Fear, I’m told, is the mind-killer, but sometimes it’s also a handy way of letting us know that, for example, the hunk of crap car you’re driving is dangerous deathtrap. And often, that’s good information to have! As an example from my personal life, when I drove David’s old Postal Jeep a few years back, the visceral fear I felt upon realizing that the motions I was making with the steering wheel had a very inconsistent and perhaps even cavalier relationship with the direction the car would progress on the road was in fact a potent alert that, hey, this thing is a rusty, jagged, boxy coffin. And that, as I said, is good information to have.
I should note that this was before David did any mechanical work on the thing, and at that point the Postal Jeep had most of its suspension and steering components connected to the rusty frame with nothing stronger than a conceptual connection and maybe some decorative stickers. The brakes didn’t do a whole hell of a lot either, and I’m frankly amazed I was able to drive it the few miles I did without some sort of disaster happening.
For this car to scare me, even at low speeds, I think is quite a triumph, because, remember, I’m a veteran of the infamous Hoffman:
…and the amazing Helicron, which very much wants to mulch you into paté:
And yet, even compared with the perverse peculiarity of the Hoffmann and the swirling blades of the Helicron, David’s old Postal Jeep (shown below) somehow felt scarier. Maybe because I had it out on public roads, with plenty of traffic. Maybe it was the cold weather, which threatened to make any impact into the windshield feel even worse. Or maybe it was that the body really wasn’t all that connected to the frame. Maybe all of it.
And that was low-speed driving! I bet there’s many tales you have of cars that are scary at speed, or a car that just scared you, not for physics-related reasons, but for more metaphysical reasons, deeper, stranger things.
Point is, I know you’ve all experienced some car that scared you in some way, and I want you to tell us all about it now, so that we may grow, and, ideally, heal. Because that car is no longer here to terrify you anymore.
I hope.
It’s a tossup between the A body cutlass Ciera that required a neutral drop in order to not stall out at any point after spending more than 20 minutes at highway speeds and the 87 Nissan Hardbody where the only advice from a mechanic was “don’t smoke when you’re driving” due to the fully rusted out fuel lines.
My current E39 / MGB (see username) is not without abundant risk, but has proven a meaningful step down in risk from my options earlier in life
International Scout, I’m guessing an 800A, slightly larger than the 80 series. I was sent with cash to pick it up and bring it back to the owner who was going to plow with it. The auto trans had a cable sticking out of the shift boot, operated by vice grips, steering wheel did close to nothing, brakes only worked on 1 wheel, rear passenger side. No gauges, and every time I took a left, the passenger side door would swing open. Luckily, if I had a trouser accident, it wouldn’t have stayed in there too long with the holes in the floor.
A ZJ Grand Cherokee (I can’t recall which year) with 290,000 miles. It was a Limited trim, had a 318, ran good, and was only $1500. I made it about thirty feet before I realized why the price was so low – the entire suspension was shot, as was the steering. There was about 30 degrees of play in the steering wheel before the wheels actually turned, and then when you hit about 20mph the death wobble set in. To add to the death wobble was a shot brake master cylinder that made stopping more ethereal than physical. The seats were epically comfortable, though…
Bought a 1970 (?) FIAT 850 sedan back around 1980 with the intention of building an Abarth 1000 “tribute” car. Car had drum brakes that really did not work so I took it to a local “import specialist” shop for a new set of shoes. Picked it up late in the afternoon and headed off in rush hour traffic. NO BRAKES! right on through a red light. Seems the specialists were not familiar with drum brakes.
Later took the entire drive train from an 850 Spider along with the disc brakes, built 950cc motor and built one UGLY fast FIAT.
Easy one. 1966 Mustang convertible. There was about a quarter turn of play in the steering, where it did nothing. It reminded me of steering a boat. Because it was an earlyish unibody convertible, it had the stiffness of wet something, and would go from horrible understeer to a snap oversteer… quickly. I don’t want to think about the lap belts, solid steering column, and single circuit all drum brakes, and bald-ish bias-ply tires. Looked nice enough though.
A close second was a friend’s ’72 Chevelle. If you dropped it into first and floored it, the tires broke loose and the back end would just drift from side to side. It would have been fine, except that it only has three lug nuts on the right rear, and was spitting lugs. Didn’t drive it much, and was waiting for disaster the entire time. Fun though.
Umhn. Where to start, where to start.
Alright. There were many, but the cream rises to the top, where it sits,… souring.
Ok. Gee Ha. a 61′ Karmann Ghia reknown the world over for corrosion on a truly British Leyland scale. The sub tropics, in this case upcountry Maui, ca. ’74 ( these things are approximate). I can’t find an image, but will query one the surf nazi’s I cohabitated with in Romeroville (nee Haliimaile), so 3/4 up from Paia to Makawao. If you’ve never lived south of 15° north latitude, clear your mind. Envision a ghia so lacy, so fillagreed with that special kind of red-dirt enhanced maui rust, that gazinging through it to see where you left your flaps or that bundle of thai sticks is nae a problem. Of course I’m not just talking about a profile view here- ANY aspect will do, including plan, elevation, as oblique as you care to look, doesn’t matter.
Such a conveyance, and a ghia’s a truly beautiful object, shouldn’t have to convey surf nazi’s down to Paia so’s we can view Loreena in the morning sun, serving our breakfast and most purile thoughts and dreams, go BACK up to Romeroville, STOPPING for a cool-down while lichee and lillikoi are gathered at that hairpin before the opportunity exsist to go through Makawao to Pukalani for the best burger within a radius of, say 3000 miles. I digress.
Care and Operation
Any Vw owner might recognize some of the drill, but only you KARMANN bodied veterans know the enhanced techniques necessary to operate a ghia that you MUST NOT LEAN AGAINST under any circumstances. Getting in (I realize some might not have all day here), the handles are intacto! Alas, things go down hill from there; both striker plates have sunk into a B pillar, which exist in name only, and the pin, face plate, levers, pivot pins,…lost in time, hard to believe they were ever really there. Hinge pins? Indistinguishable from a brown, oxidized, apple core. Here, my military background arose when I designed, constructed and tested the M177A1 retainer, hatch, side, one each, consisting of two pelican hooks, one 24″ (nominal) bungee, some actual paracord stretched from one weirdly- intact arm rest to’ther. Made a dandy seat belt as well. Starting began by firmly grasping the (female) ignition key’s eschution plate so that the (male) key could be rotated, allowing excited electrons to get on with it. The tunnel, inhabited by such things as sheathed cables for the throttle, clutch, rear brake enablement by fluids and hands, heater (haha) et. al. was rusted pretty-well solid. We got a semblance of clutch and handbrake operation, so 2 outta 6. Throttle-by-wire was called for, achieved by cord attached by a figure 8 knot on the carb lever, up through the rear deck louver of your choice, to an un-grommetted rust hole abaft the passenger rear window, to be draped, loosely on first officer’s seat. As the front drums worked and rear handbrake submitted and, provided with return-action by a cot spring wrapped around what, at one time, were the heater actuating levers, done and done. Clever fooking nazis. Steering? Yes, of course. Don’t be daft.
Operation. Crew of two, obviously, minimum, with RoundRon to scream contradictory orders in what he claimed was his Orange county “hitler-youth” phase, from the vestiges of the back seat. Driver (usually manson- eyed el Dorado) to steer (harder than it sounds with that much castor), clutch, utter oaths, and “just get on with it.” Driver #2 (me, how could I not, most of this shit was my idea) Throttle (ALWAYS be conscious of chaffing) whilst double de-clutching, neither to lug nor over-rev, Brake, firmly, aware that RoundRon’s bulk could overwhelm two leading shoes with ease. Hunter S. Thompson was frequently seen. Veins pulsed, sinuews stretched. A real sense of accomplishment.
Omopio to Paia is four or five Laguna Seca’s laid end-to-end, requiring team work or a fiery death, your choice. Best to stop thinking of Loreena for a bit and focus. Being screamed at while doing 3 disparate task was other-worldly. In the end, Loreena prefered the most facist among the crew.
‘63 CJ-5. 5.38 gears, non-syncro 3 speed, and an engine that redlined at about 4000 rpm meant top speed was about 42. I think. Not that the gauges worked. It also had manual steering with about a half turn of play and 31×12.5x15s. Which were dry-rotted and HEAVY. Oh yeah, and the icing on the cake was that the brakes went out on it about 7 miles from home. The first half of the drive went ok, the latter half had 3 downhill stop signs that I had to contend with. The first one I actually went off the road into a soybean field because I couldn’t rev match into 1st gear.
Mine would also be a CJ5. Test drove one that had a garbage lift, way too big tires, and no doors or seatbelts. The thing wobbled left and right the whole (short) drive. My dad in the passenger seat was cussing the whole way!
2000 Honda Civic SI, with bald summer tires, on an icy highway in Alaska. Bought a new project car recently and the drive from the seller’s house to the DMV and tire shop (with a stop for burritos) was downright harrowing.
Oh, I’m glad you asked. I mentioned mine a few times before, with long, boring descriptions of the whole ordeal. Here we go again! First, the TL, DR version*:
_____________________________
/|'”””||””'””||””””||””””’||””””””|\”””””””””””””\
| |__ ||___||___||___ ||_____| \……………\
|=======|===||====||======- ————-\
| == ……..|….. ||.~…..||.~……..| | =””””””””=||
| == ……..| …..|| …….||_ _….. | | ( )….o..( )||
|….__……|……||…….. | / \\ | ————– |
\–/.(. \—-|——||——|| ( ||_============.
…\__///…\_///…………\__///………….\_///
Now for the big ass wall of text, this time with even more backstory: Back in the old country, I worked in a shipyard. We needed a van to replace the one we hired at great expense.
Walking the street one day I saw one that did illegal passenger service, and it has a “for sale” scrawled in a cardboard. Ignoring the bad omen, I called the number and soon the sketchy gentleman and I were exchanging money and title for a Brazilian VW T1.5 – “Kombi”, as we called them.
The car was practically derelict, but to haul ship parts and tools it was good enough.
The floors had more holes than activated charcoal, and the same consistency. They not only passed water, I think they attracted it too, even in dry climate the thing looked wet.
The barn doors were in an open relationship with each other and the outside world, thanks to a contraption the previous owner installed to open them remotely. The thing went off if you looked at it funny. Even after tying the doors shut, passengers still had to grab the seats – the thing had no seatbelts and very smooth bench seats (thanks to a polish that was courtesy of, by then, 20 years of butts coming and going). People could slide off the van if I ran a pothole or did a sharp turn.
I lied on the paragraph above, no one would fell down on sharp turns, because turns had to be communicated in advance, in triplicate copy. The steering wheel merely relayed in broad terms where I wanted the car to go, if it weren’t much trouble. I’m half convinced that when it appeared to listen, it was sheer coincidence.
The engine leaked a lot of oil, and we had to replace it twice until the issue was solved. Too bad the car caught fire two weeks after that, but more on that later.
I had to drive with a collection of parts, especially cables, which tended to snap a lot. Once the clutch cable snapped on a highway, and the “rescue” service was a pick up with a tyre on the front. My car was old, but I had dignity, so I put it on something like 3rd gear and pushed. I’m pretty sure that happened, but I might be describing a plot point from Little Miss Sunshine – perhaps both things are true.
I tried to restore the car, and I got around fixing the floor, undid most of the rust on the body itself, had the aforementioned engine replacements, and sourced the locks and keys for the entire car – this and a complete set of seatbelts assured that most passengers stayed inside the car (some of them would be drunk and jump off for no reason, but that was on them). This was all salvaged from a burned Kombi from a scrapyard, in a bit of foreshadowing.
I even re-did most of the natural gas plumbing that was present on the car, but non functional. That was a mistake – the company that did the plumbing had a dumb switch that cut the flow of petrol to the carburettor, but didn’t do anything about the mechanical pump. One of the fuel lines was badly attached, and it got loose on yet another highway (this time a big ass bridge we have in Rio de Janeiro). The fuel hose sprayed petrol on the distributor, and from there it spread to the var battery (because old VW engine bays are two for one death traps). People started to honk for me, the car lost power, and next thing I knew I couldn’t see shit on the cabin. Here’s another helpful ASCII description:
……………………………~~~~~~~~
……….._________nnn_______._______MMM____________
Niterói /……………………………………………………………………….\ Rio de Janeiro
See the little dot over there? That’s me running away from the big gas cylinder that I was sure was gonna explode. But my shipyard colleagues assured me that a full cylinder wouldn’t swallow fire, and so I got back and fetched the onboard fire extinguisher, that was good for 0.2 seconds of extinghishment. It took me three cars and a bus to gather enough extinghishmentness to put out that fire (ok, the only thing that helped me was the bus, marked as MMM on the ASCII above – but still, I flagged three other cars!).
After we recovered the now mostly dead Kombi, we reconstructed it YET AGAIN – turns out, shipyard people are very resourceful, we did it all in house. I mean, they did and I watched, but still. The car felt like Chucky at the end of the first movie, and I guess we didn’t take the hint?
However, in a twist of movie trope expectations, after we brought it back from the back, almost all of the remaining gremlins went away. We re-did wiring with some good materials, and we even repainted the entire thing back to one colour. We sourced a new engine from the same guy who figured how to mount them without leaking oil all over the place.
The shipyard went into financial difficulties, and I got the car for myself for almost a year after that. I hauled friends and family to vacations, camping trips, shopping errands… but still, even though the car was basically Theseus’s ride by that point, the experience of being inside that rattle can during a fire made me dread any lack of response on the accelerator pedal (because that was the first sign). Also, the driver sits in front of the wheel arches in that car, and this was very obvious up until when we patched a hole on the “face” of the car that let me see the street at about knee-level – meaning that the crumple zones of the car was my legs and lower abdomen, and the airbags where whatever inflation my lungs had at any given moment.
I guess I felt like Siegfried and/or Roy, or Steve Irwin, in that I loved that car, loved being around it, but knew deep down that it was not only capable, but probably willing to kill me. In fact, the sense of mortality was so pronounced on that driver’s seat, that I was convinced that I would meet my end on that car, one day – yet I kept coming back to it. Maybe now that the car is no longer with me, and is in fact 10,000 Km from me, means I’m now immortal? As long as I don’t drive it again, I can’t die!
Anyway, that got longer than even I imagined. Thanks for reading this far. Here’s another ASCII* from this car from a different angle, as a thank you present:
—–______________________________
—-/”””””””””””””””/|”””””‘”|’|””‘””||”””||”””||”””|”\
–/—————/–|____| |___||__||__||__|…|
./——————-====================|
|–=””””””””””””=–|——–|——————–== |
| ( )……o……( ) | _ ___|——————–== |
|——————-|……/ \———————_– |
============___| ) |——————-/ ) \-/
—\\\_/————–\\\__/———-\\\_/—\\\_/.
*I tried to make some cool ASCII art of my precise model based on something I found online. I don’t know how it will look like once I post the comment, but maybe this is for the best – no matter how mangled it will look like, it will still be in better shape than what the car was when we purchased it!
Well, turns out the ASCII looks like crap after all. Here’s a photo of that model (mine was white):
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Brazilian_Kombi.jpg
And here it is with the best “I’ve seen some shit” face that it could make:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Kombi_%2873067707%29.jpeg
Ford Contour I bought from a co-worker for $250. Unbeknownst to me at first drive the rear sub-frame cross-member was so rusty it was effectively an accordion, resulting in some particularly erratic highway behavior on our first drive together. Dollops of throttle (to that lovely motor) were rewarded with a spirited swerve into a random lane.
How about ever rode in? I have a few. One that sticks in my mind was a second-generation Nissan Pathfinder that belonged to a coworker of mine. It wasn’t all that old when this happened either (10-ish years?) but good god we almost got in a multi-car accident at 25 MPH on a one-way city street when someone decided to turn left in front of us from the right lane. The brakes BARELY stopped us from a T-bone despite what I would call a reasonable amount of space to stop in for most cars. That rusted out shitbox was sold not too long after for a 4-runner that most definitely didn’t rust that quickly.
Another one that comes to mind – Smart ForTwo. For a while these were used in the Car Sharing service called Car2Go. What an absolute piece of shit these were. So vastly underpowered and under-braked that they were super scary at city speeds.
A Mini Moke lemons race car. Thing was about the size of a lawn tractor with hardly anything that counts as a body, so there wasn’t much protecting you from the other 100+ cars on track.
To make matters worse, it had a wheel bearing that was failing with a fair bit of play. So what would happen is the wheel would toe out down the straights, spreading the caliper out. So when you hit the brakes all that would happen is said wheel would straighten out, not actually apply braking pressure.
I only did a few laps, fighting it in the turns and nearly spinning out before saying, “Nah, this is too sketchy” and bringing it in for repairs.
1984 Dodge Charger (white, 2.2, automatic) with a SERIOUSLY dodgy steering rack! The steering started to make the occasional “klonk” when I turned the wheel and, when it klonked, it did NOT move the wheels. Could happen either direction, at any time and any speed. So I drove it like this for a week delivering pizzas, and noted that it was steadily getting worse.
Had to drive to my parents house 125 miles away to fix the problem, which was, hands down, the most terrifying drive ever! Changing lanes on a freeway at 75mph? KLONK, no lane change. Dodging another car? KLONK, no direction change. Turning a corner? KLONK, let’s just keep going straight.
I’m NEVER going to mess around with a car with bad steering again!
A 1976 Formula Ford Dulon (basically a Lotus clone literally built by 2 blokes in a shed). It had been brought to the States, had the wheelbase shortened & the motor breathed on, and became an autocross car. Strapped into the narrow nacelle, the 13” wide slicks were only a few inches lower than my shoulders. The day it was being sold, we each took a final ride. I—quite inadvisably—went ahead and got into 3rd coming up our narrow dead-end road. It leaped ahead, then darted toward a steep bank on the left. You all know the certainty: I was either going to flip it, or spin into my 300TD on the left. ‘Look where you want to go…’ crossed my consciousness and I straightened out and sped past my bil’s driveway. I finished the thought: ‘…not where you’re going to die’
dual 48mm IDAs screaming right behind your head, both clutch & throttle were on/off switches, etc: it was a squirmy, visceral machine that would get out of hand instantly. I enjoy quieter pursuits these days
62 Karmann Ghia in the early 90’s. A vibration damper in the steering shaft had rotted out and there was essentially 45 degrees of slop in the wheel. Drove it for a least a couple weeks while I tried to get the part.
Could be a lot worse but a 1989 Mustang convertible 4 cylinder automatic with worn out everything
I’ve not really driven anything that scared me, but I’ve been the assistant passenger in a car that did.
This was around the turn of the century, and my friend needed to move his ’73 or ’74 Plymouth Roadrunner from his parents’ place in CT up to his place in MA. Now, this was not a properly running car, but we were young and would be damned if we were going to tow it, so instead we got it kinda running. It took a fair few hours, though, and we couldn’t fix the problem of the motor blowing the PCV valve out of the cover every and stalling every few minutes, so we ended up just using electrical tape and driving until it melted off, and then replacing it.
Did I mention that it didn’t have a working battery? Or working seatbelts. And it had slick faux fur seat covers, for some reason. Anyway, we finally get moving, with our escort car (a buddy in his ’80s Camaro) following behind, but it’s already become evening. Okay, no problem, the headlights work, we’ll just take it slow. Well, about half an hour into our trip, the heavens open up and a horrendous summer thunderstorm decides that now is the most appropriate time to mess with us. Okay, just hit the wipers and – what, no functioning wipers? Shit. Alright, then we’ll both just hang our heads out the window in the pouring rain and try to see where we’re going.
As unpleasant as this is, we keep going – but then the electrical system in the car fails entirely. No lights whatsoever. As near as I can tell, the only reason it keeps going is because it’s dieseling due to a half-functional cooling circuit. Alright, well, we can’t abandon it here, so we decide to keep going. Things are going about like you might expect, but well enough all things considered, until we approach a stop sign at a T intersection – as we’re coming up the toward the head of the T, we have to turn – and that’s when I hear “Oh shit.”
“Oh shit?”
“No brakes!”
Yep, they’d failed. He managed to make the turn, if at a *much* higher speed than was at all safe, but remember the lack of seatbelts? Yeah, I end up literally sitting in his lap as I was flung across the car by the hard maneuver. If it weren’t for the steering column, I would have flown out his window.
Oh well. We survived, and the car made it. Still, never been so damned terrified in my life.
Pretty similar occasion driving some old random clunker my nephew bought for $500 for his wife to drive the kids to school and groceries while he us driving a brand new challenger with the Hemi V8. This thing also did not seem to have the steering wheel attached to anything. 4 bald tires mis alignment so that at no point were you driving straight but instead tacking left and right like a sailboat going into the wind. It took a quarter turn of the wheel to show any change of direction. Oh there was also the old school milk crate drivers seat because no seat. I got this deathtrap to his house told him never ask me to drive anything he buys that he isn’t man enough to drive and he better fix it before he let’s his wife drive it or his kids ride in it or I would report him to child’s safety.
For me, scariest car was an Alpina Roadster V8. It was a pleasure to drive, comfortable, safe, and stylish. But I was 20 or so, working at a BMW dealer, and was tasked with delivering the car to one of the dealership’s most valued (and most particular) customers 100 miles away in Vail. If I messed it up even slightly, if there was a chip in the paint or a small scratch, I was a dead man. I don’t think I’ve ever driven a car as carefully.
The car wasn’t scary but the situation was. Four adults and five children crammed into a single cab F-150, night, Saskatchewan, between Saskatoon and Prince Albert, winter, about -40°F (which happens to equal -40°C), farm road, iced over, slippin’ and slidin’, trying to stay out of the ditches, white knuckling it for 15 miles.
90 miles of terror. I’ve driven that in the summer. Nice drive.
Scariest I ever drove: 1965 Mustang with the stock straight 6 and 4-speed manual. The car itself wasn’t scary per se, but I had two terrifying experiences in it.
The first was when I was driving it at 100+ mph on Rollercoaster Road just east of the USAF Academy near Colorado Springs, CO. The headliner suddenly gave way and it was lights out. I managed to get it stopped safely, but I was scared shitless (which was the only reason my pants weren’t actually brown).
The second incident was on an April night in 1993. It was around midnight and I had just gotten off a swing-shift at Falcon AFB and had a (nominally) 45 minute drive back to my apartment. Unbeknownst to me, a late spring freeze/ice storm had blown in during my shift. I had come to work with nothing but a lightweight jacket (no hat or gloves) and had recently taken the ice scraper out of the car. The entire car was covered in glaze ice like a flash-frozen turkey. I started the car and let it “warm up” while I chipped away at the windshield with a credit card to try to get some visibility. The rest of the windows were completely opaque and I only managed to clear a spot a few inches wide and high so it was like driving a tank in terms of visibility. It was so cold that the crappy “heater” didn’t produce anything more than mildly warm air. I drove slowly, getting out every half mile or so to hand-clear the windshield because freezing rain was still coming down steadily and the wipers did nothing but smear the icy slush around. There was no traffic on that lonely road because all the other folks had already made it home but by around 2 AM I was still poking along. I was seriously convinced that I was going to die. Finally, I gave up trying to see out the windshield and just rolled down the side windows and navigated by looking at the sides of the road. When I was about 2 blocks from my apartment, blues and reds lit up behind me and I pulled over slowly. The cop walked up, took one look at me and said “Dude, you’re blue. Are you OK?” I managed to make him understand through chattering teeth that I lived just over there and he was welcome to give me a ticket if I could just get home and warm up a bit. He graciously got in front of me and kept his lights flashing so I could follow him and led me to my apartment complex. I sold the car not long after that.
The wife’s car when we first dated. A 1969 Toyota Corona with bad motor mounts and worn-out Rube Goldberg mechanical throttle linkage. The throttle would stick and the only way to un-stick it was to shut the car off. I discovered this issue while driving on snow-covered twisty backroads and ended up far,far off the roadway.
LN106 Hilux…. with savage slop in the steering… I was expected to keep up with traffic (by the owner who was riding shotgun) … mission terrifyingly impossible
Postal Jeep from the rust belt is an automatic winner- when I started at the Postal Service in the 90s they still had a few around, the frame as well as body rust was so bad that the driver who hauled them to the scrapyard was instructed to stay there to witness the crushing of the Postal Jeeps!
For me, the scariest vehicle I ever drove was a 2005 Ford Focus Wagon that I owned from 2016 to 2018.
By 2018, it had VERY ADVANCED rust. It was so advanced that the very last time I took it in for service, after putting it on the lift, the mechanic didn’t want to work on it… or stand under it to repair a steering issue.
And after it was put down and started to get moved out of the shop, the front driver side side control arm failed completely and the wheel came off.
We called a tow truck and I got $300 for it for scrap.