We had a used Plymouth K-car ~ what a piece of shit. When we were finally able to upgrade to a better/newer/more Japanese vehicle, the K actually broke down for good (terminally) on the way to the dealership, where they were promising $2,000 trade-in for anything. We actually had to have it towed in to be traded in; got the two grand trade allowance anyway, thank God. I think the K was in the crusher before we drove our new used car off the lot.

Bad as it was, the K may not have been the very worst of our cars. We've owned a large number of used Datsuns/Nissans, and all but one have been very good. The exception was an F10 wagon, their first front-wheel drive model. It was severely undersized, even for a Japanese compact wagon, and everything about it went wrong at one time or another.

I was especially irked because we got it to replace a perfectly good '72 Datsun 510 that would probably have continued to purr along for another 100,00 miles if we had kept it. It was a hard lesson to learn ~ newer is not necessarily better. That 510 model was legendary, and for good reason. Had to use the manual choke (!) to get it started, but once it was rolling, no problem.