Frank and Ernest by Thaves for January 12, 2011

Shoulda stuck to Chrysler products before about 1965! Well, what else could I say. I still have all five of mine.

I’ve had a few lemons too. And Ford and GM wonder why they’re losing customers. DOH!!! ‘06 Ford Five Hundred=junk

You haven’t mentioned the ‘71 Chevy Vega.

2001 Ford Escape. Worst vehicle I ever owned.

I had a 73 pontiac ventura. my favorite car i ever owned. if only it had disc brakes on the front.

Some owners know how to make lemonade. If you’d held onto the Edsel, it would be worth a fortune right now.

And lemons sometimes have lemons for owners so you can’t always believe what you read.

Cars built on Monday and Friday usually fall into the L category.

Clark,, What other cars have you owned? Just kidding. I have too many stories to tell here. I used to be the go to guy for everyone and I remember more horror stories about foreign made autos than domestic. People love gimmicks and I remember people buying foreign because, “a voice tells me if my lights are on.” One man couldn’t decide between a Taurus and a Lexus. “The Lexus seems to be a little better.” It also cost twice as much.

I had a used ‘74 Buick Electra Limited…it was the size of an aircraft carrier, with a 455 c.i. engine (that’s about 7.5 liters for you kids) and a 4-barrel carb that needed retuning about once a month. It got 8 mpg on a good day. But with all that, I’ve never had a car I loved more. With that monster engine, it could blow the doors off of most anything else on the road, and it was as safe for me as being in a tank, what with a curb weight of 5,000 pounds – I was once rear-ended at a red light, and the other car (a little Chevy cheesebox) literally bounced off of mine, and was totaled…my car had a small scuff on the rear bumper rub strip. True story.

But now I drive a Honda Accord, and I’m delighted with it. Old age, I guess.

SCAATY_423 is so right about Buick tanks. I remember driving from Maine to Boston in 1956 or 1957 during a snow storm. Roads were pretty slick, but I had just clicked off 60 miles in 60 minutes. A guy in a circa 1950-51 Buick wanted to go from north bound to south bound but slid through the interchange so he ended up perpendicular to the southbound traffic flow. I ALMOST made it around him in my ‘51 Ford but clipped his left rear. Him: broken taillight. Me: radiator shoved into the fan, right front fender crumpled; right front suspension, demolished; bumper, unrecognizable. What a mess. Probably didn’t help that my tires had gone from tread, to bald to what looked like tread but actually were the tire cords showing. (well ;-) on the last bit, but I never had goos tires back then.

I had one lemon of Detroit origin that Ford fixed a year after the warranty expired. They didn’t have to. I ended up putting many miles on that ‘58 Merc and would it ever go in the snow. I had it on it’s side so far that it had mud on the door panels but never turned over and witnesses said they could only see the underside of the car. Not a scratch. It took a baby carriage to do that.

I learned to drive in a brand new 1958 Buick with Dynaflow transmission and air bag suspension – what a dog! Although it had power steering, it was 99 turns lock to lock with no tendency for self-centering. It steered like a plow and the road feel was less than you would have driving by remote control from a mile away. The suspension wallowed like a canoe in a hurricane and had no lateral stability whatsoever. When we hit a bump we had no idea what direction the car was going to be headed, but we knew we would have to correct it. Just to add insult to injury, the styling was pure “juke box garish.”

Looking back on it, that car was probably good for driver training because, if you learned to handle that horrible beast, you could handle almost anything.

Midway through Driver’s Ed class we got a new 1959 Buick sedan which was a big improvement. It handled like the average American sedan – not much road feel, but it would go where you aimed it. The only drawback was the center back seat – it was a slab of plywood with only an inch of cotton batting covered by upholstery (that is NOT an exaggeration) – with four students in the car with the instructor, we students rotated position so each of us got our time in the torture seat in the middle back seat.

My own cars have been a used 1950 Chevvy Deluxe fastback sedan (9 years old when I got it), used 1958 Impala, used 1964 Ford Thunderbird (1 year old when I bought it), new 1971 Dodge Dart Swinger, new 1987 Volvo 760 Turbo wagon, new 2002 Volvo V70 turbo wagon. None were lemons although most had some quirks that I learned to deal with.

Drove a former yellow cab, right color for it, the kids called it the bananamobile. blew the engine and caught fire on the road. We now drive something else.

When Life hands you Lemons… Open a junk yard.