These Were Your Automotive Low Points of 2022

“I touched a front cross member in my 02 WRX bug-eye wagon while doing my brakes and it crumbled into dust. It’s gone, man. $500 OEM part, but I don’t know how everything it’s attached to is doing (lots of rust in this baby). I think she’s done.”

“When my truck needed a new clutch, my VW head gasket went and I had to buy a Mitsubishi Mirage to get around.”

“I drive a nearly 30 year old Land Rover by choice. I’d have to attach a spreadsheet for 2022.

“The big one was the piston letting go and going through the sides of the block.”

“When my @AudiOfficial Used B9 A4 S-line six-speed Quattro went through not one, but fricken two engines... I’m looking for a third... loved it right up until I saw…”

“Getting surprise-laid off with my 944 engine split in half probably takes the cake here. After months of being told ‘oh, no, you guys are safe, there should be no further cuts,’ welp, I’m the one who got cut in the middle of doing some cylinder head work.

“Any hopes of making it to the race I was planning to go to in November were immediately off. The rebuild is still humming along at a slower pace thanks to friends chipping in and parts that were already purchased, but to say it was an extreme suck after not being able to hop back into Lemons racing for a couple years is a massive understatement.”

“Convincing myself that selling my one owner, low mileage, Texas owned its entire life, 2001 Yukon and getting a Kia Soul to save money on fuel was a good idea 🤦🏻‍♂️ It took me three years to find that d@mn GMC 😭 Now I got another newer GMC Sierra, but I’m stuck with the Kia too.”

“My year started out with suck. On the last night of vacation (New Years day evening) my car was broken into in a hotel parking lot in Nashville. It was a 35ish degree rainy day which ruined the last day of my parents vacation down to see me. I got some ‘clear’ (it was basically opaque) plastic to tape over the window to get me two hours home, took the dealership two days to get me a piece of glass.

“Then I asked the dealer to let me know when the door is apart so I can clean it out super well and make sure no more glass is rattling around in there....they promised me it would be cleaned out completely... it wasn’t.

“So now my passenger door has glass rattling around in it. The car was barely a year old at this point, now barely two. I would take it all apart and clean it myself but the regulator and all is built into the inner door panel so the glass has to be removed to take that panel off and clean it. The fear of breaking that glass is keeping me from getting in there.”

“The death of the Ford Fiesta in the UK. Long-time best-selling model, gone, in favor of more ridiculous small pretend-SUVs.”

“I normally do all of my own work on my Jeep. It’s the only way to keep it financially viable. But this time I needed two things done asap and didn’t have the immediate time to put into it. I took it to a shop, they gave me an estimate, and I begrudgingly agreed to it.

“The job was both front axle u-joints and diag/fix small evap leak. They charged me a diag fee for both jobs, didn’t drop them when I agreed to the work, and charged a total of about $1,750 for the u-joints and replacing the evap return line which from what I’ve found since is astronomically high.

“The diag they did for the evap was just eyeballing things because if they had actually smoke tested it they would have found that the return line was fine because I still have an evap leak, and they charged a diag for the u-joints even though I told them that’s what was causing the binding – but they ‘wanted to make sure anyway’.

“I should have just waited to do it myself and spent $100 on parts. Never again.”

“We got rear-ended in our nearly new 2021 Lexus GX with less than 10k miles on the clock. LAME.”

“My catalytic converter was stolen from my outlander sport...at work...As I was sitting right in front of it with the blinds closed and there are no outside cameras...In Irvine, Ca ironically. The flip side was the ordered part came a lot quicker than was projected and was pretty fun being obnoxious for a bit, they sound fairly good, but still it was such a pain.”

“Paying a professional shop $400 to fix my air conditioning only to have the ‘fix’ last three days, and I ended up properly fixing it myself one evening armed with nothing but a youtube video and $150 in parts.”

“Helping one of my parents shop for a new car. Only plus was there were a few of what she wanted on lots so were able to negotiate some, which was good as parent is a never pay MSRP even and that wouldn’t happen on a lot of models.

“The lot we bought from had a stupid fee they had tacked on, can’t remember what they called it, but wouldn’t waive (I’d have walked but not my purchase), I had a target out the door price in mind before we went in so we went to work on trade, rebates, discounts, etc... and got it below that point so was a sound deal. I dread if anything happens to my car anytime soon, it was not a fun experience.”

“Basketball net landing on my CTS Coupe during a storm.”

“For me it was when Max Verstappen disobeyed team orders and wouldn’t let Sergio Perez pass him at the Brazilian GP. After all Checo had done to help secure the championship in 2021 and with 2022 already decided for Max, why act like a petulant child and not return the favor?”