Ladies and Gentlemen, without further ado, I give you my 1988 Ford ThunderTurd (aka the B.W.D.P.O.D.S - Big White Dehydrated Piece of Dog Sh!t):
I had the misfortune of purchasing this vehicle when the clutch throwout bearing my 1986 Toyota Camry gave up at 196,000 miles and I decided that was it. In 20-20 hindsight, this was likely one of my poorest decisions in life. The BWDPODS featured:
-Total instability in wet weather, which could be as mild as 99% humidity. If a sharp turn was attempted at more than 10 mph, one could expect either complete loss of control, or the car to continue moving forward and hit the curb.
- The car had one side mirror. I think the Ford accountants figured they'd save about $2 per car if they omitted the passenger side mirror. This really didn't help because the blind spots were terrible.
- A horrible shaking that occured at 65 MPH, as the resonance frequency of the vehicle was at this exact speed. It was enough to shake the fillings in ones teeth, and worry that parts would fall off the car if this speed was constantly maintained. This meant that on the interstate one was either constantly speeding or always being passed. I later learned that this particular Ford engine was born a V8, Ford needed a V6, so they chopped two cylinders off their V8 and externally balanced the frankensteined engine. The correct way to engineer this would have been to create a new V6 or use an existing V6 or other six cylinder engine.
- Ford didn't joke when they wrote N-O-R-M-A-L across the entire range of the coolant temperature gauge. My experience was that the space between the L and orange/red zone was where this car most frequently liked to operate. It would often overheat, despite the fact that every component in the cooling system was replaced within a year of ownership of the car. My favorite experience was taking a short cut through one of low-income sections of Baltimore and watching the temperature gauge creep into the orange zone, and wondering if I was going to break down.
- This vehicle like to eat alternators for lunch. Three in one year, to be exact.
- The Ford automatic transmission made every shift an adventure, as it often resulted in a severe jerk as the car clunked into the next gear.
- The doors were so long and heavy that they sagged downwards when open, and the sheer length of them made getting out of the vehicle in a parking lot a wonderful challenge in contortionism.
- The digital dashboard was so hard to read in the daytime that it was completely useless. Shortly after I purchased the vehicle, a $5 relay failed such that whenever the headlights were turned on, the dashboard lights shorted out. The dashboard literally had to be completely taken apart to get to the relay (which would have cost about $300 in 1998 dollars). I was a poor college student at the time, so I drove at night with absolutely no clue what speed I was going, but at least I could see where I was going.
- The Coup de Grace was one snowy winter morning I could not get out of my development to get to work. I was at the bottom of a minor slope (maybe 2% grade and about 200 feet). I got about 3/4 up the hill, gently coaxing the car up (alternating between light throttle in low gear, reverse, and doing it over again, inch by inch) before the car stalled. It turns out that the valvetrain was beginning to fail (probably due to the high tempertures this engine liked to run at). Compression in each cylinder was slowly deteriorating. I think by the time I donated the car it was equivalent to a 3 cylinder engine.
So in the case of this car "Quality was Job None," and yes, at least they circled the problem.