QOTD: Which Automaker Do You Hold a Grudge Against?

We’ve all been burned at one time or another. As time passes, the chances of a rip-off, raw deal, or money-draining, hair-pulling lemon grow greater. Maybe you didn’t like the cut of the salesman’s jib. Maybe the dealership botched or sidestepped a necessary repair. There’s no limit to the number of ways a car, or a car company, can turn once-happy customers into sworn enemies.

In my family’s lineage, the only automaker that really fits this bill is Chrysler. Old Chrysler. Often Bad Old Chrysler. And yet, it wasn’t always that way, nor did it stay that way. But for a period of a few decades, Chrysler Corporation’s name was mud, despite the rosy, horsepower-clouded memories of a family member once seduced by Good Old Chrysler.

The first cut is the deepest, they say, and Chrysler came at the remaining members with a meat cleaver.

The relative who actually possessed good memories of the company was my grandmother on my mom’s side, rest her soul. In her opinion, the greatest purchase of her life, besides that satellite dish back in the 1980s, was a red 1969 Dodge Swinger 340. The hot Dart. Not the hottest, but hot nonetheless.

Stricken with Dodge Fever, my barely five-foot grandmother decided a little low-end Mopar muscle was just the thing to keep the Sixties alive. She was Dodge Material. So, after selecting the right color and options, including a 3-speed Torqueflite, grandma joined the Dodge Rebellion.

Because we’re talking about Good Old Chrysler, it was a match made in heaven. No mechanical issues. A long lifespan. Prodigious power. And don’t think for a second that she only drove it on Sundays and never once tried to “see what it could do.” Oh, she did.

Seven years later, her daughter, my mother, saved up nearly a whole year’s salary to buy her first and only brand new car. Just like her mother and the Swinger 340, this vehicle beckoned from both the showroom and the magazine ads. It looked even better on paper. It was new to the market. It was efficient. It was Motor Trend’s Car of the Year. It was rushed to production. It was the final nail in the coffin of a company spiraling towards bankruptcy. It was…

…the 1976 Plymouth Volaré.

The Volaré’s Lean Burn-equipped Slant-Six stalled at every stoplight during warm-up, requiring the blowing of stop signs until the needle reached “hot.” A falling tear was enough to perforate the unprotected, corrosion-addicted front fenders. Eventually, an automated car wash brush punched a hole right through.

The inherent problems with that vehicle, while cleared up in subsequent model years, left such a bad impression that my mother swore off the company entirely. I recall a tan-colored, early-80s Plymouth Aries wagon in my youth, but that vehicle — bought by my father — proved the most short-lived vehicle of my youth. Like a gust of wind, it disappeared just as quickly as it came.

Fast forward to the turn of the new century. With little cash in his pocket, your author’s first hastily selected used car was — *drumroll* — a 1993 Plymouth Sundance. A base, manual-transmission two-door. With plenty going for it, mainly comfort, roominess, and a very low sticker, fuel flow issues soon provided a crash course in hitchhiking. In the space of one year, an intake valve seized, knocking a cylinder out of commission. The catalytic convertor melted. The fuel pump died. The hood latch gave out as I chivalrously ferried a carload of female friends home through a nighttime snowstorm. Suffice it to say, the Sundance was determined to make less than its factory 93 horsepower at any given time, and hell-bent on devouring every cent in my bank account.

I sold it to a co-worker.

While a Chrysler product hasn’t graced my driveway since, the company, now with an Italian flair, eventually won over my parents. It took decades, but the crazy deals available on the model which dare not speak its name (at least not here at TTAC) proved impossible to resist. Oh, and what’s my sister driving? A Dodge Journey, for exactly that same reason.

If you’re looking for the most possible room in a vehicle with zero miles on the odometer for the least amount of money, you too could be Dodge Material.

So tell us a story, Best and Brightest. No doubt there’s an automaker that earned your scorn, ire, and hatred. Are you willing to forgive, or will the two sides never again meet?