Humans are squishy, flawed creatures. Our imperfections are part of what makes us so interesting! But the little things that make us human can also be a real pain in the backside. Sometimes you might put something on top of your car and then proceed to forget it’s there. Who knows how far you might drive before you realize you’ve screwed up. Have you ever left something on top of your car? If so, what did you lose?
I am a very forgetful person. I can take down an important note in my head one minute and forget it the next minute. Sometimes it’s unimportant stuff, like a song I just heard, and sometimes it’s something important, like the date of my niece’s birthday party. Sorry, Porsche (not her real name). I’ve also forgotten more awesome headlines and story ideas than I’m willing to admit.
Thankfully, I combat that nowadays by jotting things down in a notes app as soon as things come to mind. Sadly, I guess I don’t do that for forgetting things on top of cars.
So far as I can remember, I’ve thus far left a phone on my car’s roof twice and a debit card on my roof twice. The worst one happened last year when I took a road trip to Florida in my old 2010 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI. I stopped at the Buc-ee’s in Calhoun, Georgia, snapping the picture below. I didn’t get fuel here, but a brisket sandwich and some Red Bull. I then proceeded to drive about 200 miles south, making it well past Atlanta.
As I was jamming out to some tunes and troubleshooting an underboost issue, it hit me that I didn’t remember where I put my card. Ah, “it’s fine,” I thought, I’ll just stick my hand in my purse’s card slot and it’ll be there. Uh oh.
Panic slowly crept in. I was carving some curves earlier, maybe I tossed the card on the floor? I searched the entire car and found nothing. That’s when I made a startling realization. I most likely left the card on the roof while I left that Buc-ee’s. But it was now around three hours later and around 180 miles of distance. I then looked at the fuel gauge in the Jetta. It showed that if I turned around right away, I’d make it back to the Buc-ee’s with only 20 miles of range to spare. Those gauges are notoriously incorrect and the car’s turbo wasn’t boosting as it should have been, but I technically had enough fuel to make it.
I called my wife, turned around, and drove the slowest, quietest highway drive of my life. If that card wasn’t there I was boned. I already accidentally forgot my credit card and emergency cash at home and I was traveling solo in an area where I had no relatives and no friends. Sure, I could have used my phone for any NFC-based transactions, but that wasn’t going to work for a hotel room.
Those 180 miles felt like they could have been 1,800 miles. When I arrived at the Buc-ee’s, the Jetta’s range estimator showed a big fat zero miles. None of the employees saw my card and it wasn’t at the pump, either. In my desperation, I also searched the trash cans, even though I knew they had been emptied.
I got so desperate that I started searching the street leading from the Buc-ee’s to the interstate (above). Sure enough, I saw my card sitting in the middle of a frontage road.
It had gotten run over by countless cars, but it was in ok shape and nobody spent a dime. The Buc-ee’s people were shocked. Let’s say I’ve since made sure something like that never happened again.
[Editor’s Note: I’m not sure this counts, but I once lost an entire re-upholstered armchair from the roof of my Beetle. 
And I know we’ve all driven off with beverages on our roofs, but I happen to have me doing so on video:
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Man, that’s embarassing. – JT]
How about you? What have you lost on top of your car?
My phone, but luckily it’s not a loss story. I put my phone on my roof while distracted by something. Got in the car and drove to town. Didn’t notice anything because my phone was still paired to the car by bluetooth. But when I got out I realized I didn’t have my phone, but my car said it was paired. That’s when I remembered I sat it on the roof. Rubberized case for the win, it didn’t slide off.
not on the roof, but i forgot to take the lug nut socket off the lug nuts when going on a test drive.I found it on a sewer grate in the neighborhood after walking twice by it.
Did the same thing, luckily my neighbor saw it fall off.
I learned a long time ago that when I place anything on my car I put it on the hood or lean it against the windshield so I see it before I drive away. However, last summer I put a fishing rod on the top of my car and I remember having a little conversation with myself. “Don’t put it up there, you’ll forget it. No way! I’ll remember it, it’s my favorite rod”. I guess it wasn’t all bad because now I have a new rod and reel.
Roof? do other places count? I was on a road trip all the way to canada, drove like 13 hours one way, I lost a phone inside the car(2 seater convertible) somehow it hot wedged between the seat rail and the side sill… hard to explain – that space was barely enough for the phone to get. in., it was a flip phone no less, and I thought it was on the roof and flew off or something. I got a replacement sim, and a new phone, only to find it like 6 months later. I was still happy to find it – back in those days you would keep the address book in the sim card 🙂
I can tell you the strangest thing that didn’t leave the roof. I was visiting my father in DC, and we were going to the eastern shore of MD in his Triumph TR-7. We stopped for fuel, got a couple of drinks and set them on the roof of the car while we fueled up. We hopped in and took off. A few minutes later I wondered where my drink was (this was in the 70s, so paper cups with lids, no fancy plastic bottles.) We were on the bridge over the Chesapeake Bay, so we couldn’t immediately stop. We finally got to the other side, got out, and our two cups were right there on top of the car, with the water ring providing enough suction to keep them there.
Not the roof, but is was once missing a set of keys for about 2 weeks. Had to use my spares to get anywhere. Popped the hood on my car to check the fluids an lo and behold, there they were setting on the cowl beside the wiper arm. Must have set them at the base of the windshield and forgot.
Set a Nokia cell phone on the roof (2002 or so) and drove off once. Realized my error and drove back. Found it in the ditch beside the read, a bit beat up but working.
If it was one of those Nokia bricks, we would have been more surprised if you had broke it.
The electrical system in my Lotus has a drain so I have a battery tender I plug into an outlet at home. Normally I disconnect it near the battery but one time I forgot and drove off with the electrical cord still hanging out of my trunk (which yanked itself out of the wall outlet) so it was dragging on the ground behind me. I couldn’t see the cord in my mirror, but another driver alerted me. No damage.
Once again, a minivan is a great solution. The roof is so tall it’s not convenient to place anything on there.
Minivan owner here.
But it’s not tall enough to prevent me from putting crap on the roof.
The first day that the iPhone went on sale, I went to the all night Apple store across from the Plaza hotel in the space where the Autopub used to be at the foot of the GM building at about two in the morning. It was something of a scene, hundreds of people, the majority of whom looked like they had just arrived from a dinner party or a disco. The store had twenty lines and was selling by my count over a hundred phones a minute.
My sister in law said that if I got one she wanted one too. There was a limit of two per customer, so that was no problem. She was renting a house in Amagansett, the one right next to the fire station with that fucking siren right outside the bedroom window that would go off every noon if you are familiar with Amagansett.
So I get the phone set up for her, and we drive to this lobster roll place that’s out near Montauk. So of course she had put the phone on the roof of our station wagon and it fell off somewhere on the way. We called the phone about every 20 minutes and later that afternoon somebody answered it., They said that their kid found it on the way to the beach.
I think it was about ten years before we stopped asking her to check the roof when we drove her anywhere.
Oh, did you know that sometimes you can start a car with one of those key fobs that is on the roof? You’ll never guess how I know.
This didn’t happen to me, but it’s worth sharing.
My friend’s parents ued to be gold merchants. Basically they went around my region (North of Portugal) biuying and selling gold earings, necklaces, this kind of stuff.
He would stop the car, put the briefcase on the roof of his car and do his business that way.
As you can imagine by now, after one exchange he left with the case on the roof and it just fell off.
I don’t remember the rest of the details, but i beleieve he never found it again.
He still works in that field; he has a shop in my village.
Gas cap, in my old Datsun truck. Pulled up to the pump, took the cap off, set it on the edge of the truck bed, went to prepay, discovered I had left my wallet at home, drove home without putting the cap back. Noticed it halfway home when I saw the flap sticking out. Cap could have fallen into the bed… but apparently it didn’t.
As a kid, we had a stack of library books on top of the car. Some other drivers flagged us down, so no worse for wear.
On a drive up to Mt. Hood to start the Hood to Coast Relay, the rooftop carrier opened and I lost my warm weather sleeping bag. That wasn’t fun.
On an episode of Jackass, they put a baby car seat on the roof of a car (no baby in it) and drove around a mall parking lot, with people chasing after them.
Phone.
Twice.
On one occasion, it was driven over many times and left to die. The other time…
Getting kids into the backseat was hectic, but no excuses.
I noticed it wasn’t at work, but figured I had left it at home.
Wasn’t at home.
Got home.
Wife did a ‘Find my phone’ or whatever, and it showed to be on the road about a mile and a half from our house.
It had been 98 degrees that day, and this thing was sitting dead center in the middle of the two yellow lines, still running.
But never a beverage, book, map, or anything else.
Weird.
My 90’s Arnette Catfish sunglasses in metallic red were left on the roof of my 1989 XJ Cherokee in the parking lot of the Glenwood Springs hot springs in 1999. I have never forgotten. By the time I realized it, I was almost to Denver and nobody else wanted to turn back. RIP Catfish sunglasses.
My family and I were traveling from Guam to Charleston via Travis AFB in the early 80’s.
Me, a 10 year old roadmap freak left the Rand McNally atlas on the roof of dad’s Chevy Vega and we took off from our stop in Tucson eastward.
I discovered the map was missing around the NM state line and my dad, who was almost always uber cool double backed to our motel to retrieve it and there it was… laying and spread open in the parking lot of the Days Inn.
I misread “NM” as “MN” and thought, “How did this little roadmap freak let it get so far?? And what kind of a dad is this?!”
(written within eyeshot of a curled and faded 1993 Rand McNally owned by my now-deceased dad and poured over by the two of us countless times as we traced and re-traced my touring adventures)
Definitely never. The roof is not an appropriate place to put things. Coffee cups, groceries, etc. will all scratch the paint. As a detailer, some of the deepest scratches I see are on the roof closest to the drivers door. Don’t place items on your vehicle roofs people!
Exceptions can be made if your car has a sunroof – the glass is very hard and unlikely to get scratched.
This is the right answer. I have never used my roof as a table and I’ve never had to worry about forgetting something there when driving off.
Ding ding ding! This is the right answer. Nothing ever, on any painted surface.
This is fascinating, but I suppose not entirely surprising.
At the same time, I’m giggling because my VW had a giant rust hole in a door sill and the tailgate was slowly dissolving. The great thing about a shitbox is that you no longer care about such things as pretty paint because the paint has already been ruined!
Oh yeah, if your car is literally rusting apart, then worrying about a cup on the roof is probably not a high priority lol.
People absentmindedly do terrible things to their car’s paint all the time. Resting things on the trunk? Nooooo! Dragging items on the bumper to get them out of their SUV? Just installed some irreparable gouges. Sitting on any part of the vehicle will scratch the daylights out of it. People do this stuff so casually without realizing the serious damage they are inflicting.
Well try telling that to the goats that keep climbing up there.
Myself and four friends once used the driver armrest of my van as a step-stool to get on top of the van and sit across one side of the roof with our legs dangling for an album photoshoot.
Good times. Luckily squishy humans didn’t seem to leave any marks or damage to the paint. (I did wipe down the armrest later, though.)
On the other hand, a 7-foot-tall van doesn’t have to worry so much about being a convenient place to put things down on a regular basis.
The solution is to not have a roof to begin with, thanks convertible 🙂
But with non convertibles the few times I’ve left bottles and cups on the roof I caught it before taking off, usually because I was thirsty.
“Lost” a Christmas tree. Went tree shopping with the wife and kids long ago in a 1978 FIAT 131 Wagon (lime green). Found the perfect tree and tied it to the roof rack and headed home. At around 60mph the ropes all broke and the tree went flying right in front of and UNDER the car behind us. Behold “The Road Kill Tree” that we all still laugh about today and it didn’t look half bad fully decorated.
Had the same thing happen here but in a 1991 Buick Roadmaster wagon. Now I use heavy duty cargo straps to hold down the Christmas tree.
Sounds like something Clark Griswold would do ha ha
Yeah, the best stories are the ones you can laugh about now
None/nothing, but only because I have forced myself to have extremely strong habits because I know how quickly things fall out of my brain. I lost my earbuds for two weeks and the day I gave up and bought another pair, I found them in a dash pocket in the truck, where they never ever (normally) go. I’ll lose tools in my hand, etc etc. I have to chant bolt sizings and the tool I intend to get like mantras or I will forget been the house and the shed.
Only once, driving home from college one weekend, though not technically the roof. My Saab has a spoiler right under the rear window, and it’s the perfect place to set the gas cap while filling up. Well, I forgot to put it back on, and realised my mistake about 130 miles later when I got home. Luckily we have a whole line of parts cars, so it was a trivial thing to replace.
Ready for some convertible weirdness/realness?
I have, at various times while cleaning the car, put spray bottles of cleaner or cleaning towels on the roof of the car – then lowered the power top from within the car – and later wondered where that bottle of cleaner or towel went…
…only for them to be revealed days or weeks later when it’s become necessary to put the roof up again – and voila!
Nothing that I can swear to, but I have mysteriously lost things without a clue as to where they went so you never know
Only thing I’ve lost was a nice digital tire pressure gauge in its black carrying pouch. Wasn’t left on the roof of my car, but the little nook at the bottom on the windshield between the engine hood and wiper area of the Honda Accord I had at the time (10 years ago). Which is predominantly dark black, hence why I probably didn’t see it when, after I was checking my tires and must have placed it there, later drove somewhere it must have fallen off. I looked everywhere close to where we were living, but never found it. Figured somebody picked it up.