Daewoo – but not for the reasons you might think.
My wife and I bought one Brand new in the year 2000. Daewoo was a globally successful Korean Car company that had made the move to try the US Market.
My Grandparents had already owned the bigger Sedan for a year, a close family friend was working for a dealer and I had heard nothing but good things about the brand.
We picked up a brand new top of the line Nubira Wagon, leather, sunroof, etc, etc. The car was great for our needs, we took it on a few road trips, my wife used it for some volunteer work, etc.
about 2 years into owning it an oil leak developed that should have been an easy warranty repair. The problem was Daewoo USA had declared Bankruptcy and the Chrysler/Daewoo dealer was your typical stealership style dealer who cared less that THEY sold me the car with a warranty – they did not offer to help in any way, just showed me the door(they went out of business btw). Since Daewoo was faltering they denied me any help. I had one mechanic say it was a oil pan gasket – then it took use weeks to find one. Once installed the oil leak was not fixed. I am still not certain what the issue was, maybe a seal?
Other than the leak the car was great.
The leak would not have been a big deal if it did not drip onto the exhaust and create a nasty oil burning smell.
We could not live with that smell, the car had to go. When we offered it as a Trade-in the first dealer offered us 1k, the second offered 2k…. we owed 10k on the vehicle…..
Finally we found a used 2000 Chevy S-10 Blazer (86k miles on the vehicle) at Paradise Chevrolet in Ventura, CA. They offered us 4k for the car and we dumped the rest of the owed money onto the loan for the Blazer. I will be forever grateful to that dealer as they offered some great service for a minor issue that came up on the Blazer after we bought it.
On the complete opposite side of this conversation my wife and I drove that Blazer until it had 255k miles on it and sold it for $3400. Outside of a Transmission rebuild that was the most reliable and one of the best vehicles I have ever owned.
So the worst vehicle purchase of our life lead us to the best one.