I am surprised I haven't seen this one on the list - Pinto. Before I start my tale let me warn you I get even with unreliable cars. I took one to a crusher and another to a rifle range for target practice! But that's another story.

Anyhow in the early 70's I was going to college on the GI bill and I needed a cheap car to commute 50 miles each way to college and still hold my X and two kids. Enter the Pinto. We figured it would give us good mileage (it sucked), cheap to operate (as soon as the warranty expired it broke all the time) and was a death trap in the snow. My wife wasn't a a great driver so she would ding other cars in the parking lot, bumped into a garbage truck and that type of stuff. Well, it quickly started to rust. Soon the car looked like it had leprosy. As I neared the end of college I was pop riveting patches to my floor boards and quarter panels. Then the hatch back got so rusted I didn't dare open it because it felt like it would drop off. Finally, the summer after I graduated, the engine quit (that might have been my fault).

Well, it just so happened that around that time my Dad gave a me boat and I needed a mooring to put it in the harbor. A couple of my buddies who are fisherman and myself yanked the engine/tranny, towed it to the dock (I lived in very small town then), took off the wheels and cut a big whole in the roof. Then a local fellow with cemet mixer truck came down and dumped a load of cement in it. We took it out in the harbor, hook the chain to it and thru it over the side.

It worked great for a mooring. I think Ford would have been pleased. A local guy dived down the next summer and said it had almost rusted completely away. What a shame!