Faults:
Two exterior door handles (cheap pot metal) broke off at the internal hinge; each time, dealer NLA and had to source from a junkyard. They're hardly ever used.
LR door latch broke, door wouldn't stay closed. Again, dealer couldn't get parts, so had to buy from eBay.
Transmission selector cable broke. Had to be towed. Took garage two days to disassemble the dash and half the front end of the car, just to put a new cable on. Dealer part NLA, garage had to fabricate one from a GM car. This happened once in our Toyota, took 15 minutes to fix.
All four brakes, including calipers, replaced twice due to freezing solid from rust and sponginess. Master cylinder failed at 20k miles.
All four window motors gradually stopped working. Garage was able to get three working again after two days labor. Parts NLA from dealer, so fourth replaced with aftermarket rebuilt unit.
Poor starting has always plagued this car. It takes two or three long cranks before it catches and keeps running.
Battery ground cable and battery positive cable both corroded badly. It took an experienced mechanic more than 6 hours to get the old cables out and new ones installed; he said it's the worst design he's ever seen.
Once a year or so, the battery will drain for no obvious reason. AAA hates to replace batteries in this car; it is buried and takes an unreasonably long time.
Fuel filler neck rusted badly between gas cap and gas tank. Looked like Swiss cheese; mechanic was appalled. We smelled faint gasoline for a couple years before mechanic found this. We thought someone was stealing gas, but it was just evaporating.
Remote locking stopped working in less than a month, dealer could never fix it, gave up. Power locks have never worked properly, each front door has to be locked and unlocked with the key from outside, can't do it by hand. Back doors have to be locked by hand.
All driver's power window switches failed long ago, except driver's window and right rear passenger window.
Glovebox door used to flop open, so it had to be locked to keep it closed. But once locked, it jammed closed and won't reopen. The door gets more and more warped, so the big gaps at the sides spew light from the glovebox at night because it's the one bulb that won't seem to burn out.
Power steering moans, repeated attempts to fix have failed.
General Comments:
The absolute worst car ever designed and built by anyone, anywhere, anytime. This car, and everything else from Chrysler, is why the company collapsed... Chrysler's collapse had very little to do with the economy and everything to do with the fact that it was building cars like this.
A bad design was enabled by bad engineering, exacerbated by horrendous execution, shoddy assembly, bad parts, no thought given to maintenance or repair. A poorly designed car, built with shoddy components. I firmly believe Yugo's were built with far better quality parts.
From getting into the driver's seat, I now have two permanent 1" vertical scars on my right leg. There is a sharp, protruding lower dash bit that has caught me there many times, even when I'm being careful. It's clipped the lower leg and/or drawn blood from everyone in the family who has ever gotten in the beast. We call it the Vampire Car... it draws blood, gets your wallet, and it probably would have killed one or more of us if we hadn't eventually found and fixed the Swiss cheese filler neck leaking gasoline fumes into the car.
My uncle bought this car new when he was in his mid 70's, and since then we've spent the purchase price over again in repairs. You can't sell it, even for cheap... nobody wants it.
11th Dec 2023, 16:31
Quite a review for a model that most peoples have long since forgotten about...