Look on the bright side: it's convenient for boiling eggs.
Ray: Everybody can relax, I found the car. Needs some suspension work and shocks and brakes, brake pads, lining, steering box, transmission, rear-end...
Peter: How much?
Ray: Only forty-eight hundred [dollars].note
[Venkman looks shocked]
Ray: Maybe new rings, also mufflers, a little wiring...
Peter: How much?
Ray: Only forty-eight hundred [dollars].note
[Venkman looks shocked]
Ray: Maybe new rings, also mufflers, a little wiring...
It was cheap, it was affordable, it was there. It's a car... allegedly. And it has many maladies you choose to interpret as charming quirks. It tops out at about 40 miles per hour (45 going downhill). It breaks down a lot, especially during plot-critical moments, and gets parking tickets while in motion. It needs to have special-order replacement parts since the dealer, manufacturer, and country it came from no longer exist. The only parts that aren't about to fall off are the ones firmly rusted in place. It has more duct tape than paint on it, has been in the newspaper for accidents more times than on the road, and looks like it came out of a junkyard.
In other words, it stands accused of being a motorized vehicle, but this has yet to be proven in a court of law.
The polar opposite of the Cool Car. Often found on the Neglected Rez, in fictional foreign countries, or in the parking lot of Honest John's Dealership. Expect My Car Hates Me to happen a lot when driving this rusty junker. Compare and contrast Accursed Automobile, which may be in perfect technical shape, but can be even more dangerous to its driver and bystanders than the Alleged Car. May or may not go hand in hand with Drives Like Crazynote .
Sometimes, though, the owner of the alleged vehicle will become quite emotionally attached to it. Sometimes it's because only the owner knows the car's little quirks and can keep the thing running. Sometimes it's Stockholm Syndrome. Sometimes they've been through so much together, it's hard to let go.
The Hero's Classic Car is a dated model; it can be Played for Laughs if the car is in bad shape, or is just plain wrong or misplaced.
If a horse, a house, or a computer gets this treatment, then you're respectively dealing with The Alleged Steed, The Alleged House, and The Alleged Computer. The subversion of this trope, where a car looks like this but is secretly a Cool Car, is a Reliable Rustbucket. A Chronically Crashed Car may become one of these if it gets repaired one too many times. A Rice Burner is often an attempt to make one of these look like a Cool Car. Either this or a bicycle (or worse, an alleged bicycle) will be part of a Real Vehicle Reveal. It may have been purchased at Honest John's Dealership. May or may not suffer a Critical Existence Failure. See also Resurrect the Wreck. This may overlap with Sentimental Shabbiness.
Real Life examples have their own page, in addition to those that are not cars but still fit the trope. Many, many real-life cars have become inspirations for what you see below; any such real-life cars should be placed on that page. There is a depressing number of them.
Example Subpages:
- Literature
- Live-Action Film
- Live-Action TV
- Music
- Video Games
- Western Animation
- Real Life
- Real Life - Other Vehicles (motorcycles, military, aircraft, spacecraft, rail transport, watercraft)
Other Examples:
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Advertising
- Big Bill Hell's, by virtue of being a parody of car dealership ads, freely admits that the cars they sell are total pieces of crap that are prone to breaking down, but think that you're so stupid, you'll still fall for their sales pitch and buy one anyway.
Bad deals! Cars that break down! Thieves! If you think you're gonna find a bargain at Big Bill's, you can kiss my ass!
- A Chicago icon: The car from the Victory Auto Wreckers
commercial, which was in constant rotation (with minor updates) from 1985 to 2015. That year, it was given a fully-CGI update with an animation of the T-rex from the Victory logo eating the car at the end, but newer ads at least use the original shot of the door falling off the car.
Anime & Manga
- Azumanga Daioh gives us the infamous "Yukarimobile". Yukari Drives Like Crazy, and presumably this is why the car is in the state it's in; it's a miracle that it can even still be driven. The way that thing gets camera treatment, it is the closest thing the series has to an outright villain. And as poor sweet Chiyo-chan can tell you, riding this thing is an outright death wish. Not even Kimura-sensei is quite as traumatizing.
- Girls und Panzer:
- One of the viewpoint team's tanks is a Type 89 I-Go, an interwar Japanese tank intended to fight in China against infantry that was underarmed even by the standards of infantry at the time. It's regularly pitted against vehicles ten or more years younger and an order of magnitude more capable. Its go-to option when it encounters an enemy vehicle is trying to run away.
- The team's later acquisition, a Tiger(P), could most charitably be described as Awesome, but Impractical. It outweighs and outguns the rest of the team's vehicle park on its own, but its engine, suspension, or fuel system will conk out at the least opportune moment. In its first appearance, it gets stuck in the mud, breaks down, and spontaneously catches fire before even getting into firing range. Its later track record is better, due to hard work from the Automotive Club (who are assigned to pilot it because they're the only ones capable of getting it moving again should it break down in the middle of a match), but it still has a much higher mechanical failure rate that the team's other panzers.
- When they're first found, all of Oarai's tanks are treated this way, as they're the bottom-of-the-barrel machines that the school couldn't sell when the Tankery program ended 20 years ago and they've been left sitting with no maintainence and most of them exposed to the elements.
Hana: At least they have personality, wouldn't you say?Saori: I believe the word you're looking for is "rust."
- GTO: The Early Years: Shinomi's friend Kyoko drives a car that's so beat up, Shinomi has to get in through the window since the door won't open. And then the door falls off while they're driving.
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders double subverts this: Wheel of Fortune first appears as a slow, dirty clunker that causes our heroes some annoyance on the road. Then it turns into a deadly Cool Car when it's revealed to be an enemy Stand; then, after ZZ is defeated and his Stand fades away, the car that it was possessing turns out to be a barely-operable scrapheap.
- Mazinger Z has The Alleged Humongous Robot: the Boss Borot. Created when Boss, Muche and Nuke kidnapped three scientists and forced them to build them a giant robot to rival Mazinger Z. However, since they're using literal scrap parts, the resulting robot is less than a rival; the thing has been smashed, blown up, fallen apart, the works, yet still manages to get in a win or two.
- The Mysterious Cities of Gold has The Alleged Ship — the Esperanza is a rotten, leaky old wreck that somehow hasn't been scrapped yet. How they expect her to survive the Straits of Magellan is anyone's guess. Amazingly, they do survive the straits. The storm they encounter afterward, however...
- Coach Yamazakura's car in Slow Step. Bikes are faster and factories produce less exhaust.
- In the manga of You're Under Arrest!, Natsumi ends up with one of these after getting her license. The car had been assembled out of discarded parts from numerous stolen vehicles. Then it gets customized by Miyuki.
Audio Plays
- In the Big Finish Doctor Who story The Shadow Vortex, set in Cold War East Berlin, the Doctor's reaction to a Trabant is "Does it have an engine? Or must we run like hell through a hole in the floor?" (And never mind that, if you take the EDAs as canon, he used to own one himself.)
- Sonic the Hedgehog Presents: The Chaotix Casefiles: Team Chaotix have their own helicopter called the Chaotix Copter, which is frequently mentioned to be a piece of scrap metal that can hardly fly, with Espio calling it a "deathtrap". This isn't helped by Vector not having a pilot's license, with his flying skills sending both Espio and Charmy into a panic. While the Chaotix Copter manages to fly without too many problems after Episode 1, Episode 4 has the copter's engines break down mid-flight, causing the Chaotix to plummet to the ground and crash.
Comedy
- Comedian Lewis Black had his rental Plymouth Horizon stolen. When he filed a police report, they suggested the thief took it for a joyride.
I said, "You know, I don't think you're listening, asshole. The car is a Plymouth Horizon. It is not a joy to RIDE!" This is a car that goes 45 miles per hour with the wind. If you turn the air conditioning off, you can supercharge the little fucker to 48.
- George Carlin's 1975 album "An Evening With Wally Lonzo Featuring Bill Slazso" has him introducing a new car, "The 1975 piece of shit," and a second car, the "turd coupe".
If it breaks in half, you get to keep both halves.
- Bill Cosby has driven a few:
- Why Is There Air? includes a bit about his first car, a 1942 Dodge he bought for $75. It wouldn't go over 50 mph. It came with four bald tires. He could only afford a single snow tire for the rear end. He had to load the trunk with sandbags to get any traction. He tried to drive it after a blizzard and wound up skidding sideways at 50 mph before crashing into a tree. At least he tried to make it cooler by painting "CAPTAIN AMERICA" down the side.
- The title routine on 200 M.P.H. includes a bit about getting heckled by a Volkswagen driver after his Rolls-Royce breaks down, followed by his skewering of VWs and the problems they have — such as getting blown into the ditch by passing trucks and losing in a head-on collision with a dog.
- He had a bit on his father's car, a 1952 Chevy. It didn't make any noise when revving the engine — which immediately made it the uncoolest car ever. It also didn't help that he was comparing it to Fat Albert's car, a 1941 Mercury modified to use a Cessna airplane engine.
- Scott Faulconbridge had a routine where he talked about his car. It was worth about twenty bucks. After he filled it with gas.
- The Firesign Theatre album Eat or Be Eaten features a game sponsored by the new Recall by Kamikaze Motors, among its listed traits is that it is rated 'The #1 Most Advertised Car by ''Road and Hearse Magazine'', has a plastic brake system "with the look of real metal," has easily jammed doors, windows that don't open, and seatbelts that are non-functional except to break a window to escape.
- Bill Hicks also had a few words about the Chevette in Sane Man:
Piece of shit car. Turn the air conditioner on in a Chevette while you're driving, it's like hitting the car in the balls. It goes down to 5 all of a sudden. I feel like the Flintstones in that thing. You push the lighter in, the battery light comes on. No wonder I'm fuckin' drunk. I hit a moth one time, it did $400 damage to this piece of shit. The moth was all right; he rolled with it. He took off, I'm waitin' for a tow truck. 'What happened to your car buddy?' Shit, I hit a bug. 'You're lucky to be alive. A man in Tennessee hit a ladybug in one of them things, sheared his head clean off.
- Jeremy Hotz's routine about his diesel-powered Chevette with a trailer hitch:
What the hell could I possibly tow? Another Chevette in case the first one breaks down?
Comic Books
- The title character of Achille Talon drives the British-made Achilles, largely chosen for its name. Too bad it rolled off the assembly line in 1903 and looks every bit its age.
- Archie Comics:
- Archie Andrews' jalopy has evolved over time as the series became a Long Runner, but it was never anything better than an old piece of junk. His first appearance in 1941 had him driving a 1916 Ford Model T. Then he started driving a generic 1930s jalopy. These days, it's usually an old Ford Mustang. But some of the things he's driven have really been held together by spit and prayers.
- He tried to get one particularly old car insured:
Insurer: What model is your car?
Archie: Uh, let's see... It's a Ford, Chevy, Plymouth, Pierce Arrow, Packard, De Soto, Hudson—
Insurer: Hold it! How many cars do you want to insure?
Archie: Oh, it's only one car, but it's a collection of replacement parts from several junkyards.
Insurer: Well, what year is it?
Archie: Some of it dates back to 1926! - In Archie Comics (2015), he drives a 1980s-style hatchback which only Betty can keep in working order (meaning he always has to be on good terms with her if he wants to drive somewhere).
- The car belonging to Teacher in The Bash Street Kids in The Beano fits this trope. Whenever it is shown, it always has smoke coming out of it, and it often falls apart.
- The Boys features an Alleged Plane in the VAC Grizzly, loosely based on certain other military-industrial duds. It was rushed out the door to get that sweet World War II military contract dosh, and it showed. Its biggest flaw aside from bad reliability was that to achieve the range necessary for a carrier aircraft, the Grizzly featured fuel tanks just about everywhere they could fit one—including under the pilot seat—which meant that even a few stray shots would usually cause the Grizzly to catch fire. Naturally, with a sterling product like that under their belts, you should see their super-soldier project.
- Chachu: Leila's car has seen better days, especially after she crashes it into another car in the first issue. Cyril snarks that if it weren't for the four wheels, he would not call it a car.
- Condorito: The title character still drives a dilapidated Ford T-type 1920s-era crank-start roadster most of the time.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe gives us Donald Duck's famous Belchfire Runabout, license number 313. He did manage to get it to do 40 mph downhill (and became the first Belchfire driver to get a speeding ticket). He reveals in the story Recalled Wreck that he built it himself from parts that are all out of production and can't be replaced. In the Paperinik stories, though, Gyro has managed to make it quite formidable.
- Paperinik New Adventures provides the Centurian, once Evron's finest warship that even won a battle that could otherwise have destroyed the Evronian Empire... Centuries ago. By the time it shows up it's an ancient ship of a long obsolete design whose antimatter alternator once in a while starts making an annoying noise until a large technician applies the "standard procedure" of punching it, with most of the crew considering it a punishment detail, and the only reason it has a formidable performance in its one appearance is that its opponents are technologically far outstripped and outgunned... At least until the antimatter alternator breaks down from all the hits and lack of proper maintenance and cripple the ship.
- The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers went through a succession of old clunkers, including Fat Freddy's 1958 Ford:
Franklin: Is your car working all right?
Fat Freddy: Hunh? Oh yeah, except the turn signals don't turn off by themselves. ...And there's no spare tire...and the speedometer's way off... and the windshield wipers don't work... and it pops out of gear, and you have to pump on the brakes two or three times before they start to work, and... - Gaston Lagaffe: Gaston's car is an old jalopy, a Fiat 509 from 1923 or 1925. It's so slow that pedestrians can outrace it. It leaks so much oil that one strip shows someone water-skiing in the car's oily wake.
- Gabe's beater in The Maze Agency, which is used to contrast Jen's 1958 Corvette, the Cool Car. It's not even clear what make it is, but the panels are not all the same colour, and it has been towed multiple times.
- Such kind of cars often appear in Mortadelo y Filemón. One example is in "Los Secuestradores" ("The Kidnappers"), in which Mortadelo drives a tuned-up SEAT 600 in a Formula-1 race. Once in motion, Mortadelo discovers the brakes do not work and things just go downhill from there. Years before, in one of the short stories, a criminal attempted to run over Mortadelo using the same model of car, just to crash into a coin Mortadelo carried in one of his pockets instead with the car ending up totalled.
- Brazilian comic Monica's Gang once had a story where Steve inherited an Alleged Motorcycle, mocked by his friend Curly ("This one is probably from back in the Paraguyan War. From the side that lost."). Steve then bets a pizza he can start the bike. Much struggle later, an offscreen Steve is heard yelling "It's on! It's on!" And as the final panel shows what happened: "I won the bet! It's on fire, so I started something!"
- One episode of the Dutch comic Roel Dijkstra is about a voodoo curse on the eponymous character. Roel, who first doesn't believe in voodoo, is forced by the events in the story to take it seriously. In the end, when being taken back to the airport in a rattling, run-down cab, he asks the driver (a recurring character in the story) if it is also voodoo power that is holding his car together.
- Sin City:
- Gail has an unfortunate tendency to saddle Dwight with crappy cars when he's helping her. During The Big Fat Kill she gave him a clapped out, abused, and neglected 1957 Thunderbird on its last legs. It didn't even have enough gas to get him to the tar pits. She later gives him a Beetle in similar condition (but with a full tank of gas).
- Nancy's car is so broken-down and idiosyncratic that no one but her can keep it running.
- The Arrival, a tie-in to Transformers: Animated, gave us the Bulkhead, an amalgamation of the most infamous traits of real life Alleged Cars. It's a former military vehicle (an APC in this case) with bad fuel economy like the trope-naming Hummer Dinger, the poorly placed gas tank with the tendency to explode of the Ford Pinto, the risk of rolling if turned at any speed faster than 20mph, similar to the British Reliant Robin, and the unauthorized use of the name and likeness of the Autobot Bulkhead. Thankfully, by the end of the story, Bulkhead tricked Porter C. Powell into doing an Engineered Public Confession that got the Bulkhead off the market.
- In the German comic Werner:
- Holgi's Porsche 911 S in "Das Rennen" (Eiskalt!). Yes, a Porsche. But it hasn't left the courtyard with its row of garages in two years due to a leaking gearbox and completely misadjusted carburetors.
- Andi's Ford Taunus 17m in "Besser is das!" (Normal ja!) and Gekotzt wird später!, but mostly because of the way it's mistreated.
- Wonder Woman Vol 1: Etta Candy has an old jalopy with the roof missing and no paint save the slogans the Holliday Girls have painted all over it which they all pile into to go places.
- The second World of Tanks miniseries makes much of the fact that many German tanks were... temperamental. The Panther and Tiger have great guns and great armor but the damn engines keep catching fire for no reason, and with the engine down you can't even traverse the turret so you're a complete sitting duck.
Comic Strips
- Cul de Sac has a downplayed example in Mr. Otterloop's car. It functions relatively well, but it's so tiny that he struggles to get in and out of it, and it ended up mistaken for a toy car on one occasion. His daughter describes it as a "Honda-Tonka mix, with a little Cuisinart".
- Frazz's Chevette, which he refers to as his "'Vette" and claims doubles in value when he puts his (admittedly probably expensive) bike on the rack.
- Garfield:
- Garfield once watches a commercial for a used car dealership that seemingly sells only these. In fact, the proprietor openly admits the cars' flaws in the commercial. (A minivan that had been driven off a cliff, a car with no brakes, a V-8 engine with only four working cylinders, and a car with noise problems.)
Garfield: He never sells anything, but he is honest.
- One comic had Jon buy a car from an Honest John's Dealership, the owner of which claims they stand beside every car they sell. When Jon asked if he means behind, he discovers that the man's engineers are so incompetent that they seem to have fitted the gearbox the wrong way round, and the car rockets backwards into a wall. Not to mention, windshield wipers, seatbelts, and tires are optional, and the salesman's office is a truck with the engine running.
- Garfield once watches a commercial for a used car dealership that seemingly sells only these. In fact, the proprietor openly admits the cars' flaws in the commercial. (A minivan that had been driven off a cliff, a car with no brakes, a V-8 engine with only four working cylinders, and a car with noise problems.)
- Dave's (unseen) AMC Pacer in Knights of the Dinner Table, mostly due to his refusal to do any maintenance on it. At one point, it is stuck permanently in second gear. It eventually dies, forcing him to cadge lifts on Bob's scooter.
- Brad's perpetually worked-on Chevy Nova in Luann.
- The various pickup trucks and 1970s sedans in Pluggers. As one strip puts it "You're a plugger if the junkyard attendant asks if you are buying or selling."
- Retail: Cooper's van, "The Orange Crush", which apparently has a beanbag for a back seat, pliers to turn the heater/ac controls, and no seatbelts. Cooper chalks that up to the previous owner being from New Hampshire. (Ironically, Cooper's never been pulled over in the van.) It's also such a gas guzzler that Cooper uses a scooter instead in the summer months. It eventually breaks down for good, and even the mechanics are baffled as to how the van survived so long.
- The 1962 VW Microbus Jeremy and Hector are "restoring" in Zits. It has wildlife living in the engine compartment and creates its own smokescreen as it drives. Jeremy once got a ticket for littering for the number of parts falling off it as he drove. Jeremy's parents have occasionally commented that they consider it a safer option, simply because there's no way the pair will ever get it up to highway speed. Right when Jeremy and Hector were considering selling it, it gets totaled by a semi when the parking brake stops working and the van rolls into the semi's path.
Fan Works
- According to Ace Attorney fandom, Godot drives a puke-green, collapsing clunker only referred to as the "shit car", in contrast to the other prosecutors' much more classy vehicles.
- All Guardsmen Party:
- Their Discount Spaceship, the Occurrence Border is half as long as a vessel of its class should be because the front fell off, so its "bow" is a big scab of melted metal. Whole sections of the ship are sealed off as unsafe or tainted. There's a primitive tribal society living in the vessel's hydroponics gardens, whose duties include keeping a carnivorous alien population down to manageable levels. A shuttle bay is filled with a corrosive warp fungus that lures in victims with ghosts of its previous victims. The ship's interior is covered in little yellow notes bearing warnings such as "This control panel governs the flow of plasma through bays D3-S15, no one remembers why we have plasma going through there, but if you shut them off engines 3 and 7 stop working", or "The gravity in this corridor is tilted 37 degrees widdershins with respect to this note", or (all too often) "Do not touch this button." And things only get worse when the ship shudders its way into the Warp. The only good thing about it is that it's a perfect mission ship, because no one who looks at it would ever suspect the Inquisition might be using it.
- On three separate infiltrations of civilian worlds, the team was stuck driving self-admitted "shitty vans" which prove a major hindrance when trying to outrun pursuing soldiers, police, and T'au battlesuits. "The 'Stealth' Mission" takes the cake, with a van that lacks not only air conditioning but even seats. The techpriest assigned to the mission, who hates the team, enforces this trope by declaring any modification to the van, such as adding said seats, is heretical.
- In Came Out of the Darkness, one of Dudley's friends from Smeltings has a beat-up vehicle on which he comments "Car's a piece of shit, but it runs and it's mine."
- In Cross Cases, since the loss of his beloved Blue Beetle, Harry's purchased an old vomit-colored Chevy Caprice, which he despises because it's huge and he can't maneuver it as well as he could the Beetle. It's basically an extra-shitty version of the Winchesters' Impala, and even Sam describes it as worse than Castiel's crapmobile. Somehow, Harry still manages to be pissed off about it when the Denarians melt it down to the frame.
- In Futari Wa Pretty Cure Blue Moon, Mia's mother, Kirei, owns a dilapidated old van that barely works. Yoko, the resident car fanatic, can barely stand to look at it, and she's enlisted to fix it in its first appearance when it breaks down at an inconvenient time. Near the end of the story, though, this is turned around, as the team uses their finale powerup to turn it into a complete replica of the DaiVan, DaiFighter's Cool Car.
- In The Herald and Her Knight, the Penrose-512 is barely spaceworthy by the time Elster and Ariane finish their patchwork repairs. Literally the only reason that the ship can even get off the ground is because Ariane is using her bioresonance to simultaneously hold the ship's reactor together and keep it cool enough to avoid a meltdown, the actual coolant having long since been depleted, and she can only do that for so long before Power-Strain Blackout sets in. Fortunately, she remains conscious just long enough for them to reach an abandoned space station, where they scavenge enough parts to get the ship back in working order.
- A friend of Anakin's in The Hero Strikes Back has a predilection for these when it comes to starships, though whether because he's trying to be cheap, or the Force hates him that much, it's hard to say.
- In A Kingdom Divided, Vinyl Scratch becomes one of the crew of an old, steam-powered airship. Its stoke is placed next to the balloon filled with hydrogen.
- Midnight Green's dilapidated cart that he quite happily smashes into a tree.
- In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, All Might's car is a Downplayed version of this trope. While it's perfectly functional, Izuku notes that it has signs of wear and tear in places that concerned him. The side-view mirrors are also constantly falling off and he has to try multiple times to close the doors.
- The Sleepover to Restore the Republic: The X-Wing Luke flies to the Executor at the start of the fic is in poor enough condition to not be war-worthy, to say the least.
It's in horrible condition, the hull clouded with carbon scoring and certain parts looking like they're being held together with tape and string. Upon closer inspection, it seems they are being held together by tape and string.
The rebels would never have survived during the Clone Wars. Have any of them even looked at the acceptable safety standards that are outlined in every ship manual? It’s not that Vader has, but he certainly wouldn't let his son fly around in a ship that looked like that. - Teen Wolf's Stiles' blue Jeep shows some tendencies to be The Alleged Car in canon, but it's often played up even more in fanfic. Quite often, the car used to belong to Stiles' mother, leaving Stiles heartbroken if supernatural shenanigans causes it to be irreparably damaged.
- Tough Love (Twilight): While taking his daughter to task for taking her father for granted, Charlie informs her that she's neglected her car's maintenance for so long that it requires massive amounts of repairs, which will cost thousands of dollars — and he has no intention of footing the bill.
- The Total Drama fanfic Unbreakable Red Silken Thread Plays With this: Cody owns an original 1983 DeLorean DMC-12 with factory original specs and parts. For himself it is the definition of a Cool Car, but ask anyone else, especially Heather, and it's junk; however, even she admits that it has some advantages; specifically, that it's built like a tank, so it protects the passengers from both crashing and extreme weather conditions.
- The Transbelvian Belv in Eyrie Productions Unlimited's Street Fighter/whole bunch of other stuff fic Warrior's Legacy. The author/narrator describes it quite well:
I insist, though, that when in Transbelvia, the truly discriminating tourist is obligated to drive the national automobile, the one and only Belv. The Belv is the quintessential East-European car, a tiny tin box with a two-stroke motor that sounds like a mimeograph machine on Self-Destruct and smells like a burning blackwall tire. This particular one had a four-speed manual gearbox that liked to crunch and jitter on shifts, brakes operated by cables, and no gauges that worked.
- This trope is actually named in we're jerry springer, not casablanca..
He chanced a look into the work area and saw the alleged car pulled into the bay. "That car looks like it needed to be taken out back and shot ten years ago, boy," he said. It was a sad sight; a boxy sedan that was at least half rust. The other half might have been duct tape.
Films — Animation
- In Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (And Don't Come Back!), the gang drives around France in a run-down blue Citroën 2CV. Charlie Brown is routinely injured whenever he starts it with the hand-crank. It doesn't help that they get rear-ended twice in the film, resulting in Marcy yelling in French and Snoopy giving insulting gestures. The saving grace is that Snoopy is also the one doing the driving (he knows enough to keep the car running at least).
- The last song heard in The Brave Little Toaster brutally deconstructs the attitudes of materialism and abandonment behind this trope. It's sung by thousands of personified Alleged Cars, all of them waiting to be picked up one by one by the junkyard magnet and be crushed to death by the car crusher at the end of a Conveyor Belt o' Doom. One of them was even Driven to Suicide despite still being functional enough to drive.
- Cars:
- The Rusteze Bumper Ointment tent in Cars 1 is full of rusty, beaten-up cars, much to McQueen's dismay. Ironically, the similarly rusty, beaten-up tow truck Mater later becomes his best friend.
- The villains of the second movie are all notorious "lemons", such as Gremlins, Pacers and Yugos, with the apparent Big Bad based on a German microcar in which passengers always face the back. In fact, two of the baddies are even called Grem and Acer.
- Mater qualifies as one to a point; he's an entirely rusted over (flashbacks show that he used to have a baby blue paint job), dinged-up old tow truck missing his hood (he briefly gets it back during the credits, but promptly sneezes it off again) with all the creaks and rattles you'd expect of him. Still, he's a decent backwards driver and can hold his own in a high-speed chase, and in Cars 2 he is given several nifty gadgets that put him more in the Reliable Rustbucket territory.
- Both vehicles in The Fox and the Hound; the Widow's is a really old truck, and Slade's truck becomes as temperamental as he is after the Widow puts a load of buckshot through the radiator.
- In A Goofy Movie, Goofy drives an AMC Pacer that begins to fall apart as the movie goes on, and near the end, it finally explodes, sending Goofy flying through the air and crashing through the roof of Roxanne's front porch.
- Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation: The only airline that accommodates monsters is Gremlin Air, and their planes are incredibly rickety, often struggling to keep aloft and being held together with lots of duct tape and plywood. The aircraft's shoddy state isn't helped by the fact the gremlins that staff the plane are actively ripping it apart mid-flight and by the end of the flight the vehicle is just a wingless airframe with seats. Monsters are naturally Made of Iron so this doesn't bother them at all, but it's an absolutely terrifying experience for a human passenger.
- In Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, the state of the plane the Penguin Commandos and the Zoo animals attempt to fly back to New York in is so bad that one of the signs it is not working is that its engine is no longer on fire. It also comes with several skeletons on board. Keep that in mind that in the first film, it was originally used as King Julien's throne room.
- 101 Dalmatians Horace and Jasper, the Bumbling Henchmen Duo of the fur coat-obsessed Big Bad Cruella de Vil, use a van (which appears to be loosely based on a Citroën 2CV) as their getaway vehicle during their heist of the dalmatian puppies and throughout the rest of the film. The van has clearly seen better days, as it has a loose fender, cracked rear-view mirror, sputtering engine, and a steering wheel that is so fragile it is accidentally ripped off by Horace during the film's climatic chase scene, causing the van to veer out of control and crash into Cruella's luxury car, thus thwarting her plot.
- The Incredibles 1: After retiring from his "Mr. Incredible" identity, Bob Parr drives a blue microcar that he barely fits in and stalls while ascending his driveway. After he finds work with Mirage, he replaces it with a jet black sports car.
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Mario and Luigi's van that they use for their plumbing business looks pretty beat up and fails to start after they get their first job, which requires them to travel on foot to their destination through a construction site.
- In Wreck-It Ralph, Vanellope's initial car, "The Lickety-Split", is a pedal-powered piece of crap made out of graham crackers that pales in comparison to other vehicles in her game. Later on, she and Ralph build another car that, while functionally better, is still pretty hideous.
- Zootopia (2016):
- While it's in perfect working order, Judy Hopps' meter maid cart is rightfully referred to as a "jokemobile" by Nick Wilde due to the lack of dignity imparted when driving it.
- Finnick's van. The driver's door is silver, the rest of the van is some kind of rusty red, with an awesome mural on the side panels. It backfires a lot, too.
Jokes
- Two farmers, a Texan and a New Yorker, are discussing their farms.
Texan: "I don't know exactly how many acres my farm is, but it takes me about ten hours to drive from one side to the other."New Yorker (somewhat wistfully): "Yeah, I had a car like that once."
Pinballs
- The Dude's Torino from Dutch Pinball's The Big Lebowski (2016), which includes rust stains, a broken headlight and a front bumper tied to the hood with rope. To add insult to injury, it doubles as a "bash toy" that the player hits to score points.
Podcasts
- The titular spaceship from the GURPS podcast Cautious Optimism. It's a little worrying when the highest praise even the captain can come up with is that it's mostly airtight.
- Fall Of Civilizations: Discussed. Asmund Kastanrassi, a Viking Age runemaster, built a ship out of scraps of wood and walrus skins, the only material available on Greenland, which Paul Cooper describes it as a "Frankenstein's monster of a ship." While he dis manage to sail it to Iceland over 1500 kilometers of the iceberg-clogged and stormy North Atlantic, his ship finally breaks apart and sinks in the North Sea on the way to Norway.
- One of the hosts of Well There's Your Problem is Liam, who has a van that is basically derelict and has enough issues to have received its own bonus episode.
Puppet Shows
- Sesame Street has the Sloppy Jalopy, the car of choice for Oscar the Grouch. The car itself is dirty, noisy, smoky, prone to breakdowns, and seemingly on the verge of falling apart. Surprisingly, the Sloppy Jalopy can actually perform like a race car, if Oscar is motivated enough.
Radio
- Amos And Andy's taxicab, forming the fleet for the Fresh Air Taxicab Company of America, Inc.
- In Cabin Pressure, GERTI, the sole airplane of MJN Air, is an Alleged Aeroplane. Her systems regularly break down. Parts fall off of her. She's perpetually on the verge of breaking down permanently and putting MJN out of business. The last episode reveals the wiring is actually made of gold, as part of a scheme by Carolyn's ex-husband that went wrong when she took the plane in the divorce. Part of GERTI's problem has always been the simple fact that gold is much heavier than copper.
Douglas Richardson: Most people have to stop and think before saying, "Aeroplane."
- Car Talk:
- Click and Clack deal with these a lot, including infamously Tom's Dodge Dart, which he appeared as in the Pixar movie Cars 1.
- An interesting take: One caller described his car as running "rough for two minutes... then after six and a half minutes the engine dies." The caller turned out to be John Grunsfeld, who called in from the Space Shuttle while docked to the Mir space station.
- The Goon Show:
- In "Dishonoured" Henry Crun and Minnie Bannister are seen driving a vehicle that makes The Alleged Car look positively Bondworthy. Suffice to say, it's seen going at three miles an hour, and the wick in the engine goes out. Though given that, at various times, characters in the Goons drove pianos, brick walls, barrel organs and steam-driven rockets, an actual car, no matter what its condition, would have been fairly mundane.
- In "The Missing Prime Minister", Eccles boasts that he's tuned the engine of his squad car and got an extra two miles an hour out of it:
Seagoon: How fast did she go before?
Eccles: She ain't ever been before.
- I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue: In the "Kiss of Death" round, each panellist has to come up with a one-liner that will not only end a date but make sure it is never repeated. One of Graeme Garden's was:
Fancy a run in the Škoda?
- The Jack Benny Program: Jack Benny's Maxwell. Real-life Maxwell cars were never noted for reliability; in-universe, Jack's Maxwell was many years old and falling apart, but he was too much of a cheapskate to replace it. It always had trouble starting when he tried to use it, so the distinctive clattering, spluttering, squawking noise of its engine dying was one of the show's many Running Gags. Originally a tape recording, this sound effect was later made by voice acting legend Mel Blanc.
- Lennox-Brown in The Men from the Ministry has a car that's this, which in one episode breaks down in the middle of the street.
- On his radio show, Jim Rome often tells the story of his Merkur XR4TI, which he calls "the worst car ever". (As an inside joke, Jim calls his production crew "the XR4TI Crew").
Roleplay
- Downplayed in We Are All Pirates' Revenge. Melvin's ship, the Zenpance, is described as looking rather run-down, which is supported by Melvin being envious of other pirates' ships, but it is still accommodating enough for the whole crew.
Tabletop Games
- In Adeptus Evangelion, this can be the Player's Evangelion if the player rolls poorly. It can be made by the lowest bidder or held together by duct tape (they're on the same table so it can't be both), have pressurized blood that squirts everywhere, lose bolts in battle that destroy nearby buildings, have a fractured mind, and be colored Neon Green.
- BattleTech:
- The Hetzer Wheeled Assault Gun is an alleged AFV. Among its "virtues" are a fairly slow wheeled chassis that prevents it from traversing many types of terrain compounded by lack of a turret for its only weapon, a battery weak enough that its engine needs to keep running nonstop to keep it charged, and a tendency to reach the customer not quite fully assembled at times. (If you're lucky, somebody thought to include the bolts to fix the last components in place.) Thank you, Quickcell Armories. It arguably is one of the cheapest ways available to field an AC/20, but between its flaws and the fact that its big gun makes it an obvious fire magnet it's no surprise that many of its crews consider it a rolling coffin in-universe. Compare it to the Demolisher and you'll see why the latter excels in every possible way at the expense of the former. All that said, it is not unreasonable when you consider that the Hetzer is a real-life World War II era design note .
- The Peregrine is an Alleged Helicopter. A Fragile Speedster with armor that can't protect it from a machine gun, it dies if an enemy unit look at it funny (and did we mention it only has short-ranged weaponry?). Worse, the internal flywheel it uses in place of a tail rotor has a nasty habit of breaking loose during hard landings and crashing through the cockpit. In the hangar, it has poorly placed access hatches and a reactor so poorly shielded that the maintenance crew has to wear hazmat gear to work on the machine. Most commands simply strip out the weapons and use them on better machines.
- There exists the occasional Alleged Humongous Mecha as well. Some Battlemechs are just not ready for prime time and have developed a reputation for being trouble to their own forces and perhaps a punchline as well. Most out-and-out losers quickly go extinct on their own, but then there's strangely long-lived problem children like the Assassin, a 40-ton 'Mech with a reputation for both lousy armor and missile launchers that tend to break down at the worst possible time... which is doubly bad because the bulk of its fighting weight is its missile launchers.
- Or perhaps you could think of the Daboku, precursor to the production-grade Mauler that is a massive Flawed Prototype. It is slow. It is absurdly lightly armored. Its weapons are low-powered for its weight. It overheats at the slightest provocation. Finally, it has an annoying tendency to eject its pilot when struck even by the mildest of torso hits (though this is probably for the best).
- The CGR-1A1 Charger was the Star League's attempt to build an assault-class scout mech. Start with an 80 ton frame, and use the largest engine in existence at the time of its introduction to get it up to a top speed of 86 kilometers per hour. Add an amount of armor appropriate for a mech about half its size. Then equip it five small lasers, which makes it count as "armed" only in the technical sense. It was fast for its size, but still not a fast machine and it could withstand some degree of punishment, but "assault-class scout mech" was a role that nobody actually wanted and wasn't really useful. In spite of this, the Star League had ordered massive quaitities of the mech for some reason so it was primarily stuck into storage and forgotten about until the Succession Wars when people became desprate for any Battlemech. And that's when someone decided to try to "fix" the machine with the CGR-1L variant. By stripping off more than half the armor, it was able to gain enough tonnage that the five small lasers could be replaced with one large laser and a pair of medium lasers., creating a mech that combined the armor of a light mech, the firepower of a light-to-medium mech, and the speed of a medium mech. Or as one observer put it, the kind of mech you get assigned when you get caught trying to sneak your CO's daughter back onto base at 2 AM and her shirt's on backwards.
- Another Alleged BattleMech is the Matar, a 110-ton superheavy Mech designed during the Amaris Civil War as a machine intended to withstand an entire BattleMech company assault. It was quickly reduced to a fiasco and thus became known as "Amaris' Folly" when the leg actuators shut down during powered movement because of the extreme stresses it takes for each of the actuators to undergo; the project was scrapped and Amaris' faction eventually lost the war when they could not find new ideas to overcome Aleksandr Kerensky's forces.
- The optional "Design Quirks" rules introduced in the Strategic Operations rule book adds a number of negative quirks to combat assets due to poor quality standards or designs, such as "Poor Workmanship" (more easily destroyed by a Critical Hit), "Poor sealing" (requires piloting checks to ensure the cockpit remains hermetically sealed), among a host of others like poor targeting computers and sensor suites. There's also a specific "Bad Reputation" quirk that flags a design as being perceived as The Alleged 'Mech in-universe; while often paired with other negative quirks, sometimes it's also applied to designs that are mechanically sound but are viewed negatively due to other circumstances.
- Chez Geek from Steve Jackson Games includes, as one of the things you can spend your money on, a card representing "Harold the Hoopty Car". It's worth a lot of Slack (points), but it's very expensive, reduces your effective Income for each turn by 1, and every turn it has a one-in-six chance of breaking down beyond repair. Spin-off game Chez Goth features a hearse with similar characteristics, because goths.
- The card Dodgy Jalopy from Magic: The Gathering is a riff on this trope, being one of the few vehicles that is arguably more useful in the graveyard than on the battlefield.
- In the unlikely event that a vehicle from Paranoia (especially one from R&D) isn't one of these to begin with, then carrying around a handful of mildly unhinged T-shooters with secret society missions to waste each other will probably seriously damage the systems before long. The second edition sample adventure, for example, features a six-legged Spider Tank submarine built by taking a van and bolting on legs; the bot brain is going senile, and there's a bewildering array of unlabeled and/or mixed-up controls and gauges (pushing down the gas pedal fires a torpedo, for example, and some of the levers snap off as soon as you try to pull them, and as usual the operating manual is above your security clearance).
- Toon: The Fnord promised to winners of the Cartoon Olympics is so shoddy that just driving it leaves a trail of lost parts.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- Anything the Orks build or salvage will be the alleged buggy, but thanks to the crude-but-effective nature of Ork tech combined with the fact that red wunz go fasta means that they're surprisingly serviceable.
- Even among the Orks, however, the Looted Wagon is notoriously unreliable, since any given Wagon has likely been with the Orks too long to have received proper maintenance for the stress being driven by an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight puts on the systems, but not long enough to have been completely rebuilt and given things like controls Orks know how to work.
- The Eldar Wave Serpent had this problem for a long time in actual gameplay, since it combines relatively poor stats with a complete lack of any official model. Since the rules intended it to be the Eldar's primary troop transport, Eldar players use it anyway. Some of the custom figures made to represent it are awesome, others not so much. Today, a Cool Car Lightning Bruiser with a sweet model, decent toughness, and more firepower than most troop transports.
Theater
- Nightmare Time S1E1 "The Hatchetfield Ape-Man and Watcher World": The script throws in a quick jab at Bill's uncoolness (and the excruciating-ness of Alice being driven around by him) by saying he drives a yellow AMC Pacer — a car they stopped making in 1980, and that was thought of in The '70s as a cheap and crappy tiny car of last resort.
Visual Novels
- Highway Blossoms: Marina's car (in fact her brother's) died of old age in the middle of the road, thus initiating the plot. When it was stolen later, it turned out it wasn't worth much more than scrap metal it was made from.
- The Murakami family's van in Kira☆Kira. The main characters have a lot of trouble with it, and predictably, it breaks down completely when they're already in the middle of their Darkest Hour.
- Vampire: The Masquerade – Reckoning of New York features the perfectly serviceable car driven by co-protagonist Pádraic. Legally, that's all main protagonist Kali is allowed to describe it as.
Web Animation
- The Weaselmobile in GEOWeasel, also known as Weas's mom's station wagon, tops out at, not five, but seven miles per hour.
- Parodied with the Gremlin in Homestar Runner, which has only ever been seen sitting in place in the middle of a field, so it's probably just an old broken-down abandoned car. Even as a prop car to just sit in and pretend to drive, it's questionable, because the doors only open from the outside. That didn't stop Strong Bad from trying to take it on a road trip in one Strong Bad Email. As he said at the end of the episode:
Strong Bad: And that was our road trip. Or, more accurately our car trip, since we didn't go on any roads. Or, even more accurately, our car, since we didn't go on any trips either.
- Downplayed in Helluva Boss when it comes to I.M.P.'s van. It appears to be outdated model given Blitzo has to shift gears on it during "Western Energy" and the cushions seem to have a bit of wear and tear (though nothing too extreme). The bumpers also seem to be perpetually stained with blood, indicating that it doesn't get cleaned all too often.
- In Lackadaisy, Ivy Pepper boasts that she repaired the getaway car. Cut to the car collapsing and bursting into flames.
- In an episode of the My Little Pony: Equestria Girls Digital Series, Applejack and Big Mac find one of these to serve as the tour bus for the girls' band. It's so dilapidated that it falls apart as soon as AJ bangs on the fender. Subverted later in the short, when the girls manage to turn it into a Cool Car with the help of their powers.
- In the first episode of Strawberry Shortcake: Berry in the Big City, Strawberry's Aunt Praline helps her get started on her baking dreams by giving her the latter's old food truck, which is visibly falling apart from lack of upkeep. One of the doors falls off when they're pulling out, the front bumper falls off not too long after, all of the tires deflate simultaneously, and the wooden counter snaps in two when Strawberry leans on it. Fortunately, her new friends help her give it a much-needed makeover.
Webcomics
- 8-Bit Theater has an Alleged Airship, that is outright sold under the name "Death Trap". While it does take the Light Warriors from place to place, it's unreliable and prone to crash — the one time it made a peaceful landing the Warriors had to highlight how unusual that was.
- Ben from Because I'm Depressed apparently got his car for just $4000.
Eve: Why is there no steering wheel? How did you drive this home!?
- Commander Kitty has the CC Pomatus, CK's ship which has an "engine" instead of an engine room, a faulty transporter, a snarky, uncooperative AI, and an armory five decks below the main gun.
- Darths & Droids: Unlike the films, where the Millennium Falcon only looks like a piece of junk, here it actually is a piece of junk, held together by duct tape and rust. And Han removed the duct tape. And also sabotaged it several times.
- Dean & Nala + Vinny: Dean purchases an "ancient van that needs massive work. FOR US!!" Nala and Vinny are nonplussed and worried about how this will change their trips. Fortunately for Nala, one of the alterations made to "Nessie" is the removal of the passenger seat and installation of a cat tree so she can sleep or watch the road. But it lacks windshield wipers, which is a bit of a problem on the road.
- Dolmistaska: PM's hovercar - based on the Citroën Karin concept - is referred to as a "piece of shit" by everyone, including PM themself.
- In Drive (Dave Kellett), the Machito is one of these, until the Emperor has it upgraded.
- Foxes in Love: Once comic shows that Green Fox drives what Blue Fox describes as "a dingy nightmare" while questioning its safety. Green's reasoning for not getting a better ride is that he'd rather be content with something bad than get used to luxury, only to become miserable after losing it.
- In Freefall, the Savage Chicken starts out as an Alleged Spaceship. Florence actually manages to make it spaceworthy. How terrible is it? Well, let's let the spaceport air traffic controllers explain:
"Why aren't we shooting at them?"
"Budget interlock. The computer recognizes Sam and won't let us shoot a missile that's worth more than the predicted value of his ship."
"So what are we supposed to do? Take him down with rubber bands and paper clips?"
"Still too expensive. The computer will only authorize up to spit wads."
- Sam and Helix did manage to get it off the ground by themselves, an act they're very proud of. Unfortunately, the parade committee forced them to return the balloons shortly thereafter.
- In Girl Genius, one strip involves Agatha receiving a... rather poorly maintained walking house.
- In Inhuman Relations, Fred's clunker of a station wagon leaves a trail of smoke wherever it goes. That is, when it's not stalled.
- Kevin & Kell: The first car Rudy and Fiona buy together, which when examined by Aby caused a red alert in her shop, and was apparently held together only by the air freshener, as when Aby cut it off, it fell into pieces. Luckily for them, Aby was willing to buy said pieces so they could afford a down payment on a better car that Aby vetted. Even if the car, nicknamed Vin, has its...quirks.
- Lackadaisy: Rocky's car is in pretty rough shape, sporting several bullet holes, is prone to stalls due to a worn-out clutch, and the interior is a mess. Not surprising, considering Rocky's haphazard, reckless nature, and the fact that the car doubles as his home.
- Lines Uncrossed: Speedy's car is held together with duct tape and zip ties.
- Eric Remington's, as seen in this strip of Loserz.
- Oglaf has the ship in "Bilge" — upon its completion, the leader of the villagers who built it declared that it was a good reminder that all the hard work in the world was no substitute for actually knowing how to build a ship. They decided to sail it to battle against the Vikings anyway rather than let all their work go to waste. Even those Vikings were baffled as to how the thing caught fire.
- Project 0: Owen doesn't think too highly of the Buggy, but it's Aatu's vehicle of choice. But, as a bunch of 13 year olds, they're lucky to have a car at all.
- In Rhapsodies, Paul’s drives a 1975 Station wagon which still keeps going much to everyone’s amazement. (He doesn't know what the mileage is since the odometer broke sometime after he moved to the Northwest.)
- In Scary Go Round, Esther deGroot drives a car like this.
Esther: "I have a surprise for you," says my dad. "You know that car Hitler liked so much? I made you one out of rust."
- The Schetch Pad has quite a few of these, including Finn's own 50-year-old Volkswagen.
- Lovingly nicknamed "Ratmobile" in Stand Still, Stay Silent seems to be this... but luckily, they end up with better one, called "Catmobile" by fans. Good, because Ratmobile fell apart when they walked past it.
- This xkcd features a car with a stuck GPS that continuously attempts to direct its driver to Seattle regardless of where they're actually trying to go. The car gets rejected by a driver whose other option for a vehicle is haunted by murderous ghosts. The alt-text explains that the first car would also be haunted by murderous ghosts if the stuck GPS hadn't driven them away.
Web Original
- SCP-802 ("Musical Tank") is a sentient WWII-era tank that appears to produce music from its innards. It is missing its turret, is run through with rust, and bears several battle scars.
- In Night Hunters, the Chevrolet Impala starts off this way, until it's crushed and repaired.
- In The Saga of Tuck, Mike's car, the Beast, runs. Most of the time. Beyond that, there's not much one can say for it.
Web Videos
- Robert Dunn of Aging Wheels self-describes as 'the premier collector of odd, slow, badly-made deathtraps'. His collection comes in two flavours: old but not as old as you'd think very-economy cars - such as a Reliant Robin, Yugo GV, and Trabant 601 - and surprisingly modern but no less terrible attempts by small startups to make cheaper electric cars - including a Wheego Life and multiple Codas - along with assorted videos on bizarre hyper-economy shed jobs from the 70s US oil crisis. Most recently, he's added a Lada to his fleet... Which, being in good condition, is merely a very basic but perfectly usable and unamusing car.
- Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee:
- The DeLorean lives up (down?) to its reputation when Jerry Seinfeld picks up Patton Oswalt and it becomes the first car in the series to break down.
- The second car to break down on the series was the Siata 8V he uses to pick up Steve Martin. Before he even gets going, he tries out the controls and breaks the turn signal off.
- The Volkswagen pickup in which Jerry picks up Michael Richards doesn't break down, but it has definitely seen better days, being covered in patches of rust. Furthermore, it only has three doors — not that one of the doors fell or broke off, mind you, but it was only manufactured with three doors (two small ones on the passenger's side, one big one on the Driver's side.) If anything, it at least seems like a car you could picture Kramer driving.
- When describing the car he uses to pick up Jon Stewart, Jerry talks about it as if the only nice thing he can say is that it meets the bare minimum to qualify as a car.
This is a 1976 American Motors Gremlin. It's got an engine. It's got an interior. It's got wheels. Oy. - In one episode of A Couple of C*nts in the Countryside, Cammy says that you could make Duncan's car break down by giving it a "quite hard dick slap."
- Garbage Time is an offshoot of DankPods, focusing on the automotive application of the term 'nugget'. Stars include:
- Tiny Tony Kowalski, an FSM Niki / Polski Fiat 126P that needed major restoration to be barely usable. Big rusted holes in the bodywork, disintegrating interior, and leaking petrol into the oil supply were addressed to differing degrees. Despite his tiny size, Tony isn't even that efficient, since doing anything like keeping up with traffic in low-density new world cities like Adelaide means flooring it at all times.
- Sleepy/Smelly Jeff, a 1994 EF Ford Falcon with the odd combination of base level trim but a 5.0L V8. Jeff was in surprisingly poor condition in many areas at purchase (including a dead mouse in the gear shift that caused a stench that resisted a deep clean and deodorant/disinfectant bomb) and had a few low-class modifications like no mufflers. After assorted repairs, they found both performance *and* fuel consumption to be worse than expected. The smell was ultimately defeated by *completely stripping the interior* to create Jeffy Super Legera.
- The Donkey Van, a 2001(ish) Mitsubishi Delica purchased on the express point that it was too rough to elicit concern when mistreated, having nearly half a million kilometers on the clock and Wade giving the prediction "3 months till it explodes" on it's debut. Donkey burnt oil and made weird noises, but otherwise worked for over a year until a can of engine conditioner spray blew the head gasket and it hasn't gotten the chance to be properly repaired since.
- Two Face / the Free Car, an '84 Daihatsu Charade with surprisingly low mileage and signs at least the first owner cared about it (and crashed it once), but it'd been sitting untouched for well over 6 years full of rubbish and old fuel. Despite an initial appearance of having survived remarkably well, the boys found wear in the cylinder bores upon breaking the engine down, which meant sending it off for reconditioning.
- The Supernugget, a Mercedes CLS 500 bought for $20 000 AUD, meant to be a genuinely lovely car. Turns out the gorgeous factory sound system was destroyed by a previous owner fitting a cheap trash head unit and there's a massive leak at the top of the windscreen so the cap and dash are full of deep-concealed water damage.
- While not technically a car, the homemade plane built in Endless Saturdays certainly fits. It's constructed from a red wagon, has cardboard wings, and uses an exploding propane tank as a source of propulsion.
- Occasionally, the usual FailRace crew will set up races in the Forza games for which they build deliberately crappy cars and then swap them around to others in the group.
- Pretty much any car that is featured on Hoovie's Garage
- Regular Car Reviews:
- Mr. Regular's 2007 Honda Fit, "Silicone Sally". It's got 110,000 miles on it, it's not as powerful or fast as the car it replaced, and it's filled with enough silicone leak sealant to eliminate any resale value.
- The Chevy Chevette they reviewed takes it even further making a whopping 23 horsepower, an air cleaner that was non-serviceable until Justin got a third party one that could be, and was designated "Unsafe for highway use" when it was released.
- Roadkill is built around this trope. They take an old beater of a car and take it on some grand adventure. There are far too many to list. Some notable examples:
- The "Draguar" that had to be given a car wash every few miles to prevent it from overheating.
- The Datsun 240Z that puked oil all over the track, broke frequently, and almost got them bounced from their event for being a general hazard.
- And the 1975 Corvette with no windshield, gutted interior, and brakes so bad, they did a slow down slide around on a stop sign and got pulled over.
- General Mayhem, a Charger (well, some of it is) with a motorhome engine (later replaced by a Hellcat engine) and some parts out of a wreck that died on them at the "24 Hours of Lemons" event (a whole racing competition specifically for Alleged Cars!) and some improvised bits. Authorities refused to register it.
- The Gremlin project car was not in good shape when it raced against a Prius, but the Prius lost hands-down by rolling to a halt after emitting "A Suffusion Of Yellow" halfway around the first lap. It had blown the engine block open, so they took it out into the desert to be crushed under a Chieftan MBT. They still have the Gremlin.
- Episode 5 featured a challenge to see who could get the most attention for the money on their way out to a cover shoot out of town, the two contenders being a new rental Lamborghini and a Model A rat rod borrowed from Sailor Jerry, with an overwhelming gender divide — all males they encountered wanted the Italian supercar while all females encountered wanted the rat rod — after getting the thing to stop doing its Old Faithful act, whilst dealing with its lack of instrumentation (it stopped, so obviously you're out of fuel) lack of comfort (you pull the door shut with string tied to the door's inner structure, as it has no interior lining) and low ground clearance (the first thing it does upon leaving the Motor Trend carpark is delay their breakfast out by over an hour, by running aground on the kerb interface and resisting all attempts to budge it for over 45 minutes).