My original phrasing for today’s Autopian Asks question was “What Car Most Wants To Kill You,” to which Mark Tucker (your friendly neighborhood Shitbox Showdown scribe) answered “Christine,” the possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury that causes so much mayhem in Stephen King’s famous novel and John Carpenter’s 1983 hot-rod horror adaption of the same, Janice. (No, both book and film were called Christine. I just wanted to see if you were paying attention). Now, Christine surely did some killing, but you had to cross Christine in order to become a target. So I would say the car most likely to kill you (in the spirit of Mark’s interpretation of the question) is The Car from the film The Car – which was also possessed, making me wonder if it’s not time we had a car-exorcism movie. A couple of priests screaming at an Austin Healey for two hours in an effort to get demons out of the electrical system? I’d watch.
OK, let’s get back on track. What I was looking for with my original Q was cars that are dangerous to you as a driver, not dangerous to you as a teenager in a 70s or 80s B-movie – which is probably why David sagely reworded the question. But still, Christine works. Or at least a 1958 Plymouth Fury works as a most dangerous car, as does virtually anything from the era of metal dashboards, optional seatbelts, and non-telescoping steering columns. Of course, you need to get into an accident before any of that stuff matters, and if you’re driving like a person making any effort to stay alive, a vintage machine like the big Fury isn’t likely to bite you.
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As for cars that do seem hell-bent on putting drivers into ditches, around poles, and up against Jersey barriers, two big offenders come to my mind: Porsche 911s, particularly of the air-cooled variety through the mid-70s at the very least, and the original Dodge Viper (or all of them, but especially the OG). As anyone who professes to know cars will tell you, those 911s liked to get very loose when lifting off the gas mid-corner, and many a Porsche pilot looped their machines as they learned this the hard way (Not this guy in the first episode of CHiPs though – bro can drive). And the Dodge Viper, well … Viper gonna Viper. Maybe you just burn the bejeezus out of your calves on the side pipes, maybe you spin on cold tires into oncoming traffic, maybe you need to get a foot full of brakes and torpedo into the median, ‘cuz the Viper landed in showrooms with ten cylinders and zero antilock brakes (or any other electronic stability doodads).
Now you tell us: What’s The Most Dangerous Car To Drive?
Top graphic image: Christine/Columbia Pictures
I have a “Safety Third” sticker on the windshield of my Honda Acty where an inspection sticker would normally go. Because it’s got no airbags nor anti-lock brakes and the crumple zones are your legs.
Easy. The The 1911 Graf & Stift 28/32 PS Double Phaeton driven by Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Didn’t work out well for anyone involved.
Close second goes to the Bonnie & Clyde’s Ford V8. That think is definitely weak to bullets.
I don’t believe the driver of Ferdinand’s car was killed that day
I mean, outside of maybe the presidential limo I don’t think anything would survive getting mag dumped by a half dozen BARs. Even today the highest level bulletproof glass is rated for only a single 30.06 (what BARs shot) or .50 BMG, with the realistic capability being just a few hits. Bonnie and Clyde’s Ford had 112 bullet holes in it.
A Mustang leaving a Cars & Coffee.
It may not want to kill you, but everyone around you is fair game.
Old vehicles in general. Cars that do not have the safety we have come to expect from modern vehicles and on top of that have decades of worn/failing parts and possible corrosion issues weakening the already questionable crash structure. This is in addition to things like undersized and non powered brakes, mushy suspension, and lazy steering. They don’t make them like they used to, thank God. Don’t get me wrong I absolutely love my classic pickup, but am fully aware that if I end up in a wreck in it I’m likely to be a red smear on the pavement.
I had a Brunton V-6 Stalker, which was dangerous enough. Then I drove a friend’s Brunton Super Stalker with a 450 HP crate LS and weighing about 1700 lbs. There is nothing around you and lots of aluminum sheeting ready to cut you in half. Dangerous doesn’t even begin to describe that experience.
Soccer moms hauling 20 kids in their four ton suburbans while texting. Suburban is usually going to be white. Not sure if soccer moms know that they actually come in other colors.
Complete with stickers about Jesus and being blessed.
And stick people/pets.
And sport stickers with their kids name/number.
HE>i?
You’ve just described the Oklahoma suburbs to a “T.” Sub a white Range Rover for the gated neighborhoods.
Military spec UAZ – soviet design from the 60’s or so. Jeep/tractor driving dynamics, drum brakes, lung collapsing steering column, cramped metal interior, no roll over protection to speak of – ”vinyl roof”, tyres probably from the GDR, seat belts – can’t remember. Ok, probably some aspects have been updated since the 70’s, so lets add a modern bonus – being chased by an Ukrainian FPV drone.
All of the trucks and oversize SUVs ‘driven’ by detached drivers. I drive a car. That is a battle of mass that I will lose.
Yeah, I was going to argue for a vehicle with terrible external safety. A lifted pickup with a short driver that can’t see kids in the crosswalk on the way to school, has misaligned headlights dazzling sedan drivers, and an attitude of invincibility that makes them drive dangerously.
Whoops! Mis-read the question. I guess any car I am driving that can’t get out of the way of the bigger ones.
Didn’t the turbo MR2 have the same kind of reputation for flinging off the road as Porsches and Vipers? They are so rare now.
I think someone I knew lost control of one on a curved on ramp, said the camber was the issue. Easy to assume hard acceleration while turning, also known as fun.
I had a non-turbo SW20 MR2. I absolutely loved that car.
It’s also the only car I’ve spun on a public road. I wasn’t going fast, it was just an average drive to work, and then I was suddenly facing the wrong way. Nothing wrong with it, no flat tyre or sticky brake.
The Silverado EV with WOW mode activated, it pulls so hard that the car has torque steer on all 4 wheels since the rear steering is also active, the thing went like / but also going straight, it was the weirdest feel. Insane amount of power for such a heavy vehicle.
Any fast EV. The darn things are Q-ships. They have a lot of horsepower. More relevant, instant torque. They accelerate really quickly at legal speeds when the juice pedal is mashed. If the driver isn’t ready for the level of acceleration, bad things can happen in a hurry. Most drivers have zero idea how to correct for an oversteer or understeer situation.
The other problem is that you are entirely in the hands of the software once things go sideways. There’s no jamming the clutch down and steering in to it, you just have to hope they programmed in a response to your level of panic.
I’ve had my share of dangerous vehicles in one form or another, but I’m going to call out my 1980 Olds Diesel Custom Cruiser wagon, because in perfect, pristine, and new condition fresh from the factory, it was dangerously slow.
Merging into traffic? Making a turn from a stop? Just getting out of the way? Its the stuff of nightmares…
“FSD” will literally kill you
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/tesla-was-running-on-autopilot-moments-before-deadly-virginia-crash-sheriffs-office-says/3492662/
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/05/feds-autopilot-was-active-during-deadly-march-tesla-crash/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tesla_Autopilot_crashes
Anything with level 2 “autonomy”, the better it is the more dangerous it gets.
That said, my MX5 that I bought as an ex-race car with its welded up cast iron brake callipers and brake discs spaced out on stacks of washers could have killed me at any time. Shocking level of bodgery.
Sometimes it’s the car just yearning to eject it’s teenage drivers who are abusing it. Any shitbox car driven by a teen, at night, in the woods, with an empty bag of Fucks left to give. That is a car that is probably going to hurt you in some unforeseen way.
This. Too many of my teenage friends ate it like this in the 90s in clapped out poor handling J-cars and rebadged captive imports on dark wet wind-y roads in north jersey
You think the 90’s were bad? I was in high school in the 1st half of the 80’s, when 60’s-70’s muscle cars were just cheap, used cars. A couple of friends died racing in a first-gen Camaro. Another friend almost bit it in a fox-Capri RS. I cooked the drum brakes on a ’77 Mercury Monarch going downhill with too many teens inside (who says you need three rows to seat 7 people?!?). Not to let Detroit muscle have all the gory, I almost killed myself rolling a ’75 Triumph Spitfire around a curve.
Exactly, 10 people in a 1989 XJ Cherokee going 110 on I-84. Taking a 1986 Buick Century on a dirt road rally stage and sliding into a ditch, denting but not puncturing the gas tank. Floating a 1987 Subaru GL wagon across a river and jumping it. These vehicles should have killed us, but somehow we survived. I know those roads you speak of. I grew up in Poughkeepsie NY and was always in the Catskills going way too fast.
Any project car you buy, specifically on the drive home after you exchange cash. It is going to be dedicated to taking your life because you don’t know it and it doesn’t know you.
When you’re test driving it, the endorphins are running. You don’t notice that brake peddle is mushy, or it wanted to stall out on when it hit a bump in the road. Worst, you overlooked or talked yourself out of a potential major issue.
After you pay for it, and you’re driving home, thats when your car gets super super sketchy. That mushy brake gets even worse and you nearly bounce off of a guardrail. The engine is at running temp for 30min and that random wanting to stall out turns out that its a bigger electrical gremlin and the car dies out.
Or, that random whooshing you heard behind the dashboard turns out to be a bad headgasket and it overheats a few minutes from your house.
This feels oddly specific. I sense a deeper story here.
How did you guess? lol Its a combo of 2 project car purchases. I didn’t even mention the parts car I bought and drove home 5+ hours across PA after it sat for 10+ years.
Project number 1 was a 91 Trans Am GTA. I got it for a song. Mint, under 100k miles. I noticed on the test drive that it had an odd stumble going over a speed bump. But being 22, having $3k in your pocket and about to buy a muscle car, I didn’t care. I bought it and drove it from middle of Ohio back to Pittsburgh. I was about an hour from my apartment when I hit a pot hole doing about 65-70….at night. Well, the car shut off.I lost power steering and hand to stand on the brake pedal to get it start slowing down. I was lucky enough to get it in the shoulder unscathed, but with brown shorts. Put it in park. Turned the key. Fired right up…… Dafuq. Turns out there were some loose wires going to the IAC and I guess something shorted something and killed the car. Oh and that mushy pedal was the beginning of the master cylinder going bad. Both were easy fixes but damn.
Project number 2 is an 02 Grand Cherokee WJ. I bought it as a project to build into a more dedicated offroader. Nostalgia hit me and the fact it was spotless caused me to overlook the fact it had a bad headgasket. It had the woosh behind the dashboard when I test drove it, but it pulled fine, didn’t smoke at all, and ran great. On the way home, I noticed it starting to overheat, which can be a death knell for an 4.7. I got it home, and thats when I noticed some weird things, like the wrong coolant, the wrong radiator cap, and a new radiator. Cap was easy enough to fix, but Blackstone labs confirmed the HG leak about 2 months later. Its been a resident of my garage since 22. If I sold it, it would probably end up at the junkyard and i don’t have the confidence that I can fix it. So it sits there. on a trickle charger with Stabil in the tank…..
My COVID project vehicle was a 1979 Jeep J10 I purchased in Woodland Park, CO that I decided to drive home 40ish miles by the shortest route possible, which was also has significantly less traffic then the one paved option. That meant driving down Mt Herman Road in an untested vehicle.
https://youtu.be/bjQ0jCeAtqw
The previous owner had “rescued” this truck out of a barn that had been sitting for 15+ years and got it running just enough to drive it from one side of town to the other. Afterwards, he got it running a little better, but he had other project Jeeps and this one didn’t get the love it deserved so he sold it to me. Sound familiar.
Sure, I did (with hindsight) a cursory inspection around and under the truck and a test drive around a few blocks in Woodland Park, and I knew the truck would technically run although not great. And with the assurance of the previous owner that it shouldn’t have any issues making the trip, I loaded up the spare parts in the bed and started the trip home.
The engine, brakes, clutch, and manual trans all were sufficient for the relatively short trip, but I did notice the truck seemed extra bouncy down the dirt road. Despite the pandemic, Mt. Herman Road was busy and I had to negotiate passing vehicles coming up the hill on the downhill side of the narrow road. Pucker factor was high. But, I was committed to gingerly drive this truck home and once I was back on smooth paved road I wasn’t as concerned about the ride.
Only after I got it home did I notice four of the six cab mounting bolts were completely gone. Only the front two bolt by the front bumper were installed. I still think about that discovery and how lucky I was. Not only did I put myself in danger, but everyone else around me on the roads. Oh yeah, and the carb bowl was cracked and leaking fuel.
Over 14 months of constant cleaning, fixing and fiddling I got the truck running exceptionally well. By the time I sold it to a guy who did the body work, I could start the AMC 304 with a quick flick of the key and it would settle into a nice idle. I also installed new body bushings with grade 8 cab bolts, had the carb professionally rebuilt for our Colorado elevation, performed a complete tune up, serviced all the fluids, cleaned up the wiring, etc. It was an excellent distraction during a stressful time in our lives and I’m thankful for the opportunity to help a good truck live on.
And that ’79 J10 does live on. I kept in touch with the guy who bought it from me and he did a very nice job on the body work in his garage. In the end, it took three of us “car guys” to rescue a truck from rotting away unseen in a barn to getting it not just roadworthy again but good enough for a car show.
A good friend of mine in Texas had a first-generation Mustang, and I rode with him a several times. He struggled to tame the ever-fading drum brakes, desultory steering system, deeply-wafting suspension system, and flaccid bias tyres.
Interestingly, he drove carefully while I drove like a German. Guess how many of our mutual friends choose to ride? Unanimously me. They couldn’t relax their sphincters and all of their muscles in his car. I also stopped riding in his car…
Anything built with the technologically amazing Lucas Electrics… that wonderful warm feeling you got moments after turning the ignition key wasn’t due to a fantasically efficient heater, it was just the wiring loom heating up…
the name and the understated writing is beautiful.
Random fleet vehicles. Doesn’t matter what they are, if it’s in a fleet not managed by some huge company with strict regulations and the person in charge doesn’t really care, its maintenance is the first thing targeted by budget cuts. My sister had to ride in a passenger van owned by her college, which had horrifically poor maintenance standards for their vehicles… the coolant system and two tires exploded during the trip, nearly causing the vehicle to lose control. This was a year or two ago, one of the tires that burst was from 2010 and the other was from 2000. Yes, this college thought putting students in a van with 20+ year-old tires for a road trip was okay… There was talk of suing, but nobody ended up wanting to put in the effort and money since nobody actually got hurt (thankfully). By now, the college changed their catering and maintenance contractors anyway, so hopefully now they’re not as negligent? Still don’t trust their vans. Fleet vehicles are sketchy.
Of all the cars I have personally driven, I found the Citroen 2CV to be the most scary.
EDIT: I notice 2 types of post here, Standard not broken cars that are just bad and cars that are broken versions of otherwise ok cars.
In that case I can also add a Ford Escort that was chopped in when I owned my workshop, It pulls to the left was the comment left by the customer and as is common on these Iimagined the wishbone bushes. So I took it a test drive, at about 25mph the steering wheel was violently pulled from my hands and the car swerved into the kerb (UK so drive on left), So maybe a diff fault ? I reversed it back the way I came and decided just to scrap it, It was not worth the effort. Glad I didn’t hit any parked cars.
Another one, My dad once had the throttle on his automatic V12 Jaguar stick open. I imagine that was a bit scary.
We had another trade in that had poor brakes, Peugeot 405 Diesel. It actually had no brakes at all, The vacuum pump had failed, A new diaphragm fixed it right up but it was a scary test drive.
…Citroen (sic) 2CV to be the most scary
Pfft, we had one for twenty years, and it was the most fun car we ever owned. It felt safer and got us everywhere during the snow storms thanks to the amazingly thin tyres.
I daily drove mine for 3 years. It was my first car, so driven with reckless abandon and utter confidence by a moron. Great in snow, driven flat out all the time when it wasn’t snowy.
Terrible brakes (in-board drums on mine) and no crash protection to speak of. Still way, way safer than a motorcycle though.
I didn’t say it wasn’t fun, But it really didn’t feel substantial. As stated below, Safer than a motorbike but not by much I feel 🙂
The 2 Cs – corvette and Camaro. Rented a Camaro in the 2010s, it was like driving a submarine, the visibility was so bad.
Thank you, finally someone saying it
I rented a camaro in 2013 and it was scary.
80s era Japanese SUV, short wheelbase and narrow as heck. Rollover kings.
1) Any vehicle I ever owned in my 20s when I had zero sense and even less money. Pretty sure maintenence was not a word in my vocabulary at the time.
2) Most former rentals.
An aging 26-foot U-Haul driven in bad weather by someone who’s never driven anything bigger than a Fiat 500.
My vote would be for any of the truly manic late-model TVRs with the Speed Six and Speed 12 engines. They make a Viper seem *tame* by literally ALL accounts. Zero nannies, waaaay too much power, super twitchy steering and handling, and usually driven on slippery British roads. And TVR build quality, so who knows when some really important bit would fall off on the road and cause a moment.
The TVR Tuscan Speed Six is one of the scariest cars I’ve ever driven. ^^post is 100% accurate.
But those ITBs singing… oh it’s glorious right up until it isn’t
I agree, I have one,a Cerbera.It makes no sense at all. ever. But it not even close to the scariest, to keep with the British Lunacy, a Bentley Turbo (not the R.or S) the first ones are really scary. But, to really really scare yourself, and suddenly discover that you might not be atheist after all the McLaren F1 is truly terrifying. Up to 70/80 mph in third gear they are normal(ish) the thing is, being human, you are going to overtake that car in front. Drop to second, press to go pedal and shift up the box. On a slippery British road. No nannies, 70 to 170 in four seconds the sudden realization that you are driving a car called an F1 but you are not actually a top level racing driver and you on the A30. I am still alive, the car is in a rich persons shed.
I love the F1, I’m a huge fan of Gordon Murry.
But I’d be very happy if I had an F1 with just half the engine. I don’t need terror, and I love a straight six.
Mere mortals can afford a TVR though. Or an old Bentley Turbo – you are the first to ever call one of those scary. I’ve actually driven an early one, I didn’t even find it all THAT fast, relatively speaking. But it was a nice day… I suspect that on a nice dry road the TVR is probably more of a handful than the F1. I have never heard them described as anything like as twitchy under “normal” conditions. Any pre-nanny supercar is going to be a major handful in the wet – but how many try to kill you on every drive on nice bright sunny days?
But I certainly defer to you, I haven’t driven either one – my TVR experience begins and ends with the Tasmin 350i – with 180hp in US-spec it was more than enough of a handful. Not my jam, even if I had the money. I’d infinitely prefer your “world’s fastest lorry”. 🙂 I’m much more “slow car fast”.
I am very happy with my lorry, not today fast but still it makes my smile. TVR’s are not entirely sensible but the F1? Very pre-nanny and so fast mid range (when mid range has150 mph in it) that the car is driving you. I was supposed to be writing a review of the thing. I still have the notebook, the first line reads “Oh Fuck” in wobbly letters.
ROFL! I can only imagine.