Episode: 3601
Title: HPR3601: Re: The Worst Car I Ever Had
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3601/hpr3601.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 02:01:39

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,601 from Monday the 23rd of May 2022.
Today's show is entitled, Read the Worst Car I Ever Had.
It is hosted by Dave Morris and is about six minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag. The summary is, in the April 24, 2022, out of ignorance, I bought a real dud of a car.
Hello everybody, this is Dave Morris. Welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
Today I'm doing an episode that was prompted by Beezer's show entitled, The Worst Car I Ever Had, Show 3542.
I liked this show very much. It made me remember that I'd had experiences regrettably experiences with cars, so I thought I'd tell you about it.
When I moved to Edinburgh, that was in 1981. I had not owned a car up to that point.
I'd owned a series of Italian motor scooters, small to medium powered motorbikes and so forth.
I'd been using a bicycle for a lot of time when I first came to Edinburgh, but I needed a car really.
I didn't want to be using the train to get around and so on.
The car that I bought was an old-ish Persio 104, which is quite small, not very powerful, but it was a car and it did do the job.
It's fine for driving around town and I did use it occasionally to go and visit my parents in Norwich, which is quite a distance from Edinburgh.
It's about a seven hour drive because the roads are all four mostly.
I once drove up North to Aleppo, the north of Scotland. It was, that's a shorter drive, but it wasn't really the car for doing that type of journey.
So it was mainly a town car and for short trips in the, in the locality.
So as the Persio started to give me trouble, I looked around for a replacement and I was visiting my parents at the time and went to a car dealer in Norwich.
I've shown an Austin Maestro, a British car. The Persio of course was a French car. It was newer than the Persio and seemed to be in pretty good conditions.
So I bought it and traded it in the Persio as I did so.
So the Maestro range at that time was seen as reasonably good.
This as far as I know, I'm no great to pundit of cars and never happened.
So it was, it was more or less sort of a gut reaction. I had to rather than anything scientific.
And it was, it was newer than the Persio. It seemed to be in good conditions. So I bought it.
So the car that I bought was only a few years old and had a fairly low mileage.
The model was an HLE, which is what that stands for. I think the E is something to do with the economy.
1.3 liter petrol engine. It's a five doors. They call them as four doors for passengers and a hatch at the back.
So you've got a fair amount of luggage space and these things are called hatchbacks in the UK.
And all Maestro models had front wheel drive. This one had a manual gearbox.
Probably were automatic ones, but the automatic British cars are not common at that time to my knowledge anyway.
The Maestro had a bunch of economy features and a four-speed gearbox.
And the fourth gear was supposed to be an economy gear ratio.
They had an econometer as they called it on the dashboard with green and red LEDs indicating how economically the car was being driven.
So yeah, had issues with this car. It seemed to have been designed to be driven as empty as possible.
The conclusion I drew. As soon as there were any passengers or luggage or both, the car was a nightmare to drive.
There were models in the range that performed well, I think, being passed by them on motorways and when trying to drive up any kind of hill showed this to be the truth.
I've read that the standard 1.3 model was pretty good without the economy features, but I never experienced one.
The problem was that the gap in gear ratios in the second and third gear was enormous, as if you'd accidentally skip to gear.
You're changing gear, you're getting up to a reasonable level of revs, you're moving along reasonably well, you change gear.
And the engine goes, oh no, and it can't cope with the ratio of just giving it.
So it only really worked on a flat road. If you were going up a hill, it was dreadful.
You just had to rev it like hell in a lower gear. Or it worked okay if you're going downhill.
Not surprising, no, we had a tailwind, or the car was completely empty. If you had passengers, then you were absolutely shot.
As I was doing the research of this, I was happy to find a link describing these problems.
And I've linked it in the notes, and the guy's description made me laugh. Have a look at yourself if you're interested.
It also brought back the memories, the extreme frustration I experienced this car came to really hate it.
All right, for chugging around town and stuff. But I'm not even back, because Edinburgh's quite a hilly city.
So, you know, there would be times when you'd really be struggling up a hill with this.
So my conclusion was that this particular Maestro model, generally, was a failure.
I think people would agree with that. Anybody who knows anything about it, it was an equal experience with it.
And that's probably why I got it at a good price.
The previous owner was probably keen to get rid of it after a year or so of using it.
And obviously, when I went into the car dealership, they knew a sucker when they saw one.
And I was that fool, for sure.
So, yeah, do your research, I guess, is the thing to learn from that.
I did keep the car for a few years, did a few long journeys in it, and frustratingly.
And eventually replaced it with a voxel Astra, which is another well-known British car.
This was the Mark III, I think, which was, wow, chugging cheese absolutely differently altogether, much nicer.
So, yeah, buying a car without really knowing what it is you're likely to get.
And listening to what salesman tell you was a bitter lesson to learn, but boy did I learn it.
Okay, that's it.
Okay then, bye.
Today's show is released on their creative comments, attribution 4.0 international license.
