23 Replies to “Mustang Diaries”

  3. Jamie and I went to the same driving school.
    65 Oldsmobile F-85 with slightly concave rear window, pure idocy for scraping frost and it’s colder than -2
    72 Toyota Celica, yellow with tiger stripes on the sides actually
    74 Toyota Corolla red
    “a few of this type” all with hydralic problems of some type either in the clutch or the brakes uff.
    62 Biscayne, no seatbelts at all, the gas tank was torn out after driving across a farm field and replaced by a plastic 100 gallon? drum in the trunk, 225 w 2sp auto.. -38 outside? no worries.
    65 Pontiac “StratoChief” w “South China Morning Post” sticker on the back window, my favorite, red in and out, w plenty of chrome https://www.scmp.com
    74 VW Westphalia, where the twins were concieved at The Black Hills SD yes, they know.. Brooke brings this up yearly and we have a good laugh about it.
    Then a series of “family haulers” .. deep into Chrysler mini van territory
    BMW 530
    Then 4 Saabs in a row, sadly no Viggen, but the 9.3 Areo convertible is fun quick reliable good on gas…
    No, buying a car which reports to world headquarters if I’m speeding, is out of the question.
    As is paying a subscription for heated seats like BMW tried a few years ago, “not going to happen”.

  4. Are you familiar with the term, “Masshole”? Boston drivers are particularly renowned for being super aggressive. Whenever I drive there (and other places), I’m always looking in the rear view mirror to see who might hit me.

    1. In Regina Sk, (the city which rhymes with “fun”) when you signal your intention to switch lanes, the people in that lane will speed up so as to assert dominance and prevent you from “taking their space” where they were going to soon be driving as they pay such high taxes, they consider it “an extension of their space” … a “buffer”

      also, perhaps in January we’ll bring up the concept of shoveling the snow from in front of your house, and how that piece of public road is now, “their space”

      1. “…when you signal your intention to switch lanes, the people in that lane will speed up…”

        In Toronto they speed up, blow their horns and give you the finger. That’s if you can find a car-length between cars.

        That’s why the F-250 is handy. Put on the signal while moving over inexorably, like a lake freighter. The stupid hipster in the crappy Honda can blow his horn all he wants, he’s not going to risk getting crushed.

        Leaving some rust on the fenders works amazingly well too. They see the rust and they know you won’t care if they scratch your paint.

        1. I made the lake freighter move with my 1 ton Savana and toyhauler once. Bitch saw my left signal and thought she’d just hit the gas and take that space. Wrong.

          1. There’s nothing like a huge van with a swinging trailer to adjust an unruly attitude. ~:D

            I recall fondly the time in Phoenix some fool in a Yukon decided she wasn’t going to let me on the highway. With the on-ramp dwindling to a concrete wall, I used the door of my crappy car on her. Just a little love-tap. And behold, suddenly she found her brakes.

  5. “The first rule of Italian racing,(breaks off rear view mirror of Ferrari and throws it out the window) is that what happens behind you does not matter!” ~Cannon Ball Run

    1. Datsun pickup! What a classic! ~:D Man, those things did not last long here in Canaduh.

      The Japanese steel cringed away from snow and salt.

      I had a Honda Accord that burned oil so bad it looked like a smoke screen. More holes than steel in it.

    2. 78 Nissan King Cab
      Was on site talking to a foreman when the mirror came off in his hand. The look on his face as he handed the mirror back to the engineer (me).
      Gave the truck away with the understanding that I not be told what else failed on the piece of c..p

  7. “Nothing sharpens your situational awareness like driving without brake lights“.

    Interesting. As far as I know, knowledge of hand signals are still a thing with respect to permits, small comfort if you’re an amputee and I’m not sure how well it’d hold up in court from a liability perspective. Whatever.

  8. When a poor college student at UC Berkeley I drove a 1969 POS VW bug in old man tan. I parked it on the streets of Berkeley (couldn’t afford the parking fee in my apt. building). I woke up early one Sat. morning to drive all the way to Chico State to play a rugby match for my SF club team.

    Just as I hit the 505 cut off from i80 to i5 the hood of my VW flipped up and covered my entire windshield. 70mph and I am frantically rolling down the window and driving to a controlled stop on the shoulder with my head out the window.

    The hood was my trunk on the VW … which I never used. Some street creature must have opened the hood looking for stuff to steal … then never latched it properly. I drove that car for a couple more years with a giant crease across the entire hood. Yeah … embarrassing and just awful looking. Oh, and yeah … the windshield had a huge crack across it

    It sucked being poor.

    Happy Thanksgiving my American friends! There will be NO land acknowledgements at our table today

    1. Beetles make great dune buggies. Apart from that, as a car they were a hellish death trap. Just my opinion, formed by driving a few back in the day. Yeah, “easy” to fix, but always needing fixing. (Nothing is easy when you’re poor. You’re doing everything with a borrowed adjustable and a pair of vice grips. First things I bought when I had two dimes to rub together, tools. Hell yeah. Now my kid’s friends come over to Uncle Phantom’s garage, because the old man has air tools. And a torch. And a welder.)

      My condolences to all the young guys out there trying to fix the 2000-2010 rice burners and American junk to squeeze another winter out of them. Nothing like 15 year old rust to make everything fun.

  9. Driving without brake lights on a beater is one thing. Never had the issue myself, I’ve only had one used car and that was in pretty good shape (73 Dodge Polara with a 340), about the only good thing I learned from my father was to maintain. I buy new and run them for at least 10 years, usually 12 to 15.

    I can’t count the number of newer cars on the road without tail lights or full rear brake lights, just the third eye. I’m on the road 2 or 3 mornings a week and I always see at least one car, usually a couple.

    Another is the foreign models that turn on the dash lights at sunset, making the driver believe their headlights/tail lights are on. Worse is that the driver must wonder why their headlights are so dim, but they are too dim to check it.

    1. It was a ’65 Mustang, not so much a “beater” but the kind of car whose periodic deficiencies you integrate into your lifestyle.

      1. “It was a ’65 Mustang, not so much a “beater” but the kind of car whose periodic deficiencies you integrate into your lifestyle.”

        I had a ’67, three speed 6-cylinder (which *was* a beater). It was my second car…first was a ’69 Ford LTD Brougham with a 390, which I drove like it was a Mustang, so I thought I had better get a real Mustang before something bad happened. Bought some brand new ‘radial’ tires for the Mustang (they had just hit the market)…great fun trying to get it to drift or slide with those tires.

    2. I see a few cars at night with no lights on. It’s because “the lights are always on.” The driver is too stupid to understand that daytime lights are only in the headlights, not the marker lights. Some of today’s paint jobs don’t reflect making it easier to rear-end the SOB.

  10. “The car didn’t leak oil — it had an arterial bleed.” So definitely a Ford then.

    1. steve
      Egg Beaters (chycos) are far worst than fords. Use to be brand new plymouths and dodges that could not pass a safety here in OntarIowe.

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