Question of the Day: What Was Your Worst Drive?
It sounds like the Brits dislike commuting as a rule, but we want to know what your worst ever trip in a car was. Perhaps you were on a milk run and your Carrera GT got smashed, or maybe it was a trip through the desert when your air conditioning decided to die. Share your worst experience with us in ‘comments.’
Comments
VMMVMMM
Definitely one of my scariest and most embarrassing drives was when I spun out driving a Viper ACR and ended up facing the wrong way in traffic on a semi-busy highway. Luckily the traffic light timing favored me and I was able to right myself before I actually encountered any oncoming traffic.
Billy
Driving from Boston to Virginia in my E46 M3 with nav system. I was in NJ when I saw a highway advisory sign and tuned my radio to the am dial - then the screen & the buttons went dead. I had to drive another 5 hours with the that annoying am buzz sound driving me f*cking nuts...
FPF422
It was in a Cherokee 2.1 L Turbo Diesel (the Renault engine)
One of my bosses loved to hunt but he had chosen that hunk of shit to wonder in the woods. Of course, on a hunting week end he got stuck... and as he knew that I wasn't a bad driver he asked a co-worker to drive me to his jeep and bring it back to Brussels... a 130 km trip.
Well, it happened on the week-end and he asked us to do that on the Tuesday night... so when we arrived around noon on Wednesday, we found the Cherokee in the middle of a mud pool... Getting it out of there was quite easy but he (the Boss) had forget to tell us that he had shot a small deer which was rotting in the closed car for 3 or 4 days (fair weather)... The smell was... let's say, strong. We pulled the carcass out of the car but there was nothing to do for the pool of blood and other liquids in his once pristine beige carpet and I had to drive back to Brussels...
I don't know what he had done to the car prior to that but the steering was more than wobbly, the brakes non existent and the highest speed I could sustain was a poor 100 km/h.
It took me about 1 1/2 hour to get back in the most smelly and unsafe car I've ever driven.
The Boss just bought an other Cherokee (he always called it his wife's car) but this time with the 4.0L engine... brakes were still poor but it was more fun to drive than that underpowered death smelling piece of shit...
Pocky Is God
From San Antonio, Texas to Los Angeles, California in a 1985 Audi 4000S with no a/c, semi functional windows and an aftermarket stereo that was probably worth more than the whole car.
Steve
San Diego AZ to Tucson AZ... in July... Through El Centro and Yuma... with no A/C... ick. It was 120+ in a black car. Rough.
Sol
12am after work at the ski park in an '88 Jetta. Blizzard conditions, 15" rims with lo pros and 8" of snow on the ground. 5mph the whole 45 miles home. So much snow on the windshield the wiper mount stripped and I had to stick my head out the window.
M. Dillon
Chevy Monza. Why? 2 weeks after buying it,when I was a teenager,that car would never crank up and run, to have a bad drive.
Sharky
Most of 1998. I was broke, I had a '92 VW Jetta with a really fried clutch, and I lived on the top of a hill. Enough said.
02chuck
When in the Marine Corps I was stationed in Yuma, Az. and in December of 1977 I went home to the SF bay area on my Honda 550 with Xmas gifts bungeed to the bike. I left Yuma at 3am figuring I would be home for lunch. Went through LA on schedule, stopped in Valencia around 7am for breakfast and found out I5 was closed due to sand storms in the San Joaquin valley. Figured it would reopen so I went as far as the top of the Grape Vine, sat there for a couple of hours. No luck. So I figured I would go over to Tehachapi and drop down through Bakersfield, but when I stopped for lunch in Lancaster I heard that some trucks had been blown over and that Hwy was now closed. So......I back tracked down to LA, headed over to Ventura to go north on Hwy 101. When going 101 there was a brown haze, almost as bad as the valley fog we get. I lucked out and hooked up with a guy on a BMW 750, he helped get me back up to speed (I had gone into the get there mode). By the time I arrived home (@10pm) it looked like I had done some desert rally, the bike was loaded up with dirt and my eyes were bright red and I had dirt in every crevice of my body. One very long day.
Wes
Riding into Havasu in my dad's Taurus. Popped three tires that day. That has to be a record. Also, riding with my mom in a rainstorm from Nevada to California in my Honda with no working windshield wipers. That SUCKED.
Scratch
Peoria to Chicago in my 98 Dakota after eating a Quarter Pounder. There was nothing wrong with the truck, but thank God there were leaves on the ground.
davido
January 1999, VW Jetta, Chicago to Columbia SC, 850 miles via Indy, Cincinnati and Knoxville TN. I65 was closed due to blowing and drifting snow between the Indiana/Illinois border and Indianapolis. Did the drive on two lane roads in white-out conditions because I was already a day late getting back to work from the holidays. Jetta never missed a step but at one point I ran into a portion of road that seemed impassable and I was convinced I was either going to get stuck and freeze to death or get shot approaching a farmhouse for help.
Ducati Minor
I was driving home naked in my Alfa Spider after a nasty letdown involving a redhead from school and her roommate when my fuel pump went out.
ryanawesome
picked up an automatic 240sx in spring valley? ny. had to drive back to syracuse. the trans went out 15 minutes after driving the car and the engine wouldnt start either. flat towed it behind a truck 8 feet away because the tow straps wouldnt have held if it wasnt doubled up. with no heat (it was snowing) no lights, no wipers, no power brakes or power steering while my father had every single light lit up on the back of his truck as he was doing 75 through the hills in central ny. longest scariest 6 hours of my life.
Patrick from Astoria
Early in my driving life: Spring of '91. Just left my suburban Detroit high school parking lot in the family Taurus, mentioned to my one brother riding with me that we were in no hurry and I just wanted to relax on the way hoZAP! Just like that, not even out of sight of the school. A completely unjustified - and unrealistic - 44 in a 35. Lots of weird looks and hooting from classmates, no dignity or reasonable defense to protect me.
I hated that high school anyway.
CHARLES G.
Maybe the driver should have paid more attention to the sign...
Paul In Jersey
I was riding shotgun in an Alfa with my redheaded girlfriend in my lap. She'd met up with some guy who had a thing for driving a naked taxi service.
smokeydog001
Spending a summer in the Rockies driving a '56 Chevy with vacuum wipers!
bmwloco
Coming back from Charlotte NC after a rainy Sunday afternoon with my chaste girlfriend.
I left after 4pm to drive back to school in Boone, NC. I as driving a very nice '72 VW Beetle that belonged to my sister. She bought it from a NC Highway Patrolman who swore it had never gone over 55 mph.
That Beetle would fly.
Wind shield wipers working hard to keep up with the rain, I topped a hill at about the mid-way point in the trip at roughly 70 mph. The down hill side was nothing but a sheet of ice.
I did a good job keeping the VW on the right, right up to the "T" intersection, through a farm fence, and into a farm pond.
Bobbing in the water, engine still running, lights on, I heard two people laughing like hell behind me. "Stay in the car, we'll pull you out!" said one of the good old boys.
As they eased me back to the bank of the pond he said "gun it!" and I did. Mud and water went everywhere, but the Beetle caught and I made it out. The two bubbas were soaked and covered with mud, but they were laughing too hard to care.
I thought it was over. But it wasn't.
In my hurry to leave, I went the wrong way. I was completely out of cash and the gas gauge was perilously low. I had a Citgo card, but it was worthless as there wasn't a Citgo to be found.
Finally I pulled into a small gas station and explained my situation. Mind you, these were the days before ATMs. The station jockey agreed to give me $5 worth of gas and hold my driver's license until I sent money back.
What should have been a 2.5 hour trip turned into a 6 hour odyssey. I made it to work with only 5 hours sleep. After work, I took a hard look at the VW in the light of day.
Not a scratch on it.
By weeks end I had my drivers license back.
That was a good VW. It was crushed like a bug when a Buick Riveria fell off a car carrier and smashed it, but that's another story.
Jeb
About 4 hours into a 5 hour drive coming home after Thanksgiving (so in a hatchback Integra full of luggage and stuff), on a rural Tennessee highway at night, I hit a cut-out "pothole" that was about 6" deep and a foot across doing 60+ mph. Blew one tire, goose-egged another, bent two rims, and I had to unload the car, put the spare in place of the blown tire (near-pitch black night, at least I had a maglite), and limp home about sixty miles doing 40mph while praying that the other tire wouldn't let go.
Jaymez
Last summer. Tennessee to Florida in a Vibe. The trip, itself, was fine. The car was uncomfortable as all get out. I used to be a truck driver, driving for 11 hours a day. Four hours in that Vibe and my hips were screaming in pain! I had to split the 8 hour drive into 2 days because I was so sore.
PLien
On a family trip out west, we were in a rental Dodge Spirit and had just visited the lowest point in the US at Badwater in Death Valley National Park. We were running low on gas, but refused to fill up at "National Park prices" and decided to wait until we reached Baker, CA.
We looked on the map (paper back in 1989), and saw a shortcut road between Rt. 178 and Rt. 127 that looked like it would cut the travel distance in half. (Starting at Ashford Junction on most online maps)
The first hint that it was a bad idea was that fact that the road was not paved. We pressed on anyway. The road got worse and worse. We had to weave around potholes and ruts in the dirt road, keeping our speed low. Mentally calculating our progress vs. our fuel supply, I turned off the A/C after about 10 mins. Mind you, this is August in Death Valley. Animal carcasses and skulls started passing by our window. We didn't see another soul for the entire 30 mile "shortcut." For the whole 90 minutes, my mom kept on harping on why we didn't get gas when we could.
We coasted into Baker on fumes, filled up the tank, bought copious amounts of liquids, and vowed never to take shortcuts through the uninhabited desert again.
Doug
1989 ford f-250 diesel, 9100 pound amuesment ride being pulled. I-294 south in Chicago at 5:15pm, rush hour. suddenly the power brakes decide to die. scariest stop ever.
Adam W.
1991 Lumina APV, infamous for the longest, most horizontal windshield ever, and wipers to match. Driving home from 6-Flags with 5/6 other teenagers in the worst rain ever in Atlanta, when the wiper jams. I had to roll down the window and push the wiper to get it started again. Did this a dozen times on the 40 miles home. That was a wet trip. Never quite dryed that thing out before it was traded in.
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