1973 AMC Matador Station Wagon. It was a great car when it was running.....unfortunately, it wasn't running very often. It did look nice sitting in the driveway or on the back of a tow truck. It was the embodiment of a "lemon car". When we finally got rid of it, we had 87 service orders on it, ranging from the admittedly trivial to the life-threatening (i.e., the fact that it frequently stalled when turning right and accelerating.........after being told for almost three years that this problem was just a figment of our imagination, we received a recall notice for a tiny little ceramic capacitor that was touching something and cutting off the engine WHEN THE CAR MADE A RIGHT TURN). One time I came out of work and the car wouldn't start. I left it in the parking lot overnight. The next morning it still wouldn't start. When the towtruck driver came, he tried to start it with no success. Official diagnosis? "Owner flooded the engine." Yeah, sure......still flooded 18 hours later.
We had to have the hinges on the back 2-way gate replaced four times because the gate kept falling off when it was opened. We were accused each time of allowing our daughter to swing on the door....uh, no. I valued my daughter a little more than that. Finally, the last time they replaced the hinges and we went to pick it up, the smarmy service manager decided to demonstrate to us the "correct" way to open the rear gate. It promptly broke off the hinges and landed on his foot. They had to call an ambulance for him. I tried to look concerned.....I don't think I succeeded.
We finally went into arbitration and the dealership said we were "chronic complainers". Hell yes, we were. We came to arbitration with an 18-inch tall stack of service orders. We won. They had to buy the car back from us for what the arbitrator judged was a fair price. I didn't think it was a fair price......I think they should have had to give us a pound of their flesh or something, but noooooo.
That's my bad car story.
