Before you type the tale of how you backed your new Z28 into a telephone pole, I must clarify that today’s Autopian Asks is enquiring about things you intentionally did to your car (or people you know did to their cars) that turned out to be horrible decisions, not fender benders and the like (but still, sorry about your Z28).
I think the classic Bad Car Move is the DIY convertible as crudely depicted in the top graphic. Like many of you (I bet), I had buddies in high school who made this tragic alteration to a malaise barge. In my case, I recall it being a Chrysler Newport that was sacrificed to the Sawzall. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this mod is only appropriate if the AC is non-functional and you’re about to drive more than half an hour in the middle of August to deposit the car at the salvage yard – and it’s still dubious even then, as the roof was contributing rigidity that is kinda necessary for safety. But if we’re talking a relatively decent runner you actually need to get around, well, ya really blew it by sawing that top off, because now you do need to take it to the salvage yard. Or learn to weld.
Other fails I witnessed included the absolute destruction of an interior in a painted-dashboard attempt by a would-be Hot Important Nighter who thought the job could be done with a rattle can, painter’s tape, and zero parts removal – just get in the car and spray. Things went south fast, and he was furious. And also purple, as the spray paint covered him as thoroughly as everything else in the car.
And me, personally? The worst thing I ever did to a car (a 1980 Honda Accord, specifically) was knowingly drive it a full half hour with the temp needle buried in the red, every drop of coolant prevented from entering the block because of a bum thermostat. In my defense, a tow would have cost more than the car was worth, and infinitely more than the zero dollars I had, and I had to get home somehow. But if “worst” is defined by consequences, then what I did wasn’t bad at all, as the Accord’s EK1 engine seemed no worse for wear once a new thermostat was in place.
Your turn: What’s The Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done To A Car?
Top graphic images: DepositPhotos.com; Milwaukee
I was at a track, at an organised drift day, with my drift MX5 turbo. I’d done a lot of horrible things to that car (camo dash retrim, stripped interior, welded diff, the Mitsubishi turbo installed using a Ford truck intercooler and SAAB pipes), but in this case it was the organiser of the event who drove it in to a wall.
That’s not the thing.
The radiator was cracked, coolant pouring out. I’d driven to the track, so I needed a tow. The AA at the time had a policy of not recovering cars from track events, so I had to get my car a reasonable distance from the track so I could legitimately claim to be on my way home.
So that’s why I invented, and made, using parts pulled out of a skip, the “radiator bypass pipe”. It went from engine outlet straight to the water pump inlet, avoiding the leak, but also providing no cooling at all. Cooling was done by the heater matrix with the fan on full.
And so I drove home, as slowly as was safe, watching the temperature gauge.
It made it five miles from the track before the needle started to head for the red, so that’s where I stopped and called for a tow.
In highschool I had a strange black plastic switch on a cable dangling from the steering column of my 74 buick. It had no markings left, and as far as I could tell it didn’t actually do anything so one day I took a pair of side cutters and snipped the cable. Next thing I know a strange black box under the driver’s seat started smoking(because I was an idiot and didn’t disconnect the battery). I yanked the box out of the car and all smoking issues ended.
About 3 years later I finally figured out what all that stuff had been. It was a factory installed cruise control unit, and damn if I wasn’t pissed that I didn’t have cruise control for the long freeway drives while I was in college.
A close second was straight piping my mini that i used to commute daily 65 miles one way to graveyard shifts at the prison I worked at. Nothing like a long drive with a deafening drone coming from the exhaust at dawn after 12 hours of dealing with whiney gang bangers and ch**d mo**sters.
I was visiting friends in Southern California when one of the rear brake pads on my Peugeot 504 got down to metal on metal. I found replacement pads and replaced them in his driveway. Afterwards, during the post-op test drive, someone turned in front of me and me nailing the pedal resulted in no stopping force whatsoever and I ended up swerving through a thankfully empty gas station to my right.
I don’t know what I did wrong, nicked something I guess, but once stopped with the parking brake, I looked back and there was a trail of brake fluid from the left rear caliper.
It was a Sunday and I had to get back up north the next day.
I bought some brake fluid and a C-clamp and just pinched off the line to the left caliper.
And then I drove it that way for over a year.
Are you secretly David Tracey?
I bought an R5 that had a vice grip over one brake line and no cylinder or pad on that wheel – I had driven it for 5000km before I noticed this
So my dad bought a 1993 Lincoln Continental, FWD with kind of advanced for its time self leveling air spring suspension. Anyhow, the thing had zero anti-dive or squat, and I learned that with just the right frequency of full throttle jabs from a dead stop followed by full ABS brake pedal force you could lift the rear tires off the ground after a few cycles given the right inertia. This was all hilarious to great effect with my friends in the car with me until the ABS and brake lights came on accompanied by zero power brake assist. (At least the brakes still functioned.). Mind you the car had maybe 1100 miles on it. I did what most kids do and explained, “It just happened. I don’t know?” Thank the lord it was fixed under warranty. My dad mentioned the dealer said they’d never seen such a failure before. He’s 87 now, I should probably tell him the rest of the story. ????
My dad bought a brand new Camaro in 1971, red with a black interior and vinyl top. It was a car deeply intertwined with my childhood, and it became mine in 1991 after 20 years as dad’s daily driver—he was a frugal guy!
Despite being a weird first car for a high school goth—it was probably the only ’71 Camaro in the world with Cure and Smiths bumper stickers—I loved it. I planned on keeping it forever, and eventually restoring it.
And then I killed it. In a very low-speed and embarrassing way.
It was night, and I was driving through a parking lot to get to a side street. The lot was unlit, except for the admittedly poor headlights of my Camaro. Which is probably why I didn’t see the handicap walkway that jutted into the parking lot. Even though I was going no more than 10-15 mph, the curb caught the bottom of the Camaro’s frame and immediately totaled the car. It was bent like a wire hangar, completely ruined.
Thankfully, dad was relatively understanding, and just happy I wasn’t badly hurt. I eventually moved on to other cars, but part of me still loves seeing an early 2nd-gen Camaro, and wonders what it would be like to have one now.
My friends and I cut a car in half and turned it into a trailer to be towed by another car. We were using it for the Rocky Mountain Rambler 500 (similar vibe to Gambler). We bought a 1992 Subaru Legacy Wagon from a guy for like $200. He was supposed to get us the title but didn’t, so we decided to buy another Legacy Wagon (this time a 1996) for $400 and part the 1992 out. We wound up selling the engine and transmission for like $400, so no harm there. Then, to honor the 1992, we cut it in half, found a crappy old boat trailer, and put the back half of the 1992 on the trailer frame. Then we towed it through the Rambler.
The next worse thing was taking the same 1996 Legacy up Webster Pass. It’s not a super hard core trail, but I can say that car was definitely the only 26 year old Subaru on road tires up at the 12,000 foot summit that day. This was after we lifted it by putting it on blown Forester struts we bought for $30. And we never hooked the sway bar back up after lifting it, in case you’re wondering.
That Legacy was the toughest car I’ve ever experienced.
I LOVE this story! I don’t do stuff like this, but it is genuinely fun to read stories like this from people who do or did.
Thank you.
Thank you! I’m glad to hear the story of my bad decisions brought some enjoyment to somebody else.
My first gen Legacy was a tank. It’s the bread warrior that killed the dragon in The Student Who Became King in Spite of Himself by being able to endure more than the dragon ever could. I beat the hell out of that car, it didn’t care, and it was much better to drive than anyone would believe. If I could have any car in the world, but couldn’t resell it (because I’d obviously pick the most expensive one), I’d have that wagon back.
I once went looking for a quiet place in the woods with my HS GF in my ’84 GL and figured nobody else was likely to drive up this fairly rocky (if not all that tough) trail. Nope, bunch of guys with jacked up 4×4 trucks were at the end. They were surprised to see the car and marveled at the 4WD capability of Subarus, then I had to tell them it was FWD. That’s on them, though, they had way more capability than that trail required and it’s their fault they didn’t know it.
The EJ22 and 5 speed we had in the 1996 (which was a carryover from the 1st gen) was basically bulletproof. We beat the living crap out of that thing every time we drove it and it just didn’t care. I think that drivetrain was one of the few from Subaru that actually rivaled ‘90s Toyota in reliability.
I was a little sad to cut the 1st gen in half but without the title it was basically useless, and it was an auto.
Turned a 1993 Dodge Stealth into a Gambler car with a 3″ spring spacer lift and a dazzle camo rattle can paint job. It seemed to make normal people irrationally angry for some reason
Worst thing had to be the time I cut off the back half of my ‘63 CJ-5 to make a wooden flatbed. It was as sketchy as you’d expect coming from a 19-year old with a sawzall.
Conversely, that flatbed (and redoing the remaining, nonexistent body mounts) is actually the only way the Jeep could have survived on the farm short of a full tub replacement. So yeah, it was a sketchy mod, but it did prolong the Jeep’s life, so it’s not all bad.
In case you’re curious, this was an ad I posted when I sold it several years later:
https://www.ewillys.com/2014/02/28/1963-cj-5-jefferson-md-800/
Worst thing? Put a xt6 engine in a gl-10.
When the stand alone didn’t work i put in a sti version 1 engine/trans in it. Then it got stolen.
Rebuilt the engine in my ’93 F150
On a trip from Tampa to Tallahassee the oil pressure started to go south. Fearing everything, I drained a quart, threw in some honey oil, and stopped at National Parts Depot and got a new oil pump, gasket and some other bits and pieces.
Got to Tallahassee, ignored my niece that I was there to see for her birthday, and spent Saturday replacing the pump.
The trip back was hellish, stopping to fill the pan every couple dozen miles as the gasket didn’t seal and every time I accelerated or braked oil would slosh out of it. Eventually I got home, resealed it, and prayed.
In vain, it turns out. I had been too late.
Approx 10k miles later, when I was finally able to pull the motor and do an autopsy, I found that the #1 bearing had spun and the clatter I was hearing was what rod-knock sounded like (yes, I drove with rod knock for 10k miles)
It was spring break, I budgeted two or three days to get the engine in and buttoned up. Two and a half weeks later I was beaten and broken.
It had taken a full week to get the engine in and situated. It took the next week and a half of troubleshooting to realize what had gone wrong. I realized, when I looked through some of the pictures, what I had done.
https://i.imgur.com/vM66CMq.jpeg
My timing marks were off.
I ended up trying so many things to get it to start that I had washed the cylinder walls. When I finally did get it to start I had virtually no compression. I ended up rebuilding the engine again roughly 15k miles later.
It broke me.
At the time I was studying to become a Mechanical Engineer. I had been a mechanic in the USAF, and had rebuilt engines while I was in.
The complete and utter inability to do this broke me. Was the hinge of a trapdoor that led me into a fairly dark depression for a while.
I was able to climb out of it. I’m doing well now, but almost failing out of college was the most minor of issues I had at the time.
Glad you’re doing better! I have a friend who was a helicopter mechanic in the Army and is very good mechanically but is now studying to become a paralegal.
Tell your future paralegal buddy to sit through as many Law and Motion calendars as they can and take fastidious notes about verbiage. I had to sit through 7 of them each week at my last department and it helped me beyond anything I could ever learn in a classroom to write court documents and make my reports exactly what the attorneys needed to be accurate with charges etc. It reached a point that the public defenders in a couple of the courts would ask me to help their interns and paralegals to prep plea agreements more than a few times.
My (only) kid is an attorney. The time we spent reading Harry Potter books together up to bedtime (before the movies came out) and the Chronicles of Narnia to him as a very young boy have apparently paid off for him.
Successfully launched. No regrets.
I’m glad you’re doing better. Never loose heart over an engine, as fun as they are they’re not worth that.
1971 BMW 2000 touring, as in the hatchback version of the BMW 2002. First project car after I got out of bikes (bad accident made sure I rethought those life choices). Didn’t know nearly as much as I thought I did. It was an absolute rot box.
Stripped the car to down and pulled the subframes out from under it thinking it was the best way to restore it, despite only having a single bay English garage. Beat the joints apart with no protection on the thread, so no more threads. Didn’t have the money to a full front end rebuild at that point so I decided to get into the body work.
I put it on 2 dollys, one under each end, and pulled the doors. Then I started pulling the giant patch panels out of the floors to try and replace them. All of them. Without bracing anything. The rusted out sills gave way and with the center unsupported and nothing bracing the door openings and crumpled the roof. The car was unsaveable. As a huge BMW nerd, I mourned for being responsible for destroying a rare piece of BMW history.
Shortly after that, I took some basic panel beating classes, read a panel making guide start to finish over and over on retrorides, then got into a daily driven classic mini restoration. It was a painful lesson learned, but a valuable one.
This was something between intentional and an accident: in college I was in a rush to park my car. The only spot in the lot had a moderate pile of snow in it. I knew I didn’t need the car any time soon so I figured as long as I could get it into the spot, the snow would melt before I needed it again.
Well, for better or worse, I couldn’t will myself to floor my car into a snow bank. The outcome was a car 1/3 into the spot and hopelessly stuck. I got out to assess the situation and heard the worst sound of my automotive life: “click.” This was a ’96 Grand Am with automatic locks that engaged when the car was in gear. When you’re stuck on a snow bank, your gear isn’t really relevant. In my case, unfortunately, the gear was reverse, with the engine running, slowly producing heat that would eventually melt the snow under it, at which point it would start its roll into the great unknown.
It was a lot to explain to AAA. Fortunately the driver showed up in time, took a good long look at my poorly-parked beached car with the reverse lights on, followed by an even longer look at me, and then he jimmied the lock in about 5 seconds and disaster was averted.
Modified it.
I bought it garage kept, glossy red, every surface well maintained and it handled like a dream. Entirely stock I pulled that thing to 180kph and trusted every nut and bolt of it and it sipped fuel like it just came out of etiquette school.
10 years later it’s got a rattle in the coil overs, all my oversized Japanese 3 piece wheels are egg shaped, it leaks more oil than it holds, the ITBs sound great, but it’s the thirstiest N/A 1.6 on the planet and it’s a tax to drive it at highway speeds, pushing for 180kph again would put me in a box, guaranteed.
I bought the perfect car, someone else should have beat me to it.
I didn’t read the article (I am the worst kind of commenter now…) but my answer arrived like a fire alarm in my head: I once traded my dream 1993 VW Corrado for a beat up 1995-ish VW Jetta VR6. The Corrado needed more repairs than I could afford at the time. The Jetta proceeded to show me just how demented German electrical gremlins can be, including but not limited to the gauge cluster frequently and unpredictably losing power. I don’t know what came of that Corrado and my heart still aches for what I have done.
So it was the early days of NASA – National Auto Sport Association, not the rocket one. And I was desperate to get on track. I bought a 200k mile VW Quantum with stick, good tires and brakes. Should have just gone to my first HPDE. But no, I decided to remove a few parts to make it lighter. Like the whole interior, dash included. The tech guy said no, we can’t let you on track with stock seat belts and no dash, I can’t peel you off the firewall and keep our insurance.
I stayed the whole weekend and hung out at the tech area, doing what I should have done in the first place and looking at everyone’s car as they came through. Got a lot of good natured teasing – so many people had never seen a car taken down that far.
I should have caged it but a Jetta in better shape found me. I used the Quantum for occasional runs around the farm until a guy bought it for the compact derby. No real financial loss, just a hit on the ego.
I wish we could post pictures on here, because I still have the proof of this in my Facebook albums. But that cover picture? Yeah, I did that.
Early on in my marriage, I was jonesing to buy a Jeep. I had already owned 3 different ones, but my budget for owning a wrangler limited me to……well, absolutely unsafe shitboxes that my wife wanted no parts of. I kept pushing the issue, but she wasn’t having it.
So later that night, with the mental clarity bestowed upon 22 year old me by a 12 pack of rolling rock, I took a sawzall and a cutoff wheel to my 1991 shortened K1500. And I didn’t stop at the roof….I hacked off the doors, too.
I then proudly, drunkenly, showed my wife our new “Jeep”.
Now, to rip off one of my favorite Billy graham quotes: My wife never once has thought about divorce, but that night, I’m pretty sure she thought about murder.
Excessive drink does make one brave, doesn’t it? But didn’t the roof come off those things anyway? Or was that only much older Blazers?
Also – the control that women seem to exercise is one of many reasons I am perfectly happy that I am queer as a rainbow striped three dollar bill. Dudes really don’t try to control other dudes’ automotive stupidity in that way – though one friend did cut off the automotive money supply to his husband. Hubby can still buy whatever floats his fancy, no questions asked, he just has to pay for it 100% himself, no subsidy from the MUCH higher earning spouse. Fair.
Oh heavens no, my friend. This was a regular ass pickup truck that I completely ruined. To be totally fair the motor and transmission were both on their way out and I was probably going to sell it for next to nothing anyway.
And to your other point, you’d have to know ME back in my early 20’s. The last thing I needed was a spouse that let me off the leash. I needed PARENTING lmao.
ROFL! Yikes. Though I suppose there was a reason you married so young…
Oh man that’s just what you do in small town Ohio. Sounds cliche but I literally married the girl that lived next door. So yeah we were young, but she’d known my dumb ass since 1st grade. She both knew exactly what she was signing up for, and exactly how to handle me.
Very different from my hoity-toity suburban New England upbringing. I don’t think any of my classmates were married at 30. Too busy with school and careers. Quite a few are still single in their mid-50s, myself included. Though of course the ability for me to marry is still pretty new…
At this point I would like a spouse mostly for the added income potential, LOL. Though some say my near 25yr housemate in Maine is my common-law husband. Lots of long-timed married couples live together but don’t have sex, right?
Oh yeah, absolutely. Thats the cultural difference between a town of 500 people in the middle of nowhere, and the more modern society areas. My dad grew up here, his childhood best friend came out to him as gay their graduating year. It was 1977. He was the only openly gay guy in our town. Luckily, he never really suffered any abuse or really even aggressiveness (none that he ever mentioned) but he still had to get the hell out of here if he had any chance of being himself and finding a partner.
That guy though ended up being one of the first people to introduce me to cars. He came to visit one time when I was about 7 or 8, driving a brand spankin’ new forest green C4 Corvette. He took me for a spin, and I became a car guy instantly.
Jeff was a fucking awesome dude lol
The worst thing I ever did to a car was selling my ’17 GTI Sport to Carvana. Sigh.
My condolences.
Can’t you buy another?
One year car sold in small numbers, and every used one I have seen since has been “modded” and hooned to death. So probably not.
Other than the crap color choices, the Sport was as if VW read my mind as to what makes the perfect GTI. Sigh. Well, other than the short roof.
We did the top photo to a 1980 Ford Fiesta we bought for $25. Friend needed it for a parts car. And then things got carried away and we chopped the back half of the car off and drove it around ass dragging, sparks flying. We discovered if we punched it in reverse it would lift the back end up for some spark free 2 wheeling until you let off the gas. Whole thing was captured on VHS, tape somewhere. It was New Years Eve circa 1992 and we referred to it as New Years Eve Fiesta ever since. Good times…
I don’t know what you’re on about, Peter.
Every single mod I’ve ever done was carefully planned to the Nth detail, months – sometimes years – in advance, and then executed flawlessly to ensure the car was not only better than before, but had morphed into an even brighter beacon of pure automotive magic and sublime functionality.
Or, you know, the complete #$%^&*@ opposite of that. Like the time I decided to saw the muffler part off the single quiet pack on my Super Beetle and then clamp a universal SuperTrapp muffler to the remaining stub of exhaust. It was fine… ish… until two of the three flange bolts escaped and the SuperTrapp was dragged along the road for an undetermined distance. The mostly-unchanged sound caused by the disconnected muffler should give you an idea of how it sounded post-mod.
Bonus: the extended impact with the asphalt damaged the end of the muffler and deformed the removable discs, so the tuneability of the fairly expensive muffler was gone. I pulled all the discs off and ran the “muffler” as a baffle-less open tube.
In grade school, I used to deliver the newspaper to Paul Moller, the inventor of the SuperTrapp. He was also big into trying to make a flying car. He is worth Googling.
He had a Studebaker Avante. It was always out on the driveway, because his garage was full of other stuff he was working on. Very nice guy. He would explain what he was working on, but at that age (and well, probably now) it went over my head.
Sadly, his idea of flying cars never really got far off the ground. Hahaha. But, as a licensed pilot, I’m not sure everyone should have been enabled to navigate in 3D.
Sometimes this site feels like degrees of separation. Thanks for dusting off those brain cells.
That’s pretty nifty – thanks for sharing!
“He is worth Googling”
Phrasing!
I’ve driven seven different vehicles until parts of the frame, body, or cab structure completely collapsed due to rust.
1967 Chevrolet C10 pickup
1973 Plymouth Duster
1975 AMC Hornet
1977 Chevrolet Monza Spyder
1980 Chevrolet Monza
1995 Chevrolet S-10 pickup
A relative’s 2004 Mercury diSabled – I only drove that one to the scrapyard.
The joys of living in the rust belt.
Passed it on to my younger brothers.
That poor Volvo…
Parked it for too long. Even in a garage, rot and mice got to it.
The worst thing I ever did to a car was to my New Beetle. I was young and dumb, and succumbed to the auto mod hell that was the late 90s.
I replaced all the amber lenses with clear. Then I took out the center console, and painted it yellow. The next thing wasn’t so bad, but kind of ugly. Somehow I dug up a wiring diagram and added a set of RCA inputs to the stereo so I could directly plug my fancy iPod in.
Back then I thought it was so cool, now I just feel bad for the car.
Eh, it’s a Beetle. New perhaps but still…questionable mods are seemingly somehow part of the awesome zeitgeist of owning one!
Two 10″ subwoofers in a custom isobaric box in the back of a 300ZX. It hit hard enough to pop the T-tops off if you forgot to latch them, and constantly broke the rear hatchback latch. By the time I sold the car, literally everything on the interior and exterior rattled.
I had a ported 18″ JBL Professional sub acquired from a defunct movie theatre in my XJ for a while. The amp it was hooked up to wasn’t particularly powerful, maybe 200W bridged but it was enough.
Was it loud? Yes!
Did the shortcomings of carrying around an enormous, heavy box of mostly air very soon outweigh any desire I had to wreck my hearing and shake my XJ to pieces?
Also yes.
I gave my daily driver 99 hyundai accent to a high school art class to make into an art car. I removed the rack with wings for daily driving but the paint was wild.