Jeb
I'm sorry, but there's no way this answer can be anything but Life. Running a car with a self-built W12 engine (no, not V12, W12) is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. It was unreliable, heavy and produced barely 450 bhp, compared to the Cosworth DFR V8's output of 630-650 bhp. The team purchased an abandoned chassis from the bankrupt First Racing F1 team, an overweight, dangerous and barely cobbled together chassis that almost melted during testing the previous year and was described by its own constructor as 'nothing more than an interesting flowerpot.' The horrific chassis, paired with an engine less powerful than an F3000 Mugen unit, was a recipe for total disaster. It had spectacularly bad handling, poor aerodynamics and the engine was so underpowered that the Life L190 was barely able to keep up with Formula 3 cars of the time, let alone actual Formula One entrants.
In its first appearance, in the USA, Gary Brabham managed to wrestle it around the track, setting a time more than half a minute slower than the next-slowest pre-qualifier before the battery malfunctioned after four laps. At the next race in Brazil, Brabham barely made it 400 yards out of the pitlane when one of the W12's connecting rods blew. To add insult to injury, the tachometer was non-functional and the team didn't even have its own tire pressure gauge, having to borrow one from fellow pre-qualifying fodder team EuroBrun.
In San Marino, Brabham quit the team and was replaced by veteran Bruno Giacomelli, who was far too good a driver to be piloting this stinking shitheap of an offense to the motorised vehicle. The drivebelt collapsed on Giacomelli's first timed lap: thus, his time of 7 minutes and 16 seconds at an average speed of 25 miles an hour lays claim to the slowest laptime in Formula One history. The Life only ever left the bottom of the pre-qualifying classifications when other cars suffered mechanical problems, and even then it was barely able to set a couple of laps at a time before inevitably retiring itself.
A ray of hope seemed to prevail when team boss Ernesto Vita was convinced to abandon his horrific excuse for a W12 engine in favour of the Judd V8 at the Portuguese Grand Prix, an engine that was actually capable of completing more than a dozen laps without shaking itself apart. Except it didn't, because the chassis wasn't rebuilt to accommodate it properly; the engine cover fell off on its first lap of the Estoril circuit. After two laps of Jerez where Giacomelli was more than 20 seconds of the pace, the Judd engine decided to sacrifice itself for the greater good. The Life L190 came to a stop on the track for the last time, and every F1 fan in the world breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Life folded before the final two rounds of the 1990 season, and the car was snapped up by private collector Lorenzo Prandina. It was unfortunately fully restored in 2009 and ran at at that year's Goodwood Festival of Speed, which is one attribute that it has never been associated with.
Yeah, they were completely garbage; and unlike Lola time obligations weren't their reason for failing, just engineers being in over their heads
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