All I remember was an impact, broken glass hitting my face, the car sliding to a stop, the wind knocked out of me. As I gathered my breath, I took a quick survey of my situation: I was sitting in the middle of an arterial street in Colorado Springs. The 1998 Dodge Intrepid I was driving had been struck in the driver’s side rear door hard enough that the car had whipped a 360-degree spin. The driver’s door was pinned shut and the rear door was shoved into the car about seven inches, along with sections of the B- and C-pillar. The rear axle had snapped. Sitting just a couple of feet away was the Honda CRX that had hit me at a high rate of speed. I looked at it for a second, then looked back at the purple Dodge and realized that I now had the task of explaining to my grandfather just how his car ended up wrecked. The cop took me home after everything was sorted and the Intrepid was loaded onto a flatbed trailer, which I’m sure helped my grandfather’s health issues when he saw the police bring his sixteen-year-old grandson home in the back of a Crown Victoria cop car with no Dodge to be seen. Even then, the Dodge wasn’t a spectacular creature, being a base-level 2.7 V6 car. While it was roomy and nice to drive, in hindsight totaling out the car would have saved Grandpa plenty of money dealing with that ticking time bomb of an engine. But instead, for some reason, the car was rebuilt and returned to him. I will say that whoever rebuilt it did a fantastic job, as I never felt a difference driving it.
So that brings us to today’s question: What was the first vehicle you mangled? Was it something as simple as a light winter accident, maybe just bent some metal on Dad’s car… or do you have one of those “don’t do what I did” or “lucky to be alive” stories? The only good side from an accident is learning from one, and if you don’t have to experience the accident yourself, all the better. So let’s hear your stories!
(Intrepid image: Copart. No, that’s not the actual car…but visually, close.)
Have wrecked a couple of motorcycles (first at 15-650 triumph), blown up a few, first car wreck, 10-17-13–my current project, MGB V8, hit and run on freeway, had to cut it off at windshield to fix, it is almost back on the street.
I was getting a massive KFC order of my family, and I had stacked all the food on the passenger seat.
Driving slowly out of the carpark over a speedbump, I noticed that some fries were slipping off the top of the food pile. I leaned over to catch them before they fell into the footwell, while I was doing this the car gently veered into a concrete bollard at the side of the exit.
Suspension crumpled, bodywork mangled, fries everywhere.
It was NOT my finest moment.
Oh my first was a bit full on….and very stupid. I had a 1970 Falcon ute, 302w 4 speed when I was about 19 and my brother and I were driving through the hills having just stopped in a place called One Tree Hill to buy food. We were both fatties as kids and loved our food – he’d bought a big block of chocolate and me a sausage roll ( this is relevant to the crash, trust me) – so I’m driving along about 70 mph and he’s pestering me for a bite of the sausage roll so I’m countering by asking for some chocolate – and he breaks off a line of chocolate and shoves it into the sausage roll rendering it inedible ( bastard!). I was so gobsmacked at this that I’m just staring at the sausage roll like ` how could a person DO that to a sausage roll?’ when he goes ` look out…’ I looked up to realise we’d drifted off the edge of a sweeping left hander, around 75 mph and maybe 3 feet from going over a big big dropoff…I freaked out and just started pumping the wheel left but nothing was happening cos we were in gravel, then it caught as we were coming around and either the right front went flat or dug in and it rolled. Hard. A mate of mine was coming up the hill and watching us from about a mile away, he was in tears cos he knew we were dead. the car barrel rolled apparently 6 times and end for ended a couple of times before ending up upside down skidding down the road. The roof was crushed down level with the tops of the doors, I was upside down in a full harness – my brother was KNEELING on the roof because he didn’t have a seat belt on at all and we slid to a stop. He butted his smoke out on the dash which really pissed me off, but he had his reasons.. the petrol tank was behind the passenger and it was pissing down the back of his neck. He kicked his door open, don’t ask me how, and dragged me out. I sat by the side of the road looking at my car and just very sad that it was destroyed. An ambulance guy walked up to me asking if I was OK and as I said `yes’ the end of my tongue and about a pint of blood fell out my mouth. (yep, I have a very short tongue now….) the Ambo fainted…years later I saw the ute in a wreckers and these two guys ahead of me are going ` oh, they never would have survived that one’ – told them I was the driver and they would nor believe me..
I crashed my family’s 1970 Chevelle into the side of a Cadillac when I was 16 back in 1977. The good news is that it was only a six banger, powerglide, 4 door! I still love the 1970 Chevelles but I prefer the 396 SS with a four speed.
took me twenty years to have my first wreck…Was a 2008 Dodge Ram 1500..then most recently I wrecked my bike…both were still oeprational after the accident.
My first car was a 1970 F-100 short bed stepside that I bought from the original owner in 2003 with 68,000 original miles. After driving it for several months, it met its demise due to a woman running a red light in a Chevy Astro van. She hit the truck at the left front wheel and proceeded to push it up on to its passenger side. Being 16 years old, with a minimum wage job, state minimum liability insurance was all I had on the truck. Her insurance was so kind enough to cut me a check for $550 for my totalled out truck….
I crashed the first car I owned in 1990. I was 16 and it was a 1970 Camaro. I had worked for years for local farmers walking beans, baling hay, etc. to buy this thing. (My labor rate was a whopping $1.00 per hour!) It was December in Northwest Iowa. I had just finished almost killing myself on my first solo airplane flight as I was working towards my private pilot license. I was a poor farm kid interested in flight (speed) and the local airport operators let me cut grass, do oil changes, clean toilets, or whatever they needed in exchange for flight lessons. Anyway, after the solo flight was over we had a freak ice storm, or as freaky as an ice storm can be in Iowa in December. I was crawling home in my prized red with black stripes Camaro, got passed by a semi and he cut back into the right lane too soon. Spun me right into oncoming traffic and I got clobbered in the left side door by an oncoming car. There was no way they could slow down or swerve because the roads were so bad. I was not hurt by the crash luckily (they had to use the jaws of life to get me out) I did break my hand pounding on the steering wheel because I was so mad! Truck driver never stopped, he probably didn’t even see or feel what happened. I consider myself lucky for living through it but still feel bad for killing a second-gen!
My first car, a 74 Olds Omega, was wrecked when a douche on a stolen motorcycle ran a stop sign and plowed into it while being chased by the cops.
He ran into the drivers quarter, flew over the back, landed on his ass and got up and kept running. After being searched for by helicopters for over an hour, he was caught and locked up. I wound up having to testify against him in court. My Olds was never the same again and seemed to attract more dents until my dad traded it in on a used S10.
Mine was a 66 Chevy II. Loved the car and was my daily driver. 327/4 speed. Was driving to work one winter morning. Had snowed through the night and the roads were heavy covered with snow and cars were leaving fairly deep tracks/ruts in the snow. It was also now raining and the rain was freezing on top of the snow. I found I could turn the wheels to lock and the car would continue going straight ahead in the tracks. I considered turning around and going back home. I should have. There was a long down hill with a stop light at the bottom of the hill. I knew the stoplight would turn red so I barely creeped over the hill and started down. Sure enough the light turned red. I touched the brake ever so gently. No good. The car turned slightly sideways and I let off the brake imediatly to no avail. The car slid down the hill and would not steer at all. still no more braking. The road slanted off to the side to a drainage opening and the car followed that which was right in line with a tree and a telephone pole with just enough room for a car to go straight though. The car hit the tree with driver cowel and riccoheted into passeger cowl. Popped the windshield out with out breaking it, but the dash was folded in the middle. This was back before I wore seat belts. I woke up underneath the dash with a mild concussion. I still miss that car to this day.
My sister’s 1969 VW Bug 1 week after I got my driver’s license back in 1979. It was raining hard and I was driving to the mall to hang. On the mall property, there was a road with a curb dividing it, right at a sharp right turn. I missed the turn and hit the curb. It messed up the front end and steering box. To this day, I still don’t know why I missed that turn.
Ugh!!
65 Mustang GT, Rally Pack gauges, dual trumpet exhaust, GT strips and fender badge. 289 Four barrel. White with light blue trim. Had it for about a month in 1973 when I was 16. Paid $300.00 Spent a week of that time swapping out the automatic tranny. Flipped it over after losing control going too fast for the ice and road. It was painfully slow in the end, as it seemed to hang motionless forever before going over. Only injury was my friend who hit the roof after unbuckling. I wish I had that GT today, that’s for sure.
I’ve never wrecked a car. I’ve had other people wreck them for me.
It was 1983. On my way to work. Light snow and ice. 1969 Olds 442. Passing another car on a two lane, slight curve, the TH400 kicks down, the Olds comes completely around and I hit (going backwards) a huge planter made of railroad ties in front of a coffee house. Wiped out the entire drivers side. Fender, door, quarter panel. Not totaled, but it just wasn’t the same car after that.
2012 impala. my first and only new car destroyed by the trailer hitch on a stolen explorer
Didn’t hit anything, but, at 16 did a 180 through a median at about 70 mph. Luckily it’d just rained and the grass was wet.
First metal cruncher, got into a little race on the way home from work, with a co-worker that had a ’72 Camaro. I had a ’72 340 Challenger. I’d gotten ahead of him, on a windy, hilly 2-lane road. Came around a sharp curve and traffic was stopped. I stopped about 3 inches from the car in front of me. I saw him in the rear view and winced. He tried to go around me, caught my rear 1/4, but didn’t do much damage, but he hit a parked car pretty hard…he was OK, but totaled the Camaro.
My moms 1960 Studebaker Lark station wagon. Same car I snuck onto the race track at San Fernando drag strip in 1964 at age 14. You can read about it at Hot Rod mag.com. Three days before my birthday and getting my license my brother and I took it out to deliver our newspapers. It was raining and dad didn’t want to go with as he had in the past and just told me to be safe out there. So we decided to go to our favorite slick street for some high rpm low speed nice engine sounds. Car suddenly caught traction or got posi. Slid sideways up the curb and caught a tree in the passenger door. Brother wasn’t hurt and I drove it home. When mom and dad got up I had to tell them the news. They came out and looked at the car and started laughing. Not the response I expected. Then they told me the bad news. They had talked the night before and decided to give me the car since my dad had borrowed the three engines I had built for my car. They figured I could drive the wagon until I got another engine built and then sell the wagon to finance the paint job for the Hawk.So in essence I didn’t total my moms car I totaled my car. Bummer.
Twenty days after I got my driver’s license,I rolled my dad’s ’59 Chevrolet pickup, a six-cylinder-powered long-wheelbase stepside, on the way back to the house from the mailbox.
The house and the mailbox were separated by a half-mile of single-lane dirt road cutting through a West Texas pasture, with that distance broken into thirds by two ninety-degree turns.
At 14, I already had been driving for three years, not uncommon in a rural county in 1964, and I had developed so much confidence in my driving skills that I would tear ass along that road and drift the truck through the corners.
All went well on the trip to the mailbox and through the first turn of the return trip, but I went into the second turn a bit too hot and got so sideways that the left front tire and right rear tire dug into the berms on each side of the road and up and over I went, coming to rest on the passenger side of the pickup.
I remained in the seat for a few seconds, puzzled by the sight of nothing but sky out my door window and nothing but caliche through the passenger window, until gravity took over and I rotated, still clutching the steering wheel, until I was standing on the road underneath the tipped-over truck.
Mom was gone to fetch my sister back from church camp, but Dad was plowing in a field a couple of miles away, so I had a lot of time to contemplate my transgression while I hiked to him. The 16 MPH trip, standing on the toolbar of a Massey-Ferguson tractor, back to the scene of the crash allowed my to develop dread at an exponential rate.
However, there was no beating or long lecture forthcoming. The old man just hooked a chain to the truck, pulled it upright, added enough oil to replace the oil that drained out while the Chevy laid there like a dead hog, then had me drive it back to the house.
The atmosphere at the house was less than happy. Mom and Sis had returned to find the road blocked by the truck and no sign of me. We had no phone, so they could do nothing but wait to see what had transpired. Once Mom saw I was uninjured anxiety rapidly faded.
The net result included a month-long ban on driving for me and a permanently sealed passenger door on the truck due to the edge of the roof being bent over the upper window frame of the door.
Dad never fixed the truck, partly because he was cheap to a fault. I now, at age 64, think he also knew the impact of my carelessness was re-emphasized every time he had to let me in the truck first from the driver side when we went somewhere together.