That is, an old non-roadworthy car used to do skids and donuts and stuff. When my brothers and I were around the driving age, we bought a 1984 Mitsubishi Mirage for $150, advertised as ‘No WOF, gd runner’ in the * Trade and Exchange *. We had to get dad to tow it from the other side of town while I drove it. I remember some cops staring at me, then suddenly bursting out laughing.
Anyway, it was that 1970s ‘formica benchtop’ brownish orange, with green doors, and it would almost have passed it’s warrant of fitness, other than the doors, which were rather clunky. It had a 1.3L engine, five speeds (with an overdrive actuated by a big lever near the gearstck) and a spare tire from a honda that did not fit the hub. Sadly, it was not to remain in this showroom like condition for long, as we turfed up most of our fields doing powerslides, handbrake turns and reverse donuts (It was a front wheel drive, so you couldn’t really do burnouts in forward)
My middle brother was the first on to crash it by one day. He skidded into a fencepost, denting the bumper. The following day I oversteered into a gatepost as I tried to go through the gate at 40km/h in reverse (man, you should have heard that gearbox whine!), leaving a fencepost shaped dent in the back. We both spent the afternoon filling in ruined postholes with concrete rubble.
Next task was to repair the car. Clearly an expert was needed, so dad was consulted. He armed himself with those well-known tools of panelbeating, the drill and the dinghy anchor rope. He backed it up a fencepost, drilled a hole below the hatch, put a bolt in it, and put a few loops for round the post. Into forward gear and magic! dents gone! He repeated the process to pull off the rear of the exhaust system, which was mangled and left a furrow wherever it went. The car now sounded much better in our opinion! The final touch was refinishing the paintwork. We had painted a fence a little while ago, so I grabbed the leftover fence stain and a paint roller, transforming it to an olive green colour. Something was missing… ah, that was it! Some white paint leftover from painting the boat and a self-drawn A3 Template later, and we had ourselves a WWII US Staff car!
The car lasted about a year. By now the window glass had fallen into the doors and the passenger door was held closed by a bungy tie wrapped around the B pillar. A watering can of water lasted about 10 minutes in the radiator. One day, me and my friend were out fooling around when my dad strides out and gets in the driver’s seat grumbling ‘I’ll show you how to drive’
He takes off, faster than we ever dared drive it, to a terrifying handbrake stop meters from the fences , then another, and finally entered the back paddock (which slopes down to a river) ,way too fast, spins the wheel and pulls the handbrake. The car skids around, leans to the left and hangs there for a second, and rolls onto its roof. Things go very shaky. The car comes to rest, motor still going, and I decide that I never want to be in a rollover again. After a few seconds, everyone at least seems to be all right, though my dad has a cut on his head and my friend is in a heap on the roof because he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. We crawl out of the car and admire the damage. The roof is crumpled about halfway in on the driver’s side, all the windows are gone. Eventually my brother managed to pull out the roof, but no-one really used it much after that. It now lives by the woodpile, out of sight of the road, at my mother’s insistence. The engine still works.
TL;DR: Share your memories of driving ancient cars to destruction.
We wanted to enter our cars in a demolition derby, but we were too young and I think our car was probably too flimsy anyway. It’s probably just as well we didn’t manage to scrape together enough cash for a holden or something - we probbably would have hurt ourselves.
