One of the best parts about being a car enthusiast is seeing how cars impact people. Cars create memories, and sometimes, in just the right circumstances, cars bring back old memories.
Jason wrote about how embarrassing the Buick Road Hawk was, and in the comments was a story that’ll have you chuckling. I have no idea if Canopysaurus is telling a real story here, but it’s still great:
My last year of college, a fairly obnoxious new student showed up at the dorm driving a Road Hawk. He insisted on parking in the access road behind the dorm right below our fifth floor rooms late at night and blasting disco music while he lazed in a lawn chair getting hammered on Miller High Life. So, so many people enjoyed these “concerts.” You could tell from all the screaming and food stuffs being thrown down as offerings. It all came to an end after a month when, mysteriously, a weighty, three-seat couch constructed from butcher block and burlap plunged from the heavens directly onto the hood of the Road Hawk. Road Kill. You’d imagine that my roommates and I might have heard something being as it all occurred directly below our windows, but every one of us was studying at the library that night, as we told the campus police. In fact, no one in the eight-story dorm whose windows overlooked the scene saw or heard anything. Apparently, disco sucks so bad it Hoovered a couch from the basement lounge, up several flights (the exact number isn’t important) and out of a window to land a fatal blow to the bad boy’s Buick. Allegedly. I’m pretty sure the last time I ever saw a Road Hawk was on the back of a wrecker.
Brian wrote about how a guy in a rented Chrysler Pacifica ran a lap time of under two minutes at the Atlanta Motorsports Park. The awesome Anthony Magagnoli gives more context:
Congrats on your LAP RECORD, Gino!
I was one of the engineers he talked with. I was the Vehicle Dynamics Performance Engineer for Pacifica from 2015-18. I am really pleased with how the car came out, from a ride, handling, and steering perspective. It goes to show that you don’t need a supercar to just have a good-driving car and there’s no excuse for any type of car to drive terribly. The highest performance variant, though, is that on the 18″ Michelin tire. That was the known performance tire of the lineup, and Car and Driver pulled 0.87g!
For the record, I TRIED to make a real S model, but couldn’t get the support around it.Source for skidpad claim.
I wrote about the time when Consumer Reports heavily disagreed with the Dodge Omni being awarded Car Of The Year by Motor Trend. The responses were hilarious. V10omous:
Motor Trend Car of the Year going to an unworthy winner?
Knock me over with a feather.
Citrus:
You mean the Dodge Aspen wasn’t the finest car of 1976?
Michael Beranek will make you say “aww”:
Back in high school, a buddy of mine had an Omnirizon and we double-dated for a Homecoming Dance. The interior was pretty swank for such a cheap car, and the seats were downright fantastic.
Forty years later, she’s still my date.
Also, somehow I haven’t heard “Omnirizon” before, and now I can’t get enough of it. Have a great evening, everyone!
Top graphic: GM
Umm… I dunno about that. I really don’t like seeing cars impact people. *splat*
I am honored, didn’t think that one was COTD material. But “Omnirizon” has been around since back then, because these were the first badge-engineered cars where you could not tell the difference without checking for a Dodge or Plymouth badge.
I was about to say “What about the Dodge/Plymouth/Mitsubishi Colt”…but then I remembered they were introduced for ’79, and the Plymouth model was called Champ until 1982.
That led me to thinking about how interesting it is that Dodge and Plymouth sold those rebadged Mitsubishi hatchbacks at the same time as the Omnirizons. And not just for a few years, either…all the way up to 1988!
The Omnirizons were a little bigger and 4-door (if we leave out the 024/Turismo/Charger/Duster) but I have to imagine there was some cross-shopping. Now I’m trying to think of other examples of a carmaker offering two totally different models at the same time that so closely compete with each other.
man this close to being part of COTD I was the next reply after citrus lol
My friend had a Horomni, which was likely made from the other half of the combined parts of that Omnirizon. She was taking care of a neighbor’s dog and it jumped into her lap as she was driving and the next thing you know, the Horomni was on it’s roof in the ditch. RIP Horomni, you were terrible and yet great.
I will say that a rental Pacifica was a very pleasant experience. From MIA to Key West and back, it was efficient, smooth and quiet. I didn’t try to lap it around a racetrack. And I’m guessing the Odyssey might beat it by a second, or maybe not.
Really, the only thing that matters is how many miles you can rack up on them before they die or you want to kill yourself.
I don’t have a bad car story, but I do have a couch chucking story.
When I was in college someone brought a dried out old couch and put it on the balcony of the floor of the dorm I lived in (which doubled as a smoking lounge).
Late one night, some friends and I were sitting out on the couch smoking. A friend dropped their cigarette into the folds of the couch without noticing (we were allegedly quite drunk). A short time later we realized that the copious amount of horrible smelling smoke was not coming from our cigarettes, and that the couch had started on fire.
We were surrounded by concrete and metal – there was nothing on the balcony that could have been damaged more than a paint job would have solved. We had the time to go get water and douse it.
So naturally we picked the couch up and heaved it over the railing. It fell seven stories, smoking the whole way, destroying a medium sized tree on its way down to the dormitory courtyard. Allegedly.
Thankfully no one was hurt and nothing was damaged other than the tree, which was cleaned up within a few days, and I never heard anything further.
I mean to be fair, as someone with lived in a “tree decker” (three story house, each a rental) sometime couches just go off balconies. Especially from the third floor, and especially with narrow staircases, and especially when it was already on the balcony.. I think like lemmings off cliffs, science has yet to understand why.
All true. Also, stupid, dangerous, and criminal. Allegedly.
I’m sure the campus police did an extensive investigation to bring justice due to the heinous crime perpetrated against the assholee… I mean victim
Speaking of bad cars and old memories…
My wife and I got married in 1998. A while later I was talking about my mom’s old Yugo. As it turns out, and I never knew this, HER mom had a Yugo as well, same year (1987), trim level (GV), and color (beige).
And, to top it all off, we both had an identical story in which our moms both ran out of gas… in the Yugo… within sight of a gas station!
Good Times!
Weren’t all Yugos 1987 GVs? And beige too (rust is beige right)?
They did come in colors, back in the day a friend was car shopping and had an $8000 budget. Since his family kept Kosher I joked he should get a red Yugo and a blue Yugo. He actually bought an X1/9 so similar Fiat guts but more fun and better made.
There it is. The first time in history the words, “better made” have appeared in the same sentence as “X1/9.” Screenshot this for posterity, everyone.
Early on in my driving career, I made a speciality out of running out of gas. Out in the boonies; in the middle of a four-lane intersection; a dark morning in the dead of winter on a motorway. But my peak effort was in a gas station, lined up in a queue of cars waiting for a pump to open up.
Wait, did you marry your sister? That’s pretty gross, man.