The Rust Belt is unkind to our beloved automobiles. Rust never sleeps, and unless you have unlimited money, rust always wins. Countless cars are unceremoniously sold for scrap and are sent to the crusher every year. However, for a select few rustbuckets in Michigan, they get to live a very brief second life as a racecar before going to the junkyard in the sky. This 2006 Ford Freestar was one of those cars. It was so rusty that it was collapsing on itself. But for two days, that didn’t matter, because I drove the van so hard in a field in Michigan that it nuked itself.
On March 28, the third-annual Oppo Rallycross kicked off in rural Michigan with the firing of some pyrotechnics. This event was organized and hosted by the denizens of the best car forum on the Internet, Opposite-Lock.
Oppocross is a relatively new invention organized by Oppo and Autopian reader Shop-Teacher, hosted by Oppo 454SS, and made possible because of the whole community and a secret scrapper. The whole setup is pretty clever. We have access to a gigantic slice of privately-owned farmland. This land is apparently terrible for farming or much else. However, as Oppo found out, it’s a weirdly great place to race cars. With some work involving tractors and skid-steers, the old farm has been turned into a glorious dirt track.
This track has a little of everything from sweeping turns and washboards to technical sections and even a big air jump. The back straight of this track is long enough that some cars break past 60 mph on it, which makes you feel like you’re going warp speed from behind the wheel.
Then there’s the camaraderie. Oppocross isn’t just an unsanctioned motorsports event, but it’s a place to meet old friends that you haven’t seen in a while and to make new ones. I’ve now attended this event two years in a row, and I’ve now had the honor of meeting so many cool people I knew only online before. I also got to see some old faces again, which is always great.
This time, I’m going to write two stories about Oppocross. I absolutely sent the Autopian’s Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet to this event, and it was a total blast. Also, I may have directly or indirectly contributed to the demise of five other cars that weekend. But for this first story, I want to focus on one car that has lived rent-free (but not rust-free!) in my head since I first drove it. This is a minivan that might be the rustiest car I have ever seen that was still capable of forward motion. It’s the rustiest car I’ve ever seen that I’m told was, incredibly, only recently a daily driver.
How We Ended Up With Some Real Buckets
Something I have always loved about Oppocross is the “community cars” concept. Rallycross is hard on a car, and, understandably, there isn’t going to be a long line of people who want to send it in their daily drivers. I mean, you can if you want to, and some people do run some laps in cars they count on for transportation – but you don’t have to.
Every year, Oppos toss some money at buying some real clunkers. We have a contact who is a scrapper, and we buy cars from him that are already on their way to the junkyard. But instead of immediately meeting the crusher, these cars get to go out in a blaze of glory in motorsport. These cars usually aren’t safe enough to be on the road anymore due to catastrophic rust issues. If corrosion isn’t the reason why these cars ended up scrapped, it’s some fatal mechanical issue.
That’s to say that most of the community cars aren’t good cars. They were half-parked in the junkyard when we bought them. Now, instead of being crushed and forgotten, these cars get to bring joy one last time while also probably doing something they’ve never done before. They get to leave this mortal plane of existence with four tires in the air and a tachometer pegged at redline.
Four community cars were exceptions, and weren’t total piles of trash when they went into the event. One Oppo and Autopian reader, Dottie, donated their Saturn Astra to the Oppocross cause last year and it’s still kicking. We also picked up a first-generation Pontiac Vibe, and another Oppo donated a second-generation Kia Rio, both also making return appearances after making their OppoX debuts last year. A lifetime in Detroit had taken a toll on the Astra, and the Vibe was a high-mileage warrior, but the Kia was pretty much perfect. It didn’t even have any visible rust, and its interior looked like it was recently detailed. But the Oppo said that the Kia absolutely could not come with him under any circumstances.
The new addition is a ninth-generation Chevy Impala that’s mechanically great, just rusty. The prior three cars were the MVPs of last year’s OppoX and this year’s OppoX, surviving two weekends of nonstop abuse without failing in any major way. The Impala cruised through this year’s event, getting no more than a destroyed wheel, and that was because of a large boulder the size of a small boulder that was hidden under grass on the track.
This Van Was Impressively Rusty
The 2006 Ford Freestar, which was a new addition to the community fleet this year, was none of the above. The story that I got about the van was that it was someone’s daily driver until only a few months ago or so, even though the license plate expired more than two years ago. This van wasn’t a reliable car that just had high miles and was a little rusty. No, this van was so rusty that it looked like it had spent some considerable time parked onboard the Titanic.
Actually, describing this van as “rusty as the Titanic” is an understatement of how truly bad this van was. At least the Titanic still has robust chunks of metal left. The longer I inspected this van, the more I figured out that critical structural metal just didn’t exist anymore. Take a look at the rocker on the driver’s side:
At first, we thought most of the rust damage here was contained to the driver’s seat area. This wasn’t rust. The structure simply wasn’t there anymore. What structure that was left was getting ready to return to the Earth. The rust damage was so bad that the wiring harness going under the carpet was taut. It was supporting weight somewhere. Yes, it was basically a structural wiring harness!
The lack of structure continued to about where the driver’s seat was. Thankfully, the seat was still anchored down well because the metal there, as well as around the unibody rail up front, was still in mostly one piece.
Sadly, I have no before photos of this van to show you how the van got to this state. However, there were clues that I was able to speculate from. There were just pounds upon pounds of spray foam attached to what few pieces of the rocker remained. While I’m sure the spray foam provided a temporary aesthetic solution to the van’s rust woes, I can only imagine that it also trapped water and road salt, accelerating the rocker’s demise.
The rust up front was impressive, sure, but it was in the back that was truly shocking. At some point in this van’s past, the unibody rails behind the rear sliding doors rusted out and failed. But it didn’t stop there. The wheel wells rotted out, and the van’s floor itself simply disintegrated along its edges from the rust.
The result was that you could point a camera into a rear wheel well and see the van’s headliner, sky, or someone looking back at you. You could then move the camera to the floor just behind the doors and take a selfie inside the van through the rust. Honestly, I just haven’t ever seen so much corrosion on a vehicle that still ran.
What was particularly terrifying about this was that, due to the catastrophic rust, the rear of the van’s body was only barely still connected to the floor. The roof was doing a lot of the heavy lifting, as were the sliding doors and the ever-so-slightly less rusty front end.
As a result, the rear of the van was sunken down, sort of like what you’d get with a blown suspension or overloading. But, in a discovery that petrified most Oppos, the suspension was intact. The van’s body wasn’t sinking into the wheel wells because of a suspension failure, but because the van’s floor was bending upward while the body was falling down around it. To put it another way, the van was basically imploding on itself.
There was so much stress on what good metal that remained that the sliding doors could no longer open, and the roof was bowing. Yes, the doors were basically keeping the whole thing from going taco-shaped. Once again, I must stress that this van was a daily driver until only recently. We found that the van’s control arms, brake lines, and muffler were relatively new, as if someone had replaced them perhaps only a year or so ago.
Rust Was The Freestar’s Achilles Heel
Apparently, the Freestar had been recalled because of excessive rust before. Reportedly, the defect was so bad that the van’s third row seat or rear axle could suddenly detach due to rust. But I don’t think this van rusted out entirely because of Ford quality, or lack thereof. The rear axle was still attached! The rust belt is really just this bad on unsuspecting cars.
As the locals told me, this van is a sad, highly visible example of what people go through in rural Michigan. They don’t have the money to buy a safer car, so they fix their rusty pile of junk the best they can and quite literally drive them until the wheels fall off. There are no safety inspections, either. Likewise, cops aren’t going to stop you for driving something like this so long as you have mirrors, a windshield, and lights.
Yes, this means that the driver of this van probably drove it in the rain and snow like this. The staining of the interior would suggest that lots of water has gotten through the countless rust holes as the van drove through wet conditions. I cannot imagine how miserable this must have been, but you have to do what you have to do.
Honestly, I felt bad for this van and its previous owner. It was only 20 years old, and it had lived an astonishingly hard life. I imagined that, back in 2006, someone was really happy to bring this van home. They might have carried their kids in it, gone on dates with their spouse in it, or maybe even brought a baby home in it. I bet this minivan has so many stories to tell.
Over time, the van got one small rust spot, then two, and then a few. Those spots grew and festered. Eventually, one of those spots ate all the way through the metal. The van was no longer nice. Over the years, the van went from being someone’s pride to just being transportation.
I shouldn’t have felt so bad for this van. I was an inanimate pile of metal, plastic, glass, rubber, cloth, and rust. But, in a way, I felt like it was an underdog. Here it was, literally collapsing on itself, and it was mechanically fine. The van still wanted to live, even if its body couldn’t hold itself up anymore.
Pure Chaos
So, I took it upon myself to send the van out like the hero it was. There were faster, safer cars to drive at Oppocross, but I felt one with this van. It would become one of my favorite vehicles of the weekend.
Bringing the Freestar – which we nicknamed the ‘Van’t’ – to life required the handy jump pack that I brought along for the ride. Then, the V6 under the hood roared to life with the kind of sound that screams, “I haven’t had a proper exhaust system in years.” The Ford Freestar, which served as the third generation of the Windstar, shipped with your choice of the 3.9-liter V6 from the Ford Mustang with 193 HP on tap or a spicier 4.2-liter V6 with 201 thoroughbred horses. I’ll be completely honest when I say that I never paid attention to the engine under the hood. Besides, I’m fairly sure that roughly half of the horses had left the stable anyway.
This engine had an occasional skip from a misfire and generally felt like a great amount of its remaining power was spent just idling. This was perfect, as was the 4F50N four-speed automatic under the hood.
I put on my seatbelt, made sure there wasn’t any obvious rust that was going to test out the recent tetanus shot that I got, slammed the transmission into first gear, and then dropped the hammer.
I was surprised that the engine didn’t wheeze into action, but actually woke up and quickly raced up its tachometer. I rounded the first bend of the track with just enough of a flick of the wheel to get the tail to swing a little. I then giggled and attempted to bury the pedal through what was left of the floor. Maybe that was a foolish decision, considering that Swiss cheese had more structural integrity than the van had.
The van bounced and drifted through the sand, with basically everything behind the sliding doors plowing through terra firma like a dog dragging its butt. When I say I never lifted, I mean it. The engine sometimes bounced off the rev limiter and the rear of the van, which, weirdly, was full of Kirby vacuum parts, kicked out on command, delivering delicious drifts.
But that wasn’t all. Since the van was about as well-sealed as a colander, the interior was full of dust and sand that whipped all over. The drama was intense, and all of it was happening at what, 40 mph or below? The only time I ever allowed an upshift was on the back straight, which was mostly another washboard that emptied into a soft dirt section.
It was here that I first stopped punishing the gas pedal and transitioned into the soft dirt with an epic drift. Then I rode the curve through until about the apex before welding the throttle again.
The greatest challenge of the course came immediately after this turn. This year’s Oppocross course was largely the same as last year’s, but run in reverse. A lesson that we learned early on was that last year’s jump was practically death-defying this year when run in reverse. Few vehicles landed the jump well, and the jump was such a major killer of the community car field and drivers’ backsides this year that many people simply bypassed it. I’m equal parts stupid and fearless, so I didn’t.
The van took flight readily and quickly. My view from the driver’s seat was similar to that of rotation in a Cessna 172. But unlike the Cessna, the van wasn’t going to continue gaining altitude. Instead, it landed largely flat, with the rear section of the van in total chaos, with rust jiggling all over the place and vacuum hoses ejecting into the dirt. This van was quite a litterbug throughout the weekend, thanks to its inability to really hold anything inside.
The Van Disintegrates Further
The body wasn’t the only part of the van that was unable to keep itself contained. As I neared the pits at the end of my first lap, I suddenly lost power steering. This added a new and fantastically dramatic way to drive the van.
Losing power steering in a vehicle that wasn’t meant to have manual steering is an adventure, especially if the front wheels are driven and doubly so if the loose nut behind the wheel has a death wish. I used all of my strength to wrestle the van through the big drift corner next to the pits with my foot firmly planted. I vaguely remember banging off redline, seeing a huge wave of dirt getting kicked up, and giggling as I entered the opening straight again.
I went even faster on the second lap despite the lack of power steering, but it required getting clever. The steering wheel rocked from side to side rather violently on the washboards. At first, I tried to hold the wheel, but there was a real risk of breaking my thumbs. So, my counter was to keep my foot welded to the gas pedal while taking my hands off the steering wheel. The wheel would do its violent dance, but the van would actually stay in the direction I originally pointed it in. When the drama was over, I grabbed the wheel and reined in my white missile of house-cleaning parts.
I also couldn’t remain pinned on the throttle full-time anymore as the steering wheel became too heavy for my strength to overcome. My new strategy involved lifting, turning the wheel in my desired direction, punching the gas, and letting torque steer help pull me through. This was an inexact science and led to even more hilarious drifts and a truly chaotic racing line. There were times when the van was all over the place and was only just barely keeping within the vaguely defined margins of the track.
It was on the back straight as I slammed the van into second gear when a new and exciting feature developed. Suddenly, the dust clouds kicked up from the van were joined by a sort of gray smoke emanating from the hood. Now, I was moving so fast that I never really looked at the gauges. I decided to finish my second lap by bypassing the jump, skidding through the final curves, and rolling into the pits in a cloud of James Bond-like smoke.
At first, I assumed I had blown a head gasket, which might have actually been true. But the immediately visible issue was the rupture of a rubber coolant line that was in a hard-to-reach place. From this point forward, we’d pretty much treat the van as if it were air-cooled. It would run two laps, come back into the pits smoking something fierce, and then we’d let it cool for an hour before sending it out again.
The more concerning – and hilarious – thing was that the van returned from each and every lap with its rear end a little lower than the last run. At first, we assumed that the rear suspension was failing. It was only later when we figured out that, with every impact, the body itself dropped down lower and lower under the floor. Then there was the fact that the floor itself was so compromised that it was folding up. Basically, if there were a third row in this van, I’m pretty sure it would have lost a full foot or two of headroom.
At first, the van collapsing on itself didn’t impact its operations very much. But with each lap and each jump, a little bit less of the van returned to the pits. Over time, it would lose its rear bumper cover, rear crash bar, and even its trailer hitch. I watched the rear of the van disappear in real time. It pretty much got to the point where the spare tire dragged the ground throughout a complete lap, and the rear tires rubbed on the body and wheel wells because there just wasn’t anywhere for them to fit. Yet, because everything was made out of rust, the tires created their own clearance, anyway.
Safety Third
By Sunday, it was becoming readily clear that the van’s life was nearing its end. Nobody was particularly interested in patching the cooling system together, so it ran without coolant for more or less a day and a half. The engine still ran, but being constantly heat-soaked was wearing it down.
When we decided to send the van to Valhalla, there wasn’t exactly a line of people willing to give it a go. Even the locals, a bunch who are much crazier than most people on Oppo, stopped driving the van. But I couldn’t resist the call.
We deposited a gallon of gas into the van’s tank, which somehow still held fuel, and I forced the engine back to life with my jump pack. We also kicked off what rust we could – for safety, of course!
Since this was the van’s end, I didn’t show it any mercy. I buried the throttle and left it there through the laps, using brute force to wrestle the whale of rust through the corners. I didn’t bypass the jump, either.
Amusingly, each jump ended with the engine cutting out. Apparently, the van had degraded to the point where, upon landing from the jump, the van detected a crash and cut fuel from the engine. We had to bypass the inertia switch to force the van to keep living.
Because I’m a madwoman, I took a breaker bar and pried one of the sliding doors open. I about lost what was left of my sanity here because that’s how I learned that the door was held on by two failing brackets and a wiring harness. There was no metal at all on the bottom. The van also instantly sagged a little more with the door dislodged. Perfect. Oh, but I wasn’t done yet.
On my final lap with the van, I got enough airtime to cause a triple-bounce on landing. Then, I drifted a corner and … that was it. I heard a pop, and the van quickly came to a stop from the drag of the spare tire scrubbing the ground. What happened? I broke the right constant velocity axle. The van’s inertia switch couldn’t stop me, but breaking an axle definitely did the job. By the end, the van’s structure was so compromised that the front doors were jammed shut.
That 2006 Ford Freestar got to die like a legend. Instead of going straight to the crusher, it got to bring immense joy doing amateurish motorsport. This van got to perform countless drifts, jumps, and stunts in its final days and hours. It brought so many laughs and so many smiles. This forgotten and abused Ford Freestar got to go out as a champion.
‘Van’t’ Lives Rent-Free In My Head
The rest of the field got battered quickly. But you’ll have to wait to read about those vehicles, as well as my time sending it in the CrossCab, in my second entry.
Honestly, the part of this that has stayed with me the longest is just how rusty that van was. I know about the ‘Detroit Diplomat‘ and the ‘Chicago Cutlass‘, but this van hit differently. Maybe it’s because when I saw images of the Chicago Cutlass’s underbody, it had far fewer holes than this van had. The Van’t was bad from the top down, and, apparently, the windows were broken before our scrapper friend even picked it up. This van was being driven on the road in an impossibly bad state. In a sad way, this van is also a symbol of struggle.
I never actively seek to kill cars. I am not a car sadist! But I will say that I was happy to send this van out like the hero it was. Rest easy, my rusty friend, you did well. If you’re interested in joining the madness, join Opposite-Lock today! Our next Oppocross is in October 2027, so you have a lot of time. Also, call your friends and family. Let them know that you care. Lend a hand if you can.
Top graphic images: Mercedes Streeter
What a kick@55 demonstration of adult BMX spirit. I even feel a tug at the old heartstrings, like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree or whatever.
Old vans don’t go to Valhalla to die, they go to Vanhalen.
Well done! This is the most amazingly rusted on-road vehicle I’ve ever seen. I thought the ‘before’ pictures were ‘after’ pictures!
“Corrode warrior” is your best caption to date.
Here in CA we have emissions testing every two years, but no vehicle inspection beyond the emissions. I think this is crazy. I have seen so many janky cars still being driven that would probably not pass even a basic inspections of the mechanical systems.
Mercedes the Merciless.
That is just world-class championship rust
VALHALLAAAAAAA
Unfortunately that seems to now be relegated to the past, per Shop-Teacher’s post a week ago. Or at least he doesn’t want to handle the work for it anymore and I don’t blame him.
But man it seems like a wild time, and naturally you had the craziest story.
Which is why Valhalla Motors has now been created…
Do they operate out of Jasonia?
Wow, that van was even worse than the Caravan parked on my street which has lost so much sheet metal that you can see the mechanism for the driver’s door. If I owned it I’d leave the keys in the ignition and hope to see it gone every morning.
The scary thing is I remember 2006 very well and to think that van, in such a bad state, is that from that year…
If I knew about this, I would sign up the 04 Jaguar X-Type 5-speed manual green over tan I have sitting on the street outside my house, to fix the rear suspension and rust around it cost way more than the actual car is worth. I dont want to continue paying for registration. What happens to cars afterwards? Does the scrapper picks them up?
They are indeed returned to the place they came from by the aforementioned scrapper.
I was invited to a “Faster Pastor” race at a local short track with a bunch of free cars destined for the demolition derby. I ended up in a Stratus so encrusted in chicken coop dirt that the windshield was semi-opaque. It was a willing little hoonigan though.
In the practice race I drifted into a minivan and wiped off the passenger mirror. In the main event, I was blinded by the sun on the dirty windshield and clouted a tractor tire, taking out the headlight. The little Dodge just bounced off and surged forward. I claimed second place overall. It was glorious.
Also, whatever the various church folks were doing in the stands rooting for their clergy, it didn’t sound like prayer.
I swear, some of those photos look like a sinking boat. Skipper, look at all those holes!
This is why annual safety inspections are, as Martha says, “a good thing”.
Mercedes, you are a braver lass than I to be ripping around in that deathtrap.
PA resident, I’ll trust our rustbuckets over those from Ohio and Illinois.
Absolute rustiest car I have ever seen was in Illinois. It was an early ’80s Monte ripping along I-94 with BOTH outer door skins lifted up like wings, only attached to the car at the top – possibly only by the trim mouldings. You could see into the passenger compartment as there was no inner door card on the passenger side. It very obviously had neither sills nor much in the way of suspension dampening. Did you ever see the movie “Uncle Buck” – just like Buck’s car, but doing about 85mph. Must have been quite a ride – I think I would have needed Dramamine patches in multiple. Oh, and it was about 20F outside, so a cold ride too.
You see some SCARY shit on the road in places that combine copious road salt and no safety inspections. Doesn’t PA have one of the more onerous annuals? Or have they done away with it? The Great State of Maine made you get an inspection TWICE a year until just before I got my license in the mid-80s. Still minimal tolerance for even non-structural rust in that state. Fix it or junk it. I have seen some things here in Florida, but they obviously migrated from up north – or were parked on the beach.
PA has pretty strict restrictions on body rust. They also check brakes, tires, shocks, tie rods, ball joints, lights, horn, etc.. annually – probably the only time for most older cars. The more populous counties have an OBDII emissions check as well for anything newer than 25 yrs.
Saw a ’73 or so Buick Century with rear quarters flapping like wings in IL last year. That state is BAD.
Maine is the same right down to the ODB-II check in the two most populous counties. Theoretically they are supposed to plug in to check readiness state, but I don’t think many mechanics actually bother. Just having the CEL light not lit is generally seen as “good enough”.
They actually check here, a recent code reset is a red flag. Anything under 5k in a year is exempt.
I’ll say I rarely see a broken down/dangerous car on the road here, in contrast to my southern/westen excursions.
Same in Maine – you never see deathtraps on the road.
Interesting that they exempt low mileage cars. I imagine that dealers in Maine and some garages probably do check. But I KNOW they never checked my Range Rover, because the plug wasn’t where it was supposed to be, and without my telling them, they never would have found it. And thanks to a failing evap check pump, I had to reset the thing about once a week and just left an OBD BT dongle permanently plugged in.
How much pollution is a modern OBDII car driven less than 5k a year really emitting? I’ll be the first to admit to keeping an eye on the mileage of a sketch vehicle.
I fully support basic safety inspections. Too many people just don’t even KNOW.
I agree that low mileage cars should be exempt from emissions. And I think an OBD check is more than enough testing for modern cars anyway. Even my Range Rover didn’t have an issue that would actually affect emissions – the weak pump just couldn’t always build enough pressure to do the evap test in the required amount of time, so it set the CEL. Goofy setup – how many cars even HAVE an electric pump to test that system every time you start the car? And of course, the pump was $$$ to replace, so I never bothered.
Maine exempts “antique” registered cars from safety inspections (with some restrictions on use and having other cars). I have mixed emotions on that one – I take advantage of it for my old cars, but I like to think I do know enough to keep them safe. Maybe a good compromise would be an inspection every X miles instead of time-based. Every year is a PITA on a car that only gets driven 500 miles a year, but every 2-3K would not be a terrible idea? I wouldn’t mind a pro looking at my cars now and again, but I haven’t had a mechanic I really trust in years. And kids these days have no idea what they are looking at with a 52yo car.
Our rusted out Mazda5 would have been great for this, stick shift and all. It was bad enough that you couldn’t jack the rear. I gave it to the local NPR station and it netted an impressive donation of $187.
This wouldn’t happen to be a blue 2006, with about an inch cut out around the rear wheels and plastic panels bonded & zip-tied in the inside of the rear wheel wells to try to keep spray out of other parts of the chassis, would it?
No it was silver and not quite that bad. I kept having to paint the rust silver every year to pass inspection. It should have failed but I guess the inspector gave me a break for the effort 🙂
Never change Mercedes.
I wish I could have sent out my early ’80s Subarus like this, though they might have been too tough to give out as they weren’t anywhere as bad as this Freestar and the drivetrains and suspensions were very robust.
My ’82 GL sedan went to Valhalla when the rear suspension went through the trunk floor due to rust. So not THAT robust, given it was only 8 at the time. I had sold it to my first college roommate, who drove it uninspected for the last two years once it failed inspection. Figured the ticket was cheaper than getting it fixed, but he lived in northern Maine so he got away with it.
DEFINITELY mechanically tough cars though – it survived 16-18yo me. Have you noticed that ’82 Subarus with tachs don’t actually have a redline? The whole thing is red. Why yes, you can rev them to 6500rpm or so repeatedly for a year or two before selling to your college roommate. I assume the rev limit was actually valve float… They will also survive repeatedly being driven down to less than 2qts of oil in the sump too. I did get better about checking, eventually…
Yeah, you could literally feel the valves float. I drove mine several hours over or near 3-figure speeds coming home from a far-too-dramatic camping weekend while it was suffering from a bad oil leak from the rear main seal. Stopped at an auto parts shop and it ended up that I had less than 1 qt in the crankcase. Drove it another year before a tree fell on it while I was driving, which cracked the radiator and bent the fan shroud in, stopping the fan so that it burned out. As long as there was air flowing through it, the temp was fine, but stopped, the temp would start climbing. Drove it a whole summer approaching red, pulling over to cool for a bit, going again. I’d have replaced the fan, but they were already hard to find in junk yards in the late 90s. Still ran fine when it went to the scrap yard, same with the ’84. That one I jumped multiple times and it withstood Detroit roads and bombing alleys, smashing discarded TVs and such. One time, I went down a not-too-serious offroad trail, but enough that I figured nobody would be down it only to find a few 4×4 trucks at the end. They commented about how those little 4WD Subarus are beasts, then I had to tell them it was FWD.
LOL – I did all that shit with mine too. Highlights – blasting down a back road in Maine that I didn’t know dead-ended, in the dark. Went off the end, bounced over a bunch of stumps, logs, and rocks. Had to jack the thing off logs to get it out. Slid it sideways into a curb and nuked the suspension trying to learn handbrake turns. Didn’t know the handbrake was on the FRONT wheels. Passing cars like an idiot in fog and nearly had a head-on, went into the ditch and slid sideways right on the verge of rolling but didn’t. Took it down MANY forest trails that no FWD car should ever have managed. Would routinely peg the speedo on random Maine backroads with my buddies in the car egging me on.
Worst thing was following dormmates to a college soccer game in MA. Back seat passenger decided to crawl between the seats to fool with the radio. Distracted me just as our pickup-driving friend stopped. Hit her, missed the bumper on the truck and wiped out the headlights, radiator, and A/C condensor in the Subaru. Had to have it towed home (thank you AAA Plus). Was carless the rest of the semester and cobbled it back together with junkyard parts over Christmas break. Was a LONG ride back to ME with three of us crammed in the backseat of another dormmates Mazda.
I don’t know how I survived my first couple years of driving. Or how that poor car did. Thankfully by the time I got my MUCH quicker Jetta GLI, I had calmed down considerably (though I did outrun a cop in it once – a Caprice is no match for a GLI on a Maine backroad, and in far Eastern Maine his backup was probably an hour away). I only ever got one ticket in that car, and it was a legit small-town speed trap in VT. Got a bunch in the Subaru, and even more in the 2dr Jetta that was in-between (but I had it longer).
I outran a couple cops in the GLs, but it was more a case of being in spots where I could get out of sight before they were able to pull out and pursue.
Vanhalla was right there….
This looks like such a fun time and I’m very jealous.
Question for the uninitiated – Do the event fees pay for the cars to go back to the crusher once they’re done?
I don’t know it may have some rust but I think less than a new Lancia.
Anyone noticed auto correct doesn’t know shit about cars?