We all have taste, it’s what keeps our mouths happy. That being said, we all have taste, and like a dog-crap fudge sundae, sometimes that taste is bad. Some people exhibit bad taste all the time, and some folks – most of us I’d say – have our moments of taste weakness. What we want to know is, what’s the weakest you’ve been when it comes to your car?
Have you ever put a set of rubber floor mats in your car with a gun-toting Yosemite Sam demanding that you wipe yer feet, varmit? Maybe there were flames in your past? Not the kind of painted-on flames that did a nice little fade towards the front, but some kind of neon-bright stick-on flames that you thought would look really good coming off the rear wheel well of your front-drive Plymouth Sundance?
Me? I one time made inside door panels for a Corvair out of MDF, red vinyl and wood grain shelf paper, I defecate you in the negative. Since then I think I’ve managed to keep most of my rides from suffering too many indignities, but then, how would I know?
So what has it been for you? What have you done to your car that, if it could, would make it run away from home in shame? And did you finally realize the error of your ways, or did somebody else point it out to you? Come on, we won’t judge.
Image sources: [ecomodder.com, whipitoutcomedy.com]
Hooniverse Asks- What's The Most Embarrassing Thing You've Ever Done To Your Car?
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40 responses to “Hooniverse Asks- What's The Most Embarrassing Thing You've Ever Done To Your Car?”
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1991 Olds Cutlass Ciera…
I had recently smashed up my 323, and was in need of a car on the double quick. I let my dad buy me a "one owner, old lady car" from a mechanic "friend" of his, for "$500".
Well, after the mechanic "friend" had finished the "necessary safety repairs", I ended up with an $1800 beat up, rusty POS with a bent front bumper a massively caved-in front passenger door, and a rotten, moldy, headliner-falling-down, dashboard-decimated-by-the sun interior.
First things first: out comes the flat black spray cans, and pieces of cardboard to "Mask". 2 hours later, I have a matte black '91 Ciera. Next, the wheels: Grey steelies with chrome trim. Off they come, and an hour later they are GOLD steelies with shiny chrome trim. On to the interior… Out with the blue headliner and carpet, in with acres of the cheapest astroturf Walmart could offer. Finally, "Performance Mods". I had a ricey stainless muffler that had come off an RX-7 parts car. On that went with clamps. And onto the dash went Princess Auto's biggest, cheapest plastic Tach. Man, THAT was an embarrassing ride. -
On my very first truck I cranked the torsion bars all the way up and spray painted the the frame and all the visible suspension bits light blue. Light blue because it was the only color I had available. Oh, and I didn't bother to wash any of it first.
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The '69 Camaro has Cavalier Buckets in it…..Yes….I am trying to find factory Camaro seats or get enough extra to put some Sparco or Corbeau's in it.
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On the ’95 Intrepid I had for my first car, I had put a Hot Wheels seat cover on the driver’s seat, since there was a hole. By the time I got rid of it, I had the matching cover for the passenger seat, the floor mats, and steering wheel cover. Oh, and I had a hula girl on the dash for a while, but on a sunnier day, the glue holding the top half on melted, so I drove around with disembodied legs on my dash for months.
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The fake luggage rack on the trunk lid of my Subaru Loyale kept shedding parts on the highway, so to keep the trunk dry I covered the holes with bumper stickers.
Yes, Andre the Giant had a posse on my trunk lid. 7'4", 520 LBS of pre-internet viral meme! -
It was my friend's car rather than mine, but: battery-powered Xmas lights are not flattering on a Peugeot 505. Especially a subwoofer -equipped 505 loudly blaring Queen and Parliament.
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Crager Chrome mags, the ones with the holes, not the 5 spokes, with white letter BFG tires on my vinyl landau roofed 81 Buick Sport Coupe Turbo. I was 16.
Or maybe add the super heavy duty rear spring, with no rear sway bar, and the 1-1/4" front sway bar (aka solid axle conversion kit), with stock front springs, to my 77 Corvette and expect it to handle good.
Not a mod, but the most embarrassing thing I have ever done to a car is wreck it. -
Putting on t-shirts as seatback-covers on my '90 Civic. When the shirts became faded and stained, common sense and taste took over and the shirts were gone. Oh, and hanging a Doraemon from my mirror at the behest of a girlfriend,
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In my defense I was 19 yrs. old
96 Mustang V6 slushbox
cat back dual exhaust
polished aluminum hvac/window/door/etc. knobs
fiberglass hood w/ fake SVO scoop
fiberglass front bumper with chin spoiler
"Mustang" rocker stickers
running horse decal on rear glass
polished aluminum fuel door
bullitt wheels w/ summer tires
It looked good, but in hindsight I should have spent the money on a turbo -
Saw/heard a police flashlight tap on the glass while steaming up the windows.
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But read the article title. Were you actually doing it *to* your car at the time? Kinky….
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A gentlemen never dragon's and tells.
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Parked it on the street. I felt so ashamed!
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Bought and used those $1.00 plastic window hangie cup holders that only a grampa could love. Sad sad sad…
And then there's the bit about the Rastafarianmomambamobile. 3 colors of spray paint and my poor 78 Caprice Classic went from hand painted primer brown to Green, Red and Brown. I didn't do it. And I don't know which looked worse – the primer or the spray paint. Both were hella embarrassing – but hey, it was wheels. -
1996 Ranger 2.3L/5M. 3" exhaust from the cat back, with a Dynomax muffler and a 4" chrome tip exiting under the right side of the rear bumper. I have to admit, it sounded pretty cool at the time, with a nice little burble at about 60-65mph in 5th gear, but it was definitely a case of all bark and no bite.
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I hate to think back to those dark days: Tiny 3 spoke steering wheels and Locomotion surf stickers on a wagon, "Japanese Cadillac" bumper sickers on a Gremlin, copious amounts of pin-stripe tape, glasspacks, Hi-jackers, Yosemite Sam mudflaps, Barefoot gas pedals, fuzzy dice, tiny chrome air cleaners, grey primer, and phony hose braiding. I'm guilty of every tacky 80s faux paus.
I think the worst was a rolling wet-bar in the front of a '59 Baja Bug. Kept smashing bottles every time I jumped it. NO, wait, I once jacked the Gremlin WAY UP by sticking firewood between the axle and floorboards. And then I drove it down the street and broke a bunch of parts. I was a DUMB kid.
About the only thing I'm still guilty of are the 3 spoke steering wheels and fuzzy dice. And glasspacks. And Barefoot gas/dimmer pedals. And stickers… and….-
Your Gremlin story reminds me of my Fox-body Mustang hatchback. Bone stock two-tone (white over black) with a straight 6 and wire wheel hubcaps. Did have air shocks though. I got a kick out of pumping them waaaay up and rolling with the ass in the air. Until I overinflated them and they popped, that is.
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The wet bar in a baja bug and issues with jumping are hoonworthy indeed
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1979 Chevy Malibu. It started with flames on the side. It ended with flames, dingle-balls in the windows, SS stripes on the hood and deck lid, AND a whip CB antenna with a shark on it. http://www.extremepsi.org/MembersArea/Chad/Images…
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Regardless I am digging the ralleye's
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The only thing that really comes to mind is the awesome fake carbon fiber bits I put on the dash to add 10+ horse powers, or so Mr. Pep told me.
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I ran over a mesquite bush or a cactus or something and got a flat tire a few months ago. I was too lazy to get the tire fixed, and drove around on the spare for a month or so. The only studded snow tire in Southern Arizona (I still have those tires from when I lived in Utah), and it's a size bigger than the rest of the tires on my truck. That looked stupid. The tire's fixed now, and the spare is in the bed where it belongs. This isn't the worst thing I've done to a vehicle, but it's the most recent sin I've committed.
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This last winter it snowed, I had to get to my college class. Of course my Dakota (which actuality belongs to my dad) does not have 4wd and I didn't have enough weight in the back got stuck. I got it unstuck but I couldn't straighten it out as it has pausi traction (or something like that) which is a joke because it pushes you off in one direction. As it did this the rear of the truck came closer and closer to the house so I stopped and asked my dad what to do, he got irritated and decided to try it himself. He got in and gunned it (i face palmed) the rear of the truck made a horrible sound as it dragged across the side of the house. The rear tail light broke and some paint came off the rear bumper which is now rusting. I was embarrassed, and I have pictures.
http://i862.photobucket.com/albums/ab190/gearhead…
http://i862.photobucket.com/albums/ab190/gearhead… -
I'm not particularly proud of the shape the Country Sedan is in these days.
More of an issue of not doing things than doing things. We'll see what happens this summer. -
Well, home-made car stereo installations for my own car and friend's cars. Being 18 yo this meant sawing some butt-ugly openings into car interiors, connecting wrongly some mismatching speakers and wondering how the hell bass (most important thing then!) is only OK when you turn balance to either fully L or R. Sometimes through pure luck these systems were rightly connected and people (other 18 y olds that is) were impressed with my mad skillz. Only after some years someone told me that when there's no bass speaker cords needs to be swapped on one speaker….
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There is nothing embarrassing that I will admit to, or that anyone can prove.
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The winky the cat with the eyes that light up on the back deck of a very rusty 77 Ford Granada. I should also mention the Christmas wreaths with strings of lights wired to come on when the car runs on the grill of my Dakota and my wife’s Econoline, but I do that every year so I obviously haven’t learned a thing.
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Winky the Cat has gone through the whole process – from cheapo JC Whitney crap to grampa cheezoid junk through kitsch and has now been elevated to ironic coolness. You were just ahead of your time.
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The single most useless, stupid, embarrassing, and difficult thing I ever did to my car was install LED underglow. It was pretty and impressive for about 20 minutes but was never used after that since it's somewhat illegal to use on the street and even using it in a parking lot gets you the hairy eyeball from the law enforcement around here.
Eventually, the front bar started leaking and rusted inside, causing 1/3 of the LEDs to stop working. Of course the last nail in the coffin, and the embarrassing part, was when I hit a cone during an autox and it demolished the front bar, got stuck underneath, and both cone and light bar got dragged all around the course making more noise than my engine. Embarrassing because I had to cut it off in the grid and then admit to ever having it in the first place. -
The most embarrassing thing I have ever done to my car? I crashed it. It wasn't even a cool crash (if there is such a thing), it was one of those turning left when you can't see around the cars things, where you sort of poke your nose out and BAM! Although I maintain that the guy in the E-Class shouldn't have been doing 40 in the suicide lane, particularly as there wasn't a driveway or road for him to be turning into (He just wanted to get to the left turn lane 2 blocks ahead). Poor little GTI…
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Hah.
So I was a teenager, with my first car, a Saab 9000, which I'd bought 6mos before even getting my license. It was $500, and had seen better days, though the worst had yet to come.
So there was this girl. I was enamored, and we smoked a lot of pot in this Saab. After a while it grew a 12" TV/VCR for the back seats, glued on 4.1 computer speakers, an unholy mess, and, as she had a sizable duct tape stash and artistic tendencies (actual talent, it should be noted, despite appearances,) some decorations.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v442/reeseisthe…
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v442/reeseisthe…
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v442/reeseisthe…
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v442/reeseisthe…
et cetera, et cetera.
I'll cop to some slightly weirdo tendencies, but this, in retrospect, was bad. Blinded by blue balls I drove this car, in this condition, all over the place for many months, until the turbo grenaded itself and after a terrible month or so of not being able to get out of my own way, it was replaced by a free Pontiac.-
So much win. However, I'd argue that pot is better smoked in a minivan with the second row removed and replaced with a beanbag. The third row seat makes a great couch, and there's ample space for you and your friends. I wouldn't have any experience with any of this, of course; this is all what I have been told…
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It was nice of her to label the place where she was keeping your balls.
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I put a "Starfleet Academy" sticker in the back window of my '74 Buick Electra. Yes, I used to watch a lot of Trek. I started on Trek way back before that was considered to be the height of dorkitude. Besides, Kate Mulgrew (Capt. Kathryn Janeway on Voyager) was HOT.
(If my daughter were reading this, right about now she would interrupt and say "But Dad, you ARE a dork." She has family privileges. The rest of y'all don't.)-
Hooniverse is like a family….and Janeway? Really? 7of9 rather than Grandma, thank you.
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I drive my 84 bronco II every where telling myself I got a cool classic. This thing is cool cause it is almost like a jeep and they don't make em like this no more.
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Since crashing is too easy of an answer, I'm going with "getting stuck in snow, while traveling alone, in remote locations where I didn't have any reason to be anyway, in North Dakota, in January." I thought I had myself cured of that after getting my pickup into that situation about 3 weeks after I bought it in 2005, but I did it to the T-bird just this year and have a $330 tow truck bill to show for it.
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Ran over one of those yellow parking spot block things. And yes, sadly that's the best name I can think to call those things. Failishness.
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I locked my keys in the 1979 Subaru hatchback in high-school. Rather than do something smart like call for someone to pop the lock, I thought I would bust the pop-out rear window lock. Instead, I shattered the window. Rather than replace it with a junkyard special, I fabricated a cardboard, plastic, and duct tape masterpiece that needed replacement every three months because it trapped moisture and started getting moldy.
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Mahlzeit
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