History Main / TheAllegedCar

* ''Podcast/FallOfCivilization'': 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.

%% * ''Podcast/FallOfCivilization'': Asmund Kastanrassi builds a ship out of scraps of wood and walrus skins, the only material available on Greenland, and Paul Cooper describes it as a "Frankenstein's monster of a ship." While he does 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.

* ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekLowerDecks'': The ''Cerritos'' is in excellent shape, as a Starfleet vessel, and takes an incredible pounding (especially in "Moist Vessel"), but has shades of this from time to time. As a "second contact" ship, it's considered one of the less prestigious duty postings in the fleet. In the "next episode" preview of "Moist Vessel," the ''Cerritos'' is shown to be worn down somewhat, possibly as an aftereffect of the terraforming fluid she was hit by in the previous episode. She's approximately a decade and a half old, as her registry number would place her as a contemporary with the USS ''[[Series/StarTrekVoyager Voyager]]'' (NCC-74656).

** The most infamous of Alleged Cars in the series is probably the Homer, the CreatorKiller of Powell Motors and named after its lead designer. Operating under the idea that his long-lost half-brother was the embodiment of [[WorkingClassHero the average Joe]], Herb Powell gave Homer sole creative control--unfortunately, being part of the working class is not the same as knowing how to make products for them. The result was a badly overdesigned mishmash with an outrageous pricetag.

* ''Series/SesameStreet'' has the Sloppy Jalopy, the car of choice for [[ThePigPen 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.

* "The Loaner" from ''Film/TheMask'' is given to Stanley as a replacement for his Honda Civic by some unscrupulous mechanics while the latter is being repaired.

* The "Wagon Queen Family Truckster" from ''Film/NationalLampoonsVacation'', a pea-green monstrosity covered in way too much fake wood paneling. "You think you hate it now -- but wait til you drive it!" The engine continues to idle after the keys have been taken out, and the airbag deploys randomly. Rarely for this trope, it's brand new, presumably American, and not cheap.

%% While this can be TruthInTelevision, it's largely the [[TropeBreaker ghost of tropes past]]: it plays off old pre-1980s notions of notoriously unreliable used cars and low-quality imports that tend not to be true today; ironically, older domestics have largely taken their place in the US, as American carmakers became infamous for egregious corner-cutting and shoddy workmanship that persisted up into the late 2000s. Back then owning a car [[MadeInCountryX built in a foreign country]] could be a joke in and of itself and anyone buying a used car was understood to either be barely above poverty or a major cheapskate. Lemon Laws and lawsuits have since [[IncrediblyLamePun driven]] most of the truly decrepit jalopies out of the market. Also worth noting, cars that degrade to the state of disrepair often depicted in an Alleged Car would simply not be street-legal in any modern industrial country with an established vehicle safety code[[note]]In the US, however, states are free to choose whether to have mandatory safety and emissions inspections; states that lack mandatory inspections are far more likely to have some truly terrifying shitboxes on the road[[/note]]. Of course, that doesn't mean [[WhoWouldBeStupidEnough there aren't people who still drive them anyway]], and, as anyone who has owned one can tell you, there are plenty of shady garages that will happily slap an inspection sticker on any old piece of junk or even just sell you the sticker outright, "twenty dollars with an inspection or fifty dollars without one" as the old joke goes. Yes, "easy sticker" garages will usually get audited and lose their license to conduct inspections if misconduct is found, but for every one that gets shut down, there are usually at least three or four to fill in the void.

* The main character's buddy's car in ''VideoGame/ShowtimeAtTheGallows''.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' has Henchman #24's powder blue Nissan Stanza.

* A Chicago icon: The car from the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6TTOx9I6y0 Victory Auto Wreckers]] commercial, in constant rotation (with minor updates) since 1985.

* One of the first favors you have to perform in ''VideoGame/SleepingDogs'' involves driving one of these into the harbor. The owner needs the insurance money to pay her husband's medical bills. Wei suggests selling it before being asked to crash it. The car is in pretty bad shape (one hit would probably render it inoperable) and it's quite obvious no one would buy it for a decent price.

* In ''Literature/TheShipWho Searched'', [[BrainsAndBrawn Tia and Alex]] meet a tramp prospector whose ship tends to fall out of hyperspace, sometimes resulting in unplanned discoveries. Allowed to investigate the ship, they're shocked to see just how patchwork it is, with exposed wiring everywhere and control panels salvaged from a dozen sources. Tia is suprised that it managed hyperspace at all, noting also that a lot of automatic processes were made manual.

* In an episode of the ''WebAnimation/MyLittlePonyEquestriaGirlsDigitalSeries'', 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 CoolCar with the help of their powers

* A subplot in the ''[[Literature/SpiderManTheDarkestHours The Darkest Hours]]'', a Franchise/SpiderMan novel written by Creator/JimButcher, involves Mary Jane Watson-Parker having to take her driving test so she can play Lady Theatre/{{Macbeth}} for a theater company in Atlantic City. She surprises Peter by announcing that she had purchased a rusty, lime-green Gremlin. [[spoiler:The Gremlin also turns out to be a ChekhovsGun; when Spider-Man is almost killed by Mortia the Ancient, MJ ends up ramming into her with the Gremlin while quoting Lady Macbeth.]]

* In Ilya Ilf and Eugene Petrov's ''Literature/TheLittleGoldenCalf'', the Antelope Gnu was essentially what was considered the Alleged Car in the early 1930s Soviet Union. Unknown origins (allegedly Loren-Dietrich), but obviously heavily modified and jury-rigged, working unstably and [[spoiler:finally exploding into small pieces of debris (and being rebuilt)]].

* Music/WeirdAlYankovic's car in "Stop Draggin' My Car Around", which is apparently so bad, the manager at a local disco had it towed for being an eyesore in his parking lot, and later, Al wonders if he can trade it in for a used bicycle.

** The ''Millennium Falcon'' manages to be both this and a CoolShip. It's reputed to be the fastest ship in the galaxy, and it can do [[WhatAPieceOfJunk some amazing things despite its condition]]. But that speed has been achieved at the cost of forcing various important components to withstand much greater stress than they were originally designed for, meaning that something could break under the strain at any moment (sometimes [[ExplosiveOverclocking in a loud and fiery manner]]) and turn its occupants into sitting ducks (usually [[PlotDrivenBreakdown for plot reasons]]). This is most famously used in ''Film/TheEmpireStrikesBack'', where Han and Chewie spend much of the Hoth sequence trying (and failing) to get it into condition to escape from the planet, and once they get into space, they spend a large chunck of the film trying to get the hyperdrive to work. Its status as this even gets weaponized in one of the ExpandedUniverse novels -- because the Falcon is continually being redesigned and repaired, the Empire has three totally different confirmed sensor profiles for the ship gathered over a period of only ''four years'', and as a result have to assume that the bizarre sensor profile being given off by two distant fighters acting as decoy really is the Falcon, luring them away from targets of actual value.

'''Ray:''' Only forty-eight hundred [dollars].[[note]]Roughly $12,000 in 2019 dollars[[/note]]\\

* The card [[https://scryfall.com/card/ncc/58/dodgy-jalopy Dodgy Jalopy]] is a riff on this trope, being one of the few vehicles that is arguably more useful in the graveyard than on the battlefield.

The polar opposite of the CoolCar. Often found on TheRez, in [[BananaRepublic fictional]] [[{{Ruritania}} foreign]] [[{{Qurac}} countries]], or in the parking lot of HonestJohnsDealership. Expect MyCarHatesMe to happen a lot when driving this rusty junker. Compare and contrast SinisterCar, which is 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 DrivesLikeCrazy[[note]] If it does, then [[ThisIsGonnaSuck pray that at least the seat belts work]][[/note]].

* ''Film/OllieHopnoodlesHavenOfBliss'' has the Parker family's 1947 Chevrolet Fleetmaster. The gas station attendant calls it an antique and, judging by the other cars on the road, it's about a decade old during the timeframe of the film, which was practically ancient for a vehicle in 1950s America. The Chevy regularly backfires; the starter spring sticking necessitates rocking the car up and down to free it; overheating is a regular occurrence; the fuel line is leaking; plus the Old Man asking for heaviest motor oil when it's low probably means the worn engine is burning it.