Funny stories about parents and their strange autos/driving habits
 

Post em here.

My dad is so cheap he only buys cars that no one else wants. ($0-$400 max) They run for a few months then die and he usually does not bother/can't fix them.

If he would just spend a couple thousand he could have one decent vehicle instead of 7 broken ones. *sigh*

The one car that he had that lasted for a really long time was a gold Plymouth Volare station wagon with a slant 6. It got so beat that mushrooms started growing in the rear passenger foot well but that engine ran forever. The front right wheel was worn down to the cords and bulged so much that it had a wobble that started slow and got worse and worse until you hit about 55 then it was suddenly smooth.

My father's idea of the truly hot car was the Hudson Hornet.
http://priuschat.com/forums/attachme...on-hornet.jpeg

Throughout his life, the Old Man never owned any car that was in anyway
remarkable except that for the most part they enclosed a large volume.

The first car he owned was a '54 Plymouth wagon, medium blue.
http://priuschat.com/forums/attachme...h_suburban.jpg

The second was an early '60's VW Microbus. It was the basic model ,
two-tone white over red, without all the little windows around the top.
40 HP if I remember correctly.
http://priuschat.com/forums/attachme...-microbus3.jpg

A speedometer, no gas gauge; when the engine sputtered
you flipped a little lever beneath the driver's seat to access a one gal.
reserve. (My mother could never remember which way to flip the lever.
Opposite to the reserve was OFF. Panic ensued.)

After I left home for college he owned a series of nondescript second hand
full/mid-size wagons dictated by living on a fixed retirement income.

To my dad cars were appliances or utensils. He never washed them. He
changed the oil twice as often as recommended. He carried a combo hot-
start/tire pump in the back. He ran the tires until at least one was bald.
He kept his cars until "the wheels fell off," or my mother threw a major
tantrum.

All he asked was that when he turned the key they would start.

I wonder if he would have understood my fascination/obsession with
my Prius.

My Old Man never owned a Hornet, he never had the money.

But he did have a memory, or was it a dream?

i owned a volare slant 6!
i loved that car!

Volare... ohh ohh
Cantare oh oh oh oh

I forgot about the snake story as well.

When I was a kid I used to catch garter snakes and keep them for a week or two before returning them to nature. My dad gave me a ride to my friends house with my snakes in their cage. When I got back home I noticed one of the snakes was gone. It was in the box when I left my friends house so it must have escaped, I thought. I searched the Volare front to back, under seats, carpet, everywhere. No snake, so I gave up.

A couple of months later I was going to my dad's workshop with him on a weekend and I found a shedded snakeskin in the back passenger footwell. Somehow it was managing to live in the car. After that discovery, I made a habit of leaving a door open while the car was in the garage so it could leave if it wanted although I suppose it could have exited through one of the many rust holes...

Same here!! :thumbup:
An orange '78 coupe that ran like a champ.

What color was your volare?