Bench Racing, and Other Great Lies #6

Here's one from Christian's past that he's offered to share as part of the next great installment in the wildly-popular, Bench Racing, and Other Great Lies series.

We love to hear stories, whether they're true, or just a great lie. So click the "Contact" link in Christian's profile, and send 'em to us. We'll even help edit, and maybe exaggerate a lie or two ourselves!

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One day during my Sophomore year in high school, my friend, Steve, stopped me in the hall. "What are you doing after school? 'Cause I have my Dad's Trans Am today."

This was a rare treat for both of us. Steve's father was a company executive who owned a handful of interesting toys including a big block '68 Corvette convertible and this car, a 1983 Pontiac Trans Am with the Daytona Pace Car package. We immediately made plans to go for a drive after school.

Within minutes of the final bell ringing, Steve and I were jumping into the car like, well, two kids who borrowed Dad's cool car.

We cruised it to a local 7-Eleven where we eased it into a prime parking spot right in front of the door. The car was loaded to the hilt with all the goodies, including the aerodynamic wheel covers and a 5-speed, and the white paint made the wedge-shaped car look like the shark that it was.

We'd only been inside a couple minutes when we came back outside to find a large gentleman admiring the car. A few pleasantries were exchanged between him and Steve as I got into the car. As I did, I overheard the man say to Steve, "I see you have a dent in the rear quarter panel and a crack in the spoiler. I do bodywork, and would be happy to give you a price on the repair." Steve thought that sounded like a good idea, and agreed to pull around the side of the building to get a quote.

I almost smacked him when he got back in the car.

We pulled around the side of the building, parked between a dumpster and an old blue and tan '77 Thunderbird. Steve got out to talk to the man when another man got out of the Thunderbird and popped the trunk. I wished that Steve had left me with the keys, but I stayed in the car and locked my door.

What eventually made me get out of the car was several loud, metallic banging noises followed by the car shaking. This was caused by a slide hammer punching eight holes in the fender. For the next five minutes, I watched as Steve's eyes remained the size of dinner plates covered in a big heaping of panic. Before he could panic any further, plastic filler was made up and spread over the holes. "All it needs is paint," said the first man. "That'll be $300."

The scam had been set, and these guys had two naive 16-year-olds in their sights. Steve gulped hard, and took a step towards the man. "That's not right. You said you were going to give me an estimate. Not actually fix the car."

Unfortunately for Steve, the man took a step towards him, and the second guy (still holding the slide hammer in his hand) was glaring at me. "I don't know what you're talking about. You owe us $300, mother fucker. And you're going to give us that money, right now."

"I'll have to go to the ATM across the street," Steve said.

"That's good. We'll follow you over. Don't try anything stupid." And that's exactly what we did.

We got back into the cars, and Steve pulls the Pontiac to the driveway. "Hold on. TIGHT." We were about to try something stupid.

For the next ten minutes, the two cars bobbed and weaved through traffic on Route 202 in Delaware at high speed, cutting through neighborhoods, blowing through stop signs and red lights, all the time hoping we'd come across a police officer. If a bridge had been out, we'd have jumped it, Dukes of Hazzard style! Hal Needham couldn't have asked for a better car chase.

Eventually, we cut through a shopping center and barreled down a side road. We pulled into a neighborhood, and came to a screeching halt in the driveway of an elderly gentleman who was mowing his lawn. He must have thought we were crazy, but seeing the panic in our eyes and our shaking voices convinced him that we were telling the truth. He and his wife let us use the phone, and Steve called his father to explain everything.

Forty-five minutes later, Steve's father pulled up in the driveway, and escorted us back to school where my ride home was waiting.

I don't know if the car was ever repaired, but it took me years to not go into a blind panic every time I saw a blue '77 Thunderbird.

Photo from http://autopolis.wordpress.com

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Bench Racing, and Other Great Lies #5

The next great installment in the wildly-popular, Bench Racing, and Other Great Lies series.

We love to hear stories, whether they're true, or just a great lie. So click the "Contact" link in Christian's profile, and send 'em to us. We'll even help edit, and maybe exaggerate a lie or two ourselves!

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I once heard a story about a really great mechanic. He was one of those great mechanical geniuses that didn't believe in opening up a parts catalog to fix something. Instead, he'd happily disassemble ridiculously complex things (like a tilt & telescoping steering column), fix whatever needed fixing, then reassemble it.

On one particular high-mileage car that was in for such a repair, the car's owner noticed that the gauge panel was out of the car, and the mechanic was holding it in his hand. "You know, with the gauges out, it'd be really easy to wind 100,000 miles off that odometer," he said to the mechanic.

"OH GOOD LORD, NOOOOO!!" replied the mechanic. "That would be illegal! But," he continued,"if something were to happen where the odometer become incorrect, there's no way that I'd know what the correct mileage was, and I'd have to rely on the owner to tell me."

Surprised by the mechanic's honesty and integrity, the owner shrugged and let the mechanic go on about his business. Just as he turned away to go look at something that caught his eye, he heard the mechanic exclaim, "Oops!" followed by the sound of the gauge cluster hitting the floor. The odometer gears became displaced, and little black numbered dials were seen spinning on the floor.

The mechanic looked up to the car owner, and said, "Oh jeez, do you remember what the mileage was?"

"About 38,000," the owner said with a grin.

Image from bikernet.com

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Bench Racing, and Other Great Lies #4

Just in time for Valentine's Day, I figured I'd share an automotive love story. Enjoy!

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My friend, Don, is a car guy and family friend from way back. He's a great, jovial kinda guy who can keep you laughing for days, and has a wonderful appreciation for irony.

Unfortunately for Don, he's never really owned his dream car. Much like a lot of us, there's always been great plans made, steps taken towards putting all the pieces together only to have something called "Life" cancel everything before the dream was finished.

But during the late 1970s, he came close. You see, Don was building a Bradley GT in his garage.

Bradleys were produced from 1971 through 1981 when the company went bankrupt. They were small, Italian-esque coupes that had gull-wing doors, were built on VW Beetle chassis, and even had some Corvair parts thrown in. Odds are, you've probably seen one. If you ever visit the Liberace museum, you can see his Bradley, complete with bass-boat gold metalflake paint, perfectly in vogue for both the 1970's and Liberace.

Nonetheless, Don spent quite a many years piecing his together, every day getting closer to having a cool car of his own to drive. His wife didn't quite share his vision, however.

One night over dinner, "Life" intervened. A loud discussion ensued, and several hours later, she announced to Don, "Either that damn car goes, or I go!"

Don stood there, stunned. His wife stormed off, and he quietly went to the garage to take a look at the yellow coupe that was nearly road-worthy after all these years. He had come so close, but he knew what he had to do. The car was put up for sale the next day.

And in the end, life was all candy and lollipops in Don's house from then on out, right?

"Nope," he says. "The bitch left anyway!"

Photo courtesy of priceofhistoys.com

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Bench Racing, and Other Great Lies #3

Everyone knows what a great paint job looks like, right? It's the one that's done by a master painter; the car gleams from a block away, and the paint looks to be 20 feet deep when you stare at the fender in the sunlight. But what if that master painter were to masterfully do a poor paint job?

This is that story.

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One afternoon many years ago, I stopped by a body shop that belonged to friends of mine. It was always a lot of fun to drop in and see what they were up to. Their specialty was hot rods, restorations, and customs, but like most body shops, their bread-and-butter business was repair work.

On this day, I arrived to find a late '80s Cadillac Coupe DeVille. It was obvious to anyone that this car had never been waxed, much less washed, and its light blue paint was shredded. "What's this in for?" I asked.

"We fixed the bodywork on it. The guy hit a guard rail," I was told.

A guardrail??? He must have just tapped it, right?

"No way - he wiped out the whole driver's side!"

"Impossible," I thought. "There's not a scratch on this old beater."

But sure enough, the driver had spun in the rain, smacked the guardrail with the entire left side of the car, and had came close to totaling the vehicle. The shop had replaced the bent sheet metal, and repainted the car. "What did you do, find used blue parts for it?"

I got an annoyed look. "No, dumbass. I painted it."

As it turned out, the same painting master who I had seen lay down some of the most beautiful laquers and acrylics (and the most gorgeous flames you'll ever see) had worked his magic on the old beater Caddy. He'd mixed the original blue color, then added some clear and silver into it. Then adjusted the nozzle on the paint sprayer, and stood four feet away from the car and "misted" the paint onto the body.

The result was a perfect impersonation of an unwaxed and unwashed old blue Cadillac. "If I'd have done it right, there would have been a shiny side, and this awful side. It would have looked like shit!"

And that's why he's a master.


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Bench racing, and other great lies #2

Let me just preface this by saying that not only am I thrilled that people are actually coming back to read all my ramblings, but that I occasionally get FAN MAIL too!

Much to my surprise, there was a great response to the "Bench Racing, And Other Great Lies" post from early December. In fact, one reader offered to contribute his story - and it's FANTASTIC. In fact, I kept it in the author's own words, because really, it's obvious he's quite the storyteller and it sounds best in his voice.

So I hope you enjoy this installment of the CarGuyChristian blog and, as always, if you have a story (or a car) you'd like to share, drop me a line!

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Editor's note: Just as some background information, this story involves the author's family's car, sometime around 1965. The road mentioned is now the modern Interstate 295 which runs from New Castle, Delaware to Lawrence Township, New Jersey.


It was a powder blue '61 Chrysler Windsor, a 383/2 barrel carburetor. The launch pad (the Cold War was still on) was a section of 295 not yet open to the public. It bisected the farm we lived on, so we had access to it.

There had been several high-speed passes run on it by a guy in a silver Stingray, but it was the unusual skid marks at the South end that captured my imagination. They were LONG and "J" shaped. Some were made by Posis and some peg legs (referring to the rear differentials - Ed.). It occurred to me they could only have come from some damn fool backing up as fast as he dared and then slamming it into "Drive" while mashing the gas just to see who could do the longest burn-out.

Proving idiot monkeys love the company of more idiot monkeys, I took the marks as an unspoken challenge to set a record. On a clear winter Sunday, while my folks were somewhere else, I picked up a cohort from town and we set out to set a record.

The '61 Chryslers had "push-button drive" (a button-style gear selector that came straight from the space race) that would allow you to activate the fin-mounted back-up lights by partially depressing the "R" button in order to scare the crap out of your pursuers.

Or you could push a little harder (at low speed) and make all your friends eat the upholstery.

Anyway, we drove south to the skid-marks and proceeded to steel our nerves by learning to back up at 40 or 50 mph. It's more difficult than it sounds. (Actual speeds may have varied - the speedometer didn't work in reverse. Could have been 100.)

When we were confident I could keep it on the concrete I tried my first "J-hook".

Stalled the damned car and had a hell of a time re-starting it. Left a patch about a foot long.

I don't know if it vapor locked or just sloshed all the fuel out of the carb bowls, or just agitated the sludge in the tank.

When it finally re-started, I decided the hot ticket would be to keep on the gas, shift from R to N then D so I could keep the revs up and hopefully break loose those recapped snow tires and claim my braggin' rights.

Actually, it worked pretty well. The right rear spun and smoked madly for about 15 feet while the car was going backwards! It continued to spin while the car crabbed to the left a bit, then REALLY SMOKED as it gained forward momentum for about 50 feet. It probably would have gone further if I hadn't been overcome by laughter and tire smoke.

We looked at the tire and it had softened rubber marbles hanging onto it that still smoked 10 minutes later. We could not have laughed any harder.

Most idiot monkeys would have called it a day and driven sedately home.

The third attempt BEGAN with the howling complaint of the right rear as I did the "Joie Chitwood Thrill Show" back-up-at-full-throttle maneuver. When it felt like the rear was getting airborne, I stabbed neutral and floored it before pushing the "D" button damned near through the dash.

In that moment, I succeeded in making time dilate.

The 383 sounded like a sawmill ripping a length of corrugated steel.

I was looking straight at Chuck whose eyeballs could have been seen from low Earth orbit. The speedometer was pegging 120, I was still moving backwards and there was a concrete column getting closer fast.

Because of time dilation, I was able to examine and discard about 20 scenarios in my head all while the car continued backwards at alarming speed.

The 21st scenario was the one I chose. It was SLAM THE FREAKIN' BRAKES, MAN.

Or maybe it was Chuck screaming those words like the little girl he is.

It stopped in a cloud of tire smoke several feet from the pillar of death.

"I had it under control" I said, "fer chrissake, quit your whimpering." At least that's my version of how it happened.

Turns out the axle had snapped (go figure), and Chuck had to push me home with his brother's '65 three-on-the-tree, lame-o Chevelle. It was only a couple miles on the pristine concrete of 295. By the time we got the car home, the tire had stopped smoking and most of the marbles had flung off.

We positioned the car in the very tire tracks mom had left it parked in by the back door.

The next morning she got in it to go to work. It started but wouldn't move.

She came in to the house and said to my father, "It's the strangest thing - it starts and runs just fine, but it won't move - and the speedometer says I'm going 50!

The old man looked at me through his eyebrows and said with no surprise in his voice whatsoever, "Tow it to Sam's and have it fixed. You pay the bill."

No sense protesting.

(photo courtesty of Flikr account holder aldenjewell)

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Bench racing, and other great lies #1

If you've been around car guys long enough, there's sure to be some bench racing and other tall tales that are bound to happen. You know them instantly, because they sound so ridiculous that you think, "That just can't be true!" Or is it?

The truth may not be known. The details may have been exaggerated. But they're still great stories nonetheless.

And that's why, just like any great story, they need to be retold and shared. They may not be from the likes of William Shakespeare, or Mark Twain, or Stephen King, but their storytellers are unpolished backyard talents - much like their marvelous mechanical abilities!

So look for them here. The names have been changed to protect the guilty. Whether they're true or not is up to you, but they still make for a great story!

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Back in the 1960s, my father was a young art student who always seemed to have a black turtleneck, an old Harmony acoustic guitar, and a copy of Jack Kerouac's latest novel on him at all times. He was the epitome of the Beat generation, and loved and trusted a good number of people over the years, truly believing that there was good in everyone.

This belief stayed with him through the years, but during the 1960s, he often followed this rule of thumb while hitch hiking, which was still legal in those days.

One time, somewhere between Florida and Ohio, a large, burly man pulled up and offered him a ride. The man wore a work shirt, had greased-back hair, and mostly kept to himself the first 10 seconds or so. Then he put a large handgun to my father's head.

"You try anything - ANYTHING - and I'll f-ing kill you," he said to the skinny (and now scared) 20-year-old Beatnick kid sitting in the passenger seat.

My father quickly assured the man that, "it's cool, man. It's REAL cool," and the man slowly put the gun back under the seat, all the while giving my father the hairy eyeball.

After nervously choking down an unfiltered Camel cigarette, Dad asked the man about the episode. The man went on to explain that he'd been picking up hitch hikers for many years. One day, he picked up a young guy who pulled out a gun and attempted to rob the man. Thinking quickly, he decided to put the pedal to the floor.

"What the hell are you doing?" asked the robber.

"I got nothing to live for, so you either pull that trigger and kill me, or I'll roll this sumbitch car and kill BOTH of us!" This, of course, put the assailant into a nervous fit now that he no longer had the upper hand. But the driver knew better.

While speeding along the highway, their quick pace caught the attention of a passing police officer who started a pursuit. After a few miles, more officers joined in the chase. Once there was enough police personnel behind him, he slammed on the brakes and, in one fluid motion, opened the door and jumped on the ground.

"He's got a gun!!" he yelled to the officers. The police quickly apprehended the thief, and the man was sent on his way.

Unbelievably, his adventure didn't deter him from picking up hitch hikers - he just gave you fair warning upon entering his car. But maybe, like my father, he still believed that deep down inside, there was good in everyone.


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