I'll do two. One of them isn't retro, but I'd say it's by far the worst car I've owned. The other was up until then the worst car I owned.
First one, as some will know who know me, is an early 2006 VW Passat B6 1.9 PD TDI 105 S. Being a 2 owner car, it should have been fine. Yes, it was high on the miles, but so were the two Mondeos my dad and I had at the time, and they were fine. Much better it would turn out than this heap! But I think I need to elaborate how us buying this automotive chickenshed came about.
Our Mondeo had done in the exhaust valves. It was the second one we had do this, running on LPG. It seems Ford went softer on the valve seats on facelift cars, no doubt possibly to help warm up times, but also cost. We at the time were working on most of our cars, as they seemed to last longer this way. This job obvously was going to need a trusted garage. Not wanting to get bitten again, compounded with it having LPG, which makes grumpy mechanics even more annoyed, we'd need a car. After all, driving about was our livelihood. It would also need to be plated by the council, so be either
-Less than 5 years old and not white
-Already registered.
-Rent a car ; My dad hated doing this.
This car was the middle choice out of those. It was owned by a friend of mine, who said the car was reasonable. He mentioned a bad driveshaft and iffy door locks. My dad back then never used to test drive cars, and thought I was being pushy for always wanting to do so. This would prove a very hard lesson.
He would do the deal and drive the car back. In short, the car was terrible. Despite being 7 years old
-Rear bushes had completely gone, to the extent the back of the car had a nasty twitch above 40mph when going over bumps. You could see the car crab at times
-The engine didn't always start
-The heater didn't work. Well the blower motor didn't despite it responding to power
-It smoked like a chain smoker the moment you put your foot down.
-The driveshaft was fine. It was the engine misfiring. It idled fine, but as soon as you put your foot down, it misfired like it was losing compression.
So, what would we do? No, we'd try and save it. This included
-Hotwiring the heater in
-Changing the rear arms
-Changing the rear calipers after realising despite new motors, the pistons were pretty seized (they all do that sir)
-Service it
-Change the camshaft. It's one of the most worn camshafts I've ever taken out of a car.
-Did an interior swap to one out of an SEL.
We had the garage do the rear brake pads as we didn't have a means of winding the calipers back electronically. I didn't have access to VCDS then. The garage has never said this to us about any car, but he basically said to get rid of the car, that despite being shiny, it was a turd not worth pursuing!
The oil from the oil change not only looked great, but it also made the engine alot noisier before the camshaft swap. I suspect as the tappets began to hole themselves, the engine got noisy, so it had the world's supply of tappet silencing gloop put into it.
It's fair to say the oil look ok when it came out!
This was the oil after it had cooled
After this, the car began to actually work very well. Dare I say it, drove well! However, our joy would be short lived.
After 1 week, the diff blew itself to bits! I guess the car's abuse over the years and those gearboxes being known for randomly exploding were the maker for the car. This became apparent when I tried to buy a 5 speed gearbox for it. 6 speeds were super cheap. 5 Speeds were very hard to come by (they were only fitted to the S spec models I think), and when they did, they were very expensive. The breaker, Sanburns, explained that they just went bang without warning. A secondhand gearbox then was around £650+. Repairing mine was not an option as the casing had been damaged.
After this, we left it on the Fosse Way in a layby for almost a week, quietly hoping someone would rob it. We were unlucky. We would have it towed back to a mate's gaff, courtesy of the RAC, and began to strip the old girl down. The spares, including the engine and the calipers sold very quickly
The engine sounded OK, which helped it to sell, but as you can hear, the gearbox was poorly.
That car despite being our worst buy, taught us some valuable lessons
-ALWAYS test drive a car if you can
-Even if a friend is selling a car, check it over well
-If you are desperate for a car, don't get the wrong thing, even if it seems you are backed into a corner.
-Just because the cars seem good then, do your research. It seems B6 Passats are known for being flakey.
Looking at this photo now, it still gives me the shivers!