When I was detailing cars, we had a early 50's Cadillac Eldorado come in. I thought for sure it would have power brakes because my ‘64 Cadillac did and Cadillacs were always top of the line. I found out real quick how hard it is to stop one of those beasts with manual brakes as I rolled out the garage and crept slowly…

The sketchiest vehicle I’ve ever drives, was a Lumina APV minivan with something like 190k miles on it that a friend of mine owned. Paul had hired me to do some work on his house. For reasons that are not remotely interesting, I didn’t have my truck available to me, so he let me use his van to go get materials.

Easy! I owned a YJ Wrangler for a few weeks and it was insane. It was winter in WI and I was young, broke, and in kind of a bad spot. I also needed transportation for winter and was naive enough to think 4wd=good with basically no regard to any other details.

A John Deere 4020 tractor. Since it was the biggest and “newest” one we had (also a pair of 4010 in diesel and propane, plus a couple old M&M’s just used for fuel tenders) as well as the only one with a cab and sometimes functional A/C we had to keep it working so a cracked head was patched with JB Weld and roughly…

Back in the day by brother had a Cavalier Z24, which - stop laughing - was kinda hot shit back then. Unfortunately he bought his dirt cheap because it had been in an absolutely horrific front end collision and put back together by a back alley body shop. Looked fine, but the whole damn thing was held together with…

You ain’t kidding. I learned to drive in a 1973 type II, and the only positive thing it had was front disc brakes. My grandmother had a 1970 Malibu where the only option was a V8, 4 drum brakes with no power assist. I’m not even sure it had power steering. The cleanest engine bay you’ve every seen. Two wires to the…

exactly, back in the day, no kid in high school had a safe dependable car like they all do today. Hell I had one friend who had 3 part mustangs and we would basically continually piece one together all the time just to get one that would start. I had a friend who had a old cherokee with terrible brakes and they would…

My wife’s ~2001 eclipse she had in college that would stall out if the HVAC was running and the car came to a stop. Mostly a winter scare, since it had to be jumped in order to start again and stalling out or pushing a dead eclipse out of a snowy intersection in Illinois is basically asking for someone to run you…

A Smart car. I will never set foot in one of those things again. I had a reservation for a VW compact rental at a German rental place in my town and when I showed up, the VW wasn’t available because it had a maintenance issue. They gave me a partial refund and a Smart car instead. So as not to scrap my plans, I set…

I distinctly remember the one weekend when I was 16 that my mom decided we were going to buy me a car, so I could get a job to pay her back for it. Our mechanic had told her he had something that could work for me, and that’s how the first car I ever test drove for myself was a late-70s or early 80s Mazda RX-7. It had…

I had a 1986 Ford Escort. Decent condition, except the front end was failing. All of it. I drove it on the freeway, and that’s where all the sketchiness showed up. It couldn’t pass 100km/h, and sounded as though there were no doors or roof. The engine sounded more like a sewing machine than anything out of an…

It has to be my current daily driver. I mean, I love it, I love getting to drive it every day, but not a minute goes by without it reminding me of its potential to become a death-trap. And it’s not in bad shape, really. It looks like a daily driver - not great - but it’s structurally sound, and all security components…

The Charger back when my brother and I yanked the 318 and dropped in a cop car 440.

My dad owned a Buy-Here Pay-Here car lot in central Florida from the early 80s up until around 2011. So sketchy was EVERYWHERE. I could go on and on but one sticks out.

LOLOLOLOL. This is where we’ll separate the old from the young. Anyone 50 or older will have routinely driven cars which would be considered rolling deathtraps by today’s standards. Pre 50s hot rods, kit cars, old motorcycles, beater 60s muscle cars, VWs with no clutch, ancient commercial vehicles, relic military…

When they have to tell you not to rest your heel on a particular street sign that now comprises the driver’s floor because “it’s been sliding out,” you know you have made a sketchy choice in Spring Break transport. 

Not me, but my dad.

“damage a lazy or sexist health professional can cause”

I highly recommend even if you’re an adult. A sapling in a hurricane is such a perfect description for how it felt to be a teenage girl in America.

Omg the ‘advanced degree’ dismissal. Heard that from a psychiatrist when I said I was concerned I had ADHD. He was like - you have your Masters, you can’t have it. What?? I also had a therapist at a rehab tell me I must not be co-dependent if I finished my Master’s Degree. I still don’t agree with either of them.  It…