Posted on 03/29/2018 11:36:30 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
We were stationed in Wichita, Ks and the temps would hit 100 degrees for over 30 days during the Summer. The AC in his Pacer had a hard time keeping up with the heat due to all that glass.
Excellent!
hahaha awesome!
Hahaha...my dad had a Plymouth Cricket, which I think was somewhat related to the Dodge Colt...all six of us kids learned to drive in that car, and boy, did it die a slow death, like a cat that lives too long and its fur all falls out in clumps...
My first car was also a Chevy Vega. Replaced the aluminum engine twice, and had the battery stole three times. Cute car, though!
My sister, who was a well known danger to cars, was allowed by her stupid hippie boyfriend to drive his 1971 Ford Pinto across a causeway when she was 14, and she promptly went off the road and flipped his car over. I think he was way too old to be driving around with a 14 year old girl, but he proved his stupidity by letting her drive.
My late great-uncle had a Mercury Bobcat, which was essentially the same vehicle. He was a Catholic Priest. One time when I was 16 he drove it from where he was stationed in New York City back to Pittsburgh to visit us. He threw me the keys and asked me to go get it washed for him.
I got about a block down the street and found that I had NO brakes! Just a hideous grinding sound. I rubbed up against the curb to stop the car, turned around and went back home.
I looked inside the wheel. The rotors looked like a relief map of the Rocky Mountains. I mean, they were GONE!
I said “So, you drove all the way from New York City in this car?” He answered “Yes, why?” I told him “All I can say is, God sure takes good care of his employees!”
Unsafe at any speed. Must be a riot at 100 MPH.
Ah, the Vega and Pinto years of cars, when things were really going downhill.
He would have been OK, but when he tried to get out the cast metal door handle snapped off.
One of my best friends had a Vega (maybe 1974 model?) and they were driving down a hill when they saw a tire roll past them, and the one in the passenger seat said “Hey look! Some a**hole lost his tire!”
Then the car banged its left rear quarter into the road and ground to a halt!
I was told by someone that there was some flaw that allowed the rear wheels to back out from the differential and separate from the car, though I cannot find any mention of it on the Internet!
It was around 1973 that American cars fell off the cliff...I remember a boatload of really crappy, rusty cars driving around America in the mid-Seventies.
They finally began working their way back up in quality in the late Eighties IIRC, but it was a depressing sight on the roads in the Seventies.
Oh, absolutely. If you got 80K out of those cars, that was good. 100K? Very rare. But some did make it. 120K? Nope!
Nobody likes those not telling the truth. We’d rather hear of your daring escape and how you rescued your friend from the inferno.
In many cases, downhill was the only way to get things going.
I remember what a joke the Corvette became for a decade............
“Only guessing but if it was racing at a drag strip safety regs. would have required heavy mods.”
Some/many? drag strips have the equivalent of Plain Folks Nights, where anyone can bring their car and race it. I think if you do the 1/4 mile in less than 10 seconds, they then require you to have a more race-modified car plus some driver certifications. IIRC.
Excellent analogy.
I’m also a crack shot and can’t speak of the dancing.
I knew someone who had BOTH a Chevy Vega AND a Ford Pinto. I drove a Vega GT once and it didn’t seem like a bad car.
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