Unashamedly I stole this idea from Jalopnik, but since it's Valentine's Day what is your best date car story. Here's mine:
Junior year of college and I was rocking a 95 Isuzu Rodeo 5spd, 6cyl, 4wd. It had a black exterior and gray cloth interior. Now I tried to keep the outside clean which was hard living in a mtn town on a college kid part time budget. It also had an aftermarket stereo, amp, and 2 12" subs in the back. I had at least screwed down all 4 corners of the license plate so when the base hit you didn't hear the license plate rattle.
Now I also had a 100lb black lab, the whole cargo area and most of the backseat was his. I took him hiking, creek hopping, swimming and fishing. He went just about everywhere with me.
I met my date while visiting a buddy at his dorm and asked her out, thankfully she said yes. Picked her up in the Rodeo and off we went. Fantastic date, 20 years of marriage later we still laugh about that old Rodeo. She doesn't remember how clean it was on the outside, or that there was no trash on the inside, or that the subs made your booty shake when the bass bumped. All she remembers is how it smelled like funky wet dog on the inside.
I own a 1960 El Camino. I've owned it for a long time.
On one of my wife's friskier days... well, suffice it to say that I honestly considered naming my youngest daughter "Camina".
I dated a woman who was 5'10 and her inseam was 3-4" longer than mine (and I'm 6'2) she drove a XC90 because when you lifted the hatch and folded the tailgate down it was, in her words, the perfect height for her to be bent over.
Always appreciate a woman who's always prepared and know what she wants.
Trent
PowerDork
2/14/21 3:25 p.m.
When Bianca and i were just starting seeing each other and she still lived 140 miles away, she would drive down on Fridays often arriving before i was done at work. I was working on a gorgeous little 60 Alfa Giulietta sprint and told her I'd like to take her out someplace nice and to dress up.
Damn near identical to this one
I picked her up in the Alfa and we went out to dinner. As we left the restaurant she asked if she could drive it back and I handed her the keys.
As she was starting the car I tried to explain that the 2nd gear synchro was a bit grumpy and that she should probably.... and I found myself on the receiving end of a "don't mansplain to me stare"
She then proceeded to wind the thing out in the first three gears rapidly exceeding the posted speed limit, grabbed 5th and as soon as it was quiet enough to speak said "I know how to drive old cars"
My heart melted right then
When I was in high school one of the cars I was allowed to use was a '64 Rambler 660 station wagon. One could make the interior basically flat from the dashboard to the tailgate.
It also had 3 on the tree with overdrive so I could grope and drive at the same time.
Good times!
Back in 2006, I had a 2003 350z. I took my super-impressed future wife out for a date. We parked on the side of a downtown street with high-ish curbs. As we were leaving one location, she got the door stuck on the sidewalk. Not wanting to feel like a doofus, she simply added some muscle to her will to close the door from the inside. The handle ripped off in her hand, and her face probably turned red from shameful embarrassment (back when people had that still). Before she could apologize, I laughed my ass off. Somewhere down the street, the dead pedal also came unstuck from the floor. Yay, Nissan, testing my cool. We're still married 15 years later, with no Nissans in sight . . .
I'm just here to see what story Curtis has!
In college I took a girlfriend with me on a roadtrip to FL for spring break in a 66 Bonneville in which I had just finished rebuilding the 389. Some of you saw that Bonneville at the challenge a few months ago. It wasn't like Panama City Beach or anything, we stayed with my Grandparents in Ruskin and then took a couple days and went to Disneyworld.
This girl was a big fan of sex in non traditional places, but she was very concerned with getting caught. It couldn't just be in a dressing room or an airplane bathroom. So it was my duty as boyfriend to find places where we could have sex outside and not get interrupted... in the woods, in the boat where we could see a mile away, in the desert of Nevada at one of those exits that goes nowhere (looking at you, Zyzzyx road)
So she and I were in Ruskin. Behind one of the strip malls was a large expanse of meadow-ish space between the mall and the Ruskin Power plant. I carefully turned off the headlights and we proceeded to drive out in the middle of this field where she every so brilliantly spread her [insert NSFW descriptors here] body out on the hood of my 66 Bonneville. Just about the time things were getting interesting I noticed an entire line of cars coming across the field, all of them paused, and one of them turned their car toward us and put on their high beams to get a better view.
Turns out, there was a road through that field that was the employee entrance to the power plant and we began our frolicking right before a night shift change.
Fail.
rustybugkiller said:
I'm just here to see what story Curtis has!
Didn't disappoint did it ?
Curtis never disappoints!
ddavidv
UltimaDork
2/15/21 7:20 a.m.
Mine isn't particularly sexy.
Was on a double date while barely out of high school. My mechanical abilities were minimal back then. I had the first of several Mk 1 Fiestas. The four of us were bopping down the local expressway going to wherever we were going for the date when the car suddenly shut off. Almost like the cord had been pulled from the wall socket. I coast to the side and try starting it a few times. Nothing. No dash lights at all. In frustration, I give the center of the steering wheel a hefty punch. The dash lights come on. Car starts. Evening continues.
The next day I tinker around with the car because I know something isn't right. I found a connector in the column harness not fully clicked together. (I need to point out I never touched it previously!). Pushed it together until it clicked and never had a problem with that car again.
There was one with my college girlfriend and the gearshift in my '75 Trans Am...
2nd date with a Brazilian lass a couple of decades ago. I was in one of my 309 GTis, which had just developed a totally random misfire (turned out to be the ignition amp, took me months to sort as I had 2 replacements that turned out to be intermittent too), but it hadn't occured for several days. Tipping it down with rain, going downhill into a square right, not going quickly but with Eagle F1 GSDs on the front and random rubbish on the back it would go sideways at the slightest provocation, I drop down to 2nd just as I turn in and the engine stumbles as I turn in, then stops dead and we swapped ends instantly. She was Not Impressed.
1st date with a lass back in Uni, a very up-market girl, I turn up in my shonky Triumph Dolomite with partial interior and rally bits. The expression on her face said it all, and it didn't improve with the run out through all the lanes I knew like the back of my hand. There was no 2nd date! Interestingly many years later I did roughly the same route with my now-wife in my Almera Gti and she was screaming with delight...
2007 saab 9-7x. Manistee national forest in Michigan. 2015 labor day weekend. Left the kids at the farm with the inlaws and "went for a drive" and found a seemingly quiet spot off a 2 track dirt forest road. After everything was done we kept going down the road and discovered we were within probably 20 seconds of several campers full of people when we "stopped to take in the beauty of the forest"
only other humorous car story was when we were friends hanging out and not dating yet. We parked behind a restaurant that was atop a west facing hill after their car cruise night to watch the sunset and talk. She was laying on the bench seat of my 54 Belair with her head on my lap and we talked for an hour or so when red/blue/spotlight lit up at us. He came up and said "lots of people park back here, what are you up to" so i said "we're customers who stayed late to talk, we're just friends" and got the "talk, riiiiight" reply. I looked him in the eyes, pulled my zipper down, and asked if he wanted to check. He looked at our ID's and told us to go home
Way back, I had a 1962 Ford Galaxie. Screwed some thin cable into the upper trim holes, and hung curtains. Love shack on wheels.
My life is dull. I have no stories....
So, many of you know I love my El Camino. It's a big part of my life and I'm proud of it, so I like using it to *try* to impress girls. Back in college, in Atlanta, I took a girl out in it after talking up how cool my classic car is, probably ignoring several eye rolls. It's Friday night in Midtown, raining, and getting dark. It's an old car from the 70's but it's in good shape and handles weather fine. The city is alive and full of people doing Friday night things, and traffic is heavy though flowing smoothly as we approach Peachtree Street (main street for you northerners). All of the sudden the car just turns completely off. Engine, headlights, all electrical power, without any warning at all. I get out into the pouring rain and pop the hood to look for problems. Traffic is backing up behind us, folks are getting mad, and it really sucks because we can't even turn on the emergency flashers. She has AAA and isn't having any of it, so she calls a tow truck. Meanwhile I'm staring at the negative battery terminal scratching my head over the whereabouts of the ground cable's clamp. It has completely vaporized! All I see is a burnt end of the cable and some slag. I still have no idea what happened to this day, but somehow my ground strap welded itself off the battery and left me with nothing but raw cable. I don't even have tools on me other than a knife. Luckily a crusty old mechanic in his coveralls just happens to be walking by on the sidewalk and starts looking at the problem with me. In his pockets just happen to be some pliers. I use my knife to slice the end of the cable long ways, loop over the ground terminal, and use his pliers to twist the ends together tight. I get back inside and limp the engine back to life, just as the tow truck arrives. I like to think I got laid that night because of my mechanical prowess, but in reality it was likely due to something lame like my charm or good looks.
My friend was attending the local community college that was holding classes in an old VA hospital. Dances were held in the old morgue with the beer kegs stored in the coolers that used to hold the bodies. He introduced me to a Greek girl at one dance and I asked her out. I was driving a 72 Triumph Spitfire, he told her I had a Cadillac convertible. When I picked her up she asked where the rest of my car was. Believe me you can't do much in a Spitfire. That Greek wedding movie was about our wedding. She still gets mad at me when I say we met in a morgue.
My wife likes to tell me that she married me because she likes the plaid seats in my GTI.
MrFancypants said:
My wife likes to tell me that she married me because she likes the plaid seats in my GTI.
So her other suitors are going "damn! I knew that I shouldn't have gotten the leather!"
There is a special place in my heart for the hoods of Plymouth Dusters.
NMNA...
I think I'm older than most folks here, since this story is about a 1959 Austin A55 Cambridge. We were in university in Victoria B.C. in 1974 and decided to go camping for reading week, which was mid-February. We went up to Long Beach on Vancouver Island and arrived to find about 2 inches of wet, slushy snow in the campground. The tent had a waterproof floor, so that wasn't terrible, but it was cold and drizzly the whole time, the firewood was sodden, and the forest dripped so much it might as well have been raining (which it well might have been - it was hard to tell). Late the next day, we decided we'd had enough fun, broke camp and headed home. Over a mountain pass, in heavy, wet slush.
At this point, I should explain that the Cambridge had a dipstick in the transmission to check oil levels (which given 50s British seal technology was a good idea), and to access the dipstick you removed a large rubber bung (about 2 inches by 4 inches) from the transmission tunnel on the passenger side. We're slithering up the pass in the deep slush in the dark, when suddenly there's a blood curdling scream from the passenger seat. It seems that the slush had been packing into the space between the transmission and the tunnel to the point where the slush pressure exceeded the grip strength of the rubber bung, and a geyser of freezing, wet slush erupted from the passenger side of the transmission tunnel, covering the passenger head to toe. Unwisely, I thought this was the funniest thing I'd ever seen, and couldn't stop laughing hysterically. She was of a different opinion...
The strangest thing about this episode is that we're still together 46 years later, proving she's an exceptionally tolerant woman.
Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) said:
My life is dull. I have no stories....
Same here... I only have an amusing story of me driving two female friends in my 1986 Toyota 4x4 pick-up with a standard cab and a stick shift.
"I can drive, but I'm not sure where both of you will sit..."
One friend: "It's OK, I'll sit bitch".
"Bitch" meaning with one of her legs on the passenger side, the other on the driver's side, and me shifting between them. That was an amusing night... first time we ever heard Tool (Sober).
Hong Kong, 1967, on R&R by myself. I left the hotel in civilian clothes to sight see and found my way to a popular tourist attraction. Mid week morning so I was the only person there. An older Chinese man approached, introduced himself, pointed to the road and asked if I would like to have lunch at his house with him and the beautiful young lady sitting in the car (Rolls Royce). I declined. Often wonder what if.
. Didn't have to ask twice. Sadly, that car was the most fun thing about her.
