I’m not proud of it, but I’ve driven some real piles on public roads. I mean real garbage. But unlike this person in Australia, I’ve never been caught driving a car without its front end, windshield, or rear glass. Let’s talk about this ridiculous reprimand that occurred in the state of Victoria in Australia earlier this month, then see if I can get any of you to admit that you’ve also partaken in such tomfoolery.
I’ve never driven a car that I thought was endangering other vehicles on the road, but I have driven cars that I thought might endanger me a bit. My Postal Jeep before my repairs was definitely the worst.
I’m going to quote my colleague Jason Torchinsky’s words from my 2019 Jalopnik article titled “I Drove My $500 Postal Jeep Only a Few Miles but It Was Still Sketchy as Hell“:
One of the things I think I actually take real pride in is the fact that I’m willing and able to drive some really, really terrible cars. It’s one of those perverse things I actually love, and the worse it is, the better it feels. I don’t think it’s a sex thing, but let’s be honest, who the hell knows?
Anyway, David’s Postal Jeep really delivered here. It’s terrible. And I mean that by my own Torch standards of terrible. It’s barely drivable, and, I’m pretty sure it’s dangerous as hell, too. It’s stubbornly slow, which may be the only reason David or myself or anyone behind the wheel of that thing is still alive. It’s also impressive that the performance of it with a real-car inline-six is as bad or worse than things I’ve driven with a single, wheezy two-stroke cylinder.
The Postal Jeep is baffling in how bad it drives. Nothing makes sense. Why is it so hard to keep in a straight line at 35 mph? How does it require so much steering input? Why does it want to start fishtailing at the slightest provocation, like driving by a sign with colors that are just a bit too vivid? Nothing about it makes any sense.
Except the brakes. They make sense when you understand that they have no interest in stopping you.
I don’t throw the word “deathtrap” around much, but I could be tempted to make an exception here.
Mercedes chimed into my slack discussion to mention that she daily-drove the little Ford Festiva you see drowning in a dirty river below:
Here’s a screenshot from a video a trucker took of Mercedes driving the Festiva as-is down the highway, with the passenger’s floorboard covered in White Claws:
As for that Hyundai Palisade that cops in Victoria pulled over on Saturday the 18th of March? Well, I’ll just embed the Tweet:
Checklist before leaving the house:
✅ Keys
✅ Wallet
???? Front end of the carOfficers couldn’t believe their eyes when this vehicle drove past them on McIntyre Road in Sunshine North on Saturday.
Details ➡ https://t.co/V77ycV77VI pic.twitter.com/rFPiYlEgBE
— Victoria Police (@VictoriaPolice) March 19, 2023
“Keys, wallet, front end of the car” read the three items on the hilarious fake checklist on the Victoria Police’s Twitter page. The police’s press release describes what happened:
Police had to do a double-take after watching a car drive past them missing half its front end in Sunshine North.
Officers were on patrol when a 2022 Hyundai Palisade drove past them on McIntyre Road about 3.30pm on Saturday.
It wasn’t the 41-year-old woman’s driving that drew their attention, but the fact that it had no windscreen, back window, or panels to cover its engine.
The Brighton woman had already been issued with a defect notice by police on Wednesday, warned it was unsafe and not to drive it.
She was issued with another fine, this time for using a light vehicle in breach of a major defect notice which will cost her $740 plus earning herself three demerit points.
That’s some sketchy stuff!
Have you driven a janky car before on public roads, even temporarily? Maybe you just got into a fender bender, or your tire keeps going flat after 20 miles, or your radiator is leaking all over the road — any sort of janky driving, I want to hear about it in the comments section!
A few examples from my past:
Datsun 510 with welded diff, side pipe with no mufflers, left hand side doors caved in and after $50 purchase of car replaced with spare doors of a matching colour after bending the B pillar out to somewhere close to its original position and shimming the door hinges with a handful of washers. After one enthusiastic burnout broke one side of the diff it was driven as a one-wheel-drive car for some time!
Datsun 610 with a 4.4 litre V8 swap (Leyland P76 engine), Celica 5 speed and water pipe rollcage, had to stop in the middle of a main road when it tried to burn itself when the cable from a hand winch in the boot fell across the exposed battery terminals.
1975 Valiant sedan a friend bought that had a cracked case on the auto which we later repaired by epoxying the inside of the crack – when he bought it it would only drive in reverse, so we drove the 20kms home through the suburbs in reverse.
Datsun 1200 coupe a friend bought with an illegally swapped L Series 2 litre engine, so we ‘fixed’ it by swapping that for a Z18 EFI Turbo engine which proceeded to demonstrate the torque of the turbo engine by gradually breaking all the spotwelds on the bodyshell with audible ‘pops’ on every hard launch, until the doors would either pop open or jam shut and the bootlid kept popping open.
The best effort was with a Datsun 610 sedan a friend was stripping of parts he wanted to keep, and we decided to see just how much you could remove and still drive it. We had it down to a shell with all panels removed, the roof cut off, all the interior stripped out including the dash and the drivers seat replaced with a milk crate. He took it for a lap around the block and arrived home just as the local cop ( who knew and hated my friend with a passion) came cruising down the street!
Honourable Mention goes to my first car (a manky MKII Cortina) that, while working on it at a mate’s house, was taken for a quick hoon down the nearby main road with no hood and no rocker cover on the engine. I was leaning out of the side window to see thanks to the rapidly developing oil slick up the windscreen and over the roof, when I saw the police car going the other way then doing a u-turn. Managed to get back to the mate’s place, in the yard and close the gate to hide before the police made it back – they cruised around for 10 minutes trying to figure out where I had gone!
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’69 Camaro. Daily driver, just a 6-cyl auto beater. Brakes went to the floor when I put it in reverse to leave for work. Instant Dot 3 puddle. Work was a Chevy dealer. There were two traffic lights, three other stops, and 15 miles of interstate between home and work. Drove it there on the parking brake, leaving hella lotta room to stop. Clocked in on time. New brake lines made and installed while I worked.
’72 Malibu, totaled on the left rear 3/4. Wheels were straight, no metal touching the left rear tire. I bought this car for the engine. The car was little-old-lady cherry condition except for the smash on the left rear. Wired up a brake light and drove that thing for a couple weeks until I found a place to swap the engine from it into my ’67 Chevy van.
I had a succession of crappy cars in the mid-’80s, though most of them could pass a state inspection.
The most suspect of these was a Dodge Demon, which looked great but very much needed front-end work. Every trip was a fight to keep it going in a straight line and it chewed up the front tires like the streets were paved with 40-grit sandpaper.
I drove my friend’s xj to school once that was the same way: no front end, no glass, and it was rusted to shit, even the frame. the body would flex whenever you hit a bump. also no doors and no exhaust. ahh highschool and rednecks
Every car I’ve ever driven on public roads has had several things that this car doesn’t have:
* Headlights
* Front indicators
* Front number plate (required in my country)
This car was dangerous *and* illegal
Picked up a Volvo V70R for 400, was told the brakes were really bad, I drove it about 15km home after stopping at one stop sign the brakes essentially failed, the emergency brake slowed it down a bit. Made it home safely and fixed it bad master cylinder to put it mildly
“I’m not proud of it, but I’ve driven some real piles on public roads. I mean real garbage.”
I beg to differ. I think you’ve been VERY proud of your ability to get piles of mobile tetanus on public roads.
My second car was a 1970 Mustang Grande with a 302 V8, and it ran so poorly I had to turn the idle up to like 2000 rpm, and after the 4-wheel drums got a little heat in them, they couldn’t keep the car stopped at a light, so I had to shift into neutral before stopping or it would idle right through the intersection.
I once saw a guy driving a late 70’s F-150 with the hood off and his buddy was sitting on the inner fender pouring gas down the throat of the carb… thankfully it wasn’t on a highway, but who knows what shenanigans they got up to later on.
This is when the ability to post photos would be nice.
Other than the bit of remaining glass in the center of the windshield (and it is safety glass) I don’t see what the big deal is with the Hyundai. Sure its hooptie, but in what way is this unsafe. That citation is bull shit.
My father bought a basket-case Bug Eye Sprite race car. He parked it and passed away a few years later. The car had been sitting for about ten years when my older brother decided to resurrect it. After a few months sifting through the piles of parts, we got it running, and he decided to shake it down in a nearby, under construction, housing development. I don’t know if the car had ever been registered in it’s lifetime, it didn’t have a windshield or a bonnet, but he donned a pair of safety glasses and went to “check out the new road.” He was escorted home by a very understanding police officer. I can only imagine the list of laws that had been broken. He was just told not to do it again.
My friend used to have a 2002 Honda Civic, purchased from a family after their teenage son was done with it. As you can imagine, it was filthy, covered in dents, scratches, and punk band stickers. Bumpers falling off, no ac, etc. The control arm bushings were so worn out that I could hear the control arms hitting the frame/other components of the car, even on a straight, smooth road. There were grooves worn in several metal components and while going round a corner, I had a heart-stopping moment when the steering wheel locked for a split second, like something caught in its groove for a moment. She drove they car for years until the head gasket finally failed and I pronounced it dead and not worth reviving.
That car always reminds me of what a good friend she is. When I graduated from college, she drove up to see me. Only about an hour and 15 minutes…on the highway. She never drove that car on the highway, and usually stuck to back roads with speed limits under 45. It took her over three hours each way, and she didn’t even think about it. Just “I gotta see my best friend graduate!”
She’s got a 2012 New Beetle now, and she takes pretty good care of it, which I’m proud of her for because that wasn’t always the case with her previous cars.
One of my many old 80s Subarus once developed an alarming eccentricity while I was out & about. Upon acceleration (what there was of it), it would veer in one direction, and, upon applying the brakes, veer sharply the other way. I carefully crept home on neighborhood streets to find that a tie-rod end had completely stripped out-the threads were just undulations. The castle nut kept me from wrecking, but it had cut through the cotter pin almost halfway.
Around that time I started buying better parts-and never reusing cotter pins
I didn’t see this anywhere in the comments.
State Trooper: Do you have any idea how fast you were going?
Del: Well, funnily enough, I was just talking to my friend about that. Our speedometer has melted and as a result it’s very hard to say with any degree of accuracy exactly how fast we were going.
State Trooper: Seventy-eight miles an hour.
Del: (whistles) Seventy-eight, huh? Well, yeah, I could buy that. Sure, I guess, y’know, uh… you would know better than us, especially since we’ve got a melted speedometer.
State Trooper: Do you feel this vehicle is safe for highway travel?
Del: Yes, I do. Yes, I really do, I believe that. I know it’s not pretty to look at, but it’ll get you where you want to do.
State Trooper: Now, you got no outside mirror.
Del: No, we lost that.
State Trooper: You have no functioning gauges.
Del: No, not a one. However, the radio still works. Funny as that may seem, with all this mess, that the radio is the only thing that’s really working good, and it’s clear as a bell, don’t ask me how.
You’re going the wrong way!!!!
Phhh….
How do they know where we are going?
I came here for this.
Here’s the link to the scene. Michael McKean is absolutely perfect as the taciturn state trooper.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RhMYeITmVE
I was rear ended by a Crown Vic that was pushed into me by a van, causing me to hit the car in front. This happened on Boston’s old Central Artery. My car was a Dodge Shadow “America.”
No immediately detectable injuries for the people involved, so we quickly exchanged insurance information and got out of the way.
My car was slightly accordionized. The bend on the roof was noticeable. But, it ran, so I got in it and headed towards Storrow.
Though I was able to go in a straight line, the car was kind of crooked. Something was dragging. But, I wasn’t stopped. I made it all the way home in Brighton with nothing but a few strange glances for seeming to go crookedly down the road with a bent roof. Of course, the still drivable car was totaled.
I did daily drive a 30 year old rusty leaking all fluids jeepster commando for a few years. But in reality in Minneapolis I see crap on the roads so often that I have forgotten that I grew up back east where state inspections keep total garbage off the roads. Now I see stuff where most of the body has long rusted away, much of the glass is gone, all doors and hatches still there are held shut by bungie chords. It is just so messed up.
I thought i’d driven some junk but you guys are on a whole nother level!
I drive an archetype of crappy cars. My daily driver is a 1998 Suzuki Baleno/Esteem. It’s the same car “Saul” drove in “Better Call Saul”. We call it “la misteriosa” (the mysterious one in Spanish) and it’s defiantly the jankiest car I’ve ever daily driven.
There’s no front bumper, the back bumper is held on by tape. When we got it none of the windows worked properly and only 3 out of 4 doors worked, nothing locked. The key goes into a small hole in the bottom of the dash where someone put in a temporary ignition system that become the main one (I suspect it was stolen at some point). The key looks like a lock box key. I have to jiggle the antenna if I want good radio reception. We had wild time clearing up the jerry rigged wiring that would make the car refuse to start or sometimes turn off.
La Misteriosa is not the worst car in Puerto Rico but she’s close. It felt that way last week when the driver side car handle broke and I had shimmy out the other side to pick up my daughter up at day care.
All said, I love my car though, every time she starts and gets me somewhere I pat her fender and I get a sense of gratitude I wouldn’t get from a normal car. I plan to fix her up and bring her back to her mid-90’s station wagon econobox glory. We’re stuck together now.
Heh, Baleno door handles. I had two Balenos and I loved them very much – they were comfortable, roomy and dependable and the bumpers were actually good at taking low-speed impacts and plopping right back into shape. But the door handles, man… I lost at least one every winter, the little hook that pulls the door latch is made from the cheapest fecking plastic out there.
The door handles and everything to do with the doors is trash, I’ve replaced almost all the components of the doors and the rear driver side window still won’t roll down.
I agree with the bumpers, that’s why I’m getting the front one replaced. Finding the bumper for a 26 year old car on a small island full of Jalopies was a months long exercise in frustration and determination. Now I just have to save up the money to get it attached.
Before that I have to address the fact it’s leaking almost every fluid possible, but hey it drives like a retired champ.
Had a guy in a Mercedes back into my Baleno once, at a leisurely pace. Sounded like stepping on a tupperware container. Got out, saw that the front right corner of my bumper was basically inside-out. While I was sarcastically congratulating the dude on his amazing driving skills I heard a “floop” and the bumper just went back to its original state. Ended up billing the guy 5 bucks for a new license plate holder cause that was the only damage I could find.
So yeah, Baleno 1 and 2 never left me stranded, both eventually were retired to a combination of rust and German TÜV inspection and are probably still living their best life somewhere in Africa where I sold them to.
Friend had a 69 Delta 88 in high school that was mechanically at the end of its life – but at least had a decent body. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, he acquired a 74 Vega with all that entailed. I’m not religious, but I think I prayed to every deity know to man while in that thing.
This is normal in states that don’t require safety inspections.
Half way through a rebuild I went for a drive in my Lotus Elise. The only body work was the front clam and the doors. No lights, no plates, and the engine was fully exposed sat on the extruded aluminium chassis out the back.
Fun drive. More fun than the E30 325i I drove that had a wheel fall off, but kept going because we’d welded up the diff. More fun than the 320i that I kept daily driving after it had caught fire twice.
I’m the UK we have the car inspected ever 12 months for safety, so you really have to work at making something a dangerous pile of crap.
I did manage to drive around for about six months with a snapped rear spring. Somehow it got through an MOT without them noticing (even after I’d asked them to see if they could work out what the weird clunking noise was). Given how obvious it was, once my regular garage had got it up on a lift, I realised the MOT inspector had never looked at it. I’m never going back to that place again.
I mean my CJ7 technically is street legal, but you can see the entire engine through the tube fenders and I can drop the windscreen down onto the hood. as well as remove the entire roof. It also has Detroit lockers that like to engage around corners if you exceed 5 MPH and the gearing makes it a 45MPH or so only vehicle for comfort reasons.
Old jeep owners have driving sketchy junk on the roads down to a science
(I have owned 5 jeeps so there is pride in this statement)
Scout owner here. I feel seen.
I have a 71 Scout as well, it does not have the windshield delet option, but it is mighty fun to take top off and get terrible gas mileage from the little 304 Tractor motor. She is a tank though.
JDE, I don’t know if by “little” you mean the HP to weight ratio of that giant lump of iron, but I think that’s the first time I’ve heard anyone refer to an IH mill as “little”.
And yeah, there is nothing better than having the top off in the summertime.
I bought a ’73 Fury for $50 in 1987 and used it as a winter car. It had three different-sized tires when I got it, and that was just a start. I did replace the brakes and got two new tires and a couple used (but same-sized) snows because I’m not a complete sadist. The rest of that car probably fits the mental picture you have right now. I worked at a garage at the time, so I had an “in” on getting it through PA state inspection (….it was *mostly* legal, promise!)
Mine was in 1990 and it was a 1970 Buick Lesabre with a 455. rivets and stop sign metal over holes in the rear quarters, the black top was actually tree sap from sitting for so long under the PO’s tree. exhaust was swiss cheese, but that old girl got through winter admirably so she got a trans rebuild, which even back then cost more than the car did, which was $300 for me. dual side exit exhaust when the officer gave me a fix it ticket for that and some 20 dollar used rubber from the tire shop out back. that old Buick just kept going through high school and Iowa Winters though.
And I’ll bet that no matter what happened to the rest of the car, that 4:55 remained silky smooth for the duration.
Went with a buddy to look at a 260Z he wanted. Had a 350SBC and an M22 trans. At the time I had a bit more car experience than him, but not much, so when the guy wanted to take it for a test drive I was the person in the passenger seat.
I about shit myself.
Guy was flooring it everywhere, powershifting, banging it off the rev limiter, just going nuts with it. I honestly had no notes about what might be wrong with the car because… well… I just had no thoughts at all. Looking back now I have one image of that ride, when he pulled out on the road and there was an open spot in front of us more than a half a mile long. After that its just white noise.
Buddy buys the car. We get it back to base. Next day there’s a puddle under it. We investigate and it was the master cylinder that had leaked all of its fluid out.
Probably not the sketchiest vehicle I’ve ridden in, but on the graph of sketchy vs scary, its pretty high up there.
My dad’s 1972 Ford Ranch Wagon. That thing had no floors, was more Bondo than machine, and had 320,000 miles on it. It shook a flap of Bondo and fibreglass loose at 60. Dad reattached the flap with more Bondo. I think that thing had single digit horsepower when we drove it to the dump. And all of those horses needed to be taken for that final walk out behind the barn.