Faults:

Needed a new clutch at about 300,000km's.

Front drive shaft boots need replacing every now and then.

The boot springs died.

General Comments:

Easy to drive and maintain.

The car handles beautifully with 14in Alloy wheels (comes standard with 13in).

Parts are cheap and easy to come by.

A very reliable small car with low running costs.

Faults:

Nothing major as of yet.

General Comments:

This car is a wolf in sheep's clothing!!!

I would recommend this car to any insurance conscience boy racer type anyday. The acceleration of this car in unbelievable given that it's only a small lightweight car, and that it doesn't look particularly fast either.

The key benefits of this car are the fact that the engine has high compression and a much larger based torque than most other engines of it's kind/age. It will leave, as stated by others, many of your typical boy racer Novas, XR2s, even your newer hot hatch's like the Saxo and the Fiesta Zetec.

Faults:

Other than wear and tear, nothing.

General Comments:

This car refuses to stop, doesn't burn oil, and runs great. It sat for 2 years and I just brought it back to life again. One of the best cars for basic transportation and reliability I have ever saw, even my teenager couldn't kill it.

People complain the '85 is too plain looking, while I get people all the time thinking it is a lot newer than an '85.. And I just love the power sunroof, power brakes, power steering, air conditioning, all on a basic model...

Faults:

It has a problem with rust, and the interior (front bucket seats) are faded and cracking.

General Comments:

Other than those problems, this car is very dependable. It can take any abuse you can dish out and it begs for more.

Faults:

Brakes, tires, oil, and belts. Oh, and a hurricane.

General Comments:

I picked this up (my first car) when I turned 16 for $600.00 -- UGLY as sin and embarrassing to pick dates up in, but I got around 100,000 miles out of it and many trips from New York/New Jersey to Wisconsin and back. Used it forever as a pizza delivery car too.

The car was in Bound Brook, NJ last spring when Hurricane Floyd made the Raritan River wipe out most of the town. My Toyota (then at 190,000 miles) was under 5 feet of water for 16 hours.

Pep Boys drained the radiator, gas tank, engine, transmission, refilled everything, replaced the battery, and fought with a LOT of ether sprayed into the carb.

Would you believe it actually ran after that? The car got moldy, rusty, and smelled bad of course.

Never ran really good after that, but I don't fault the car. It eventually was fighting to start (at 210,000) and blowing black oil out the tail pipe. I gave up and drove it to the junkyard on Christmas Eve, 1999.