These Are The First Cars You Truly Hated

The first gen of the 4-door lumpmobile Charger:

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How Dodge dared to bring back their most iconic model name and had such contempt for their history by not including any classic Charger styling cues. (Considering how it’s nothing more than a stubby lump with a Dodge Dakota grille and Intrepid tail lights, I asked the stylist, Ralph Gilles, if it took him anymore than 15 minutes to come up with such a meh design—the insult hit home.)

Dodge learned their lesson with all the screaming they received from Charger fans. (I wrote to the dumbasses.) The subsequent 4-door Charger gens do have classic Charger styling cues. But whenever I see a first gen 4-door, I have an overwhelming feeling of wanting to smash the windshield.

Submitted by: the1969DodgeChargerFan

Early to mid-70s Plymouth Valiant, specifically light-to-medium green four-door sedans, similar to the one pictured:

(WARNING: Buzz-kill story follows)

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I was a ward of the State of New Jersey from the age of 12 until I aged-out of the system on my 18th birthday. New Jersey’s Division of Youth and Family Services’ (DYFS) automobile of choice in the 1970's were green Plymouth Valiants sedans with the occasional similarly painted Dodge Dart thrown into the mix. The interior of these cars invariably smelled of mid-70s Chrysler vinyl, mixed with stale cigarettes, bad coffee and BO.

My first introduction to DYFS was three days before Thanksgiving in 1976. I arrived home from school to find one of these green Plymouths parked outside our apartment with my two younger brothers in the back seat. Most of our belongings were on the pavement and my mother was sobbing to a man in a brown suit, his gut hanging over his belt. Mister Brown Suit told me that we had been evicted from our apartment and that my brothers and I were now in foster care courtesy of DYFS. Forty-five minutes later, the green Plymouth delivered me and my brothers to our first foster home.

Now, I’ll spare you the gory details of how and why we ended up in foster care, other than to mention that neither of my parents were properly prepared for adulthood or parenting. And despite some of the horror stories you may have heard, all four of my foster families were caring and loving people who did their best to raise other peoples’ children.

The DYFS case workers, however, were a different story. They ranged from the young, idealistic, recent college graduate who still thought she could change the world, to the burned-out life-time state employee counting the days til retirement. They were all overworked and probably underpaid. And they all drove those damned green Plymouth Valiants...

Submitted by: Earthbound Misfit I

A green DYFS Plymouth Valiant parked in front of your current foster home was rarely a good thing. It usually meant a new foster child coming into the system, and all the emotional turmoil that entailed, or one of your foster brothers or sisters, whom you had bonded with, was being moved to a new home and you would likely never hear from them again. Sometimes it was visit to get a dressing-down from the social worker for bad grades or some sort of misbehaviour. And once it was to tell a 10 year old with no other family that her mother had OD’ed on some bad heroin.

Regardless, I quickly learned to despise the sight of a green Plymouth Valiant.

My last ride in one was shortly before my 18th birthday, when my case worker drove me to a county job fair. I was essentially given the choice of working for the sanitation department, the highway department or the school district, all for minimum wage and some basic benefits. There was also an Army recruiter on hand, but I did my best to avoid him since Ronnie Raygun was likely to be our next president and I had no desire to die in the Iranian desert.

Afterwards, the case worker, who was probably my sixth or seventh in five years, bought me lunch at the local Dairy Queen knock-off (a real treat, actually.) She helpfully suggested I start looking for a job in the private sector and to avoid anyone who might be a ‘bad influence.’

A few days later, she came to the house to show me how to fill out a job application and how conduct myself for a job interview.

The morning of my 18th birthday, I had two duffle bags packed with my belongings sitting on the back porch. My foster mother had made me a breakfast of pancakes and bacon and had packed me a bag with a full lunch. I heard the green Valiant pull into the driveway at 9am sharp. The social worker had me and my foster parents sign a bunch of paperwork, I was given the usual lecture to stay away from drugs, and was handed a state check for $65.38, which I assume was some sort of allowance given to kids aging out of the system.

A hug from each of my foster parents and my foster siblings, a handshake from the social worker and suddenly I was an adult let loose upon the world.

The social worker offered me a ride to where ever I wanted; I declined one final ride in the green Valiant and walked the three blocks to the New Jersey Transit bus stop and the GM Fishbowl that would deliver me less than a mile away from my cousin’s house who had agreed to let me crash in his spare bedroom for $75.00/month.

I would occasionally see a NJ state-owned green Valiant on the road from time to time, and the same chill would go down my spine every time. And the foul stench of the interior of one of these cars is one I can still recall nearly 50 years later.

Submitted by: Earthbound Misfit I

1980 Dodge Aspen. My ‘79 Prelude got wrecked by a drunk driver and my insurance company would not allow me to rent anything better. I was so shocked at the sloppy steering that I took it back to the rental agency. The guy behind the counter said, “You haven’t driven an Aspen before, have you?”

Had that @#$% thing for 6 weeks.

Submitted by: lapsrus

For me it was the Chevette.

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These cars were heaps of shit.

They were slow (especially with the slushbox), had crappy heat, had cramped interiors, had slow/crappy windshield wipers, tended to leak fluids a lot, didn’t like to start when it got cold, had shitty brakes, had weak electrical systems, had turn signal stalks that would break off in your hand, had clutch cables that would snap, had a hard/bouncy suspension, had a cheap/poorly lit interior/dashboard with exposed screwheads and they were especially horrible to drive in snow with their light weight combined with RWD with no LSD.

And I say this from first hand experience as my older brother owned one and my sister had three in a row which she bought because she had a boyfriend who was a GM mechanic - who advised her to buy these heaps of shit because “they were easy and cheap to fix”.

Problem was, they needed constant fixing. The downsides of these cars was not worth the minor upside of them having cheap parts and being easy to fix.

Parts were also cheap since there were so many dead ones around in the 1980s and into the 1990s (which was the timeframe my siblings owned these heaps of shit).

Chevettes are not cars, they are Curses.

If you want to curse a Frenemy, gift them a Chevette.

Submitted by: Manwich - now Keto-Friendly

My 2012 Kia Soul. After owning Hondas and Toyotas for decades, I decided to gamble on what I thought would be a fun little car with great features at a reasonable price. Lesson learned: you get what you pay for.

So many problems right out of the gate. The stereo would make a popping/crackling sound when using the USB port for music, the UVO infotainment system would often crash when using the backup camera (great timing!), and the brakes had a weird grabbing issue. All of this was brought to and acknowledged by the Kia service department, but they were unwilling to help fix any of it. According to the service manager, the car was “too new” and their “corporate office wouldn’t authorize the warranty work”. I guess the 10 yr/100k warranty doesn’t kick in until you hit a certain mileage?

I kept the car for a personal record low of less than 90 days and took a huge bath on trading it in for a Honda Civic. Worth every penny.

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Submitted by: paradsecar

Pt Cruiser Convertible

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The PT Cruiser itself is pretty dumb. I never liked that car, and never understood the fascination with them. Then they chopped the roof off. Why?!? Taking a 4-door “not a minivan” and making it a convertible when it wasn’t designed for the task just leads to all kinds of awkwardness.

I had one of these as a rental once, and it confirmed all of my feelings on the car. It was miserable to drive, and significantly compromised as a convertible. The drive train sounded great on paper, but it was neither quick, nor good on gas. Wind noise was at levels I’ve never experienced in a car, and the roof let water through. Trunk? Doesn’t exist. The doors are stupidly big and don’t like small parking spots. I assume any buyers of the thing had never been in any other car to know that everything else on the market was better. EVERYTHING.

Honourable mention: Chrysler Sebring Convertible (hard top version)

Submitted by: dolsh

First one to come to mind is the Honda Passport which was only a Honda by badge alone. These were terrible and as someone who worked for Honda in the late 90s and early 2000s they were hated by everyone who came in contact with them

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Submitted by: PDM33

And...

it was just a rebadged Isuzu but man it was way better looking than what honda actually made at the time

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Submitted by: boneheadotto

Hummer H2 & H3, especially the H2 SUT. Truly pointless vehicles driven mostly by poseurs.

Submitted by: JimmyZZZZZZZ

The car I had a personal hate for was the early 90s Ford Tempo. I had one as a rental in 93 and it was painful to drive because there was a,metal bar in the seat back precisely positioned to give me a terrible back ache. Nothing else has been that uncomfortable.

There are any number of cars that are poorly made or soul destroying to drive but I never suffered them apart from being a passenger in Chevette and a Hyundai Pony.

Submitted by: Slow Joe Crow

For me it’s the third generation Volkswagen Touareg.

Before the pandemic it was THE unofficial car of Karens in my area (now a days BMW SUVs are more popular). 2018-2020 was a period with A LOT of crashes involving these and I almost got hit several times. To this day I get irrationaly angry seeing one of these on the road.

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Submitted by: Pablo Mejia

Easy. The Cadillac sedan DeVille/Fleetwood RWD with the 4100. Why? The distributor is jammed under the cowl, the 80s interior screams cheap hotel and falls apart, and there’s no excuse for the engine being so far back because the fan shroud is 2 Feet Long. And all of that wouldn’t be so bad except 140HP in 2 tons of Cadillac makes it a slug. An unreliable slug.

Submitted by: Drg84

for me it had to be the introduction of the coupe SUV. All the handling, acceleration, and efficiency of an SUV with the cargo space of a sports car.

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and then the horrible execution of the Honda Crosstour. What could have been a great fastback Accord was instead this horribly ugly SUV coupe like lifted sedan

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Submitted by: boneheadotto

K11 Nissan Micra

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Good gods I hate that car. If the colour beige was a car it would be a K11 Micra, the hold music of the automotive industry, the personal transportation equivalent of 4 hour PowerPoint presentation on shale.

Fuck that car and the coffin dodgers that drove it 20 mph under the speed limit and took half an hour to reverse into a parking spot twice the size of the “car”

Even the ironically tunned and custom K11's were just pure sadness.

Submitted by: Tacet

Easy: the XA41 Rav4. When my wife became pregnant, she instantly decided to toss my 2.0L Focus Wagon (that I’ve owned for two years before we started dating, mind you) out and replace it with an SUV, in particular an XA41 Toyota Rav4. I hate SUVs, I instead offered we get a used Focus ST wagon if she hated my car in particular. After a bit of fighting and back and forth we compromised and got an XA41 Rav4.

It isn’t comfortable. It doesn’t handle. It can’t offroad. The automatic is dumb, the ergonomics are non-existent, the automatic tailgate is painfully slow, it has the worst infotainment system I have ever had the misfortune to use (Moving Ford’s sync down to second place). Its only saving grace is it’s tolerable in light snow due to AWD, but that quickly goes out the window once ice is introduced (my Focus did alright in ice and snow thanks to the electronically simulated LSD). It gets pretty good fuel mileage too, cause it uses parts of my soul to supplement its carbohydrate fuel.

That car makes me wistful for my days of driving a Vaz 2109.

Submitted by: iProton