet, later it of course sucked a valve, against better sense fixed that, drove it a couple more years until it threw a rod through the side of the block! Junked after that.
Thing about this was the car was more trouble than a performance car, but with no performance. 48 HP dog slow. 50 MPG at best but just not worth it.
lol! My worst was an '85 Sunbird! I bought it used when it was about a year and a half old. There was a good reason somebody dumped it so early! It was nice looking, all the extras, velour seats, nice interior,and I had a 5 speed stick.
I think the clutch and brakes went out within the first 6 months of owning it. I had to replace the heater core, muffler, brakes, A/C (twice), had the engine re-built once or twice, headlights always went out, the dash lights went out, tilt steering broke. Once I had paid it off, it still ran me about the same per month in car payments lol!
I was in the military and shipped it to Germany where I had it for 3 years. Drove it everywhere from Amsterdam to Rome, and after shipping it back to the U.S., it made it from NYC to Los Angeles and half way back. I got it up to 110K miles before finally dumping it. At 7 years old, it was ready for the junk yard. I've never owned a GM product since.
I am not the least bit surprised that GM dropped Pontiac in 2009.
Though the Firebirds (from 67-69) looked good, and the 455 SD TransAm was a runner.... and of course the early GTO's. But all those cars were decades ago.
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