Ever Drive a Slow Car That Scared You?

Not specifically because it was slow but it also happened to be slow. Back in my miata days I briefly had a '92 that I basically bought to steal the hardtop from. I briefly considered rallycrossing it but decided it was too ruined. It mostly drove okay but had some worn out bushings or bad alignment or something that resulted in it pulling to the right when the front end was unloaded, most noticeably when cresting a hill. So you'd approach the top of the hill going straight with the wheel pointed straight, and by the time you were on the backside of the hill you'd have at least 45* of left steering input just to still be going straight. Discovering that was an interesting experience.

Tie between an early 60’s Ford Econoline van with a 6 / 3 on the tree (school van) and an 80’s Dodge pickup with a slant 6 and also 3 on the tree (spare / beater work truck).   

I drove the Econoline about 40 miles round trip with our band equipment.  It pulled so hard to the left when braking it took two hands to pull the wheel to stay straight.    My buddy riding shotgun thought it was hysterical.  

The Dogetruk was a longer sample, probably 100 miles mostly on the highway and some of it in traffic.   It pulled badly to the right and had a ton of slop in the steering box.  Going straight, keep it left. Changing lanes / turning right, let the slack out of the steering and pray.  Terrifying at highway speeds, I should have gotten a tee shirt for surviving that one. 

buzzboy said:

Mom drives a Mazda 3 2.5 and has for many years. It's pretty peppy. She's very accustomed to how much power it has. We were on a road trip and she was in the driver's seat of my weighted down XJ at high elevation somewhere between Las Vegas and Reno climbing a slight incline. She decided to pass a semi that was going 10 under. She downshifted to 4th and floored it. After about 30 seconds of attempting to pass the semi a car crested the hill coming down at us. That pass took about 45-60 seconds and it felt like the oncoming car was going to head on us. I'm sure there was more room than it felt, but I was full pucker. Next time I might recommend 3rd gear for passing. 

I decided to sell my '89 Toyota pickup with the 3.0 after pulling out to pass a car at about 7,500'. No discernable acceleration happened. I'd just replaced the bloody engine due to an excess level of piston in the sump, too.

Also, years ago I was going camping with an old Volvo 245 - one of the ones from the early 80s with the switch for overdrive. We were loaded up with food and a canoe. Pulled out to pass, dropped a gear and the only thing that happened was more noise. Both times the problem was solved by aborting the pass so it wasn't scary, more funny.

Citroen 2CV ,  cute fun car that was so slow people would pass me in anger every day , 

And decades of VW bugs and buses , most not too slow but look out for the side winds !

dps214 said:

Not specifically because it was slow but it also happened to be slow. Back in my miata days I briefly had a '92 that I basically bought to steal the hardtop from. I briefly considered rallycrossing it but decided it was too ruined. It mostly drove okay but had some worn out bushings or bad alignment or something that resulted in it pulling to the right when the front end was unloaded, most noticeably when cresting a hill. So you'd approach the top of the hill going straight with the wheel pointed straight, and by the time you were on the backside of the hill you'd have at least 45* of left steering input just to still be going straight. Discovering that was an interesting experience.

Heh.  In 2016 I was driving Evan's Miata for a bit.

I discovered that a good number of the rear suspension bushings were, shall we say, very experienced, when I tried to pull out to pass someone.

The turbo woke up, and the rear tires decided to go in all sorts of new and interesting-in-the-Chinese-curse-sense directions.

At least he knows I never abused the car   It definitely does not belong in the "slow car" category, though.

Yes ... two of them, in fact.

First was my parents' '71 Beetle, after it lost both 2nd and 3rd gears while I was in high school, and out on a date with a girl that I really wanted to impress.  We made it within 10 miles of getting back to her house before it fried the clutch from the 1st to 4th gear upshift, and her Dad had to pick us up, and tow the Beetle back to my folks' place.  Fortunately, she still went out with me for quite a while after that momentous first date.  Scary slow during that adventure though.

Second was the first car I ever owned myself, a '80 Rabbit diesel with 275k miles on the click.  Dangerously slow, eve, around town, but as reliable as an axe.  Bought for $300, owned for almost 2 years, sold to a good friend for $300.  Cost me nothing in repairs the whole time that I owned it, but sooooo slow.

Was a passenger in a 1963 VW bus with 1200cc of roaring power... in a torrential rain and wind storm... in the middle of the night... with 6 volt, 6 candlepower lights. 

We were going 15 miles an hour on the freeway and being blown 10 feet or more from side to side.  Steering input was no more than a suggestion.

It was absolutely the longest 12 mile, 45 minute long trip I have ever been on.  I would have kissed the ground when we got there, but would have drowned.

This was scary mostly because it shouldn't have been.

We were shopping for a car for my son and went to a small used car dealership.  There we found (IIRC) a Mitsubishi econobox that looked ok so I took it for a drive.  Good weather, dry pavement, not speeding... came up to a gentle bend in the road, the kind you don't slow down for, and almost needed full lock to stay on the road.  The only other time I had anything like that was in the snow with summer tires on my Miata.  The guys at the dealership told me I was nuts, that car is in perfect condition!

1974 Ford Pinto - 4 cylinder with auto trans, limping on 3 cylinders and would not exceed 35 mph downhill.  Barely made it up the big hill a couple of blocks from the house (you could walk up that hill faster than I was going for the top 200 ft).  Brakes were grabby.  I was driving on a learners permit without an adult in the car...

 

In reply to Junghole :

That surprises me. I daily drove a 1974 Standard with a stock 1600DP engine. It cruised(loudly) at 80mph on the interstate just fine. The brakes I could never get quite adjusted evenly left to right but they were plenty to stop a light car in town.

Yeah the brakes were great, they just needed a bit of heat in them to become more compliant. Otherwise it was a full four wheel lock up. As far as the top end, it was a really short geared 4spd. Not even sure that was stock, since I don't do VAG products. 

We bought a Fleetwood-built motorhome (38 feet, single rear axle, V10 Ford, 4 speed auto.) At 55 mph or (slightly more) if you wanted to pass on the interstate it just... roared, and... that was about it. In Florida. For defensive driving, slowing down or steering were your only choices. 

Later we upgraded to a diesel pusher. How I loved to pull out on a (Florida hill,) pulling a Jeep Wrangler, to pass an 18 wheeler doing 64 mph and we could actually accelerate with some authority and not hold up faster traffic. Glorious.

Shadeux said:

In reply to MadScientistMatt :

I took my driver's test in a 1981 Datsun 210! It was my brother's car. It had an automatic. I later drove it to Disney World with him in the passenger seat. I started merging on the interstate and pressed the accelerator down a little bit. The engine rpm went from 2400? to whatever the redline was when it downshifted. I let off the accelerator in horror.  My brother said, "yeah, I meant to tell you it doesn't like doing that."

The 210 I learned to drive on was a manual transmission. This one was so hard to operate that I ended up buying at least two cars with completely shot clutches because I could shift them just fine and didn't realize anything was amiss.

Trent said:

This. 

We bought it non running and thought it would make a great shop runabout.  We were very mistaken

Gotta disagree on Deux Chevaux's, they are awesome fun.  Slow as hell, will lean to 45 degrees while cornering at 0.001g, but a hoot to drive and difficult to get into a dangerouse situation with unless you're trying to escape up the inside of a caldera as the volcano is getting read to blow.  My sister had a 2CV, and I had a Dyane for a while, similar to the one below.  Love them, miss them.

Now for a truly terrifying experience in a small slow vehicle, it's those god awful E36 M3ty little Kei vans that people over here loose their E36 M3 over.  They were popular in the UK in the 80's for deliveries, plumbers, building contractors etc.  My trainee father in law had a Bedford Rascal, a badge engineered Suzuki Carry.  Now that's terrifying.  Going round a roundabout at traffic speed, not arsing around, hit a small something with the inside tire, remember 80's traffic speed in the UK, and the berkeleying thing goes on two wheels!!  Plus the fact that the engineers cleverly saved money on crash structure by using the occupants legs to adsorb any energy in a front end collision.  Honestly, if I were in charge those things would be regulated as golf carts and limited to 15mph, even then only after adding some mass under th

I'll pile on Beetles.  My 1974 Super Beetle with a 1500 single port is slow, but can run at 65 on the highway if need be.  While not the safest thing out there, it does alright...during the day.  Any time from dusk til dawn on the other hand, scary as hell.  It is a former rallycross car (and will be again some day), so the windshield is pretty much sandblasted.  No cracks, but so many micro scratches that any time light hits it directly, the whole windshield lights up with glare and you can barely see out of it.

2011 Colorado. 2.9L with 4L60e. Regular cab, regular box, 2 wheel drive.

Passing anything aside from agricultural equipment was a test of will power. Coming up on anything slow moving and pulling out to pass was fine if you are already traveling at a higher rate of speed than the other (hence agricultural equipment traveling at 60km/h vs the truck at 100km/h).  

When you had to slow down for slower moving traffic before being able to pass, it was game over for the truck. Road clear, foot down, loud noises annnnnd..... nothing. Eventually it would down shift and pick up some kind of speed to pass with but it just felt really unsafe to pass anybody on the highway. 

1953 Chevy pickup with the small 6-cylinder. It was so slow that going on the freeway was an act of faith. Also had a 1948 Dodge dump truck that was equally slow, but much bigger so unlike the little Chevy, people would back off and give me room.

1974 Vega GT.

Factory 4 link, but ony 3 of them still had a mounting point on the unibody.

There was a gaping rust hole where the 4th one had been.

Right foot down, car goes left.

Right foot up, car goes right.

Abruptly.

My cousin and I bought a TJ Wrangler to flip and had to drive it half a mile back to his shop. It had at least one suspension mount rusted completely off the frame. Even at less than 20 mph it would change direction seemingly at random. For those 3 minutes of driving I was certain it was going to kill me

In reply to Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) :

I came to say a 2CV, probably the slowest car I ever rode in. My riding mower has a bigger engine than the 2CV.

An early 60s Ford Econoline van.  I was in the Navy, temporarily stationed in Sicily, when I volunteered one night to take a vanload of co-workers back to the barracks.  There were about 9 or 10 sailors loaded into a small van with seats (actually, a wooden bench) for 3.  Aside from being a 10 year old van with a nearly shot suspension system, lacking seats for all my passengers meant the load would often shift abruptly when taking even the slightest curves.   Luckily, the 7-10 mile trip was on fairly level roads as I don't think that poor little 6 cylinder powered van could have taken many hills.  The ride back in the nearly empty van was an experience as well, since the van now floated on the smooth parts of the road but bounced softly at any bumps.

Incredibly, that little van held up under 6 months of that kind of abuse.

Briefly owned a Sunbeam Imp. Brilliant little 875 cc engine derived from Coventry Climax design, coupled with rather horrid handling habits when you neared the limits. Maybe I am just not a fan of swing axle suspension?