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.
wasn’t really a worst thing, because minus accidents, but certainly the most strange and amusing…
we had a couple days of high winds and rain during the winter. a mistral with 100+ KPH gusts, combined with periods of heavy rain. after staying inside for several days, i needed to go out to get groceries. i found that my Ford Ka driver’s side door was literally filled with water. i noticed because it was much heavier than usual and sloshed when opened. i had to ask someone how to deal with this because it was so bizarre. luckily a friend knew that there was a little plug underneath that i could drain the door of several liters of water. no damage done, just very odd thing. 😀
My car was broken into and they stole a guitar I had in the trunk.
What’s worse, when I got back to the car, they had left a banjo in it.
Was the banjo there BEFORE they broke into it?
No, that’s the joke. :p
It’s funny if they didn’t steal it, but certainly funnier your way.
There are a lot of variations depending on which type of musician you want to target. I’ve heard it with basses, various brass instruments, mandolins, etc.
I got myself a nice moss yellow Volvo EX30 just a couple of months ago.
6 weeks ago, there was a thunderstorm coming in. I tried my best to get both cars inside of our carport.
Just about 20cm of the Volvo were unfortunately sticking out.
Well…unfortunately it turned into a hail storm. rear window smashed, but luckily not so much of the body. Sounds not too bad.
Until I opened the trunk.
As there was so much hail and rain coming down, the gutter of the carport was flowing over. All that water ran directly through the smashed window inside my car.
So yes…water damage.
My epic heap of poo ’82 Volvo 245T caught fire. At rush hour. In Woburn on Rt.128 in MA, on my way home to Maine. Like an idiot, I put the fire out and had the heap towed home by AAA, and repaired it. Should have let it burn to the ground.
Coming home from a New Year’s Eve party, my roommate Kate hurled into the shift boot of my ’92 Peugeot SW8. Neatly filling it at least. That was seriously nasty.
Minor but infuriating – a few years ago, one of my dumbass tenants went out to the garage to get a box of something. Box was on the other side of the garage from the man door (but THREE garage doors with electric openers along the way that he could have opened). Did he open a garage door and get his box of crap? Nope. He set the box on the back hatch spoiler of my BMW wagon, squeezed his fat ass between the car and the garage door behind it, and DRAGGED the box across the back of my car, scratching the shit out of the spoiler in the process. $400 in paint later… But to his credit, when I found the damage and went absolutely ballistic about it, he fessed up and paid for it. He’s lucky that only the plastic spoiler was damaged, he managed to not get into the metal roof somehow.
My nephew once peed himself in the back of my 911, so that was fun.
A more serious episode – a misplaced metal crank in the trunk of my Miata shorted the battery while I was doing 80mph in the left lane of an LA freeway. Everything turned off.
Parked on the side of the road, the car started filling with smoke. It amazingly never caught fire.
My ‘20 Honda Accord Sport 2.0t sedan/sleeper muscle commuter car was stolen from the parking lot behind my building while I was asleep.
One morning, my wife calls me on her way out the door to go to work. “Where’s your car?” she asked. “In the parking lot, why?” “Because no, it isn’t in the parking lot…”
I reported the theft to the police. Fortunately, I had put an AirTag in the car when new, through which I located it a few miles away. I met the cops at the vehicle, which I was able to positively identify. It looked good overall but the thieves had taken off my plates, popped off the drivers door lock, and reprogrammed the ignition so it would not identify my key.
I had it towed to the dealer, where the claims adjuster identified $12,000+ in damage including a cut dashboard wiring harness and damaged drivers airbag. Fortunately insurance was able to cover all repairs and I had the car back good as new a few weeks later.
The police officers told me how smart it was to hide an AirTag because otherwise it would be gone with no hope for recovery. But I keep waiting for the thieves to strike again and worry that the Club I now use isn’t enough to stop them.
Sounds like you need a 6000 SUX!
It’s been a year since my ’11 Fiesta 5M went up in flames. Maybe it was the radiator fan bearings. Maybe it knew I test drove a Civic Si, GTI and a Scion Tc the week before. Any way, I paid $1600 for it in ’18, dailyed it until 2025, and then cashed the insurance check for $2980 after deductible. Good times.
My ’88 Regal was broken into in the lot of my college apt, shattered the passenger side window and stole the CD player (I THINK it was a CD player…details get a bit fuzzy after almost 30 years). I was still finding glass until the day I sold it 2 years later. Can’t recall if that was before or after it fragged the transmission.
Not me, but my college suite-mate and his immaculate full-leather 4 year-old Porsche 911S. At the beginning of the year, he set his sights on a very attractive girl in our dorm, believing that she was either The One or The One for Right Now. After several weeks of socializing he invited her to a concert about 40 miles away, requiring travel over a mountainous highway famous for its hairpin turns and elevation changes. And my roommate was not a conservative driver.
Anyway, they go off in the evening for dinner/concert and I don’t wait up. The next morning, roommate is sleeping alone. I offered a cheery “So, how’d it go?” Roommate gives me a disgusted look and says “On the way back she threw up in my car!” I don’t recall that there was a second date.
I had an immaculate 2012 VW CC (manual!) from 2015 till 2020. It started burning oil, more and more over time. One day I got a check engine light for misfires on cylinder 1. Replaced coil pack, no dice. Same with plugs. Ordered a compression tester and there was zero compression on cylinder 1. All others were normal. I think it was a piston ring issue, based on what I could find online. Only had ~120k on it, naturally it was one of that 2.0 TSI engines. It really sucked because we had just bought a house, and having a fully paid off car was nice.
I didn’t get much on trade, but I ended up with my 2014 Sportwagen TDI (no turbo gas engines from VW ever again), and I definitely like the wagon more than the CC. Getting a great deal on financing in April 2020 was no problem, so it didn’t end up hurting me financially. I guess I’m kinda glad it’s gone? I liked it but it wasn’t “me.” Plus this was at the tail end of the supply of Dieselgate cars, so the Sportwagen even came with a warranty!
I had an ’83 Firebird with incorrectly-sized wheels. I did not know this at the time. The wheels were rubbing the front brake lines, and one night they finally made it all the way through one of them.
I ended up rear-ending the car in front of me. I was a broke teen so I drove it to a parking lot and planned to have a friend tow it in the morning.
When I went back, the rear glass had been smashed and the metal part of the hatch was folded into a V shape (still latched) so that someone could steal the subwoofers and amps out of the rear.
I also had someone steal the Rota wheels off of my Scion xB and leave it sitting on the rotors behind my garage door. Rotas for f-sake. Cheap knockoff wheels that cost me $500 for the set including shipping.
A classic in the rust belt, tale as old as time.
Towed home
Pushed to a spot in the backyard
“Need to get that thing running, I have way too much money in it to let it go cheap”
Days turn to weeks
“Got to get that thing running, it’s still a good car”
Weeks turn to months
“I’ll get around to it sometime, it’s still worth some money”
Months turn to years
“No, it’s not for sale, I’m going to fix it up and it’ll be worth a fortune”
Years turn to decades
“$200 bucks, it’s scrap, Haul it out.”
I don’t even have most of your excuses, but have a manual 09 Outback that has not moved from my garage in two years.
I have a 1993 Toyota Pickup, 22re 5 speed in my back yard rotting away because the owner won’t sign over the title, swears he’s coming to get it so he can fix it up.
It needs a clutch and a fuel pump to run and drive.
It’s been there for 6 years.
That makes me feel better for turning down any car storage requests.
Just tell him he has a deadline to come get it, and if he doesn’t meet it you’re towing it out onto the street and leaving it until the city tows it away?
Hahaha!
No way, I’m still holding out hope. And the closest thing I have to a street is backroad, nobody’s towing anything away out here unless it’s a car upside down in a ditch.
If I just rolled it into the front yard with a sign on it that said “$3,000 NO TITLE” it would be gone in a matter of days anyway.
Not quite the worse, but had a battery blow up back in the late 80’s. Got in the car one morning to go to work, hit the ignition switch and boom. Could smell burn electronics. Popped the hood and the whole top of the battery was blown off, must of shorted internally. Cleaned it all up with mixture of baking soda and then a new battery, everything was fine after that except the clock never worked again.
Not my car, but I was driving.
I had a rented Mitsubishi Something Cheap in Ireland. We stopped at Aldi (didn’t have them in the Us back then) to get some provisions on the way to the hotel. One provision we obtained was a 3 liter bottle of soda. I’m not a big soda drinker, but I hadn’t seen a 3 liter bottle in a while and bought it.
While driving, it broke loose from its bag and started rolling around the cargo area. I heard it, but didn’t worry because what could happen? Apparently, the very low end vehicles overlook things like little plastic caps to cover the sharp ends of seat rails.
Eventually, when it was good and shaken-up from rolling around behind the rear seat, the bottle found a nice sharp corner to roll into. It punctured the bottle which proceeded to roll around the cargo area spraying a high-pressure stream of soda in every direction. I pulled over and watched from the outside until the bottle tired itself out.
My dad bought a brand-new Ford Sierra wagon in 1985. The first one in out city.
Since the licence plates hadn’t arrived yet (normal, back then), the Sierra was parked inside. Five days later, the house was flooded, with half a meter of muddy water in the garage… There were specks of brown dust still appearing four years later when he sold the car.
Also, his first brand-new, a Ford Falcon Sprint, in 1981 (already told this story). Same situation: parked inside because no license plates yet. This time it was stolen by police gangsters -mind you, this was the end of the last dictatorship, so impunity of these guys was rampant. The insurance company called a few months into democracy to tell him that the car was found, hand painted red and with blood stains in the rear seat and trunk, in case dad may want to have the car back. Yeah, nope.
One of the upper arms of a Y-shaped oak tree fell on my ’83 Subaru while driving down the street. Hit from the passenger A pillar to about the center of the grille. The 3 bolts that held the strut top hats on were embossed clearly into the hood and creased it pretty well as it bottomed out the suspension and stopped the car short (I had been braking already). Mechanically, the radiator got cracked and the cooling fan shroud bent so that it locked up the fan and ended up burning it out. It stayed cool as long as the car was moving, but would overheat in traffic. Drove it all summer pulling over and shutting it down for a 15 minutes or so when the needle got just below the red. It did fine, but I knew I reluctantly needed to find a new car and I ended up with the best one I’d ever have.
You can turn on the heater to cool the engine in an emergency. Once had to do that in my first car in a long highway summer trip, it couldn’t handle the constant 70 MPH with stock cooling.
Yeah, I ran it with heat blasting. As a bonus, when it stopped blowing plasma air, I knew I needed to add water (I just used straight water at that point).
Some years back, my wife’s Civic Si got stolen for a joyride. The cops towed it to an impound lot and told us a couple weeks later. Alas nobody closed the moonroof and it was a rainy time of year.
I think you know where this goes.
I bought a super low mileage 2005 CTS-V in 2012. My wife and I were headed out to our anniversary dinner and a tree fell. I saw it and hit the brakes; the tree hit my front bumper and lip before going under the car and ripping off the lower cowl cover below the rear passenger door. It also cracked another. The grille below the bumper was dislodged from the lower lip and somehow, I pried it back into place but also got myself stuck as it tried to snap into the slot but ended up impaling my fingernail to the point I couldn’t get my hand out. My wife had to get into the trunk, where there’s a blow-molded case with cheap jumper cables, and a handful of even cheaper tools. She brought me a flathead and I pried my gushing finger out of there. I used a napkin and some cheap red electrical tape from the same kit and went out to dinner at Red Lobster.
not my car, but my kid sister’s…
she volunteered for an international medical mission for a summer and i drove her ’00 accord instead of my regular ride, mostly for the novelty (v-tec, yo!)
anyhow, went to a buddy’s lake house and took a couple of cold beers, as one does. one of those PBRs escaped containment and rolled under the seat.
later that summer, during a hot south carolina day, i came back to the car and it smelled like someone had a championship celebration in the back seat, but it took a few days more to dig under the seat and find the shredded can.
fortunately, she has a weak sense of smell and never brought it up.
Ooo, I have a fun but painful one. In grad school there was a guy in our lab who did a lot of work with gallium, specifically gallium spacecraft thrusters. As a result, he burned through quite a lot of it, and tended to buy it in hundred kilogram orders. Somehow, despite being a pennyless grad student he owned a mid 90s NSX (maybe ’95?) which famously has an all-aluminum body. Those of you familiar with FAA/EASA transport regulations may know where this story is going.
One Friday he picked up his monthly order of gallium from the freight office and put it into the passenger seat. He then left it parked over the weekend in triple-digit midwest heat. When he returned on Monday, he found the gallium (which melts just above room temp, and has a rather high thermal expansion coefficient) had entirely melted and poured down the seat and collected into one big pool in the passenger footwell.
Aluminum has a fun reaction when exposed to gallium- it sort of just absorbs it, slurping the liquid metal into it’s own crystaline matrix, which also happens to completely destroy any structural capability it might have had. So when my labmate finished cleaning all the split gallium, he very carefully peeled back the footwell carpeting, and discovered his car now had the Flinstone’s drive option. Fortunately it was a pretty localized failure and a repair shop was able to cut out the whole footwell sub panel and weld on a new one.
As soon as I saw you wrote “gallium” my heart skipped a beat. He got lucky that it didn’t just dissolve his whole car!
Sunk my FJ wheeling in muddy/sandy water durning in the spring at an off-road park in Indiana which flooded the interior a bit but that was the least of my worries. This was within like a year of ownership to. It destroyed my starter, alternator, battery and worst of all my trans fluid looked like it was a chocolate milkshake. But by the powers that be (the previous and first owner) bought a extended warranty on it and the local Toyota dealer replaced the trans under warranty (would have cost like 6.5-7k). But hey I learned a lot out of it and learned my limits more when wheeling.
Hail!
Had a guy the consistently parked his 3 series BMW in front of a hydrant right down my block.
Never got towed…
One day during high winds, the tree in the front yard directly behind the hydrant let go.
Laughed my ass off when the 150 foot oak tree cut his car in half. Even got a picture of him yelling at the tree…..
I love when fire fighters smash the windows and run their hoses right through cars parked at hydrants.
I probably have worse stories but this one is sort of funny.
24hour race in Belgium, an ex Tom Walkinshaw XJS, fast tank of a thing, not going to win but fun. I was used to pulling off the line as the prototype rockets did there thing, after four hours I the was in the zone,or groove or whatever. Then there were marshals waving flags and all sorts of goings on, I wondered what all the fuss was about. Twas about me! The fuel cell had split, a lot of petrol was being dumped on a hot exhaust pipe. My mirrors were set so I could make a rough guess aboutthings 60 yards behind. The flames were only 10 yards long! So that is a daft tale. Two laps of Spa under a black flag. The car lived to drive another day, and so did I.
Oh, I forgot about the time a state investigator stopped at my house to ask my wife where my car was and then came to work and repossessed my NSX – it was stolen vehicle sold at auction to the dealer I had purchased it from. The dealer had to refund my money and I was incredibly fortunate to find a replacement in a couple of weeks 40 miles away with low mileage in great (stored) condition, since I wanted another black automatic and they were very rare. The insurance company offered me the car after a couple of months but I wasn’t interested after the police had cut the firewall where the fake VIN had been engraved as evidence.
And my boss left his car at the dealership after hours where they had one of those slots in the door for your keys, only there’s just dropped the keys on the floor, and someone came along and slid something under the giant gap under the door and pulled the keys out. The police caught up with the thief a couple of states over.