After my little "incident" on the M3, I've been given a hire Corsa. Awful. When I got it, it had done 4 miles. After four days, it's now done ten, and believe me, I've hated every one of those six miles. Awful. If I got this as a new car, I'd be mightily hacked off. It's just awful. No guts, no presence and it feels like it's already done 1,000,000 miles. Awful. It's as useful as a wooden compass. Awful. I'm tempted to crash it just so no-one else will ever have to drive it. It's awful.
V
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Oh boy do I hate the Corsa as well. Diabolical thing. No presence and other traffic treats you as thought you weren't there, scary.
My other horror was one of those Mercedes bubble cars. Hertz LHR at the time had nothing else. Not only was it ridiculous to look at but it was a complete dog to drive. Back it went after 24 hours.
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Horrible cars....
Ford Ka(k) - all I can say is WHY?
New Vectra....current adverts compare to a bmw ??? I think not (and believe me I've driven plenty of new vectras)
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Kangoo - no redeeming features whatsoever.
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The Lada Riva.
It was so horrible it was fast achieving cult status in the village where I live.
When my wife insisted I interrupted a busy day whilst plastering, to pick her, the children and her mother up from the train station to save them 15 mins walk DOWN HILL into the village, I decided to hook the trailer to the back of this thing, which I never washed, and drive it to the station.
SWMBO's face was a picture, as was her mothers!
I never went more than about 20 miles away from home in that thing.
H
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Ladas are cool ! Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh
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NURSE !
Hawkeye
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Stranger in a strange land
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during my not-infrequent trips, I often get lumbered with Hertz 1300s. Great fun trying to get a carb'ed 1300 car with 3 occupants to approach the speed limit on the Johannesburg freeways, where the altitude is about 6000ft... and the traffic flows there at speed limit + 10km/h!
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HF - I'm glad that you are sooooo smitten with the Golf. I also found it a pig to drive, especially the whole reverse / first gear malarky.
Then again, at a cost of £100, it is a particularly cheap pig!
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Megane 1.4 8 valve.
No go whatsoever. Terrible ergonomics (e.g. steering wheel blocking "main beam on" warning light).
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Modern cars = Missan Micra.
Older Cars = 1984 VW Polo. It's so old that it's cool, but like HF, I don't think I could get used to the gearbox, and the lack of servo brakes. I felt like I was standing on the anchors just to get it to slow down, I don't know how my mate manages to drive it all the time....
Blue
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Nissan Micra - Thoroughly horrible device. Had one earlier this yr for a while. It was a 1.0L 16V; sounded more like 1600...
Also Peugot 106 base model, no PS, even worse than the Micra!
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I have a 2000 Corsa D as a works car - horrible to drive, gutless, noisy, handles like a pig with a hangover, the gear box is like stirring treacle and brakes are dire. Had a 2001 Primera diesel before that. Noisy, rough and very uncomfortable for me and I had to clean the lights every 50 miles in winter as they just collected muck like it was going out of fashion. Had a Focus TD before that - pretty good, but I thought the suspension was overhard to make it handle, and the heated front window annoyed me. Had an Almera 1.4 before that. Handled like a pig, didn't go unless you got it over 5k rpm (when it was so noisy you had to wear ear defenders.) The good thing about all these cars was they were free....
I was pleased to get out of any of these cars into my own car - and at one stage that was 1992 BX TZD, now a Xantia Turbo D.
RichardW
Is it illogical? It must be Citroen....
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my mates 1 litre POLO borrowed it last week. It is a 1990 1.0 catalyst equipped 4 speed. Do cars get any slower? dangerously slow and very dull.
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Vauxhall Corsa and Nissan Micra - both were mine as a result of the last crash, and I'm getting the big red frog back again on Wednesday while they try to put polo right again. The Corsa was foul.. felt like I was driving one of those tin cases that Mr Kipling apple pies come in.
BMW 3 Series Coupe - just nasty! Too cramped inside, and too stuck in the 80s. The one we had also had the "tasteful" wood trim...nasty nasty nasty.
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Thoughts of an orange Fiat Stada I owned (circa 1982) fills me with conflicting nostalgic memories: delight of the lively driving experience but dread of the 'measles rash' rust spots which appeared in the middle of the body panels and roof after the hint of rain or damp weather.
AI
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I once drove a diesel maestro van, the dashboard rattled on tickover, the exhaust was hanging off, the engine leaked oil and diesel, but the emissions were splendidly good! Totally unresponsive. Handbrake came up 3 miles before hitting a brick wall type stop- not very imspiring. To be fair, it was road legal pretty much and the miles had stopped at 100,000 - 5 years previous.
More modern cars, the citroen Saxo, quite nippy, and generally fine, but having fairly big "plates" I seemed to get all 3 pedals at once, or not at all!
James.
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James
The Saxo can be driven by people wearing size 14 dr marten's! I know, I did it for about 12,000 miles.
The 206 is a truly horrible car, awful seating position, made for short legged people, seat too high, height adjuster changes angle of seat and not height. Size 14 people have to drive bare footed and thats not nice in winter. No elbow room as the door panel is a silly shape. Visibility quite poor due to silly shaped pillars.
I'd rather have a Saxo than a 206.
Ben
On my 3rd Citroen. Saxo, Xsara, C5.
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As the owner of the car in question (ie the one which HF is referring to) I feel honour bound to leap in and defend it.
Except I can't....
Cheers
Rob
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Just had a Corsa for a few days - only a few weeks old. What a pile of junk.
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Pugugly/Hawkeye - erm - please can you clarify your points, I have no idea what either of you are talking about!
Thanks :)
HF
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HF,
A blast from the past. LAC used to be (a may well still be under a new name) a regular on the site. There were issues. I thought my post had been deleted as it may have disturbed our editors !!
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Not strictly a car, but I used to have an ancient Thames van with a column gearchange the convoluted linkages of which would bend if too swift a gearchange was made from neutral to first. This would then necessitate climbing out and straigtening the linkages ( which ran down behind the front wheel) with a few blows from a hammer. This made me a very popular figure at junctions in London.
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PU - TY for clarification. I have some knowledge of this from the archives!
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Sorry, worse car (my Father's, in fact) - Moskvitch ! The passenger door fell off !!!
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Old-model Corsa 1.0 3-cyl. YUCK! And no, engine that sounds like half a Porsche does NOT make up for that.
Drove a new model Corsa 1.0 (as accident repair courtesy car) recently and it was a bit nicer to drive overall, but couldn't help the feeling that instead of a flywheel GM have bolted a concrete paving slab on the end of the crankshaft. Should it really take almost 2 sec to drop from 3,500 to 2,500 rpm? Forget quick gearchanges in one of these, they don't happen. Also, you are in no danger whatsoever of getting done for speeding on the M-way!
All of this is particularly unfortunate in view of the fact that I have since driven a new-model Corsa 1.2, which just proved to me that when they put a proper (i.e. 4-cyl) engine in it, the Corsa is not bad at all.
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I agree with you on the old Corsa, but it wasn't just the engines that made it such a turkey. Lamentable suspension control was the thing that used to make me hate it. It could turn a superb country road into a thing of misery.
The power steering pump used to give up when parking and the dashboard plastics would disgrace a pedal car.
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Very true - and while we're on, let's not forget the accelerator pedal that needed a savage kick to produce any response whatsoever! At least they've sorted that out on the new one.
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