Right then, lets do this properly.

In no particular order:

Austin Allegro - unconttollable when sliding - stuck it on its side when negotiating a wet carpark in hull, tried to quell understeer using the parking brake.

Ford mondeo diesel - I know I say I like the mondeo, but this one had 140k miles, soggy suspension, early diesel lump (was an L or M reg) and had been owned by a smoker - only had to drive it 8 miles between offices, if I'd had some spare cash on me would have dumped it at other office and taken a taxi home - except the taxi would have been a mondeo diseasel, or a Lada at the time.

Lada Riva 1.5 - my dad's, still has one. Only rear drive car I've not had the tail out, not for foolish lack of trying. Not got enough power to push it out, applying the handbrake just slows it down. Steering so dead I don't know if I'd correct it but at least as they don't make them anyh more if I wrote it off he'd have to buy a proper car. Biggest slap in the face? Offered to give him my 3 yr old S40 and he didn't like it. Nuts, my dad.

Shitroen AX - There is NOTHING nice to say about that car. It wasn't a GT, otherwise I could have said it was fast.

Chrysler Neon - had it on fleet for a year and drove about 40k miles in it. Average 190 miles/tank. Naff 3 spd auto meant the naff 2.0 engine was never at the best rpm to pull the naff handling out of a bend. Would kick down to

1st mid bend just to piss you off, or kick up to 3rd and suddenly stop understeering. The only car where ABS would save your life every journey. Doors never sealed, bits fell off. Eventually the autobox gave up.

That's the five that spring to mind.

oooh 5 worst :)

5 Metro GTa sorry but they were not designed to be hot hatches and sticking a warmish 1400 in a understeering shed isnt my idea of fun. funnily enough the one i had the misfortune to borrow had a fake roll cage made from cardboard tube and painted weird shit happens in these cars.

4 grandad scorpio 24v fish face. had one of these at my old work as a pool car euuuugh enough said it were a barge. overweight a bastid to park (tad bigger than the XR2's i were into at the time)

3 Punto sporting 16v old shape

wifes got one of these and it has the single worst set of adjustment for driving positions ever seats too high even on the lowest setting, columm doesnt go down far enough. hey i like to sit low in a car but c'mon it were designed with the tallest possible driver being 5 foot eff all. although it does have that nippy little 85 brake 1200 engine which redeems it a bit but it revs like a bas 5000rpm is 90 in 5th try driving it for a while you keep looking for another gear

next step is a 6 speed box out a 1200 elx or the mk2 sporting to sort that problem out its a fooking mare.

2 Mazda 121's

its not even a real car its just a rebadged fiesta nuff said

1 C20 LET Converted Nova

this is the the worst car ever to drive

for a start its a nova yeah yeah i know i've got a C20XE project nova sitting outside the house right now and i'm biased toward em if anything but look at the problems :)

most have at least 300 bhp in a FWD arrangement running through non LSD'd boxes mainly bodged astra GTE 5speed F20's or if your lucky a F28 that WILL BREAK.

traction is available eventually sometime about 10 seconds after you plant the throttle even running wide rubber widest you'll get on is circa

205/40/17's at a push it will still spin the wheels at any speed. too much power to crap a chassis nuff said

althou my red top will be a scooby slayer when i finally fit the throttle bodies on :)

god bless sleepers

1) Austin Allegro 1.3L in dogshit brown. The front tie bar ripped itself out of the subframe. Apparently a common fault. 2) MK2 For Escort Van. This thing was rotten. Did 80 MPH sideways around a duckpond. Heard this banging. Looked underneath to find the front OSR spring hanger bracket seperated from the chassis. Finally killed it when I ran the diff out of oil. 3) Rover 216. Got it from auctions with knackered headgasket. DEcided to put a recon engine in that I got from a Asian engineering firm in Bradford. Engine was really crap. THe bloke who'd done the head seemed to think that you could skim off as much as you want and that minimum head depth was a myth. 4) Yugo Zastafa. Fortunately it wasn't mine but a mates. Even though it was only 2 years old it did things like having wheels fall off. He hated it so much he drove it down a ditch - deliberately. 5) Lada 1600. Nuff said.

Not really done anything silly in cars I hated, 'cos it's usually been whilst the owner has been with me / I've been on a test drive.....

(also bear in mind I've only been driving 6years, so haven't experienced a lot of utter s**te 70s BL stuff)

Here's my top 10 list:

1. 'modded' Nova - far too much power for the s**te chassis to cope with

- wheelspan in 3rd gear on damp roads and torque steered like there's no tomorrow.

1. late model old shape Mini Cooper. Horrible driving position, naff gearchange, shitty A-series engine, poor visibility - like driving a postbox.

1. Fester MkII 1.1 'Festival'. Why did people buy these things?

2. Escrote MkIV 1.6 GL 'Plus'. Mine was a good one - no rust, didn't have the CVH 'death rattle', but it steered like a barge, had stupidly heavy steering at low speeds (even on skinny 155 tyres) and handled like a puppy on ice.

1. Metro GTa (pre-K series). Went quite well, looked nice, but.... odd driving position, very strange rear seats, rusted worse than a 1970s Fiat Mirafiori.

Hehehe. The first three are my biggest disappointments.

2001 BMW 320d Tourer. After I'd driven the 530d, I was expecting the 320d to be pretty much exactly what I wanted from a car. But instead, it had overly tall gearing, even for a 150 PS and very torquey diesel. And I'm sure it had great chassis balance when pressing on, but during normal driving it felt very isolated, very... dull. 2003 Golf IV GTDI - the 150 PS version. Salesman was telling me how wonderful Golf diesels were, how wonderful Golf GTIs were. Managed to get all sorts of flashing lights going in the dashboard through hooning it. Not a bad car, all up, but very expensive for what it was...

Early 1990s FSO small family car (I forget what it was called), with the XUD

1.9 diesel engine. Understeer, rattle, understeer, more rattle, nasty oversteer, understeer, rattle. The best thing about it was the engine.

The Fiat Uno 60. After my time with the Lancia Y10 and various Cinquecentos, I was expecting this to feel quite alive and entertaining. But, no, shake, rattle and roll was the name of the game... Closely followed by the Punto GT - lovely torquey 200 Nm, awful torque steer, and rubbery handling and gearchange.

Metro MG Turbo. Quick in a Metro way, noisy, difficult gearchange, and way too much power for the braking and grip aspects.

Doh! Top 5.....

Hmm... I think it started with a P, yes.

But it was awful. Truly awful. The diesel was about a grand more than the petrol one, and it was the cheapest way to a Peugeot diesel engine... :-/

That old Polonez Prima thingy ?

It's hard to pick "worst" in a general sense without considering age but even then most of the cars I dislike or have considered poor are newer ones as you can forgive a lot more in a car from the 60's and 70's due to it's age and the fact they have character unlike so many modern cars that are over tired and over assisted.

Picking the cars that proved the most disappointing would suggest in no particular order.

Subaru Imprezza Turbo (late '90s estate), sure it had loads of grip and was at the time the fastest car I had driven (prodrive tuned) but it lacked feedback through the steering, pedals and seat (despite being quite harsh). I was always having to guess how much grip there was at the front and back not very confidence inspiring.

Alpha 164 Clover leaf, quite nice to drive apart from the stiff clutch this only makes the list due to constant electrical problems resulting on one occasion in the drivers seat back folding flat back while the car was in motion. Very sweet

3L V6 engine. 1969 VW Type 1, Ok I know I said I could forgive old cars a lot but it was just hideously under powered compared to some of the other VWs of the age I have since replaced it with (amazing what a difference 16bhp and more torque makes), they are also surprisingly big.

I'm going to cover 2 cars here the Merc SL500 (mid 90's) and the SLK230 both look quite promising on paper but both are let down by clocking the scales at more than a fully laden artic and having surprisingly bad auto boxes (considering there reputation as one of the best auto box makers), combined with the hairdresser image resulting in me only being able to drive them at night rather spoilt the soft tops.

Finally it's another Mercedes this time an A class, the build quality on all of them but particularly the early ones is shocking, built to a price doesn't sum up quite how flimsy the entire car feels. (Very nice jack)

^^^^^

*cough*

Sorry, long day.

1. Skoda Felicia 1.3 LXi - N Reg. It was a courtesy car, NOTHING about it was good, it was worse than the Triumph Acclaim 1.3 A reg that was mine that was in the garage, it every way. Everything about it was shit, it was mind bendingly slow, the ride handling was actually so far off the bad scale, it was funny, the interior was made of yogurt pots or something, absolutely EVERYTHING about it was SHITE on a grand scale - this is my number 1.
2. Vauxhall Nova 1.2 - G Reg. Carb one, to be fair, it was knackered, again, everything about it was shit.
3. Volkswagon Polo 1.05 - K Reg. Slower than the Felicia, not as bad as it in anything other way, but IMHO too slow to be safe on the roads.
4. Ford Fiesta 1.1 - G Reg. Shit. Nothing more to say.

I couldn't think of another car i've drove that i hated enough to list here. I was gonna put the Ka, for comedy sake, and being too slow to get up my favorite hill without using 2nd.

Pete M raved thus:

:: I reckon we should list the 5 worst cars we've ever driven, and why. :: :: hopefully humourous stories of the silliest tricks we've done in the :: worst cars we've driven.

1. Skoda Fabia 1.4 MPi. Hire car. Was one of the slowest cars I've driven. I had for a few days and I was well pissed off with it because it was totally uncomfortable, had a tape player (I only have CD's) and no creature comforts. It even had manual windows.

1. Peugeot 307 HDi. Hire car. Possible the second slowest car I've ever driven and the handling was utter s**te. The only redeeming feature was it's comfort factor; with the arm rest down it was like driving an armchair :)

2. BMW 316i Compact. Collegue's company car. Wasn't the roomiest of cars (though I'm 6' 2") and I was suprised by it's complete lack of speed. And the dashboard was crap and seemed to point in the wrong direction somehow!

1. Ex-Heathrow airport Ford Luton van (sorry, it's not a car but it goes in). Belonged to Kingston University Studen't Uniton. My god, what an insane thing. It was bright yellow for starters, and I can't think where to begin on what was wrong with it. It had holes in it. Everything you can imagine was there. It had a lever which converted the engine into a generator which was a bit cool. It didn't stop me giving it death though.

2. Austin Allego (bright yellow). Belonged to a mate. Was dubbed the 'flying banana'. It had a black vinyl roof, six spotlights and the suspension was lowered by (alegedly) letting some of the gas out...

Perhaps you should have put some legal tyres on it. Allegros handled very well by the standards of the day - certainly better than the offerings from Ford, etc.

1. through 5. ) Datsun 140j Violet from the late sixties, early seventies. Had leaf spring suspension and cross ply tyres, both grip and handling were utterly atrocious wet, dry, or upside down, but it did have the benefit that it could knock over small walls, lightly loaded artics, freight trains, etc without sustaining damage. Which was just as well as each corner was a tactical retreat.

Drums all round provided plenty of time to admire the scenery you were shortly to become part of, and ensured that all four tyres would be willing to lock up evenly during rainy spells, snow, dry roads in shadow, roads that had paint somewhere on them, etc.

Steering was challenging, it was only once I had a proper car (a Celica was my next, not much newer but utterly incomparable) that I learned that you could steer a straight line just by not moving the wheel, you didn't have to find the balance point on the camber and hold the wheel against it, and then switch to holding it the other way as the camber changed or when turning corners.

Other than that, most cars have been fine when I've had them. Even a Citroen GSA Club was actually all right really, perhaps by comparison.

Apparently >I reckon we should list the 5 worst cars we've ever driven, and why. >

Another for the list, but only as it's a disappointment. The Alfa Romeo 156 V6 I'm using for work purposes.

Yes it's quick, yes the engine sounds gorgeous (but not as good as older generation Alfas, in my opinion), but it's nose led. Very nose led. Go into a roundabout at some speed and it understeers. Lift off and it understeers. Admire the scenery and it understeers. Did I mention it understeers?

I should hope that the lesser petrol models are better in the handling department. It would probably be a decent motorway car if it were not for the car's immense thirst. We covered 80 miles and it used 14 litres of petrol, and this is with me driving it and the boss there too. That's, what, 26 to the gallon.

So we can either have lots of understeery action and under 26 mpg, or a more relaxed pace but still cutting along, using stacks of fuel.

No wonder it's for the chop; 35% tax and it's not that good a drivers car, not that good a motorway car, kinda too much engine and not enough of the rest of it.

That said, it's great fun, especially playing "find the limiter in second gear up Pool Bank," a favourite little hobby of mine. I enjoyed it, it just wasn't anywhere near as fluent as I would have expected (and as I'm used to).

One assumes the Ka has to change down to first to get to its limiter going up a steep hill ;)

Just as an actual response, 156's are known for decent handling, you sure you're doing it right...?

V6 isn't quite as sharp as the TSpark due to the weight, but it's still the best of the FWD V6 saloons - the Sportwagon sorts the weight distribution and is probably the 2nd best car in the range after the 2lt TSpark saloon.

I think someone doesn't really get the point, though.

It's all about the engine - the noise, the performance, the looks and the styling, both inside and out.

However, I'm sure you're right, Dan, given that all Fiat group loosely based on the Tipo floorpan tend towards lift-off oversteer anyway.