Check out What's the Worst Car of the Millennium?: The Results

[tnas at euronet.nl]

Aleksander Mierzwa <alexaudi at kki.net.pl> wrote:

>>I nominate the Lancia Thema, 

>Themas were being used by the Polish goverment since the early 90s. Despite
>being driven hard (those secret service drivers are usualy lead footed ;-)
>and having high mileage, they still look and run good. Our officials were
>satisfied enough with them they are replacing them with Kappas right now.

The Lancia dealerships here dubbed them Lancia Trauma. Enough said. :-)

>> Citroen XM

>I have to admit, I like Citroens. I believe their poor reputation is mainly
>created by cheapskate owners who expect such a complicated car to be
>maintenance free. They don't change the LHM fluid at specified intervals
>and ignore the first symptoms of hydraulic spheres failing. When the whole
>system finally fails and needs $$$$ to repair, they brag about poor
>reliability. My uncle used to own a BX which he had always serviced
>regularly. He put almost 200.000km on it without any serious problems. A
>situation similar to that with automatic transmissions. People drive
>200.000km without changing the fluid and when the tranny blows, they claim
>automatics are inherently unreliable.

How about electrical problems? There's a couple of XMs along every highway here, usually with broken-down electrics. The highway assistance hate 'em with a vengeance.
And don't get me started about BXes- you apparently get a good one or a very, very bad one. My two leased BXes were in the workshop all the time, with either electrical or hydraulic malfunctions. And they were maintained religiously, being leased cars...

>>Alfa 164, 

>What's exactly wrong with it? I've never heard anything bad about these
>cars. The interior design is definitely not to my taste, though.

Amazingly flexible body (at least the early versions before the facelift), very rust-prone, troublesome electrics, engines prone to blowing their gaskets and losing all their oil.

>>Renault 20/30, Renault 25

>I agree that corrosion alone is a reason to nominate all Renaults from 70s
>and 80s to that award. However, mechanically they were quite sound.

And the 30/25 were very prone to electrical troubles with the myriad of electric/electronic gadgets, as a by-product of the rampant corrosion problems. The 20 just went rusty, not so many options.

Not a lot of people know that Audi recalled a lot of type 43s due to the high recycled steel content, which caused them to rust out of control within months. (Typical Alfa problem, BTW.) They hushed it up and just bought the cars back from their owners for prices above their actual values and scrapped them whole.

Tom