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Cars/truck/motorcycles (hence forth all vehicles are covered under "cars") you use to get you around. In most cases, and countries, you need them. Let's hear your stories involving cars you have own/owned.[u]

I was inspired to make a post about the cars in our lives and some of the stories surrounding them because, well, for the third time this year my current car is giving me trouble.

See, I leave for vacation on this coming Sunday to head out to California to visit family. My wife and I have had this planned since last year and budgeted for it. Of course, the last week before we leave, the car starts to act up and more than likely requires fixing. We can't fix the car and go on vacation, unfortunately. We also can't return any of the things we prepaid for without destroying our plans and other people's plans, in order to budget the car to get fixed. We would love to get a new car but right now it is not in our budget until possibly the new year.


Yeah this does seem like a post for someone to just whine, which is kind of the point. Cars are a pain in the rear. They have a habit of being a problem when you don't need them to be, for me at least. Cars are not always bad, though.

You may also have some good stories about cars, I want to hear those too. Times your car exceeded your expectations and actually surprised you.


So, by all means, let's hear your car stories.

Used to have a Lotus Elise. Loved that car, it was amazing to drive by my god did it generate some bills... Had it 5 or 6 years, had the head gasket fail on me twice amongst many other things. When I sold it, it had about a £3,000 bill on the way...

Now drive a Ford Fiesta and am bored shitless...

We've had an old Suzuki for a while, ugly as feth but it was a bloody reliable car. We got to 135,000 miles before it finally gave up on us and all it needed in the meantime besides the odd new tyre was a new clutch.

Dad scrapped it a few months ago, bought himself a second-hand Mazda MX5. Beautiful car, got a Niseko special edition, something like 250 ever made. Spotless bodywork, perfect interior and it just blitzes along.

Always been a fan of cars, went to a track day a few years back, got behind the wheel of a Gallardo, MP4-12C and an F430. The Lambo was just terrifying, probably wouldn't ever actually enjoy owning one of those.

Couple of months back my fiance and I were in California. Never driven on the wrong side of the road, but we still decided to hire a car. Went for an ok-ish looking Hyundai in the SF airport terminal, and it drove like a dream. We covered approx 2000 miles in that car and besides a puncture that we had to fix around 1 hour north of Berkeley, it was a fantastic car.

Wife used to own a 2016 Subaru Impreza . . . it was the automatic with CVT. Well, after a couple months we noticed a thing where occasionally, you'd park the car and it would not let you disengage the key to leave. You'd have to put it back in gear, sometimes even so far as actually moving, cycle it back into park before it would disengage.

Then in Sept-Oct of this year, I was getting ready for class one evening and get a call from her, all frantic. . . She's saying that she can't push the brake in, and it refused to go into gear. . . So, I head down there and sure enough. . . the brake pedal feels like someone stuffed a rubber ball under it and it won't go into gear. I mess around with it more, recycling power and eventually send her and the kids home in my car, while taking hers to class. . . During class that evening I did some research on the issue, and took the car in to the dealership the next day.

Turns out there was a "technical bulletin" on both issues, but the damage was done for me, and now she drives "my" old car (a 2018 RAV 4), and I am driving my "new" car (a 2017 GTI that we got used)

My dad's old (early 1990's) Zaporozhets car has finally given up. I have been pressuring him to buy a modern car for as long as I can remember, but those damn Soviet cars just never break. He has had that car since forever and is the kind of guy who never buys something new until the old thing is 100% broken (our other car is also really old). But now finally are getting a new car, and I will get to drive it as well

He is currently looking at a Suzuki Ignis because it is small and relatively cheap, but still has 4-wheel drive. It also looks cool.

Reminded of a car I had when I was 16.

Buick Regal '87. My stepfather gave me the car because he had given each of his kids at least two cars so my mother made him give me one.

When I say gave me a car I mean he gave me a P.O.S. He gave me a Buick Regal '87 with an Oldsmobile 447 Rocket. He disabled all but two of the carburetors because he didn't think I needed all that power. Looking back at it I can say Orks have built better than this car.

So, got the car, and got it legal. First thing I do is hop on the highway and head into town. As soon as I started speeding up to meet highway speeds, car stalls. I'm rolling right out onto the highway losing momentum and hitting a hill. I'm freaking out and get the car started again.

Let a friend's dad look at it and he opens the hood. I watch as he takes a look, shakes his head, then shuts the hood. He tells me that I shouldn't be driving it because parts of the engine had to be hacked off in order to get it to fit into that car. Not only that, there are parts duct taped on, or has a coat hanger wire wrapped around it to keep it from moving.

Apparently it was amazing the car ran at all. But disabling the carburetors like he did was what was causing the engine to stall on the highway.

That was probably the worse car I ever had, but also one that gives me a big chuckle.

I love cars.. The reason I cant afford to have any other hobbies is because of my cars lol...

I have quite a few car stories but Ill tell two here because they are the most memorable.

1. July of 2017 I took a 99 Honda Civic DX (2 door hatchback) on a trade for detailing 2 of my buddies cars (I run a detailing business). This car was a crap box. 260k miles or so, I wouldn't be surprised if the clutch was original, paint had a nice patina to it (it was falling off) and a handful of other things including needing new CV joints. What mattered to me was that it ran, since I needed a daily driver so I could park my 16' Challenger in the garage for the winter. I would say its about a $600 car if I am lucky.

About 3 months ago a different friend called me up and asked if I still had the Civic, which I did, and that the owner of the 1974 Dodge Dart Swinger that he had been storing at his place, that I had been drooling over for about 3 years, was wanting to sell it. I told him there was no way I could afford to buy that car right now, it just wasn't in the cards, but jokingly made the comment that I would trade straight up for the Civic. He told me to bring the Civic and the title that night to his house because he might do just that. I drove it over and sure enough, the guy didn't want the Dart anymore, he was wanting a Civic for his son who just got his license. Long story short, I traded straight across for a 74' Dart with a rebuilt engine (225 slant 6, perfect for a daily driver), new interior, all new suspension, poor quality low dollar paint (she's a good 20 footer lol), and lots of other little things. Probably worth around 4 to 5 grand. Only issue with the car was it had a huge flat spot when you gave it gas from a stop. You would have to feather in the throttle real slow or it would fall on its face and die. After spending HOURS trying to tune this carburetor correctly, I threw in the towel and decided I was just going to order a new carb and see what happens from there since the one I had been working on was new AND the last owner had rebuilt it with the same results. I took the old one off and went to put it in a box in the trunk, and happened to find the original carb that came with the car in another box with some old replaced parts in it. It had been sitting there for at least that 3 years that I knew of the car, and figuring it couldn't be worse than what I had just taken off I decided to put it on and see what happens. So I put this carb on with no gasket (I didn't even scrape the pieces of the old gasket off the intake manifold) and only had 1 bolt to tighten it down as the other one was too long (only 2 bolts to hold the single barrel carb down). Hooked up some of the vacuum lines to the ones that would reach, cranked it for about 10 seconds and it fired and ran like a sewing machine. Absolutely amazing how well it ran, no flat spot, great throttle response, plenty of power etc etc. Ordered a new gasket, found a shorter bolt, hooked everything back up correctly, and its been my daily driver since then. I was really big into classic Mopar Darts and Dusters about 10 years ago and I am thrilled to be back in one again

2: Why Ill never buy another VW

When I was in the Navy I picked up a 1996 VW Passat. It was the I4 model, not the VR6, but it ran well enough and the interior and paint were in perfect shape so I bought it. It took about 2 weeks to find that this car was possessed! It all started when it would randomly start honking. Not like beep beep, but as though someone was holding the horn down. It would start to do it between 9:45 and 10:15 every night, and the only way to get it to stop was to go outside and disconnect the battery. After some investigation, I found that it wasn't the actual horn, it was the pneumatic door lock system. I never figured out what would cause it, or why it did it at those times, but it pissed off everyone in the apartment complex I lived in so I just disconnected the battery every night when I got home. Well, in retaliation for silencing the song of its people, it started doing it when I would drive the car. And, out of spite I am sure, it would only do it when I was sitting at a stop light. Again, the only way to stop it was to pull over and disconnect/reconnect the battery. I have never been flipped off so many times in my life..

To top all of that off, after about 2 months of owning it, it started to die every time I put it in 5th gear. It would run fine shifting 1-4, but as soon as I put it in 5th it would just cut off and die. I ended up parking it when I left for deployment with the battery disconnected. When I got back from underway, a fresh faced e-3 sailor bought it from me since he was a "long time VW fan and knew all about them" and I didn't want to deal with it any more. 5 months after, I get a call from a tow company trying to collect impound fees from me but since I had a valid bill of sale they apologized and told me the previous owner had parked it at an apartment complex when he left for deployment and the apartment manager had finally called the tow company after it was in their parking lot "honking" for 3 days. The guy didn't live in the apartments, apparently he had just left it there. The people at the impound lot managed to get into it with a slim jim and disconnect the battery.

My first car was a 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. I bought it for $1700. It was a decent starter car for a 17-year old, and had the Olds 307 V-8 in it.

Through shear dumb luck it took a beating over the next two years. Hail storm got it, and the insurance company gave me $2300. I pocketed the money and never got the dents fixed. When I registered for college, campus employees backed into me, taking out my quarter panel. They gave me $1200. I pocketed that too. A month later a guy at the grocery store backed into the same quarter panel, and freaked out. He said he couldn't afford another hit on his insurance, and gave me $500 not to report it. I then sold the car for $600 to my friend's little brother.
Owning that car netted me almost $3000 in profit.

IronWarLeg wrote:

2: Why Ill never buy another VW

When I was in the Navy I picked up a 1996 VW Passat. It was the I4 model, not the VR6, but it ran well enough and the interior and paint were in perfect shape so I bought it. It took about 2 weeks to find that this car was possessed! It all started when it would randomly start honking. Not like beep beep, but as though someone was holding the horn down. It would start to do it between 9:45 and 10:15 every night, and the only way to get it to stop was to go outside and disconnect the battery. After some investigation, I found that it wasn't the actual horn, it was the pneumatic door lock system. I never figured out what would cause it, or why it did it at those times, but it pissed off everyone in the apartment complex I lived in so I just disconnected the battery every night when I got home. Well, in retaliation for silencing the song of its people, it started doing it when I would drive the car. And, out of spite I am sure, it would only do it when I was sitting at a stop light. Again, the only way to stop it was to pull over and disconnect/reconnect the battery. I have never been flipped off so many times in my life..

To top all of that off, after about 2 months of owning it, it started to die every time I put it in 5th gear. It would run fine shifting 1-4, but as soon as I put it in 5th it would just cut off and die. I ended up parking it when I left for deployment with the battery disconnected. When I got back from underway, a fresh faced e-3 sailor bought it from me since he was a "long time VW fan and knew all about them" and I didn't want to deal with it any more. 5 months after, I get a call from a tow company trying to collect impound fees from me but since I had a valid bill of sale they apologized and told me the previous owner had parked it at an apartment complex when he left for deployment and the apartment manager had finally called the tow company after it was in their parking lot "honking" for 3 days. The guy didn't live in the apartments, apparently he had just left it there. The people at the impound lot managed to get into it with a slim jim and disconnect the battery.

That was a bit funny. . . Honestly, I think it is something with the Passat line. . . A fellow soldier buddy of mine bought one "new" (technically it was preowned, but was the dealer loaner car, so low miles, great maint.) sometime during November. His was, I think a 2012, and he took his family to his home state of Indiana for Christmas, from Fort Campbell, Kentucky. So, not the longest of round-trips. When he got back, he kept running into electrical problems, took it in, and apparently the wiring harness was pitted and majorly corroded from all the road salt of that trip. .

Of the VW's I've owned, my only complaints are the drone, and seat comfort of the 2014 Jetta TDI. . . So far, my GTI has been great (it also has the droning exhaust note, but once I'm working/have enough money, that will be fixed)

Owned a '87 Mercury Station Wagon, bought from a shop. previous owner told them it had a tranny problem, and if they couldn't fix it they could have it. Transmission was fine. I got it for $600. Turned out the problem was the parking brake was locking up. found out when it tore up the differential and rear axle.
Nice thing about that model year Merc Wagon, could swap parts with a Police Crown Vic. By the time I was done I had replaced the rear axle, water pump, alternator, distributor, radiator, and rims with parts from Police Cars. Oh, and it had the 302 Windsor V-8.
I loved watching tuner boys faces drop when my beat looking old wagon would not only take them at the line but out run them in the quarter mile. Running as "Stock" of course.

 helgrenze wrote:
Owned a '87 Mercury Station Wagon, bought from a shop. previous owner told them it had a tranny problem, and if they couldn't fix it they could have it. Transmission was fine. I got it for $600. Turned out the problem was the parking brake was locking up. found out when it tore up the differential and rear axle.
Nice thing about that model year Merc Wagon, could swap parts with a Police Crown Vic. By the time I was done I had replaced the rear axle, water pump, alternator, distributor, radiator, and rims with parts from Police Cars. Oh, and it had the 302 Windsor V-8.
I loved watching tuner boys faces drop when my beat looking old wagon would not only take them at the line but out run them in the quarter mile. Running as "Stock" of course.

This reminded me of another car I owned.

I was perusing craigslist for a good candidate to take out on the trails, nothing super nice obviously. I came across an 88 Ford Bronco II that had about 40k miles on it and was in fantastic shape, just dusty, and the guy wanted $600 or trade for a rifle he could hunt with. I knew something had to be up with it since it had been sitting for a couple of years and had such low mileage and low price, but I gave the guy a call. Turns out it wouldn't start, would just turn over. They had replaced everything in the fuel and ignition system and still nothing so they parked in in a car port and left it. We ended up working out a deal for an old 25-06 that I had purchased at a pawn shop for about $200 in Texas that I hunted deer with.

I get to his house and we did the deal and he signed the title over to me. As my buddy is backing his trailer down the driveway I asked if they had checked the emergency fuel cut-off in the passenger kick panel. He asked what I was talking about and I showed him the big red button that's behind the kick panel on the passenger side that trips when the vehicle thinks its been in a collision to stop the fuel pump etc. I push it, turned the key over and it fired right up. It ran like crap because of the old gas but I drove it home. Needless to say the dude wasn't happy with himself but he had already signed the title so she came home with me

I have many, many stories.

Probably my "favourite" would be when I travelled up to London to test drive and ultimately buy a new sports car. I live in the South West, so, for non U.K. residents, that's about 3-4 hours into London.

Had a spectacular test drive, which could have been lifted straight out of a video game, including driving down Pall Mall past Buckingham Palace, the Tower Of London and Harrods. Once all the paperwork was completed time was pressing on, so I headed out but wasn't really in a position to do anything to push the car as the light was failing and I was on unfamiliar roads. (Did manage to time passing Stonehenge just as the sun set though.)

The story really begins a few days later.

I decided to head out to visit a buddy who I'd deliberately kept in the dark about my new purchase in order to surprise him (as he's as big a petrol head as me.)

This was the first drive since I'd got home, so once I'd gone a few miles to warm everything up, I decided to open the taps as I left a roundabout onto a nice straight piece of road with a decent speed limit.

I buried the throttle, the car shoots forward and has already hit the speed limit within a few car lengths of leaving the junction.

Then..nothing.

I don't mean the engine, I mean literally everything. Headlights (it was October and already totally dark) brake servos, power steering, interior lights, exterior lights and engine. I'm traveling at around 80mph in a dark box completely unable to see or really control my speed or direction.

I managed to pull into a layby using what can only have been the force and by torchlight discovered what can only be described as a very important fuse had blown, taking essentially everything with it.

Thankfully I wasn't far from my parents house, so a quick phone call bagged me a tow home (the only cost being my dad's irritating smugness and all the "I told you sos" about buying an Italian car.)

Ultimately investigations revealed that the car had been broken into and had its stereo stolen in its previous life. This had damaged the wire loom and, under very specific circumstances, the damaged wire would touch some metal behind the dash and cause a short.

Who'd think that someone nicking the stereo could have nearly resulted in me launching myself through a hedge several years later?

Ok... how about a bonehead moment...

Mercury Mountaineer automatic shift lever on the steering column worked loose. Apparently this is an issue with mid to late 90s Ford Explorer/Mountaineer. Two screws hold it in place from the front and they can work loose and fall out.
I wound up pulling the dash half apart to figure this out (Had to change out some bulbs anyway, so...). Get things back together and …. won't start. Wound up running the battery down. Thought I had triggered some anti theft device or something.
Got a friend to give me a charge and jump. Nada. Fine.
Finally figured just jump the solenoid. It started..... Good thing I had the rear tires chocked...…

I had the silly thing in reverse.

Well, going to have to bite the bullet and dip into the vacation time to fix the car. Seriously kills a lot of our plans but need the car when we get it back.

Most bonehead thing? Putting too much oil in my engine because I over estimated the rate of an oil leak. Next thing I know I am smoking out all of morning traffic in the city.
Then, of course, the car dies a few weeks later because of that.

I'm currently on a streak of repairs for my motorcycle. It all started last week when I somehow lost my key at the grocery store, and messing around with my ignition switch I ended up breaking my brake lever. I walked my bike and my groceries home and ordered a new ignition with new keys and a new brake lever. Yesterday I installed the new ignition switch and brake lever, and in the process of adjusting my brake cable play I somehow broke my speedometer cable where it goes into my front brake cover without realizing it. After driving halfway to work I realized that the speedometer cable had broken off and trailed, and that since the core of it was made of wound wire the wire had unwound and I was trailing about 10 feet of it. I pulled over and just cut it off. There's a new speedometer cable on the way, so if I can manage to install it without breaking something else my streak will be over.

I was driving home from work after dark. I was in a rented Toyota truck. "Rented" because we were paying exorbitant prices - I was working as a study coordinator in Lilongwe, Malawi (anyone ever been there?) and they were the only game in town if you needed a vehicle, but didn't have money to pay the extra-exorbitant fees to have what you needed imported. And "truck" because, well, these folks cut a lot of corners when it comes to things like "safety" and "getting the damn thing running at all".

While I'm sure everyone here is familiar with Lilongwe, I'll give folks a quick primer. This was back in 2000, and Lilongwe, while being the capital of the fine country of Malawi, was a very modest, quiet, sleepy town. When the sun went down, everyone went home. While I believe there were a few streetlights looming over the main north-south road that ran through the capital (the only paved road that ran from one end of this modest city to the other), none of them worked. It was dark. Really dark.

While rounding a corner off this major road onto a smaller road that led to my house, there was a ghastly lurch and the truck bucked into the air, and came crashing down again.

See, when I picked up the truck, one of the arguments I'd gotten into with the kind rental folks was that each wheel should probably have more than two lugnuts to hold them on to the axle. We went back and forth, and it finally became clear that while perhaps in principle he did agree with me, there simply were not enough lugnuts in their shop to accommodate my outlandish request. So. Insufficient lugnuts. What's a guy to do?

The truck crashed down, lower than I recall being normal, and proceeded to grind to a jarring halt on the (now badly rutted) asphalt. Just outside the window, a flash in the dark: my left front wheel had decided it had better things to do and launched itself into the thick foliage alongside the road. The chaos and destruction as this heavy object hurdled through the trees was only evident for a few yards: African jungle is not to be trifled with. So there I was, all alone in the dark on a desolate stretch of Lilongwe road ... but thankfully with my cell phone. If there's one thing we can say about many African countries, it's that their cell phone technology was significantly more advanced than ours was, in the US. My cell phone saved me, and I only had to sit there for 20-30 minutes while my friends came to get me.

When the rental guys came to pick up their mess of a truck, somehow they managed to find a few more lugnuts and they had it repaired and back to us within a few days.

Now ask me about the time Interpol arrested me at 6am after a night of heavy drinking for driving a car that had (unbeknownst to me) been stolen from South Africa and sold to my colleagues in Malawi by a Malawian minister (i.e., someone in the government)... The best part was that the truck had a 'Grand Theft Auto' (the video game) sticker on the back window when we bought it.

Similar thing happened to my dad.

Took his 4x4 to have new tyres fitted and rotated, collected it and drove home.

He had no cause to drive it again until the following evening when he and my mum had some function on in the next town along.

While on his way, the rear wheel was seen overtaking the car and heading on down the road without the rest of them, fortunately not hitting anybody as this was a national speed limit (60mph) road and it was a large wheel with a big tyre on it, anything it struck would have been a severe impact.

Thankfully, as it was a rear wheel, the speed and the fact he could still steer meant the car was relatively stable and he was able to come to something resembling a controlled stop (leaving a substantial groove in the tarmac with his newly exposed brake disc.) Had he been cornering rather than going straight at the time, the outcome could have been quite different.

Amazingly, the garage tried to deny liability because it had occurred the following day, and it took my dad mentioning he worked for a motor insurance company and had the director's permission to use their legal department to fight the case if necessary (which was true, not a bluff) to get them to put it right.

Crispy78 wrote:
Used to have a Lotus Elise. Loved that car, it was amazing to drive by my god did it generate some bills... Had it 5 or 6 years, had the head gasket fail on me twice amongst many other things. When I sold it, it had about a £3,000 bill on the way...

WTF? I though Lotus sourced a Toyota engine & trans for the Elise - dead reliable!

That reminds me of a situation we had with our current car.

We take a four day weekend to Chicago every year and wanted to get some preventive maintenance done on the car before the drive from Michigan to Illinois.

So we took the car to a quicklube place because we didn't have time for our normal garage to do the work. Had an oil change and transmission flush since it was due and we had some extra cash. Got the car in, work done, and out in less than an hour.

Next day we take it to Chicago where we would drive it at least once a day for food and other errands. Eventually we drive it home and during this whole time nothing feels wrong with the car, it is driving just fine.

The next morning I wake up and have to drive out for something, car is driving rough. I have had transmissions go out on me so I know what it feels like when one isn't working right. Brought the car to our local garage and they told me the quicklube place had over filled the transmission fluid causing damage to the transmission.

I ended up having to take the quicklube place to court because they wouldn't own up to the quality of their work and tried to settle out of court for $100. Judge sided with my wife and I in that the car had been in better condition before the quicklube place had worked on it and the work they had done caused damage.

Once, when I was in the Army, one of the HMMWV's came back from our FSC for regular maintenance, but they didn't properly service one of the spindle nuts so the wheel came off just like in Azreal and Pancake's stories. Unfortunately they were cornering at the time, so the entire truck flipped and rolled and all of the soldiers inside ended up in the hospital :(

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:
Used to have a Lotus Elise. Loved that car, it was amazing to drive by my god did it generate some bills... Had it 5 or 6 years, had the head gasket fail on me twice amongst many other things. When I sold it, it had about a £3,000 bill on the way...

WTF? I though Lotus sourced a Toyota engine & trans for the Elise - dead reliable!

Original Elise was the Rover K-series engine. The 3k bill I was expecting was just a lot of consumables all at once though. Was needing tyres, brakes, suspension, plus exhaust manifold and steering rack if I remember rightly... Coming just after the second HGF was rather undiplomatic of it!

Crispy78 wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Crispy78 wrote:
Used to have a Lotus Elise. Loved that car, it was amazing to drive by my god did it generate some bills... Had it 5 or 6 years, had the head gasket fail on me twice amongst many other things. When I sold it, it had about a £3,000 bill on the way...

WTF? I though Lotus sourced a Toyota engine & trans for the Elise - dead reliable!

Original Elise was the Rover K-series engine. The 3k bill I was expecting was just a lot of consumables all at once though. Was needing tyres, brakes, suspension, plus exhaust manifold and steering rack if I remember rightly... Coming just after the second HGF was rather undiplomatic of it!

Ah, thanks for clarifying. That's not unreasonable maintenance. I thought you had to do major engine rework.

Another quick little addition I just remembered.

I used to work part-time in a care home while I was at uni, and as I was one of the few there who had a driving licence, one of the jobs involved using the company vans to take the residents on outings.

The vans were bloody enormous, huge Transit like things weiging several tons once wheelchair lifts and similar equipment had been installed. Never driven something this big before, and the training for this role consided of "Start it up, take it to the end of the road, well done you're ready to drive it". It was a bastard to drive, like trying to steer an aircraft carrier, and I had my fair share of cock-ups with this particular van.

- Scraped it against a bollard when trying to navigate a carpark. Left a 2' gash along one side. I wasn't punished for it as we agreed the signs in the carpark were rather misleading.

- Accidently damaged the roof when a colleague said the van's low enough to enter the parking structure. We checked afterwards and there's another huge scrape along the roof, but we kept it to ourselves as who's going to see it there?

- Almost set fire to it on a trip back from Eastbourne. We were driving along and noticed smoke coming from the wheel arches. Turns out the handbrake had slipped out of place, so it was on by a minute amount, enough for the brakes to apply but not enough for the alarm to go off. Pulled into a supermarket carpart where we let it cool off but saw a tiny bit of flame, so we just poured our drinks on it to extinguish it. Found out afterwards that you shouldn't just chuck water on it but we figured a damaged brake disk is better than a ruined van.


Gave up driving those things after that, especially when it transpired that the company never actually got round to insuring me on the vans. Since then I've refused to drive anything that big.

Before I got my own car I rode around in my brother's 94 green Ford Aerostar we called Smoky. The car would make a perfect 90 degree turn right if you let go of the steering wheel, it was also sentient and hated PT Cruisers.

My first car was a 96 Isuzu Trooper with no catalytic convertor or muffler because they rushed of and fell off on the road somewhere. Had to drive it with the windows open all year round so I wouldn't asphyxiate myself.

Second car was a 2000 Ford Crown Victoria which was a tank but had a lot of electrical issues because it was a Ford.

Third I had a 99 Land Rover Range Rover that had continuous issues with its air suspension. After I got tired of it and replaced the suspension with coils and shocks the head gasket blew.

Fourth was another 99 Crown Vic that also had electrical issues and would shut off randomly in the middle of the road while driving.

Now I have a 2004 Mustang Mach 1 that gives me the occasional problem, but I've come to expect that from Ford... It's a toy so whatever.

My main drivers are my 2011 Nissan Altima for gas mileage and my 2013 Jeep Wrangler for snow and other Jeep stuff. So far I am vary happy with both my Nissan and Jeep.

When I saw this thread I knew someone had to post this video in it.

https://youtu.be/Ldyx3KHOFXw

As to a car story, a long time ago a friend of mine and I were in his car, a black chevette, and those were good cars. We were coming to a stop at a red light when WHAM! We were hit in the ass so hard it threw our chevette forward. My friend was a damn good driver and managed to jerk the wheel hard enough to take off off the road before we rear ended the carn front of us.

We'd been hit by this huge silver and maroon ford, brand new, was being driven by a ford employee in a jumpsuit to a sale point. The front driver's side quarter was a wreck, completely buckled in, light broken, bumper bent.

The chevette we were in sustained no discernible damage at all beyond trivial paint scraping. No dented metal, no damaged rear light, no bent fender, nothing.

I know you won't believe it. Hell, I was in the car when it happened and I still don't believe it. But it happened .

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
When I saw this thread I knew someone had to post this video in it.

https://youtu.be/Ldyx3KHOFXw

As to a car story, a long time ago a friend of mine and I were in his car, a black chevette, and those were good cars. We were coming to a stop at a red light when WHAM! We were hit in the ass so hard it threw our chevette forward. My friend was a damn good driver and managed to jerk the wheel hard enough to take off off the road before we rear ended the carn front of us.

We'd been hit by this huge silver and maroon ford, brand new, was being driven by a ford employee in a jumpsuit to a sale point. The front driver's side quarter was a wreck, completely buckled in, light broken, bumper bent.

The chevette we were in sustained no discernible damage at all beyond trivial paint scraping. No dented metal, no damaged rear light, no bent fender, nothing.

I know you won't believe it. Hell, I was in the car when it happened and I still don't believe it. But it happened .

Something similar happened to me, so I believe it. I went to college in the Midwest. When the late fall/early winter rolled around you knew who the "out of state" students were by how they chose to drive. Ever see someone try to ride to class on a 10-speed racing bicycle with bald tires with pure ice on the ground?

Anyway, people not used to icy roads apparently have no idea they need more room to stop. As I'm stopped, waiting in a parking lot for the road in front of me to clear I get thumped pretty hard in the rear. Mentally swearing to myself I get out of my car to assess the damage and exchange insurance info. I was driving a 1985 Pontiac Grand Prix, which had bumpers you could actually bump. It even had two vertical "push bars" on the rear bumper if you needed to have someone bump you forward. As I'm looking at my car there's a very minor scuff, should come out with a little buffing compound.

I turn to look at the other car...…. Front bumper caved in, hood bent, radiator leaking. There was even a noticeable "t" shaped hole where she hit one of those push bars. This lady just couldn't stop screeching "Muh Caw, muh Caw". As I had no damage I just jumped in and took off. Technically leaving the scene of an accident, but all her fault anyway.