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Poor built quality on a new car. What's the worst?

16K views 67 replies 50 participants last post by  MRVW00 
#1 ·
I tried searching for this, didn't find anything. Post poorly built cars, that you have owned in your past from new! I will start with mine:


If you think you had badly built car, think again. Nothing beats East Europen car built in the 80's/90's.

When I was a kid my dad had purchased a Moskvich 21412, and it was the worst that he, and then me had owned ( I had it after him)

The car started rusting in its second years, so we had to replace fenders, sills, and trunk floor. The radiator wasn't big enough, so it will run hot quite often, we had to change the carburetor almost immediately with one from a Lada, the axles start knocking after 10,000 km.
In its third year we had first of many transmission failures. Countless times we were left stranded by this horror of a car.




At the end it we ended up selling it to the gypsies for scrap like this:

 
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#5 ·
The one thing that I don't get... is the people building Lada's, Moskvich, Wartburg etc had to drive them. Didn't they break down all the time on the workers own cars, their supervisors, the managers, the general public... I know it was quite a controlled environment in terms of the market for the cars, but still - wouldn't heads roll because the cars were completely terrible and left people stranded constantly.

You'd think people would know - yes this is junk, perhaps we need to make sure we make them better.

??? I work with a bunch of guys from Poland, Romania, Hungary, and have family from Ukraine... they were trained exceptionally well (all these Eastern Europeans know their trades very well - and do good work, and are just about the most helpful people you could ask for) and know quality work. They all learned it back home in Eastern Europe (well, it is well known the Eastern school system was actually advanced and excellent in general). They even talked about being excited about working on new projects and there was constantly work to do... they just said the pay was bad, and pretty much everyone knew how well the western world had it by the mid 70's to early 80's. I guess they just were all hatching plans to get the heck out of there.

The consensus from them all were the cars were terrible, but not everything made in the East was made badly... They say the cars were bad because the brilliant minds were designing power stations, weapons, space technology, chemical processing facilities, transit systems, and buildings... Basically the worst engineers were left to design things like cars :laugh:. Probably is true.
 
#7 · (Edited)
The consensus from them all were the cars were terrible, but not everything made in the East was made badly... They say the cars were bad because the brilliant minds were designing power stations, weapons, space technology, chemical processing facilities, transit systems, and buildings... Basically the worst engineers were left to design things like cars :laugh:. Probably is true.

Probably true for a lot of countries even now.
 
#8 ·
In the 70's the quality was much better, compatable to western made cars ( well maybe slightly worse:))

The Lada cars were pretty tough, so were the Moskvich and Volga cars. They were easy to mantain without the help of a shop. Skodas were allright as well. I had a Trabant, that hever left me stranded,
which doesn't say a lot, since its as simple as a moped.

Aftre the respective governments started to run out of money, the built quality declined. Keep it in mind that people were waiting 10-15 years for a car, so when they get it, they don't care - better than no car:thumbup:
Just the whole thing needed to be retighten by its new proud owner. In Bulgaria you wait the most for Lada - 15 years, then Wartburg, Skoda and Polski Fiat -12 years i think. Then you have Trabant, ZAZ and Fiat 126p with await of 8 years, and then Moskvich, which was 4 years, and then without a wait,
You can only dream to get a Volga
 
#9 · (Edited)
I tried searching for this, didn't find anything. Post poorly built cars, that you have owned in your past from new! I will start with mine:

whoa whoa whoa sir, that was uncalled for sir

i spent half of my childhood in that car. as a kid that was my fathers first car that i remember.
tons of road trips, driving me to the grandparents for the summer, stuff like that.
not once did that car break down or left us stranded anywhere
:laugh::laugh: :wave:

edit: now that i think about it, it was also the very first car i got to steer, and few years later when i could reach the pedals i learned to drive on it :laugh:
 
#11 ·
I can't think of any new cars which are very poorly built ... hell, the new Kia Rio is pretty well built (almost as nice as my Civic from 2001 was). All the entry level cars I can think of are very well executed (Fiesta, Focus, Sonic, Cruze, Chrysler 200, Dodge Dart/Avenger, Civic, Fit, Corolla, Yaris, Golf) ... seriously, I can't think of ONE new car that is built shoddy or poorly anymore.
 
#68 ·
x2

I remember in the late '70s walking into an AMC dealership and seeing a brand-new Concorde where the black paint was starting to peel off the grill. The car was in the showroom of all places. Great advertising there. I pointed it out to my Dad and we turned around and walked right back out.

So you're the reason AMC failed...:laugh:
 
#21 ·
manol2,

I bet you are Bulgarian, right? :wave: Anyway, the Soviet era cars were indeed total junk, so in my opinion those don't count.

From the modern day cars, I'd say pretty much anything made in China, Malaysia or Indonesia would have extremely poor built quality.

 
#22 ·
Well, my 02 Nissan SE-R

Not spec V, regular five speed. Fun car but quality was total crapola. For one it had a really bad buzz/rattle that would come from the dashboard above 4500 RPM. Luckily I didn't often have to rev that high because that 2.5 had such great low end torque. Just overall cheap materials and fit and finish, and a lot of electrical stuff broke like the fuel pump and something with the engine computer (the failed part had already been replaced in a recall). One thing related to the engine electronics went right after power train warranty ended and was like $600 bucks. Wish I had ****ed up my engine so it could have been totally replaced before the first recall, some people got a free new engine. Got rid of it for chump change but it was in crap condition by that time. Hopefully it didn't crap on the young couple who bought it. The guy was a mechanic so I think he knew it still had some life left.
 
#24 ·
I guess it was a plus living in Yugoslavia that we had a choice of Fiat,Zastava(basicly Fiat),VW and all the russian cars as well.
Zastavas where pretty good build quality, and w VW dominated the car market. By the fall of Yugoslavia, VW mustve been #1 car in the country.
Even now, mk2 Golf,espacially diesel will be priced the same as Alfa Romeo,Renault,Fiat that are 20yr younger.
 
#25 ·
There was a story I read somewhere how Bosnians, in particular those in Sarajevo have a love for VW and the Mk2 golf as a result of its ability to run on nearly anything.

As I've gotten older I've seen less and less Yugos and Zastavas and more VW's. I wouldn't be surprised if someone said they had a majority market share (VWG).

Hell, my best friend has a mk2 diesel that has been passed down through the family. For all its issues that thing still runs, even with 10 school windsurf boards and sails on the roof. :laugh:
 
#36 ·
The new 328i (F30). I think there's pictures of all the big fitment gaps and plastic.:laugh:

While it was still a nice car, I'd have to mention my MKV GTI. At only 35k miles things were rattling and seemingly falling apart, as well as the interior just didn't seem to be holding up too well with the age.
 
#45 ·
The new 328i (F30). I think there's pictures of all the big fitment gaps and plastic.:laugh:
Glad to hear I'm not the only one who noticed this. The one I saw at the local auto show (which uses dealer stock so it wasn't pre-production) had the most uneven gap between the hood and the bumper I had ever seen.
 
#40 ·
I remember in the late '70s walking into an AMC dealership and seeing a brand-new Concorde where the black paint was starting to peel off the grill. The car was in the showroom of all places. Great advertising there. I pointed it out to my Dad and we turned around and walked right back out.

 
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