It’s a film I reference often, but in this case it fits. The absolutely fantastic movie Twelve O’Clock High concerns itself with a U.S. Army Air Forces bomber group stationed in the south of England during WW2.
Tasked with “precision” daylight bombing over occupied Europe relatively early in the conflict, the group goes about its missions without fighter escorts, leaving themselves wide open to every Messerschmitt and flack gun along the route. It’s a deadly business, but orders are orders. Every day, B-17s take off into a clear blue sky, many never to return.
So many, in fact, that the base earns a stigma of being home to a “hard luck group.”
The equipment is fine, as are the men behind the controls, but luck isn’t on their side. And just as circumstances can sink the fortunes of an otherwise competent outfit like the 918th Bomb Group, so too can hard luck fall on a car.
Some vehicles are just plain unlucky.
Your author knew of such a vehicle back in college. A paisley-fancying classmate briefly owned a vehicle that was compelling in its own right: a third-generation Honda Prelude in an unusual spec. It carried the base engine, but for some reason boasted optional four-wheel steering — a pricey but appealing system most often found on hotter Si models. Yours truly had just ditched an Si himself, thought that car lacked the fancy footwork.
The college experience was a short one. We’re talking eight months, yet during that time, our protagonist’s Prelude fell victim to two bouts of bad luck — one of them fatal (for the car only, thankfully).
The first incident occurred one night while our classmate was slumbering inside his apartment in a sketchy part of town. Outside, some kids decided to make off with the car. Their plan hit a snag when they discovered their target contained a strange third pedal mounted to the left of the accelerator and brake. No matter, they tried anyway.
And in doing so, made a mess of the clutch. Starving student kept his car, but the incident left him with an unexpected bill.
Not long after, this same student found himself at a red light, stopped behind (if I recall correctly) a dump truck. For reasons unknown, the driver of the truck unexpectedly threw it in reverse and started backing up. Boxed in from behind, our protagonist could only watch in disbelief as the weighty truck’s dual rear wheels made a solid effort of climbing his car’s low-slung hood.
And that was it for the Prelude with the mismatched engine and steering. RIP.
Through no fault of their own, some vehicles just can’t catch a break. And it’s entirely possibly you owned such an unlucky vehicle, or knew someone who did. Tell us about it.
[Image: General Motors]
Why a picture of a GEO Storm for a story about a Prelude?
Very unlucky to anyone who got the Geo when expecting a Prelude!
Maybe that’s what a Prelude looks like after a truck backs over it?
True story – a friend, living in a small town in Oklahoma, had a Geo Storm. On her wedding day she realized she had left an important part of the wedding dress/veil at the house, so she tossed her Geo Storm keys to her brother. It was a ten mile drive to the house, and the wedding was starting in fifteen minutes. He made it back on time, turned to me and said, “I’m came over a hill doing 110 and there was the only cop on duty. He waved. Good thing he knows the wedding’s today.”
I don’t believe it; no way can a Geo Storm do 110.
Uphill or down. Off a cliff, maybe.
Sure it could.
I think the GSi had 130hp and would easy zing up to H-rated tires speed limit. Plus they weight like 2,700 lbs or so.
An old lady in my Grandmother’s retirement village had a GEO Prism – she was pretty famous for a foot to the floor driving style. Pretty sure it topped out around 100 mph. Don’t discount the small slippery cars with determined drivers.
I proved to myself that my 125hp 2000 Corolla indeed had a 110mph speed limiter.
115 in a 75hp 1983 Accord.
Swear. To. God.
A friend/coworker of mine spent ~$65,000 and three years building a Factory Five Cobra replica in his garage – paint took 10 months alone. Beautiful car in classic Blue with white stripes, built “427” (stroked Windsor). Fast as a scalded cat. His dream toy.
After finally getting all the inspections and red tape to declare it road legal, on the first day he had the plates, he was finally driving it on the open road. Top down, shifter in hand, 550HP underfoot. Beautiful. The culmination of decades of saving and years of work.
On the way home westbound on I-264 in Virginia Beach, making the turnoff to eastbound I-64 – an unusual left exit – traffic was stopped, as it often is (it merges with another onramp before merging with I-64, so it snarls easily). He queued up, as one does.
I’m sure you can imagine what’s about to happen next. He happens to glance in his rear-view mirror, and some dope in a full size SUV, Expedition I think, phone glued to their ear, is coming at him still at full speed and it looks like they’re not even slowing down. He grabs 1st, turns the wheel, and tries to gun it to get out of the way. Too late; the SUV hits him in the back corner and jams the other side of the car against the Jersey barrier, bending the car nearly in half. There wasn’t a single exquisitely painted panel not irreparably damage. Luckily he wasn’t hurt.
*2 hours* into the first drive.
That’s the saddest car story I’ve heard in a long time :(
NOOOooooo! That is the stuff of nightmares.
I’m almost wrecked my 350Z within the first hour of ownership. I bought the car from a dealer about 150 miles from my home. Sure enough on the drive home it started pouring rain. I reached my exit started slowing down. As I took the off ramp I downshifted from 6th to 4th but due not being familiar with the tight gearbox I accidentally grabbed 2nd. This of course spun the rear tires immediately and pitched the car sideways. Thankfully the traction control kicked in plus I had already put the clutch back down as I sensed the rear end was coming around. The TC did its job and saved my bacon. The car wiggled its tail but I managed to keep it pointed in the right direction.
Ironically a similar situation nearly occurred when I got my C7. Again I got caught in an epic rainstorm during the drive home. This time between the darkness and puddles I found myself in an exit lane. Only this time it was not of my choosing. I just couldn’t see the lane markers and had drifted off course. Normally one might brake and quickly change lanes to get back on the highway. That was too risky here, so I just took the ramp (VERY slowly), came to a complete and safe stop at the next intersection. Once I got my bearings I got back on the highway and had my wife find the nearest hotel… I wasn’t going any further in those conditions with an unfamiliar car.
Many years ago a friend and his daughter had just purchased her first car. ~1 block from the dealership she was hit and the car totaled.
@Jeff Weimer – I recall coming up to a traffic light with an obvious “fender bender” an immaculately restored Skyliner plowed into the back of a 5 ton rail service truck. The driver of the car was in tears.
@Jeff
That hurts me just reading it.
I forgot to add – he built a new car (after arguing with insurance forever, he now has a defined-value policy) with many of the original car’s parts. That’s stuff’s not cheap. Engine was at *least* $10K, and it was okay.
So far, so good.
My son currently drives a 2006 Nissan Altima we refer to as ‘La Cucaracha’. Every time we think he’s killed it, it runs again.
My sister in law owned it, and was sideswiped on the interstate by an 18-wheeler. She drove it another five years and figured it was at death’s door, so she gave it to my son.
He wrecked it. Traffic stopped and bald tires have a longer stopping distance. He ate the back end of a pickup. We spent four hours swapping out the core support, radiator, hood, and bits.
He wrecked it again. Went off-road, swallowed a road sign, crashed into a ditch. We spent four hours swapping out the core support, radiator, hood, and bits.
The head gasket is popped, so every day he checks the coolant and refills it.
There’s a popsicle stick jammed into the stub of the shifter so he can move the selector. Every body panel has damage. All the hubcaps are missing. The windshield is cracked. He does have decent tires now though.
Ate a pick up. Swallowed a road sigh. Did he ever consume a bridge abutment or dine on a hatchback?
’98 Cadillac DeVille d’Elegance. Leased to drive my parents around more than anything else. Even though a lease, ordered to get specific color. Picked car up on Saturday and a gentleman took out the bumper and rear quarter panel Sunday morning in the church parking lot. By the end of the lease, the only body panel that hadn’t been replaced was the roof. Only mechanical problem was a rattle in front end/suspension that service department could never fix.
As I retell this story, have learned…RED cars are cursed.
early 90’s – old safari van = bad luck day
1- out to lunch at noon too tight on normal turn and smashed sliding side door –
2- went to pick up daughter & backed into pole shoving the rear mtd. spare through rear door –
3- when dropping her off she opened pass door while i was backing , tearing pass door off on big rock –
took 4 hours and 3 wrecks to total the thing
I was laid off 20 days after I bought my 2002 WRX and it took almost a year before I was able to find work. The first thing I did was sell my WRX and paid cash for something that would hold me over until I could get back on my feet, and settled on a 92 300ZX with T-Tops. In the 2 (3?) years that I owned it:
I replaced all 4 tires. Every single one kept going flat. Tire shop couldn’t find anything wrong with the wheels or the tires. Geico cancelled my roadside due to “too many calls.” I finally yelled at NTB to replace 2 of them with the lifetime replacement warranty with better tires…and those promptly went flat too.
The car’s alarm would go off at the worst time, e.g., when I was out in the city and had no easy way to return (it was at least an hour subway ride) and the condo association threatened to tow it. Thank goodness for roommates! I started leaving my keys at the front desk whenever I went out.
It got stolen and tbh I was kinda hoping it would stay stolen. As I was driving home about a week later, I saw a 300ZX parked at a national park 10 miles away and thought, hey, there’s a Z just like mine. I got a call from Geico the next day: it WAS my car! The thieves had busted thru the passenger side T-top, smoked a ton of weed in it, and burned out the clutch. They stole the stereo and my booklet of 48 CDs (idiots, it was almost entirely classical music, with a couple Frank Sinatra and ABBA discs interspersed). For whatever reason, Geico decided to spend more on repairing the car than I’d paid for it.
A couple months later, the slave cylinder destroyed itself and I couldn’t get it out of gear while on a drive to visit friends.
After 2 (3?) years of torment, I finally had a stable enough job that I traded it in for a Mazadaspeed MX-5. GOOD RIDDANCE.
Interesting.
Kind of goes against the whole “Japanese Reliability” thing…
a 10 year old car with no known history and cheap enough to buy with cash? sounds like a creampuff to begin with.
My buddy’s Rubicon fits the “hardluck” moniker. Just off warranty his engine started throwing codes. He ended up having to get the engine rebuilt. That turned out to be a disaster because it was rebuilt incorrectly. In frustration he put in a low mile engine from the wreckers. Yesterday that engine started throwing the same codes as his original engine.
He has been having multiple problems with shock mounts breaking off in the rear (Jeep has a weird set up). The dealership told him to pound sand since he had an aftermarket lift. The aftermarket shop blamed the stock mounting bars. They finally measured the springs and found that they were sagging 3 inches more than they should. That story ended up well because BDS sent him new parts.
His electronic disconnects for the sway bars have also been a nightmare. He now has quick release aftermarket units. He’s also had multiple electrical gremlins.
Lou;
The legendary Chrysler reliability.
Fiat owns Chrysler. Until the early 1970s, Chrysler was known for its engineering. Ancillery stuff like door handles, knobs, locks, switches, headliners, etc. would fall apart, but the drivetrains were durable and repairable. Fiat, OTOH…
All of my Chrysler products over the years have been very reliable. So have my brother’s and parent’s.
My Ford Probe.
Holy crap that poor car.
Over 4-1/2 years and 186K miles (which is hard in itself) it had 4 accidents, none of them my fault and was stolen once – almost totaled. In Texas on a really rainy day some diesel fuel or oil gut dumped under a bridge and I had slid at a very slow speed on it and hit the curb, breaking the half axle. A Houston police officer was at the traffic light, saw the whole thing, stopped and wrote an incident report (he was a nice guy, good cop) without me asking. USAA didn’t make me pay my deductible. I should have just been able to drive off on that one, just an unlucky hit.
Car was reliable, just a magnet for calamity.
Some of these stories are gut-wrenching.
Car commercials should really show more real-life weather events – pouring rain, blinding snow, hailstorms. And oh yeah – more realistic people. Fewer mountain vistas, more traffic and Walmart parking lots. (If your vehicle can make it there, it can make it anywhere.)
My wife’s current vehicle looks fine and runs great – but before we got it, it was involved in minor accidents in the front, in the back, on the driver side, and on the passenger side.
I can’t for the life of me grasp why carmakers aren’t aggressively marketing new cars the Wal-Mart shopeers that buy previously wrecked cars for their wives demographic. Think of the dozens of dollars in lost sales being left on the table.
@Art Vandelay, as a personal attack, this isn’t your best work. Let’s separate the issues back out:
Spouse’s vehicle: “I mean” “I guess” I could’ve put my spouse in a Hyundai Santa Fe, but I’ve heard a lot of people having issues with them. No wait, I’ve heard *your* tale of woe repeated over and over and over. Anyway, “YMMW” but your most recent conclusion/recommendation was that the spousal vehicle should be a Toyota – which is what I did (with new Michelins), but hey “you do you.”
Marketing: You’re absolutely right about the commercials. The roughly $1,000 of advertising built into the price of every new vehicle purchase/lease is money well spent – the ads are perfectly targeted, very realistic and completely effective – I was wrong to criticize and I apologize to the OEM’s.
Well there are enough people with a similar take of wow.to support Hyundai settling a class action but yeah, probably just me. For all its issues, I never worried about it being wrecked. I got mine a Honda this time, new. Then again, I don’t seem to get ripped off by those big companies like you do all the time, so I applaud you doing your best with what you have. But hey, you are an expert on welding helmets and grinders as I recall, so ya got that going for you I guess.
Is it a whole grand in the price? I guess I just really didn’t notice.
Clearly you are the smart one though…wrecked Toyotas and old pickups…I can only dream lol.
A majority of U.S. drivers do not purchase their vehicles new. The OEM’s already have the smart customers like you; to expand the market they need to reach the dumb ones like me. [I have fairly consistently dropped some hints to them on how this could be done.]
Think. They could turn their finance offices into some sort of Facebook Marketplace type operation.
“Now look, I know you don’t have the 2 grand for this here used Toyota…how about you kick in a pack of Marlboro Reds, a high point 9mm and that OJ Simpson jersey”
I can’t imagine why they don’t want to sell low margin rides in that environment.
Us new buyers are such chumps. To think I could spend my time dealing with that, sweating a few hundred bucks here and there. I’d love to waste my time like that.
Maybe they could sell these low budget rides through Wal Mart. GM would be a solid option…fit in with all of that other crap from China on the shelf.
The closest I can come to the bad luck car was my 2003 Accord, and it was only slightly bad luck for about a week during winter. I got about 6 little love taps in about 3 days, all after I’d been stopped at stop signs for at least 20 seconds waiting for my turn to go. It wasn’t me stopping short, just morons on phones. Luckily there was never damage because the taps were low speed; it was still annoying though.
Worst one I can think of is my dad’s buddy’s 1962 Imperial crown sedan. He inherited it off his parents who used to tow an Airsteam trailer with it. He spent years and lots of $$$ painstakingly restoring it down to the last detail. The first road trip he does, the surge brakes on his nearly brand new travel trailer fail completely on a curving downhill stretch of road, fishtailing the trailer and causing an accident. The Imperial did a complete roll, damaging all body panels. To rub salt on the wound, the linkages and electrics messed up with the crash- the engine didn’t turn off, and continued running until it seized from the all the leaking coolant and oil. He and the missus were fine, but I have never heard a man cry so hard, even over a telephone call. He sold the remains to a man who promised to restore it, and instead let it sit out in a field for a decade or so. It eventually disappeared and was presumed scapped…
… until last summer. My dad’s buddy spotted it, on the road, still with all it’s damage but running,and towing a small fishing boat. He chased the guys down and got them to pull over. Apparently they bought it for a thousand bucks, spend another grand doing a cheap rebuild on the 413 and getting all the fiddly bits like brakes and lights working. Finds out they were a a pair brothers whose grandparents were the original owners before his bought it! Talk about a small world! He gave them his number and told them if they ever wanted to sell to give him a ring. Hard luck automobile for sure, but seemingly getting better.
2019 Toyota Camry SE. In the year and half, and 55,000km, it’s needed:
2 transmissions,
2 full sets of brakes,
1 new wheel
Thankfully, it’s all been covered under warranty.
That’s surprising, given the Camry’s reputation for reliability.
My mom had a red Chevy Chevette that was rear-ended three times. My theory is that the car being red and the taillights being red, the people that ran into her must have been colour-blind and didn’t see the brake-lights were on.
Our VW Tiguan suffered the same assault as that Prelude, and I had to watch it from the driver’s seat. I’d pulled in behind a trash truck, not crowding it, about two car lengths back. Not far enough to see his mirrors. But I’d been stuck in traffic, and really needed to pee. After I switched off the ignition, The truck started backing up. I mashed the horn, to no effect; who knew it wouldn’t work with the car off, Then I fumbled to start the car, shift into reverse, roll down the windows and shout, while I watched the truck get larger and larger. CRUNCH!
Thus will I remember my family vacation in Yellowstone. Surprisingly, the car was still drivable, with an intact radiator and at least one working headlight. We only had 2000 miles more to go, dropping my kid off at college in Tacoma and returning to Denver. Pulling a one-ton travel trailer.
The Tiguan wound up with the daughter who lives in Seattle now. In May, she was creeping along on I-5 when a semi rear-ended it at low speed. There was enough front and rear end damage to total the car. A bad luck car? Well, it had some very bad days, but it lasted seven years.
In 1985 a buddy of mine bought a brand-new 1986 Jeep Comanche pickup. It was summer and we were bored so I sourced a $25 ping-pong table from the classified ads or somewhere, and we went to pick it up in his week-old truck. The house with the ping pong table had a sloping driveway we pulled into. We then carried the table out and leaned it against the driver’s side of the bed before lifting it in. Somehow the truck started to roll backwards down the driveway. The driver’s door was open and someone jumped in and put on the brake, but not before the door caught the edge of the ping pong table, pushing it backward until it caught on a crack in the driveway. Well, something had to give, and it was the door of the Comanche. It bent all the way forward until it touched the front fender. And no– it wouldn’t close again after that. The price of our $25 ping pong table had just increased by nearly $1000… and my friend was none too happy. IIRC he had to file bankruptcy about a year later and the truck was repossessed anyway.
Wow – such misery .
-Nate