Faults:

Not much went seriously wrong with the Excel over 130,000 miles, but there was also not much left of the car at that point. There were no engine or tranny problems, and the clutch was the original. The front tires never stayed balanced, and the steering thus wobbled on the highway. The exhaust system had to be replaced about 3 times in that mileage.

The car wore terribly cosmetically as in paint and flimsy plastic exterior parts, it looked like a piece of junk after only 1 year of driving it. The body rusted terribly over the course of 5 northeastern winters, which thankfully ended up doing it in.

General Comments:

It was a cheap commuter car to buy and own, but never at all a fun car to drive. It was flimsy, buzzy, uncomfortable, and deadly underpowered - it could never get up even the smallest of grade at a speed over 45 MPH.

I can't fault it mechanically as it never let me down, I did maintain it well. But I hated this car and was embarrassed by it every second I was seen driving it, and was overjoyed the day I got to surrender the horrible little thing to the junkyard.

Faults:

There was a hole in the linkage so large I had to hold the gear shifter so that it would not fall through the floor and hit the asphalt below, resulting in a shower of sparks trailing behind the vehicle.

You had to pray that the weak starter would actually turn over. When it did not, you would have to push start the blasted thing.

The brakes in that car were atrocious.

This car was seriously underpowered. I only got the car up to 65 MPH (highway speed) once. And that was because I was traveling downhill, and I had an overweight friend as a passenger.

There was no need in changing the oil. The car burned through it faster than you could keep up with it. Part of the re-fueling process was topping off the oil.

The car would not stay in gear. You had to fight with it to stay in first. It liked second gear. Third it would get testy again, and it settled on fourth.

The car backfired often. Once my neighbors called the police and reported gunshots because it backfired so many times while I was trying to start it.

General Comments:

Driving this car was a workout. I developed so much upper body strength fighting it to stay in gear, that I did not need to take a physical education course my whole first year of college.

Traveling anywhere in this car took a great deal of prayer, swearing, patience, more cursing, and a great deal of elbow grease.

When Adam Sandler wrote his song "Ode to my car" he must have been writing it about this one.

I averaged about 10 miles per gallon for gas mileage.

This car had absolutely no acceleration. Old women in walkers moved faster than this car.

I never had to worry about giving anybody rides. People refused to ride in my car.