rev up your engines today I'm gonna talk about one of the worst cars ever made
the PT cruisers now PT stands for personal transport it turns out that
Chrysler was trying to pull a fast one a call it a truck to try to raise the
average cafe gas mileage in the United States but it didn't work out that way
so it's still classified as a car not an SUV not as a truck now these PT Cruisers
were produced from 2001 to 2009 it's particular one is the 2003 and right
from the gate big mistake every single one of those was produced in Mexico now
here's why she listened to Scotty and not to these nuts in magazines and
Award winners it was acclaimed at one of the best 10
cars in the years when it first came out and they called it the North American
Car of the Year now come on now you come out with a new model it's made in Mexico
how can you call it the car of the year what are the top 10 cars come on now yes
we do have the advantage of hindsight it's now 2019 well at least it was when I
made this video in the future it'll be later but at least you'll understand back when
they were making these things they had no idea how they were gonna last you
call it car of the year top 10 car they just started making them you got no idea
what kind of qualities in them no not being a Chrysler fan even back in 2001 I
didn't expect much from these things but I really didn't expect them to be as bad
as they came out let's start on the hood you know the plastic crap yes plastic
everywhere it cracks it breaks look at the cheap faded bumper supposed to be
black no it's white that's more than just superficial stuff with these these
engines are notorious for blowing head gaskets all the time they overheat I'd
say at least eight out of ten wants to come here with overheating problems
first thing I do is use my block link test find out yep that gaskets blowing I
said just get rid of the car don't go any further
yeah they look cute it's how they sold 1.3 million in these clunkers but man
looks can be deceiving in this case aside from the engines blowing head
gasket the automatic transmissions we're basically garbage one they could barely
get out of their own way even though they kept trying to make the engines a
little bit bigger and a little bit bigger they never were all that fast but
Americans mainly drive automatic transmission and this car man it had one
clunker transmission this particular one to 2003 PT Cruiser has amazing a little
four-speed automatic it's 3 speeds with an overdrive on it you know they don't
have much acceleration they don't get very good gas mileage for a car this
size either this particular one gets in the teens and stop-and-go traffic it's
about 18 miles a gallon now Chrysler's quality control actually
the ones made in Mexico hey it's notorious for being horrible those dodge
neons were made by them they were horrid is no exception if you ever made the
mistake of buying a faster one the one that's turbocharged
whoo that's just turbo charges the head gas keep blowing faster that head gasket
will blow so fast with the turbocharger on them I've seen them go with as little as
40,000 miles and that goes the engine basically comes back to pretty much a
chrysler paradigm they often make good-looking cars
it's just fall apart you want a lawn ornament a parking on your a lawn it
looks cool you know but driving it every day for hundreds of thousands of miles
you can forget that unless you got deep pockets to keep fixing it heck even the
heaters on these things break down there's the cheaper heater car and the
stupid things either clogged up or leaking you gotta get the whole dash apart to
replace them and here's the part I really don't understand when this thing
was brand new a base model was three thousand dollars more than a four-door
Toyota Corolla yeah back then the Corolla didn't have the cool gangster
styling of his PT Cruiser but it wouldn't run circles around these things
there you go three four hundred thousand miles or more and this thing cheer
you're lucky to get 80 or 90 before the engine blows if you ever owned a
Chrysler Neon you were probably smart enough to realize I'm not gonna buy its
replacement because the original one was bad enough they were handy seats going
on in the back you got all kinds of space to throw crap
in like my customer has all their junk in there it makes a big Locker good
storage area but has a vehicle for dependable transportation this is one of
the last things you never want to buy now this one's got a hundred and
eighteen thousand miles and believe me it's on its last legs we'll start it up
you can hear her squeak a nerve and in the back you can hear the muffler
vibrating they just had poor cheap build quality anybody in their right mind that
would say this is North American Car of the Year what are the top ten vehicles
of that year they got rocks in their head at least if they were honest now I
mean if they're in the old paola what the heck a lot of people do that these
days old Scotty knows they'll tell you the truth about these things I have no
ulterior motives other than showing people what's out there what's good
what's bad over the years I've had a lot of women buy these because they thought
they looked cute just like the minis the buy them because they think they look cute
only to find out that cuteness is hiding an endless money pit under the hood six
months ago out of customer buy used one and nit was a convertible they actually turned some
of these into convertibles he had just bought the vehicle for like nine hundred
dollars brought it to me couple months after he bought it said what's wrong and
there was a typical PT Cruiser the head gasket was blowing and it had overheated
he put some of the sealer in it he bought an autozone we're pretty good the
bar sealer for head gasket leaks and he just got rid of thing you said sure I'm
not going any further on and you're gonna even see look in here it's a small
engine but there wasn't much working room pennies plastic intake manifolds
they crack and warp all the time besides from the engine head gaskets blowing and
their air conditioning compressor is a notorious clunkers that break down after
a short period of time hey these things are made in Mexico you
think at least have good air conditioning it gets hot down there you know it's like
ages ago the Germans that cars had horrible air conditioning systems a hot
day in Dusseldorf is probably like 75 degrees now the Germans make better air
conditioning systems no arguing that but this hey supposedly an American car you
think they could have put good I see but no it was just the usual chrylser
crap that would blow up and the compressors would blow up long before
their time the condensers they used on were a little bit too small so they
didn't cool it down right so the compressors would always run hotter than
other cars and then go on I've seen that so many times not just on the PT Cruiser
but in many Chrysler products they tried to make them too cheap to save money
then they don't hold up over time in this case it's a truism marketing
trumped engineering and manufacturing in his PT Cruiser so don't be suckered by
oh look it's a cute little car maybe I'll get one for my kid to go to high
school and don't the engine problems the transmission problems their conditioning
problems the heating problems the electrical problems that these things
had it's truly amazing that Chrysler suckered 1.3 million people to buy these
things now eventually they stopped making them in 2009 people wised up and
I guess Chrysler figured hey the jig's up we can't fool people anymore there's
such a bad reputation nobody's going to be buying these things anymore
these SUV type vehicles crossovers they're so popular these days to fail at
selling a model that tells you there were problems and problems on top of
problems which PT Cruisers which leads me to the old joke why did it make a PT
Cruiser so I could comfortably hold five people well that's so four of them can
get out and push it while the fifth person steers the car to the nearest
garage so now you know the truth about the PT Cruiser and why you'd really have
to be out of your mind to buy one of these things used today
and here's some bonus questions and answers average guy says I've
learned a lot it's nice to see an honest mechanic there's a lot of junk out there
I'm thinking about getting another vehicle I got three choices a 3.6 liter
Ford Edge 4.0 Nissan Frontier and on the CRV EXL alright crv hands down that's
better than any of those by far out of
those three that is the most wise choice I've got customer with CRVs that have
400 something thousand miles on them they're still running down the road yeah
they might make a little noise and bounce around a bit but they're still
going down the road with original engines original transmissions get the
Honda CRV those things really can last a long time and you didn't say whether you
get new or used but you know if you're talking about buying new definitely get
the Honda because it can just last and last I like to rav4 is too but the crv and rav4 their kind of neck and neck connect they're pretty good vehicles if
if you like the CRV go ahead and get it don't get the other one especially
not the Nissan they don't hold up in the Ford Edge it's a decent vehicle but it's
not gonna last near as long as the CRV well Bob a42 says I got an 08
trailblazer with a bad wheel bearing in the front driver's side I replace and
still have the noise that's a problem with noises you know you never know
exactly where to come for I've had customers say hey I got this noise in
the front and then I find out that it's a wheel bearing in the back that making
a noise noise travels around so what you want to do is I got a video finding the
source of car noises what I use is this sound listening machine for sending
units they're like little transmitters and they have magnets and straps on you
put them in different areas of the car then the receiving unit which is like a
radio is in the car and you were headphones and it's got clicks that go
one two three four so you can go from each sending unit to here where the
noise is coming from then you know with yours it can very well be that the other
wheel bearings worn to or that that was the noise in the first place that's why
if you really want to fix a noise your best to pinpoint it perfectly before you
start and the problem with wheel bearings are a lot of people say well
checked up now I pull the wheel it didn't wobble so the wheel bearings okay
ah that's a mistake because wheel bearings when they first wear and first
start to make noise a lot of times it will have no play at all and they'll
only make noise when you're on the road driving with the weight of the car then
they won't even make a noise when you Jack it up and spin so you got a
listening device you can hook it up drive it down the road with the weight
of the car on it you can count which side is making a noise and fix that side
so I'd say have that done first and somebody
puts it on the other side and says the noise is coming from the other side then
change the other wheel bearings, so if you never want to miss another one of my
new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell