That Moment When An Unreliable Car Actually Works: COTD

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Car enthusiasts can be a harsh bunch, especially when it comes to insulting brands they don’t like. Ford means “Fix Or Repair Daily” while Lotus is “Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious” and Honda is “Hold On, Not Done Accelerating.” While many of these are just mean and some are really messed up, like the one for Pontiac, sometimes there’s a kernel of truth. Every now and then, an automaker just lobs a steaming dump onto the public.

Mark’s Shitbox Showdown featured a 1978 Ford Fairmont. It doesn’t take much research to find out that Malaise Era cars were often piles of garbage, and Andy Individual’s surprise at a working car makes me laugh:

Seeing a Fairmont described as “Runs and drives well” sure lightened my mood. Were they even ever intended to do that?

Don’t ask Bob Mayer about that one:

Speaking of cars that work, it’s a miracle every time I start one of my modern Volkswagens and I don’t have something new that’s broken. I’m not joking, starting my car and discovering something broke is a regular thing. Today, Matt wrote about how 9 percent of Electrify America charging sessions fail. Hey, that doesn’t sound so bad, right Dogisbadob?

9% failure rate isn’t bad by VW standards.

Today’s COTD is a short one, and we’ll conclude with a stop at Jason’s Cold Start, where he talked about cars adorned with fake wood. You couldn’t help yourself.

Andy Individual shows up again for being clever:

I think you should stick to tail lights. You have already carved out that niche. Branching off into these splinter topics just makes you come off like a pulp writer.

Canopysaurus asks the important questions:

If you put wood veneer on a BMW Clown Shoe, would you call it a Klomp or a Clog?

IRegertNothing, Esq. also got me:

Drive your 3-row Buick Estate wagon to drop off your kid at school. Stick your head out the window and yell “I’m at the high school with a giant woody!” Your kid will roll their eyes so far back that they snap their retinas while the other parents mentally add you to the agenda for the next PTA meeting.

Finally, let’s appreciate how different the Chicago Auto Show used to be, with Michael Beranek:

Forget the wood, let’s talk about that Scirocco at the 1978 Chicago Auto Show. What a sweetheart that car was.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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49 thoughts on “That Moment When An Unreliable Car Actually Works: COTD”

  1. I had a 3.5 V6 Ford Escape, 2003. I did not intend to purchase it, but My mom was trading it in and they were offering her next to nothing. I really should have looked up some of the reviews I suppose. They were not considered reliable I was told later, but hat little bastard was a billy goat in the winter, wen over 300K miles before I sold it and only had one thing happen. the Spark Plug like all FURDS of the era shot out of cylinder 4. I heli-coiled it and replaced the plugs and it was good to go.

    2. 3.0L Escape, you mean? That’s a good engine, seen many with over 200k miles. Mazda-derived (with some additional Porsche engineering, apparently?), sold by Ford as their “Duratec” V6s. Not known for losing plugs like the “Modular” family, AFAIK. Cooling system issues at higher mileages sometimes, yeah, but that’s usually degrading hoses that were probably overdue for replacement anyway.

      1. yeah, it was 3.0, that is correct. I kind of forgot there was a 3.0 back then until you reminded me. They were not known for plugs as far as I understood, but this one shot one at 200K miles, and it was a 2003, so I figured it was under the same engineering model as the ford V-8’s or that time.

  2. I thought the funnier acronym for Ford was “found on road dead.”
    That said, my 2017 Ford C-Max Energi has been the most reliable, trouble-free car I’ve ever owned.

  6. Some good automotive acronyms in the comments, all right.
    My favorite one, though, remains what someone said of their AMC which I recall was a moribund Eagle back when they were still fairly new, decades before they acquired Radwood coolness:
    “Alas, My Car.”
    Said with a dejected gesture towards it sitting forlornly and immobile at the curb as we walked by.

  7. My favorite auto brand acronym was always:

    Old Ladies Driving Slowly Make Others Behind Infuriatingly Late Everyday

    Then there was:

    Hope You Understand, Nothing’s Drivable AND Inexpensive

    and the classic:

    Bought My Wife

    2. Ha, good ones about the first two, hadn’t seen those before; as for the third one what I always saw were those two:
      Break My Windows
      Bust My Wallet

  11. and some are really messed up, like the one for Pontiac

    Shut yo’ mouth! My Pontiac rides so smooth. An ‘wen you step on ‘dat muthafucka’ VROOM ‘dat shit got POWAH! Ain’t no muthafucka’ keepin’ up wit’ my ass! Sheet! An ‘dat sheet ride like a floatin’ couch. I love my Pontiac car. My sheet’s ALL DAT.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoyCa_6wZrs

    In all seriousness, can’t go wrong with a supercharged 3800 swap in a Fiero. THAT is a Pontiac I’d hoon. Or a 2000s GTO.

    My father used to own a ’79 Bonneville purchased for $500 in 1998. Malaise-era “luxury” at its finest. Beige with a red interior. We used to call it “the limo”. The headliner was sagging and rubber inside flaking off, there were cockroaches living in it, and the emissions-controls-choked engine struggled to get it up to speed on the highway in spite of being a gas-guzzling V8. My sister had some choice words to describe that car in the context of “the one for Pontiac” that wouldn’t be appropriate to relay here, but damn was it funny. My father totaled it while intoxicated.

  12. I had an ’80 Mercury Zephyr. Brown metallic with plaid interior. 6 automatic. It was..okay. The transmission tossed it’s front deal..twice..but it was warranty deal.

    1. My neighbor had a Zephyr wagon, no woodgrain, brown metallic with 2 brown bench seats. It made our Pontiac 6000 (tan on tan velour) feel like a Rolls.

  15. Damn those Bob Mayer vids get me every time. His clinical delivery is hilarious when informing viewers about the frankly horrendous build quality of these cars. That rattle…I don’t even know how to express how bad that is.

    You guys gotta find a way to interview him

  17. “Ford means “Fix Or Repair Daily””
    Since “fix” and “repair” are synonyms for each other, it seems like it’d be more encompassing (& more accurate, ha) to say Ford means “Fix Or Recall Daily.”
    Guess the old acronym joke came into widespread use before the term “recall” was well-established in the automotive industry and the joke just never changed with the times?
    Like the way we still call road rollers “steam rollers” even though it’s been many decades since these machines were actually steam-powered.

      1. Ha, hadn’t seen that variation before. Still, “fix” and “repair” are pretty much the same thing so I’ve been trying to make “Fix Or Recall Daily” a thing for years but to no avail, guess I just have to accept that it’s my equivalent of Gretchen as per Regina George’s admonition to “stop trying to make fetch happen.”
        Years ago I knew someone who raced both Fords and Chevys as a weekend racer; he said that there was a popular joke at the track about Ford meaning “F****ed On Race Day” (he was a bit of a Puritan, hence the bleeping, ha) with “Found On Road Dead” being another popular variation. What’s funny is that he was a big Ford guy but said he’d not heard similar jokes about Chevy; he said he couldn’t argue with that as his experiences with Chevys were that they were indeed far more reliable than Fords but he just preferred the looks of the Fords (his pride and joy was a genuine ’65 Shelby Mustang sportsroof fastback in white with blue stripes.)

  19. I heard somewhere that at the end of every VW production line, there’s a guy who checks each car for buzzes and rattles. If it doesn’t have one, he installs one.

    2. When my father had the 2001 Audi TT, it always buzzed and rattled. The gear shifter for the 6-speed manual was the first item to start doing so.

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