What's the WORST car/truck you've owned?
My ’95 Ram club cab that I bought new is still the biggest piece of junk I have ever owned. I had been buying a new Chrysler vehicle every two years since 1980 when I got the Ram.
Six days after I got the thing, it went into the shop. Then seven days after that it was back into the shop. I kept telling the service people something was wrong with the transmission. There was a shaking in the drive train whenever the torque converter locked up.
The dealer tried reflashing the ECM. That didn’t help. Then they put in an MP performance ECM. That didn’t help and I made them take it off because it required I run premium fuel but it didn’t make the truck run any better.
Then, they thought the wheels and tires were out of round. They ordered in 12 wheels and had a mechanic check the runout on each wheel in order to find four that had less than 0.025” runout. Once that was done, they put new Michelin tires on it. The vibration was still there. They replaced the torque converter. Again, same vibration. Then they said they wanted to send the truck to a tire shop to dynamically balance the tires and true them up. I told them the problem was in the transmission and if they weren’t going to replace it, then I was done with them.
So, I filed a lemon law claim. The Chrysler zone rep for this area came over from Memphis and drove the truck. That knucklehead didn’t know you could unlock the converter by holding the gas pedal steady and just barely tap the brakes. Once you let off the brakes, the converter would lock back and the vibration would start again. I told him what to do and from the passenger seat I could feel the vibration but he said he didn’t.
He told me the truck was performing as engineered. I asked if “the truck that broke all the rules” (their ad slogan at the time) had a defect engineered into it. He said, “no.” I then told him I had driven a ’96 Ram and it didn’t have the vibration, so that truck must be defective. That got him really flustered and he said the dealer had done too much to make me happy. The service manager and the sales manager were standing there and could not believe what they had just heard. I got up and started walking out when the rep asked what I was going to do. I told him he’d find out.
I went home, called the dealer and told him I wanted my money back. Now, get this, he tells me to come back up to the dealership to drive a new ’96 to see if it was smooth. It was. So, they pulled the transmission out of the ’96 and put it into my truck. And, they put my transmission into the ’96 and sold that truck as new!
But, it gets better.
About three months later, I’m going around a slight bend in the road and truck kept going straight. I eased on the brakes and that helped restore some steering. I limped it to my office and when I looked under the truck it looked like every seal in the steering box had exploded. Grease was everywhere. The dealer towed the truck in and replaced the steering box. Exactly seven days later, the steering gave out in the same curve while on my way to work. The dealer again towed the truck to their shop and called me three hours later saying it was fixed. When I got to the shop I saw the dealer’s copy of the repair ticket. It had “Silent Recall” stamped on it. They had to replace the steering shaft.
Once that was fixed, I went to another town and traded the truck in on a ’94 Volvo. That was in August ’96. I still have the Volvo. My 18 year old daughter is driving it now. It currently has 185k miles and is going strong.
But, I will never buy another new Chrysler.