I've had some rippers, some snorters, some nice ones, and some utter bombs amongst my 60+ cars, but without a doubt the Lemon Of All Time (certainly my biggest disappointment) was a brand-new HG Monaro GTS. I was 21.
Its predecessor in my stable was a one-year-old Mazda R100 (boy-racer red, of course!) -- a car of impressive finish quality and great attention to detail. Unfortunately, I rotated that rotary at 94 mph and it was history.
The Monaro was alI I could afford after writing off the uninsured Mazda.
In the Monaro's first 1000 miles (at which point it went in for its mandatory first service) the following things went pear-shaped, and I arrived for first service with a list of 48 items to fix. Amongst those were:
* misbehaving Traumatic box (kept losing second gear, which left too few options in a three-speed box)
* front alignment made the car almost unsteerable
* the driver's door dropped about 3/4 of an inch and had to be hefted upwards to close successfully
* the driver's seat came loose from the floor
* the paint started to fade; it was "burnished bronze", and I had requested no "go-faster" stripes; after about three weeks (parked outdoors at work) one could see where the black go-faster stripes had been oversprayed with the b/bronze, and a sloppy job it was, too.
* less safety-related, but annoying nonetheless, were the myriad loose thread-ends flopping about all through the upholstery; really untidy work.
It returned from that first service with two things "fixed": the driver's seat mountings and the loose threads (some of them) on the seats: someone appeared to have taken a cigarette lighter to them!
After another three services and a couple of visits to attempt to get things fixed under warranty, the list still had 46 items to be fixed; the alignment never was, so the car was a dog to drive.
At the 8000 mile service, I took the car to town very early (about 6 a.m.), parked it across the dealer's showroom driveway (the major, inner-city Holden dealer for a large industrial city that is not the "S" or the "W" of "NSW" (as in Newcastle / Sydney / Wollongong), wrote "lemon" all over it in toothpaste, and dropped the keys down the nearest drain grate.
GMAC (finance) pursued me for about three years before they gave up; I had refused to finish paying for the PoS, and still owed a couple of grand (the car cost $3700, when a new Kingswood was $2500).
I then bought my first Rover -- a 1960 P5 Mk Ia -- which was dowdy, but a far better car than that Monaro. And then I got my first Rover P4 -- a 1956 90. Unlike Styria's 90, this was a beauty. Quite ordinary looking ("the patina of age and honest work"), that old aunty could life her skirts and run -- once she had built up speed; getting to cruising speed wasn't the most rapid experience, but the car would sit on 90 (mph -- its official top speed -- and its horsepower) all day on a Melbourne-Sydney trip without a rattle, squeak, or complaint (though in those days of rather ordinary cross-ply tyres and cheap retreads, punctures were a common feature of my Rovering).
That car did 520,000 miles before the head came off (gasket), and never let me down in any department other those governed by Lucas the Prince of Darkness. I spent very little on maintenance and just drove the old dear.
PS: I've checked this post for typos, so please excuse any I've missed; I'm having vision problems at the moment and even set large, the text on my screen is really out of focus. Perhaps I need someone to hit me on the head. LOL
