Yesterday I wrote about how a $4000 car accident led to me finding my Monte Carlo SS, which predictably led to a slew of trash-talking between my high school buddies about the historical accuracy of the events as portrayed, as well as telling of other stories that we hate to hear about ourselves, but that our friends love to tell time and time again.
You know the stories that I’m talking about: That time that your friend knocked down a brick wall in the high school parking lot because he wasn’t looking while backing up his F150? Wait, that was me. Riding shotgun in your friend’s GMC as he went up over a four-foot tall snow drift in the neighbor’s yard, got stuck, and then made you get out and lock the front hubs while the neighbor came running outside ready to call the cops? I was that passenger. Watched your buddy attempt a bootlegger’s reverse in his Impala wagon, knocking over an entire picket fence, and then stopping to try to put it back up again before the old lady who owned the place noticed? To this day he won’t admit it happened, enough though there were over fifty witnesses.
Or, quite possibly my favorite story ever (Lohnes refused to publish this article unless I told this one): The time that we stole my friend’s car, resulting in him chasing us down the street on foot as we frantically attempted to drive away in reverse (1980s Plymouth Horizons seem to top out at about five MPH in reverse in case you’re curious), ripping the keys out of the ignition and leaving us stranded in the middle of the street (Still sitting in his car), only to return ten minutes later with a massive tree branch, which he used to beat the front bumper like it owed him money until we exited the vehicle. He hops in, races off down the street without us back to his house. My buddy and I then walked back to his graduation party and drank beers like nothing happened.
We all love telling these kinds of stories, especially if they’re embarrassing and involve the guy that still owes you a six-pack from the last time you had a garage night, that stiff.
So, tell us your favorite funny or embarrassing car story about a buddy of yours (Or about yourself if you’re brave). Keep it clean though, and no stories about street racing in school zones or anything like that. That’s not cool.
Where to start…
There was the ex-girlfriend who was driving us back to her house because I was too tired to drive…she set the cruise on my ’87 Monte SS to 85mph and ended up falling asleep herself, which ended up with the poor Monte flying off a 30-ft embankment into an alfalfa field at 2 in the morning. Car survived, and I did too…after bouncing from the laid-out seat to the T-top and back.
There was the one time I was showing off manually shifting a column shifter in my ’99 Blazer for a friend who was curious on “why”…I blew the 3rd to drive shift and went straight to reverse, which got the back end to bunny-hop up enough that I slammed it to neutral and pulled over. A cop pulled in behind us, impressed because he’d never seen a Blazer that year bark tires at 90mph and thought I had done a V8 swap…
There was the night I was DDing for a couple of friends. Had just gotten my 2001 Ram, and they wanted me to do donuts. I was happy to oblige, since it was wet out. First donut, one guy loses his nerve, wants to go home. We drop him off and go out to some lonely intersection in Killeen, TX and start hanging the tail out…until the passenger rear blows the bead. Picture, if you will: 2am, 37* out, pissing rain, a cop behind me just shining the spotlight so I can see, one very drunk guy and one very pissed sober guy changing out the tire, taking turns so that the one can be in the truck attempting to thaw. On the way back to base, ditched the shirts so the heater could actually make an impact…a good idea until two shirtless soldiers tried to drive through the gate. A female friend saw me rolling a flat tire to my room at almost four in the morning. I didn’t wait for the question, said something like “Don’t f’ing ask” and crashed.
I have more…
He was most likely impressed with your speed and wanted your autograph.
My cousin who was my age bought a 58 Edsel around the same time I bought my first car. We’d be going down the road around 70 MPH and right after going around a curve he’d hand the steering wheel to someone (preferably a girl) in the back seat.
Do you want the sober or drunk expeditions?
Back in the late 70s, early 80s, friends of mine who shall remain nameless were at a hotel during a N H R A event. Friend # 1 was riding a mini bike around the floor they were staying on, and into the elevator to ride on other floors. Friend # 2 was cooking on a charcoal grill in their room. they were asked to leave shortly after friend # 1 drove his mini bike into the cleaning ladys cart. I miss the good old days.
We were ditching school one day, cruising around in my friends 1972 RoadRunner. Suddenly his Dad in a Chevy pick-up was hot on our a#$. What did we do? Pull over? Nah! He floors it! We are flying down an old country road with his dad right behind us! He lost him by sliding through the dirt lot of an implement dealer and hitting the highway! It wa all good…until we went home that night!!
Did your friend lose the the Roadrunner? I sure as hell would have.
My buddy Ken was just back from basic training and he was driving around in his dad’s early 1980s Ford F-100.
His dad had just gotten it. Aside from being two-tone brown, it was probably the nicest truck the guy ever had. He’d just put a brand new bug shield on it; One of those ones that’s just a flat piece of tinted plexiglass with some chrome trim around it.
(I know, right? Classy!)
We’re driving around town and Ken’s telling me all his exploits in basic training. After about 20 minutes of this, I looked over at him and said, “You know what? I don’t care what you did in the Army. You’re a pussy if you don’t hit that barrel.”
I pointed at one of those orange construction barrels sitting beside the road. The plastic ones were pretty new at the time (Yes, I’m a thousand years old.)
He looked at me, then looked at the barrel, then looked at me again, and sawed the wheel like he hated round things.
The truck slammed into the construction barrel at 30 miles an hour, and the barrel bounced into the woods.
That all would’ve worked out fine, but on top of the barrel sat a chunk of asphalt the size of a small pizza box.
It smashed through the new bug shield and skittered around the the hood for a few laps before it finally bounced up and cracked the windshield.
Good times.
I was a drunken passenger in a Tahoe piloted by a drunken mad man. We were driving at a high rate of speed in the wrong lane because the driver insisted “he paid taxes and both sides were his” Me punching him did nothing but escalate the situation when he took a sharp right thru a fence and into a field where we immediatly started doing donuts. Then as I leaned in to beat him harder we hit a tree, head on, radiator sprung a leak and my seat broke. He then went into revese and hit another tree and the back window blew out. Then proceeded to Dukes of Hazzard it back onto the roadway. I exited the vehicle when he approached my house slow enough for me to jump out.
Tankful for both the experienace and the fact no one died…he claimed the truck on his insurance…said a he swerved to miss a deer…
“And then there was Wan??”
When we were in high school I wasn’t fortunate enough to have my own car. Considering the amount of troubles they caused my friends I probably did not miss much.
One such case in point: My friend Kelly had a little Chevette Scooter that was hand-me-down from two older brothers. Much as you would expect a car that had already been through two teenage boys it was far from reliable and often out of commission. During one such period his dad was kind enough to lend him his fairly new F250 4×4 that was only a couple of years old. Incidentally, I discovered late his dad had been unusually kind to do this as he was at work and had no idea he had given permission.
The trouble started during our lunch break. We raced out to our local Dairy Queen, ate quickly and raced (much too fast) back to school. He dropped me in from of the school and then drove out into the lot to park. While showing off he did a big old burnout as he turned into a row to park. I was walking in the doors and smiled at our principle as I heard skidding, a loud bang, a horrible screeching noise and then a horn blowing in one long, uninterrupted blast. I turned around to see his dad’s truck majestically parked atop the hoop of a 80’s Chevy Caprice owned by a foriegn exchange student from Asia.
After school I rode my bike over to his parents house to find out what happened when he got home. I walked in their kitchen to see sheetrock missing between to wall studs that apparently was just big enough for Kelly to fit through with a little physical assistance from his dad. His mom gave me a deer in the headlights look as she said “Oh Ryan you need to get out of here before Kelly’s dad knows you are here”. Even though I wasn’t in the truck when it happened I was found to be guilty by association and was sentenced to treading extremely lightly around his dad for several months.
Seen a guy neutral drop an X-11 into reverse and threw him into the windsheild
Buddy of mine had put my car on blocks in the school parking lot. Someone snitched that he was the culprit .I said nothing.One weekend I had helped him change tranny fluid in his 69 Shelby GT 350.Monday I drove my truck and skipped 3rd hour and removed the driveshaft out of his Shelby and placed it in the bed of his truck.We had 4th hour together and I suggested he drive to lunch at A&W.Go out and his car goes no where and he has no idea why and hes pissed.I suggest we take my truck which we do.I suggested to him maybe there was some dirt in the valve body and we should try after school.I skip 5th hour and replace the driveshaft.He gets out of 6th hour and I tell him I can tow him home if need be. He gets in revs the crap out of it,slams it in reverse and all but hits the cars behind him. I said Id bet that piece of dirt moved.He agreed. LOL. I waited until our 10th high school reunion to tell him any different.
Should say I drove my truck.
In HS, my buddy Bob Leach spent all winter building an 11:1 289 and porting out the heads in the hopes of making his behemoth ’76 Ford Elite fast. In the spring, we installed the engine. When we fired it up to break in the cam, it began leaking from everywhere, oil, water, fuel. Bob must’ve shut the engine off 10 times trying to fix everything.
He finally got tired of running around the 9 foot long door to shut off the engine to fix yet another leak. So, he grabbed that wire from the coil to the distributor to pull it and stall it. Yep, that Accel Super Coil had a bit of juice because he hit his head on the hood a few times trying to get his hand away from the zapping. Then he dance this interesting jig across the front yard. I think he got the use of his right arm back later that day.
This is a long read, but it’s a good one.
Let’s go back to the year 2000, my senior year in high school. My friend Greg had a 1986 Monte Carlo “Sport Coupe” with buckets and a console and a LG4 305 that got handed down to him for his 1st car. Over time, he added a SS nose and trunk lid, SS gauges, and painted it primer black and slapped on the requisite “Calvin pissing on the Ford logo” sticker on the back window, and we used to call it the Monte Carlo Pseudo Sport. It was always in some state of disrepair, but it was a fun car, and it fueled most of our automotive shenanigans. I have a lot of stories that I can tell that involve this lovely vehicle, but this one stands tall above the rest.
It was a Friday in late February, and we were talking about the car and how it hadn’t been on the road all month because of various repairs being done, like steering column work, rear window leak repair, etc. We wanted to take it out that night to cruise, but the car needed an inspection sticker. We realized this late in the day in study hall, and made a list of stuff it needed to get fixed quick before we could bring it down to our local MA inspection station before they closed at 5:00 PM. Greg and I ran over to his place immediately after school and roughly slapped it together enough to take it for a sticker. To our surprise, it passed. That means it’s safe to drive on public roads, right?
After we got back, he threw me the keys to pick up our friend Pat, who lives right in the same neighborhood. I went to pick him up, and threw the keys to Pat so we could mess with Greg. We were on our way back to Greg’s when the first of many incidents occurred. As we rounded a corner, the whole steering column fell out and onto his lap! I had to quickly grab the thing and push it back up into place before colliding with a minivan full of kids, and had to hold the thing there all the way back to Greg’s house. Yeah, that wasn’t awkward at all.
After we bolted it back up, we headed back to Pat’s again to meet up with two more friends. There, we ripped out the stock ECU and smashed it with hammers, set it on fire, etc. You see, Greg switched to a 4-pin HEI setup and installed an Edelbrock Performer intake and carb to replace the computer controlled Rochester Quadrajet garbage, so we didn’t think we needed it anymore. Well, we did. More on that later.
We figured out our Friday night destination (the ever-sleazy 24hr Bickford’s Restaurant in Braintree MA) after our little ECU beatdown, but first, we had to go to the ATM. The five of us pile into the Monte and get out to the main road, with Greg driving this time. As we were going down the road, he complained of vague steering. That’s because he forgot to bolt the steering wheel on and it came off in his hands! He had swapped on a 90’s Cavalier 3-spoke wheel, but forgot the nut. After stabbing it back on the splines, we hit the ATM and he found the nut. At this point in the trip, we were considering just going back and getting a different car, but one friend egged Greg on to take it on the highway to open it up. Thinking the worst was behind us, we hit the on-ramp. You know where this is going.
On the highway, the CD in the stereo was over, and it was time to switch it out. Riding shotgun, I asked my friend in the back to grab the CD case on the package tray. As I looked back to my friend, I noticed that the rear window was sticking STRAIGHT UP. The adhesive had failed, and the trim that’s usually on there holding it in was missing because we had done work to that area of the car recently and we forgot to re-install it. Before anyone could say anything, the window flew off the car, Calvin sticker and all, right toward the Ford Explorer behind us, smashing in a million pieces on the ground! We immediately pulled off the highway in a panic.
After we got off the highway, it got worse. The car wouldn’t downshift, and we were going downhill toward a light. You see, that ECU that we had destroyed had completed some sort of ground circuit that the transmission needed so the torque converter didn’t lock up, and the Monte wasn’t slowing down. Considering it was in a beaten, smoldering pile back at our friend’s place, it wasn’t doing its job anymore. Greg cut the engine and braked to a stop at the light. But even that wasn’t going to keep us from getting our sloppy pancakes at Bickfords. Determined to get us to our destination, Greg pulled a MacGyver and rigged it up to make it work in a parking lot. I’m not sure what he did under there, but it worked enough to drive the car again. We all hopped back in the car and we finally made it to our destination.
And yes, we made it home without further incident. Well, except for us all taking turns hanging out the now-vacant rear window.
My 18-yr old first cousin who drove a 396-powered Canadian Pontiac was goaded into drag-racing another punk in REVERSE. They both lost control and the cousin ended up with his car impaled on top of a fuel pump and local VFD in attendance. In retrospect the situation was downright dangerous but we young idiots thought it was hilarious at the time…in the small town in which it happened it was “do you remember when…?” material for the next 40 years.
Hauling our Super Vee formula car to Mosport, late night and we get stopped and searched at the CA border. Drug dog goes through the trailer which smells like gear lube and beer. Dog comes out trying to clear his nose blowing dog boogers everywhere. This pees off the guard so he sends us inside to speak to the “magistrate”. He lines us up and asked each one of us “Where were you born ?”. My brother and I answer “United States” , Jones (our crew member in charge if moral) lies and says “United States” -he was an Army brat,born in Germany but that would be a long story. Almost free and clear! Now he asks my girlfriend, ” Where were you born?” Her answer, ” in a hospital”… Without missing a beat the three of us break into our best Three Stooges- Nggga-a-a, woob woob woob woob! “Why?” “She wanted to be near her mother!” Can we go now judgey-wudgey? As I’m picturing myself behind Canadian steel bars he says, without even a smile, “go away and do not come back”. We did go away. Right past the poor German Shepard who could not get the smell of Castrol out if his honker.
In 2003, I was attending law school in Seattle. Anyone who’s been to Seattle knows it’s completely built on a hill – if you’re not going up, you’re going down. In snowstorms, rather than putting the busses away, Metro would send out more busses. One of our ways of being entertained was to sit on the corner near my apartment and watch the busses pirouet down the hill.
One particular evening it was pretty boring, so a shapely friend decided to flash the bus drivers (trust me, they were quite a nice sight to behold) as they went by. If ever there was a better way of demonstrating that you vehicle goes where you eyes are… this was it. A bus came down the hill, and the bus driver’s mouth was agape as he stared at her nice gesture. The bus, not to be outdone, moved in the direction of his eyes. We scattered and the bus did this beautiful pirouet and slid the rest of the way down the hill backward (nearly 1/2 mile to the bottom).
Just thinking about it is making me laugh as much as I did then…
One more….I had an old 1966 Fury III Sport Coupe I picked up from the back lot of a dealership for $200.00 (those were the days). I had to put a transmission in it was the only drawback. Pulled out the old 727 and dropped in a 904. No issues, everything bolted up just fine except the linkage on the tranny. No worries though, a little finesse with the column shifter and all works well right?
I went to a friends house for just a minute to get a…mm…cup of sugar.. and left the car running in the driveway. When I came back out, the car was gone! I looked all over and decided that the car had been stolen! Called the cops to report it and my buddies back at the bar to pick me up. Cops called the next day and told me they found the car. Apparently, the thieves got in the car and could no figure out how to get the car out of reverse and backed it into the ditch across the road from my friends house! Lousy sons of guns left it there…running…and in gear! So it dug itself in pretty well and ran itself out of gas sitting there all night! Pulled it out with a friends 4 wheel drivet truck.