Knock on simulated wood (I have an Ikea desk), I’ve had pretty good luck with my cars not getting messed up outside of a collision. The only really significant bummer I’ve experienced was the golf-balling my wife’s then month-old RAV4 received when we were caught in an unpredicted hail storm on the way back from a movie, which suuuucked (the hail, I mean, but as I recall, the movie wasn’t great either).
I do, however, have plenty of second-hand experience with cars getting damaged due to bad luck or carelessness or just plain stupidity, including a tree mishap like the one in the top pic – RIP Uncle Charlie’s Buick Regal.
I once saw a person slide a chair into their hatchback, back-first and legs out, and then shatter the rear window because they didn’t account for the legs extending beyond the slope of the hatch. Also shattered: their spirit.
In college, a buddy of mine procured spray paint for an art project before a few hours’ worth of classes one day in early June. When he returned to his car, an art project of a different sort had been completed in his absence as a can of flat black had split in the heat and graffiti’d the interior of his Sentra.
And then there are the more minor, but no less irritating and possibly heartbreaking annoyances such as kids (or pets, which are like kids) hurling up breakfast all over the back seat, spills of stain-producing liquids onto light-colored upholstery, and the like.
Oh, nice! Antti just piped in on Slack:
I once had a hailstorm wreck all horizontal surfaces of my month-old lease, on a work day that could have been an email. When I got the $4000 worth of PDR performed on the car courtesy of the insurance company, the guy doing it leaned on the headliner and broke it and stained it trying to fix it. He ordered a replacement one and the delivery driver left it in the rain outside the shop. He eventually found another headliner in time for the lease return as I just wanted the car gone at that point. Dents did disappear though.
I was mildly annoyed when I accidentally used the rear wiper on the dry and dirty glass on my current lease, but then I remembered what happened to the earlier car and figured I can live with it. Still, I’d hate scratching the glass!
What’s the worst not-a-crash incident … wait, now Thomas is hitting me up:
There was the time the belt tensioner on the Crown Victoria grenaded, lodging the pulley against the timing cover and wearing a groove in it. Then there was the time it sort-of caught fire. Then there was the time wheel studs sheared over a nasty pothole. Then there was the time the transmission gave out …
What’s the worst not-a-crash incident you’ve seen or experienced yourself? See you in the comments.
2nd year of college, my mustang was broken into. They broke out the rear quarter window, then realized they couldnt get in. So the smashed both front windows, also damaging the door panel and A-pillar trim in the process. This is december in central NY, so snow. The window guys replaced the fronts, but ordered the wrong rear so i had a nice breeze for a few weeks. They did catch the guys, who found that all i had in my car was a phone charger and old bluetooth. Asshats. I got off easy though, they also got 2 of my residents cars. Broke multiple windows on each, plus a WJs sunroof.
I got the charger back 7 years later.
Never lock your car
Friend had a mk 1?2? Jetta coupe (1988) and never locked it for that reason. Windows are rare.
Ice storm and a 90 year old walnut tree. Fell on my 1200 sqft barn and it looked like a tornado hit it trailer park style. 2000 M Coupe (owned since new) and my Miata donor for an Exocet build. A Mastercraft waterski boat for the topper. All gone in an instant.
Only smiling this one because there’s no crying face.
Insurance? Any good news there at all?
Actually the MCoupe after years of steady value jumped up at the end. Paid $38k new + $15k for subframe reinforcement and full MCS suspension after years of track work. Insurance paid me $59k which covered all my costs. Boats more than 5-6 years old are totaled because of broken windows. Seems the glass manufacturer only holds on to the molds that long. It was a stated value deal but given it happened around covid finding another one was challenging.
Damn, that Mastercraft could have easily been more expensive than the rest of the damage.
Senna, my German Shepherd mix, was nursing an infected tooth, unbeknownst to us. He was always a butthead, but he was being extra buttheaded around then. We were having a big family dinner and he was trying to steal food from everyone. Normally, he was pretty good about not begging at the table. My mother-in-law didn’t like his attention, so I put him outside. He opened the door on my Volvo 850, a skill we didn’t even know he had, and climbed inside. He proceeded to tear up the interior of my car. Door panels, seat covers and carpet. I wanted to kill him. I assumed it was petty revenge for being separated from the good eats. When the vet later discovered the bad tooth, most was forgiven. Poor guy was besides himself with pain. A little junkyard shopping and I was able to replace most of what he damaged, but the one seat carried his scars until I got rid of the car.
I have pics somewhere, I should see if I can locate them.
Caltrans had resurfaced a section of 880 between Milpitas and Fremont and neglected to properly street sweep up the small gravel afterwards. My 2009 e90s front end got absolutely fucked by flying gravel. Too many chips to count on the hood and windscreen. Even the plastic was in bad shape. I was furious as I had been planning on selling it on the not too far future.
It ended up going to a guy who was going to make it a track toy. He didn’t care about the cosmetic damage luckily.
First drive in a 1973 Buick Convertible that I painted, changed out the interior carpet, and new top. The local Marathon station was still full service back then. The gas filler was in the middle of the car, just behind the top and ahead of the trunk. The kid running the nozzle wasn’t watching and I was yaking with someone when I realized gas was overflowing. Running at top speed past the attendant I slammed the emergency stop but not before a couple of gallons of high test were now in the car and all over the paint.
I was not a happy camper.
I’m just old enough to have been around for gas pumps that did not have the auto-stop function. There were always dark stains on the concrete back then, esp when stations started switching to self-serve. I enjoy how plenty of them still to this day have the original signage from that era informing you that you’re responsible for spills.
My WRX ate its entire totally-professionally-built engine, and I had to sell it for the value of the rolling shell. That’s how I got into German cars.
I feel you here. My old LGT blew a turbo (the third of it’s life) about two weeks after I had the entire top end pulled and rebuilt due to it skipping timing and bending a handful of valves.
I loved that car, but will never touch a Subie again.
I could be swayed by a naturally aspirated Subaru, either a BRZ or a Brat could still entice me some day, but I agree, no more turbo Subarus for me.
You know it’s traumatic when the better option is a German vehicle.
Honestly, I might have Stockholm syndrome for reliability issues, because I keep thinking I’d love to try a Fiat or an MG.
I have a soft spot for the 500 Abarth. I know what problems they’re likely to have, and they’re not so insurmountable as to wholly sour its appeal. The issue of course is that they’re all used at this point, and like abused.
The 124 Spider is pretty good, though, it’s a Miata with a Fiat engine.
Older Fiats, though, uh, yeah that’d be a harder sell.
Now an Alfa Romeo, on the other hand, that might take less convincing.
I’d be mostly interested in a 70s Spider or a 60s Spridget, I drove a ’72 Spitfire once and it was really fun, but I’d like something with a slightly more refined engine (the Spitfire has a tractor engine from the 30s that sucks to cover any distance with)
You may be thinking of the standard wet liner inline-four engine used in the *big* Triumphs. That engine was also used in the Ferguson TE 20 tractor although it was designed in 1947, not the 1930s. I also read it was sometimes used in agriculture water pumps. And why wouldn’t it? It had plenty of torque.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_wet_liner_inline-four_engine
The Spitfire OTOH used the Standard SC engine, designed in the 1950s and AFAIK not shared with tractors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_SC_engine
I always appreciate a good factual correction, thanks for the info and links!
Always!
I failed to put the car in gear AND to pull the handbrake. Later a colleague showed me a picture and asked if it was my car?
My first thought was I didn’t park there.
Yes, the car had decided that the other side of the parking lot was better and had rolled across and parked it self 4 inches from my colleagues car. He could not get in on the drivers side.
There was damage to the front lip of my car, because of a small sign that stopped my car. Thank goodness no one was hurt.
Yes it was a BMW, so even without a driver they park like …. 🙂
Not the worst, but definitely weird: Had a 2002 Passat wagon (because I am cool like that) parked on the curb outside my house. Come out to go to work one morning and there is a single hole punched through my roof. Exactly bullet shaped. But it didn’t pass through the headliner, which was unblemished. Took it to a crash repair and he was able to recover the bullet – near as I can figure, must have been someone firing a gun up in the air and my poor little wagon caught it after gravity had its say. Enough momentum to pass through the steel, but not the headliner
Gas line popped off of the front carb on my TR6, pumping gas all over the exhaust manifold. Results as expected…
Result = actually driving any old Ferrari
That sucks, TR6 is a nice British roadster. I feel you, my 1st car was a TR7
Low car, tiny tinted windows, moonless night, way out in the country, long and curvy driveway, no turnaround, sloped hill on each side of the drive, never been there before, no spotter.
Recipe for disaster. Of course I missed the drive halfway down and bottomed out as two wheels went off pavement after I clipped a stiff bush that left deep scratches down my door.
But, it gets worse. Oh so much worse: I was on a blind date that was a full on “NOPE” about two seconds in for both of us, and had just dropped said date off after an excruciating dinner.
Had to knock on the door late at night, ask her father for help somehow pushing/lifting my back wheel onto the driveway to get traction again. Most awkward 15 minutes of my life, and I’ve never told the story to anyone (until now).
So maybe that’s the worst thing to happen to both me and my car…
I wonder what that story sounds like from her perspective.
Based on the way she talked at dinner…
“So I went out on another date last night. The guy was nice I guess, but it was obvious from the start there was no chemistry. At least I got another free meal out of it though, haha. That’s like the fourth this month already!
After he dropped me off at home, like 5 minutes later we get a knock on the door. The idiot backed off our driveway and I had to go wake my dad up to help him push his little car back onto it. Dad even had to pull out a 4×4 from the landscaping to help get traction on the grass that he needed to fix the next day. He was pissed. It had to have been so embarrassing for that guy… I couldn’t even watch!”
This happened a month after I got my first car, on my freaking birthday. I was backing out of a cramped parking lot. The parking lot had a fence and the posts of the fence had big concrete feet holding them down. As I was pulling out, the car stopped around the curb. Thinking it was the curb stopping my slow backing out, I pressed the accelerator, only to be rewarded with the gut wrenching sound of the bumper and much of the front of my car being pulled off and broken. Turns out the car was stopping because the bumper was resting on the concrete feet of the parking lot’s fence. In my defense, the feet were completely invisible from where I was. Yes, I should have noted their presence as I was backing out and accounted for them, but it’s not like pulled and broke the front of my car on something I could see. Anyway, the result was 6000$ of damage, (mostly paid by insurance on the spot, but my eye watering first year premium were gonna stay a while after that), and a really shitty birthday.
You get this situation try to switch insurance before the claim appears on your license. Trust me it can be done and you can save thousands. Also relocating to a new state and switching over your driver’s license can work wonders
The most painful was probably my first brand new car. I took my little brother to the beach maybe 3 weeks after buying it. He spilled a milkshake he had to have in it. Then all his wet suits and boards made a terrible smell and sandy mess in the back. I ended up having to rip the whole thing apart and clean it. Almost had to get a new carpet. From then on I only ever let him in my work truck spec trucks.
I’ve had a few trucks and a Subaru get totaled with hail. But have been able to buy them back for scrap value. Subaru needed a rear back glass but other then that just ran them with dents.
I was going through a carwash at a gas station in ’98 with a Mercury Tracer wagon. This was the small, garage-sized pull-in where the brushes and sprays went down your car and back up, free with fill-up sort of thing. There was a guy spraying off the parking lot with his hose hooked up just inside the wash. He pulled the hose taut, which popped it up in line with the brushes which instantly grabbed hold of the hose, ripped the tap off the wall, and proceeded to whip it down the side of the car. Made a series of cuts through the body about 2 inches apart all along the hood and passenger top/side edge of the car and smashed the windshield and back hatch. My ex somehow climbed out of the passenger seat and into my lap behind the wheel to escape the whirling hosepipe of doom.
That’s some final destination shiz right there.
Gonna give the nod to my not-quite-beloved 1963 Corvair Convertible that looked so promising when I bought it and towed it home, but when I started stripping paint there wasn’t any real metal left underneath. It just kind of disintegrated in front of my house into a pile of rust and bondo.
I had a Rambler Classic like that, the frame rails were made of Bondo caked in undercoating, cut my losses and dumped it
My ’72 Super Beetle caught fire, which was the style at the time. 😐
The stock single-carb setup routes the fuel line from the fuel pump to the fuel-make-it-happener in such a way that it passes very close to the distributor cap. If there’s a drip, it will likely fall on the cap and *whoosh*.
I was pulling out of a parking lot when the engine stumbled and died. As I reached for the key to restart it, I saw – neatly framed in the rear window – what appeared to be a cozy fireplace. (Take that, Hitchcock) I got out of the car and ran up several flights of stairs in the nearby building where i knew there was a desk that was staffed 24/7. By the time I got back to ground level the fire department was on the way and they used sixteen pounds of dry extinguisher stuff to put out the fire. (I was and remain grateful though).
Fortunately only the decklid and the vent area under the back window got charred, along with the engine compartment itself. The lightning hoses were burned down to the bare copper where they attached to the distributor cap. After some quick refurbishment, I replaced the stock engine with a rather hot 1835.
What didn’t kill the Bug made it stronger, so… yay.
See if them VW engines had been liquid cooled it might have put out the fire
You had me at the first sentence.
Not as drastic, but I’ll never forget when a coolant connector over the engine blew on my Mustang while on the road – a glance in the mirror and a fleeting thought that it was like Spy Hunter back there.
Thanks, Jack!
* plays 8-bit version of Peter Gunn theme *
I took my 73 Super Beetle like 3 years ago to the VW specialist to do a whole tune up including changing the gas filter and ethanol friendly hoses. Well I was driving back home and right before parking the car died and I was what now? I just got it back…. well I opened the engine compartment and I saw the filter unplugged dripping gas, I ran for my tools and garden hose just in case lol I was so mad, never came back to that shop.
A crackfiend neighbor smashed the driver’s side window of my Ford Contour, just so they could pop the hood to steal the battery, to get a core refund fee at the nearest AutoZone. It would have been around $10 back then, so all he got out of it was a dime rock. He also stole the license plates and probably traded them for another dime rock.
The smiley face doesn’t show how much this pisses me off. Just know it does.
It caused the insurance company to total the car.
Its up there with the people who rip copper wire out of buildings to sell for pennies on the dollar and leave the owners with six figure repair bills. Or just leaving the place sit vacant and derelict because the cost of renovation suddenly spiked too high
For me it was turning the nooks and crannies of my Mazda6 into ad hoc cheese factories.
I’d gone out to pick up a gallon of whole milk as that’s why my kid was drinking at the time. I unwisely put it on the passenger seat for the drive home, and unfortunately along the way home a teenager blew through a stop sign, I panic-braked and the gallon of milk hit the dashboard and exploded.
After yelling a few choice words, I eyed up the ruined milk carton in the passenger footwell and very carefully picked it up, with a mind to keep it level and prevent the escape of whatever fluid still remained inside. To my dismay, the carton was light as a feather, already devoid of its entire contents, which were now seeping through every crack and soft surface of the car’s interior.
I had a friend that something similar happened to, except it was a Chevy squarebody pickup, and it was a gallon of buttermilk.
In West Texas.
In August.
He was actually injured in the incident, so he couldn’t clean it for a couple days. You could see stink lines coming off it when he opened the door.
I had a coworker who spilled a bowl of cereal in his Camry and never cleaned it up properly, so that thing smelled like rotten milk until the day he wrapped it around a telephone pole. And he was the one who always insisted on driving whenever we went anywhere as a group so he could book the mileage
I’ve had two cars stolen. A Civic DX ( stick-shift! no less! ) and then a Kia ( by the Kia Boys, jerks )
2005 Accord hit while street parked resulting in a single dent in the driver front door. Sterling Auto Body (franchise) did the repairs at the demand of the other driver’s insurance company. Got car back, and paint was orange-peeled on door. Took it back and they redid paint job. Got car back, and on the way home the inner fender liner fell off and mirror was loose. Upon closer inspection, a bunch of fasteners were loose or missing, and there with a fresh big scratch in the new new paint. Returned and demanded satisfaction. Person who reassembled the car after body work was fired on the spot. Some time over the weekend while the car sat outside at the body shop, somebody dragged/slammed a 6′ tall heavy steel cart all the way down the PASSENGER side of the car, damaging every panel and surface. Body shop began repairs without notifying me. I only learned of the additional damage when I showed up unannounced to see what was taking so fucking long.
Had a even worse similar issue but started as a crash so not relevant for the required story line
4 2 liter bottles of Diet Pepsi froze and exploded in the back of my Juke. Brown slush everywhere.
By everywhere I mean dashboard, windshield, headliner, footwells… In single-digit F temperatures.
Had a couple cans of Dr. Pepper Cherry Vanilla (mmm, those were the days) do the same thing. Thankfully frozen soda slush/ice is much easier to remove than liquid soda (or dried).
Hail storm. now I’ve got speed holes
Same here. Multiple times.
So that’s how you add lightness! Colin Chapman should have thought of it.
Would someone driving over someone else’s Miata hard top at an autocross event be a non-crash thing? (In the grass in the paddock.)
Daaaaaaamn…
Our son was helping with some yard work by getting the wheelbarrow, which was stored in the garage on highly placed wall hooks. He didn’t move my wife’s car first. So much for the hood…
Just a couple of days after buying our brand new Rover 825TD, a mouse chose the innards of the car as its final resting place.
We could never find where it had kicked the bucket, and for weeks the stench was thoroughly unbearable.
So much for new car smell…
Getting (hilarious) Seinfeld flashbacks from Jerry’s smelly car.
“I once saw a person slide a chair into their hatchback, back-first and legs out, and then shatter the rear window because they didn’t account for the legs extending beyond the slope of the hatch.”
The exact same thing happened to poor Mr. Pig in Busy Town.
and yet cops can strike windows repeatedly with their batons and get nowhere
What this tells us is that the cops need a magic court order to instantly switch the insurance on the vehicle into their name – then and ONLY then will they be able to do incredible damage with only minimal effort.