Ever finish a job so miserable that you find yourself saying, “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy,” as you slide back out from under your car and start putting tools away? For me, it’s usually the same projects that leave me so grease-stained that I know I’ll be showering with GoJo until Tuesday.
You read the headline so you know where I’m going with this—of all the cars you could choose to restore, what would be the absolute worst? Stuff that breaks constantly, has poor parts availability, bad access to common service items, and worst of all—vehicles that still kind of suck even when restored back to brilliant condition.
I don’t think the W8 Passat qualifies for that last one, because a mint-condition eight-cylinder VW sedan would actually be pretty cool. But I’ve known my colleague Jonathon Klien for years now (he had one for a bit) and I can’t remember a month that’s gone by where he didn’t somehow mention how awful that car was to work on and how often it malfunctioned.
Some other Sisyphean car resto projects that were causally suggested in The Drive‘s various internal chats included the LaForza SUV and “anything with a Cadillac Northstar” engine. But I’m really looking forward to finding out what the most dreaded project cars would be in the minds of our readers. The comment section’s open!