my dad hired out a ford sierra when i was younger,
the passanger window fell out when my mam tried to wind down the window, as soon as she moved the handle it dropped out and somehow managed to grab hold before it hit the tarmac (serously!)
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Seat Marbella (cost-cutting Fiat Panda) about 25 years ago.
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Chevrolet Lacetti automatic, the automatic being the worst aspect of it. I'd had a couple of manual ones which were OK and I liked the estate version.
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My worst was a Seat Marbella hired in Spain in 1999 from a small independent (booked through Holiday Autos).
It was generally scruffy, there was no cover for the luggage in the boot, it leaked oil, and we had a blow-out on the motorway - the tyre just fell to bits.
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Not a rental car as such, but a courtesy car from a lease company. A Peugeot 206 1.1 "Style" about 5 years ago. It was the car that finally made me realise just how badly Peugeot had lost the plot since the days of the 106/205/306/405/406
The dash had the colour, texture and visual appeal of elephant hide and rattled and creaked with just 4,000 miles on the clock. The little TU engine which was a peach in the 205 seemed to have had its balls cut off and sounded like it had sand in the engine oil, it was noisy, sparsely equipped, had the worst driving position I have ever experienced, and most insulting of all, it didn't have that lovely, pointy go-kart like handling that should be the God-given right of any small Peugeot. The brakes stood the car on its nose if you sneezed at them, the power steering felt like something Vauxhall would have been proud of in the 1980's, and it was just generally horrid.
I wanted to like it. I had always found small, small engined French cars very appealing until this point. I've owned a 106 and a couple of 306's and loved them, but this was just horrible. I crashed it thankfully, into a muppet in a BMW who pulled out without looking (my only RTA in 18 years motoring). They replaced it with a mk1 Focus 1.6 Zetec. Much better.
Edited by DP on 17/11/2009 at 12:08
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>>Chevrolet Lacetti automatic, the automatic being the worst aspect of it.
Funny that. I was pretty unimpressed with the last automatic I hired, and was sure it would have been much less gutless as a manual.
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VW Polo with brakes like an on/off switch.
I've never driven a car with brakes that were so sharp, there was no feel to them at all. They were worrying at speed and downright embarrassing in stop start traffic where I was bouncing the car to a halt like a learner with a lead foot, staring at the mirror and waiting for the sound of a tailgate crunch. I had the car for a day and just couldn't get used to it, it was impossible to develop any empathy with the pedal. I was never so glad to hand anything back in my life.
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Good topic. For me, a recent Chevrolet Aveo. Gutless engine, dreadful gearbox, horrid interior, but most worrying was the steering that bearly felt connected to the wheels. Driving dynamics firmly rooted circa 20 years ago a la Datsun.
Funnily enough, I have since had a Matiz on hire and that seemed a much better little car.
IMHO the current generation Fiesta and Corsa are very good, and driving the Aveo made them feel like a Rolls Phantom in comparison.
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Seat Marbella with a full length folding roof on Holiday in Tenerife. Driving with the roof fully open, it parted company with the car and sailed gently to the side of the road.
Volvo V40 Diesel. Slow and thirsty as well as the noisiest diesel I can remember since my mate's Mk1 Orion.
Ford Mondeo Diesel (non TDCI). The engine caused every single component in the car to vibrate. Fortunately, black plumes from the exhaust and almost complete loss of power signalled its imminent end and Hertz replaced it with a petrol one.
Renault Modus. Driving position like an Alfasud, bouncy ride, indirect steering and acceleration on a par with continental drift.
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SEAT Ibiza diesel hired in the summer of 2005 southern Spain.
I wanted something with aircon, didn't care what it was provided it had working aircon as my wife was about five months pregnant at the time. This car came with a little frost button and LED but I don't think it was connected to anything else.
Luckily, we were in Spain where there are no glaciers to overtake, it could have been a bit messy had we been in Switzerland.
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We had the new fiat Bravo(a?) as a hire car to and from Bristol, apologies to anyone who owns one, but Ive never driven anything so cheap and nasty (at least that what it feals like)
It was a diesel car, and when you accelerated it would wobble from side to side, it was noisy, drafty very uncomfortable to sit in I always seemed to sit twisted and I could not get the position right, the wipers would screech and bounce all over the windscreen coming down the class with a thump at the bottom, it didn?t help that it was chucking it down with rain all the way up the M5 and A1
The dash layout was cluttered everything squashed into one small place, and it gave me a headache trying to look down the tubes at the half obscoured speedo.
The cruise control was operated with a turn knob on the indicator stalk which meant if you turned off the CC via the brake pedal, you had to turn the knob to the ?off? position and then back on to reset the CC.
In the Vectra it?s a simple button press to resume.
I cant think of anything nice to say about it, it was horrible
Edited by redviper on 17/11/2009 at 12:29
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redviper wrote:It was a diesel car and when you accelerated it would wobble from side
Sounds like skew-whiff tracking to me - mine doesn't do that.
The cruise control...you had to turn the knob to the ?off? position and then back on to >> reset the CC. In the Vectra it?s a simple button press to resume.
So it is on these - mine has a RES button on the end of that stalk.
Totally agree re. instrument visibility though - triumph of form over function there. Pity you didn't like it though because we're very pleased with ours (although is Dynamic spec & hence top of range which may make a difference).
Back on topic: my candidate for Worst. Rental. Ever. is an '02 Micra 1.3 (or so they claimed). Horrible flimsy little thing. Worst body roll I've ever experienced. Ghastly sticky plastics that made your hands sweat. Gutless, thrashy engine. 'Orrible thin seats. I can think of nothing to commend it - not even the colour (lime green metallic). I have never been so glad to hand a set of keys back.
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Oh - Ive got lots of contenders.
Once hired a poverty spec cheapest price I could find Seat 500 in Majorca in the early 70's from a local car hire place in Cala Millor.
SWMBO and I went about a mile downhill before returning very slowly and warily to the sound of grinding worn out brakes and demanded a replacement which was duly supplied .
Brakes on the replacement were checked out as OK so we set off around the island and were some miles down the road when for some reason SWMBO lifted the floormat to find a tracery of holes just about held together with rust - We could see the road rushing past through the floor.
It went all right though - which is more than can be said for the Yugo we hired in Corfu which was a proper dog of a motor , no guts and all plastic.
I also hired a Matiz in Kefalonia which would not get up a hill with 4 in unless the aircon was switched off....
I can and do afford better motors these days.
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A Daihatsu Grand Move (as a loan car) several years ago. Looked and drove like a shoe box, or as I would expect a motorised shoebox to drive. It also had large stickers on each side declaring that 'You could have this car for only £?? a month'.
I'm not normally worried about my street cred but this was pushing things a bit far! Fortunately I only needed it for one day.
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Chevrolet Kalos, hired in Montenegro. Cramped, underpowered, badly built, noisy, tacky. Its only redeeming feature was the gearbox, which felt like it had come out of a FIAT 127. A bad thing in most people's eyes no doubt, but a happy trip down memory lane for me.
Why anyone buys these things in this country to this day (OK, they're called AVEOs now), is beyond me. They're not even cheap.
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How could I forget the car I had while working in CT mid-90's.
Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera.
It didn't come with a steering wheel, just a large tiller next to the gear lever.
3.3litre V6 85mph flat out. That was more than the car could handle. It was certainly an experience driving over the old metal Sikorsky road bridge. Drive onto the bridge, hold your breath and don't move a muscle until you see which way the car was going to twist this time.
The car nightmares are made of.
Edited by gmac on 18/11/2009 at 09:40
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Some sort of small Peugot ending "SW" (sorry! It may have begun with a "2" but don't put money on it) which left me crippled after about 200 miles. It had an LCD odometer which doubled as something else. To save spending money on an extra LCD digit you had to press a button to get the final digit to scroll in, thus dropping the most significant. It was generally weak kneed and awful. I'd been tolerant of the hire company delivering smaller cars, I'd had a 1.4 Toyota which was great fun, but that was the final straw and it was Mondeos and the like after that.
JH
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Cheeky
>>For me, a recent Chevrolet Aveo. Gutless engine, dreadful gearbox, horrid interior, but most worrying was the steering that bearly felt connected to the wheels.Driving dynamics firmly rooted circa 20 years ago a la Datsun.
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For me an Aveo, rented but almost new, just last month. The auto gearbox was so awful that almost induced whiplash at each gear change.
The only hire car that would not climb the road to our holiday flat. Lots of wheel spin but made it after three attempts. I swopped it the next day.
Second was a fairly new Corolla from one of the major renters, that I did not check before driving it ( slap slap wrist). I was coming down an unsealed rooad off a low mountain pass near Port Elizabeth, South Africa when it spun of the road into the bush. We had no A/C and the windows open so it stopped in a dust cloud ( inside and outside of the car) We finished pointing the wrong way wondering what the pink fluffy dice had happened. One rear tyre was illegal ond off the rim. On further examination there was lots of mud in the engine bay so it had not been serviced in any way prior to our hire that was totally in the dry.
We were lucky it all happened on a flat bit of the road else we might not be here to enjoy life.
I check hire cars much more intensly now including photos if required.
Edited by Webmaster on 18/11/2009 at 01:22
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Cortina Mk 2 1300, somewhere in the West Country I think... or was it Ireland? Anyway it had one of those choke plates installed between the carb and intake manifold to restrict mixture flow. I suppose the purpose was to prevent people from destroying the engine by over-revving it all the time, but the effect was to make the car almost lethally sluggish. It could manage about 50 absolutely flat. Horrible.
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I have never personally hired a car but my dad always insisted by far the worst was the Morris Marinas. Occasionally he had to drive hire cars from work. He always hoped for an Allegro (my dad apparently loved driving them) but he always got dreaded the Marina 1.8.
The worst car I remember though is the Rover 100 he had when his car was being repaired. His was a 1995 Punto and the hire car was a 1996 Rover 100, the Rover felt like a tin box in comparison. Nasty horrible cheap little thing.
The thing is he used to often hire Metros in the 80's which he quite liked, but I suppose by the 90's they just became really often fashioned.
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Ihave had 2 fairly dire rentals; one was a very gutless but new Micra automatic earlier this year. The other was more like 15 years ago and was some sort of 900cc (turbo) Daihatsu, perhaps a Charade? It was well beyond unpleasant! I also had a poverty spec old model Twingo once which wasn't very marvellous!
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The thing is he used to often hire Metros in the 80's which he quite liked but I suppose by the 90's they just became really often fashioned.
There was an honesty about the original Metro that I quite admired. Bum basic, ancient mechanicals, cheap, functional, simple transport. The facelift somehow seemed more pretentious, and didn't have the ability to carry it off.
That said, the multipoint injected GTI version didn't half go. 0-60 in 8.5 seconds! In a Metro!
Edited by DP on 17/11/2009 at 19:25
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I hired a Suzuki jeep in South Tenerife and the tyres were as bald as a coot, when I told Pedro about it he said "no problemo) now there's a surprise!
Oh, and we drove it op narth (where it rains) and it did but ... the windscreen wipers didn't work.
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The worse was a suzuki swift, auto, with aircon, on the island of menorca.
It was so gutless and knackered it wouldnt make it up some of the hills, 4 up, with the aircon on.
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Beige Marina or maybe Ital estate on the Isle of Man. Think it was a 1300. Tried to do the TT course in it. Dire.
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Worst was a puny base model fiat stilo - horrible flimsy thing the clutch pedal was so high up that I couldn't rest my heel on the floor while depressing it. After getting clamped in London (£120 to Camden council) I got stuck in a traffic jam from Banbury to Stoke - my left leg got cramp and I could barely drive it . I really hated that car! Funnily enough I had the arbarth version on another rental and it was a blast.
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Cheery chap in southern England (still in business I think) hiring out not-quite-this-year's model cars for modest sums. A couple of times I struck gold with a Talbot Solara SX, but on two other occasions I ended up with a bright mauve Hillman Avenger (it was then 15 years old IIRC) which would have been OK but for the huge white and yellow lettering round three sides "Hire this car from #12 a day, Tel...."
On my first foray in the "toxic" Avenger with a female acquaintance I took a couple of wrong turnings and ended up at Beachy Head...
Second time out, I actually watched the fuel gauge going down as a fuel leak threatened a Thelma and Louise style spectacle not far from Didcot Power Station. I parked at a nearby pub to phone the AA and was verbally and physically abused by the landlord who took particular exception to the garish advertising on the car which he obviously felt was bad for business.
I bought my own car shortly afterwards.
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A long list of not very good cars.
had a couple of Geo Metros (1990s Suzuki Swift made by GM in I think the USA). In some ways quite well put together small japanese cars but hindered entirely by being automatic and only 1 litre. Took one on a 7000mile tour of the west of the USA in student days (was the only car they'd give us being only 21 and foreign). found that touring most of the west of the USA meant being at some altitude meant climbing hills became a tedious and slightly nervewracking experience - there was a real feel we were at various points literally going to fail to go forwards at all...still the thing kept on going like a very slow clockwork toy and did over 45mpg even with the rather good AC running (it was AC or overtaking but not both - like having a on off turbo button) so at 85c a gallon we had some very long drives for less than a tenner.
Also drove a Chrysler New yorker around 1991 - the FWD version that still looked like a sideboard and I think had hidden headlamps behind bodycolour flaps...had a V6 that was very asmatic and also an interior with truly nasty and sickness inducing red velour (with a chocolate outside paint job and opera windows in the rear pillars I think) and faux leather on the dash in sort of ribs that did sort of look like a side of ribs.. suspension seemed to sort of keep rebounding for 2 or 3 times on every bump.
Also remember hiring a Ford Escort in the UK around 1992 that was truely dreadful. 1.6 with daft gearing and a terrible mid range boom - remember having to change down 3 gears to get it to go at all. was really really cheap inside and looked like it had barely seen any engineering input.
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Vauxhall Vectra SRi about ten years ago. Notable for it's extremely hard suspension and general unpleasantness to drive. Had it as a courtesy car after specifically asking for anything except a Vectra having hated the one I had as a courtesy car the previous time...
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Corsa B (?) 1.2 'Merit' (of which it had precious little) 1997 Vintage, one of the many times my company Vectra was off the road for a major failure. As stated elsewhere, have refused to even hire anything from GM let alone buy or lease one of their products since that Vectra.
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A Proton saloon, can't remember the name, hired in the mid nineties to get from West London to somewhere in Wales.
Picked up the car the evening before because I needed to be on the road by 5am - it had under 100 miles on the clock. When I tried to start the car the next morning nothing happened - had to call the AA out and they traced it to a loose connection - making me over an hour late at my appointment.
When I came to drive home again, the oil light wouldn't go out! Another call to the AA, this time it was traced to a faulty sender - so I was told to just ignore it...
Hadn't quite made it to the Severn bridge when I had a blowout and ended up facing the wrong way on the hard shoulder of the M4!
They just don't make cars like they used to...
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Thanks HJ.
So where do I start -
UK -
Rover 100
Rover 213 (Honda shape)
Ford Escort Calypso
Ford Sierra 1.6L
Vauxhall Cavalier 1.3L No Power Steering
Fiat Brava/Bravo
Fiat Marea
Ford Granada 2.0
Mercedes 190e 1.8 Manual
Peugeot 206 SW
Suzuki SJ10 (?) Small Jeep thing
Vauxhall Frontera 3dr Cabrio
Peugeot 106
Citroen Saxo 1.0
Europe -
Opel Astra 1.2
USA -
Buick Century
Lincoln LS
Cadillac DTS
Nissan Sentra
Mazda 626
Nissan Altima
Nissan Verso
GMC Jimney
Pontiac Aztec
Buick Roadmaster
Dodge Caravan
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Haiving hired car in the usual sun spots, home and in the US - I have to defend US cars the anonymous ones we hred were quite endearing in a way Eurobxes can't. Worst was a clapped out Opel Astra in North Cyprus - seriously "tired" and in Greece - I think it was some sort of Hyundai - horrid insipid thing with dynamics that made the Cypriot Astra feel like a thoroughbred.
Edited by Pugugly on 18/11/2009 at 09:31
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That's reminded me of an another dreadful vehicle which I had erased from my memory. At the rental car desk about 10 years ago, was given the keys to a Mitsubishi Pajero which had been offered as an upgrade.
I had visions of an enormous 4x4 type thing so imagine my horror when I saw that it was a version known as the "Pinin". This is, or was, a short, high and narrow SUV with a tiny engine. It was knocked off line by every single bump and felt as if it would topple over at every bend. Truly horrible.
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Personally, an early 90s Hyundai Accent in southern Spain. Not sure what spec, but horrid and gutless. A friend recently hired a new(ish) Renault Master van, but auto. Nasty thing, brakes that had me (passenger) chewing the dashboard at every junction and an autobox that had a congenital aversion to changing gear. Ugh! Ironically, I'd hired a new tranny from the same co the week before and loved it.
Alex.
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worst old model rover 216 circa 1989, top of the range but wheels so thin that it had no sideways grip, i wrote it off going round a bend at a speed that any other car worthy of the name would have taken easily, this heap of junk spun and spun and spun
best dodge intrepid that i had in chicago for ages and ages, was a fab car in every way
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I quite liked the Rover 213 (Honda 12V engine I think) my company hired for me in the late 80s, but then I was a new grad and anything was better than my Metro.
The Maestro 1.3L was pretty dire, Ford Escorts of the day were fairly ropey as were Astras from memory but it was the Ford Orion which defined the (lowest) standard.
I recall the Sierra as being very comfortable for a long trip but a Montego Estate 1.6 from Kenning (now defunct I think) had clearly been broken into so the door frame didn't seal at the top - right by my ear - awful car. 1990-1993 Rover 214/216s seemed 'premium' in their day.
In the US the Hertz franchises always saw Brits coming 'would you like to upgrade to a Mustang for $1 a day Sir?' I did, instead of a capable Mondeo-related Contour, the 3.0V6 had about 75BHP and a sluggish auto, there was no boot so when SWMBO came out to join me for a holiday (I was out for a month working) we couldn't fit the suitcase in. I rented Taurus/Sable or Contours thereafter....
Since then, Ford Focuses always remind me of just how good they are, Seat Ibizas have been fun (apart from one SDi) and even a Peugeot 207 was OK as was a Hyundai I10 in Greece this year - perhaps cars have improved somewhat ?
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