Automotive old wive's tales

[JWC]

Or, to be modern, old spouse's tales.

I'm not saying any of these are true, except for Uncle Bradley's story and even that is also a matter of believing in the supernatural or in just odd animal encounters. There are all sorts of stories; it could be the girl picked up along a bridge, who it turned out died years before. and disappeared when the driver got her home; or the young couple who hear about an escaped convict with a hook for a hand.....scared they drive away and later find a hook hanging on one of the vehicle's door handles. There are local stories, that are essentially true, but have become more gruesome or exaggerated with the passing years....like the seven sister hills in Livermore California and the tragic death of several teens...or one or two depending on the story-teller.

Since the beginning of the automobile era, there have been stories associated with automobiles. Some are just how new technology confused an old timer. Some are horror stories.

With that in mind, what are some of the stories you know, experienced, or heard about? 

I know a few, like this one from my grandmother’s brother. Until the 1950s (and a decade or so after) back roads in North Carolina were dirt…..and heavily forested in areas; dense swamps in others. One night during the 1930s, as Uncle Bradley drove home in his Ford Model A, he was in a very swampy area around Goldboro NC. Out of the woods jumped an animal or, as Bradley put it, a demon monster with red eyes. The “thing” jumped upon the hood of the Model A and stared at Bradley for a few minutes, then jumped down and disappeared into the woods. Though he couldn’t go very fast because of the dirt road, he went as fast as he could until he got home.

Two older guys traveled to Birmingham Alabama and while there bought one of the Volkswagen Beetles that supposedly got 50 miles per gallon of gas. The salesman showed what he thought they needed to know and off they went back to Florida. Their first stop was a problem. They stopped for something to eat and when leaving that realized reverse was busted. Every time they stopped on their trip home, they had to push the car out of the parking spot and then take off. When they arrived in Florida, they stopped at a VW dealership and complained about the problem. A technician jumped in the car, threw it in reverse and backed it up. The older guys couldn’t believe it and asked what he did to fix it. The salesman never told them that reverse was to the left, push down, and back.

When an RV salesman sold a new RV to customers years and years ago, he told them that one of the new features was cruise control: “All you do is set the speed, and the RV does the rest”. So, the older couple did just that. They set the cruise control and left the cab to relax in the back. Needless to say that didn’t end well.

When automatic transmissions were a novel feature, a customer asked a salesman how do you push start an automatic transmission car. He told her it was possible, but you had to be going 45mph when you dropped it into gear. So, when the inevitable happened and she had a dead battery, a man offered to help. She told him he had to get up to 45mph to get the car to start.  He backed up quite a way, and  was going 45mph when he slammed into the back of her car.

[shp4man]

Yep. That sounds like some customers stories I've heard.

We had a younger tech, about 22, that was assigned a job involving an old early 80s pickup. With a three on the tree transmission. Took him 20 minutes to figure out where reverse was. 

[JWC]

Yep. That sounds like some customers stories I've heard.

We had a younger tech, about 22, that was assigned a job involving an old early 80s pickup. With a three on the tree transmission. Took him 20 minutes to figure out where reverse was. 

We had a VW-based dune buggy on the lot at the Chrysler dealership.  A couple of guys gave him a radiator cap and told him that the owner said it had to be replaced.  After many minutes of looking around the buggy, he finally noticed everyone standing at the window, laughing at him.

[JWC]

And a couple of these, the RV and the A/T story, were from my days working with cars in California.

[shp4man]

I once opened a trunk to change a tailight and found it was full of pot bricks, wrapped in cellophane.

Didn't say a word. Though it smelled funny, though. 

[JWC]

At the Honda store in California, an irate customer who had just left with his car after the car being serviced, stormed back pissed off. It seems he was missing a coffee can that was in the trunk of his car. When asked what was in it, he got even more pissed off and yelled, "well, fuck you people". I found out later that the tech had found the can when working on tali lamps, and decided to keep it.  Management never found out about it.

[Laconian]

I dealt with a number of carbage hoarders during my years working retail as a teen. Usually older folks, swimming in trash wherever they drive. Kind of terrifying that they're allowed on the roads.

Stuff like this

[JWC]

That is what I ran into at the hospital when I helped handle valet parking. One Volvo wagon had groceries in the back----from weeks before that the owner had forgotten about. There were flying roaches in the car. We never parked it, just pushed it to the side. I finally had to tell the owner, after a couple of visits, that we couldn't park her car and sent her to the parking lot with a shuttle to pick her up and bring her back. After she exited the shuttle, the driver let me have it---she smelled so bad that it lingered inside the shuttle.

It turned out she was completely unaware. After the shuttle experience, I told her we couldn't help her anymore and explained the biohazard associated the her car.  Two weeks later, she showed back up with the car cleaned out. She pulled me aside and thanked me for letting her know how bad things had gotten with her.  It made my day.

We still wouldn't park the car because it still smelled like decaying meat, bread, milk, and eggs, but the flying bugs were gone. After that, we pulled it over to a reserved spot and never told her.

[AutobahnSHO]

I couldn't figure out the reverse in either a Renault or Smart TwoFour.  There was a little ring you had to pull up to shift into R.

I struggled one time figuring out how to open the fuel door on a Focus hatch. Opened the owner manual, you just push the door and it pops open.

[Morris Minor]

I couldn't figure out the reverse in either a Renault or Smart TwoFour.  There was a little ring you had to pull up to shift into R.

I struggled one time figuring out how to open the fuel door on a Focus hatch. Opened the owner manual, you just push the door and it pops open.

Opels used to have that. Ring on the gear lever to get it in reverse.

[AutobahnSHO]

Opels used to have that. Ring on the gear lever to get it in reverse.

Maybe that's what it was ?!?!?!!!!    Not a bad car, not super awesome either. Better than some of the cheap US rentals!

[JWC]

Not really a wive's tales.....but...

In the old days, car wrecks could be big news. This was especially true in particularly violent crashes. 

In the original post, I mentioned a Livermore Ca crash. The story is about two groups of teens driving on Greenville Rd just outside of town. Greenville Rd had been paved using the existing dirt road as its base and without flattening the roadway. This decision didn't matter when cars were Ford Model Ts and the top speed was limited. But by the 1960s and 1970s, this would lead to people flying over a portion of Greenville Rd that was locally known at "the seven sisters", a group of seven hills that were as steep as some of the hills across the bay in San Francisco. It was also known as the roller coaster.

One afternoon, two or three groups of high school students were cruising the seven sisters hills. The two primary groups were six girls in one car and a couple of guys in another. At some point, the two boys in one car encountered a car going the opposite direction, and believing they recognized them, and made a sudden U-turn to catch the other car. As they topped one of the hills, it was too late to stop when they realized the car of girls had stopped in the roadway. The boys' car was airborne and landed on top of the girl's car. The crash killed four teen girls, injured two, and injured both boys.

CalDOT would shave the hills in the seventies, years after the 1962 crash described above, but not until another crash killed a couple of teens after losing control racing over the roller coaster.

[Payman]

The island of Newfoundland has the highest concentration of moose per square mile in the world, some 170,000 animals. Driving on the rural roads requires vigilance, and driving after dusk can be downright dangerous. A month after graduating high school back in 1986, there was a terrible accident involving recent grads of a school in another town not that far away. A car with 4 teens aboard, 3 guys and 1 girl, hit a moose at high speed late at night, and the 1500 pound animal peeled the roof off the car and decapitated the 3 boys. The girl in the back escaped without a scratch. There was much speculation about what she was doing at the time of impact.

[AutobahnSHO]

eek