Automotive

These Are The Cars That Ruined Your Relationships

By TechKee Admin

Posted on October 9, 2016

Image credit: ESSSIX GmbH – Accountant/Wagon Thumper

Last week, I was on a hunt for stories about you and that one relationship the car got in the middle of. Friends, siblings, parents, relatives, girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands, wives or personal chefs—all of those relationships were fair game.

Some of the tales ended with regret, others with relief.

And all of them show that we’re just car people, out looking for the cars and some meaning in this noisy world.

[Welcome back to Countersteer, where we ask you to tell us your greatest stories of success and failure, then we pull the very best of them to share with the rest of the world.]

Whatsername And The Ranger (Seneca the Younger(er))

What’s her name again? All Seneca can see is the Ranger.

Seneca the Younger(er)

10/04/16 5:13pm

In the mid-’90s, I moved just outside of Seattle and bought a 1970 Ford F-100 Ranger XLT for $500 cash in hand. I loved that truck. The first night I had it, I drove up to a scenic spot in the Olympic Mountains and slept in the bed under the stars. The engine was in great shape, a 300 straight 6 with mostly original parts. She wasn’t a powerhouse, but she did fine as my daily driver and my bugout vehicle. The only problems were the body, and the mufflers. There was rust everywhere, and someone had replaced the mufflers with glasspacks years ago and the fiberglass was shot to hell, so it sounded like a herd of Hell’s Angels when the engine was running. I mean I would start her up and car alarms would go off on either side of me.

Being in my twenties at the time, cash was short and I had to decide which problem I wanted to solve first. I opted to fix the body to prevent further decay and figured I could live with the noise for a while. I got the bed sandblasted and rhino-lined, and did some bodywork and bondo myself, opting to leave the original sun-bleached avocado (“Explorer Green”) paint in place to figure out another day.

So there I am, driving around in a beat-up truck with a pristine bed liner and an exhaust system that sounds like a fleet of drag racers, with barely enough in my pocket for gas, beer, and groceries, and I start to date. I met a beautiful girl, athletic, smart, pretty. She was perfect, except for one thing. Every time I would swing by in that Ford, she would sit next to me on that luxurious bench seat with that baja-blanket upholstery cover hiding two decades of sins inflicted upon the vinyl underneath, I’d start up that straight six and she would wince and look at me out of the corners of her eyes as those blown glasspacks would proudly rumble their call out to the neighborhood around us.

She gave me an ultimatum one day, told me she wanted me to fix the exhaust and paint the truck or sell it and buy a new car instead. I told her to pack sand and she cleaned out her things from my apartment. I did end up selling the truck a few years later when I moved overseas, but to this day I think about that old Ranger every once in a while. I think about the smell of the cab, the knobs on the radio, the way the gauges looked on the dash, even the crazy green paint. But most of all I think about the sound of that straight six. And I barely remember the girl’s name.

Glitterin’ Like Ke$ha (FutureDoc)

Listen, I’m all for self-expression and doing what you think makes you beautiful. But you know what they say about glitter…

FutureDoc

10/05/16 8:29am

Glitter-280: The story of a ex-girlfriend, glitter, and my 280ZX

I understand that some folks want to “sparkle”. More power to them. They can be fun, fantastic people… just not for your car’s interior. I really didn’t mind (at first) that my girlfriend (now ex) was really into body glitter… like David Tracy is into old Jeeps and creative use of motor oil level of “glitterification”. I had a silver ‘79 280ZX with the black on black vinyl interior. I kept it spotless an was still in that mentality of “perfection” since I spend the previous summer taking the body down to metal, removing as much rust as I could, and repainting it. After dating for a few weeks, glitter was everywhere and no amount of Armor-All product force-fed into a power-washer could remove the glitter. Every time I drove at night, headlights would reflect a thousand little universes embedded in a 70s era vinyl import. It was in the carpet, seat-stitching, vents, and even the headliner. I was worried that the glitter would combine with the “Datsun Rust (TM)” and create a super evil material that would take over the world. We broke up over non-glitter reasons but even after a year (and longer), I was still trying to remove the glitter. Try explaining to any new romantic option why your car’s interior is painted with “fairy dust”. You can’t tell them that you have spent a month’s paycheck on cleaning supplies. They will assume you are messing around, a slob, or looking for a “cover story” for your own glitter-addition to tell your closed-minded parents at Thanksgiving.

New rule: No glitter. Never again, never forget. My wife was fine with this rule. She know not to even bother getting me a birthday card with glitter other wise I will run away ranting and screaming and spend the next few months polishing imaginary glitter out of my dashboard. Somehow, my wife got past the Glitter 280… but it did take a couple of weeks to make sure I was not in need of a “cover story”. So if anyone thinks that driving a Miata might send the “wrong signals”, try a glitter-tastic Datsun. That is the backstory of the Glitter-280.

Always With The PT Cruiser (Daryl)

Is anybody happy with that car?

Daryl

10/04/16 5:12pm

I’ve alluded to this in the past…but this post is very relevent to it. Back in 2006, my wife and I were shopping for a new family car. I had a 2000 Kia Sephia that quite honestly, was one of the most dependable cars you could imagine. However, it was getting long in the tooth, high mileage, the AC didn’t work, the engine had no compression in one cylinder and only about a 1/4 of what it should in a second cylinder. With it being a 4 cylinder car to begin with, this wasn’t good. So it wasn’t worth fixing. It was time to buy a new car. I went to a local dealership, with my goal of getting an extended cab F-150 with a V6 (cause I was a single-income family of three and couldn’t afford a 4×4 V8 SuperCrew), a Ford Five Hundred, Ford Escape, or Ford Explorer. While at the dealership, my wife waited until the sales rep walked off and then said she “had to have” a particular vehicle. It was a 2006 PT Cruiser sitting in the Dodge/Chrysler lot next to the Ford Dealership. I absolutely did NOT want that car. I explained why. It looks like a station wagon, but it’s not. Its not built for someone who is 6′ tall. Its a Chrysler. However, her Uncle is a big Dodge man. She’d “Never gotten to pick out a new vehicle before”. It was supposed to be a “family vehicle” so she should have a say in picking it. She swore she’d get her driver’s license. I bought the car, on the condition that she got her license. She never did. I had to drive that piece of shit car for six years. I hated it. Every time I got in the car, I fought the urge to punch her right in the mouth. I gave her hell over it. I finally lost my patience with the car over a $7 engine coolant sensor that broke off in the block. I set a $2-3 grand budget to buy a used car instead of fixing that piece of shit PT Loser. I went and bought a ‘98 Buick Regal GS (with a supercharged V6) instead. It’s all good now, but I was miserable in that car.

From the fall-out, my wife is no longer willing to voice her opinion on what we should get. At least not outright. But if I ask her what she likes, I get a good idea of what we should look for. She still hasn’t got her license (just celebrated 10 years of marriage), but at least she has a learner’s permit.

Cry In The Shower? I Guess? (ESSSIX GmbH – Accountant/Wagon Thumper)

Keep a stony composure, even in the face of the toughest of German adversity.

ESSSIX GmbH – Accountant/Wagon Thumper

10/04/16 5:04pm

LMAOOOO! I can totally relate to the opening story on many, many levels. Above is a shot of my B5 S4 Avant (its no longer with us). This beautiful picture was taken in Ocean City MD During h20i (2013). Before that weekend I had only ever done brakes & oil changes. I am an accountant by trade. Long story short; the T-stat failed on the way to breakfast on day one. Spent all weekend (with the help of new and old friends) trying to get the car road worthy to just get home. Tore the car apart and put it together several times In the end the the plastic T-stat housing was no good and I had to have the car towed 275mi home. So all 6 of us packed into my friends A4 and drove home.

The Bad: It was my GFs (shes a twin) birthday weekend, so she spent the whole weekend cooped up watching me struggle, away from her family. She already hated my B5 cause it was a maintenance hog, that weekend solidified her hate for it. Little did she/we know that the very next weekend the fuel pump would quit on our way to church. If she knew how much money I put into that car Id be dead, not single.

The good: I brought ALL my tools with me (wagon FTW) not cause I thought the car was going to piss the bed, but just cause German cars. I became well acquainted with the B5 platform that weekend. Very well acquainted, tech status even. My GF was impressed by how well I kept my cool in adversity, she couldn’t see me crying in the shower.

Oh, and this summer I asked her to marry me. She said yes.

Another Satisfied Miata Customer (MPA)

Apparently helping people dodge bullets is another thing the Miata does well.

MPA

10/05/16 9:19am

A 2006 Miata.

I’d been dating Michelle for a little more than a year – she was the first woman I’d dated that had kids – she had 2.

A few months prior, I traded in my ‘09 WRX and bought a brand new ‘13 Honda Fit in order to save $ for us to get a house.

After a few months of trying to make it seem fun, the Fit was crushing my soul with its pitiful amount of horsepower, so I traded it in and got a low-mileage ‘06 Miata Grand Touring.

She was fucking pissed to put it lightly. She said it really showed how fucked up my priorities were because I bought a 2 seater that could not haul her kids with us, even though prior to getting the Miata we’d never taken my car with her kids.

I tried to trade it in after a few months, but being it was almost winter, they were not offering me a lot for it, so I told Michelle that I would sell it after the winter when I could get more.

Our relationship ended about 2 1/2 months after I bought the Miata. Looking back now, it probably wouldn’t have lasted regardless of what car I bought, but the Miata was definitely the catalyst for the end.

I couldn’t enjoy the car, knowing it brought so much grief to the relationship, so I traded it in 2 months after we broke up and bought a ‘06 C6.

I met my wife within 6 months of Michelle and I ending our relationship, so I kind of wish i still had that car, because had I not bought the miata, I probably would not have met my wife, and there’s no way I’d be as happy as I am with her. That Miata helped me dodge a fucking bullet, and lead me to happiness 🙂

While On The Topic Of Miatas…(Goofnik)

How interesting that these things happen.

Something About Those B5 Audi S4s (Gestapo Librarian)

The car may be dead, but its spirit lives on.

Gestapo Librarian

10/04/16 4:14pm

B5 S4.

First car I bought for myself after college that I had been lusting after since my neighbor picked up a new one while I was in high school.

My girlfriend at the time constantly begged me to teach her how to drive stick because she always wanted to learn and so she could drive it if necessary.

She was a terrible driver who totaled 2 different cars while we dated, so not only was I terrified for the life of my clutch but for the car as a whole. I kept putting it off and making excuses every time she brought it up.

She also didn’t understand the concept of forums, or the car community as a whole. Meet-ups, cruises, shows. It was all so foreign to her.

It was part of the larger sticking point of the relationship. She just didn’t get me as a person, why I do the things I do and why I like what I like. Everyone has those parts of themself, but the hardest part was that she didn’t even try to understand.

After 4 years we eventually broke up, and it absolutely destroyed me.

Got rear ended at a stop light, and totaled the car about a year later.

Miss the car more than her.

Those Damn Project Cars (8695Beaters)

But if you can learn some introspection from it, then more power to you.

8695Beaters

10/04/16 4:39pm

Well it didn’t get between me and a girlfriend, but the last FSAE car I worked on ruined a lot of friendships. The Senior class designing it went horribly and most of those guys up and quit after the class wrapped up mostly do to a jackass of a professor, though towards the end of the class I was pretty hard on people who I didn’t feel were pulling their own weight (considering how much of the car had to be redone after that class, I feel I was justified, though I could have been WAY more diplomatic about it).

The rest of the year went OK, but after graduation, we had 3 weeks or so to get the car finished and ready for competition. By this point, my GPA had dropped by 20%, and I had flushed two minors down the toilet so I could put in more shop hours: I REFUSED to let anything come between me and competition. The stress and long hours got to me and I turned into an awful SOB. Short tempered, critical of other people’s work, and bitching about everything. By the end of that month (and probably much earlier actually), any patience people had for me was gone and while in my deluded mind things were fine, the truth was I was a pariah. We did get the car finished and brought to competition, where it fell on its face, running into all sorts of reliability problems that never appeared in 2 months of testing. It was a nightmare. I can’t even begin to describe how gutting it was when the car refused to start for the second Enduro stint.

The weekend after we got back from competition, the team went to a local autocross and didn’t even ask if I wanted to go. I found out about it on Facebook later. It’s been 2 years and most of them still don’t speak to me. I don’t blame them though, I was a piece of shit, taking out my frustrations on people who didn’t deserve it. I eventually went to a therapist to deal with the pent up emotion. It was one of the best decisions I ever made, as she was both able to help get me over the disappointment and frustration of that season, as well as equip myself to handle stressful situations. I’ve never been a very social person, but I’m much better at realizing when I’m being a jackass. I’ve been slowly reaching out to my former teammates to try and mend bridges. It’s not easy and it really hurts when I think back to how close I was to some of those people.

TLDR: It’s just a stupid fucking car. Don’t get worked up over it. Cars don’t care if you call them lazy, but people sure do.

GATOR! (SmugAardvark)

Just…wow. Florida, man.

SmugAardvark

10/05/16 3:43am

I know I’ve shared this story a few times, but screw it.

About 8 years ago, I had an upcoming first date with a nice young lady I had met at a Chili’s the week prior. At the time, my daily driver was a Subaru SVX, my weekend toy was a Honda S2000, and my bike was a Suzuki SV650. The SVX was a great everyday car, but it was starting to show its age. Fantastic for getting to work, not for wooing a young lass. A motorcycle seemed like a poor first date choice (and it was a bit janky.) So I elected to take the S2000.

We did the whole dinner and a movie thing in the city, and had a pleasant evening. It was around an hour back to the coast where we both lived, and it was a very nice fall evening. Rather than take the highway back, I suggested putting the top down and taking the freshly asphalted two-lane back road through the Florida swamps and forests. It would add about 10 minutes or so to the drive, but mid 20’s me thought it would be exponentially more enjoyable.

It was a mostly uneventful ride back. I was doing about 65 mph, and we hadn’t seen another car for at least fifteen minutes. All of a sudden, I saw what looked like an uneven spot in the road ahead. Didn’t give it much of a second thought at the time. As I came up to it, I realized that instead of being a small dip in the road, it was a 6 or 7 foot alligator stretched across the entire lane, undoubtedly soaking up any remaining warmth from the blacktop.

At this point, I had two options. Slam the brakes and hope for the best, or swerve and put my car in the trees and water. I slammed the brakes, the result of which was not pretty. Rather than drive over the gator, I drove through it. The carbon front lip exploded, both the front and rear bumpers were torn free, blew a tire, cracked a shock absorber, and put a leak in the radiator. After being 100% sure my pants were not filled to the brim from a panic-induced bowel evacuation, I got out of the car to survey my options. I put the donut tire on to replace the flat one and cleared as much of my car’s reptilian-removed parts out of the roadway. The rest, there wasn’t much I could do. I was in the middle of nowhere without cell service, there were no street lights, and I had a sickening feeling that another alligator was nearby and witnessed the befouling of his kin.

It didn’t really dawn on me until later, after we got back on the road…I never even asked my date if she was okay following the collision. As if to double down on my own ignorance, when she questioned why I didn’t seem concerned about her. My reply was, “I have about $200 invested in this date, but $30,000 or so invested in this car. You looked fine, so I voted for my greater concern.”

There was no second date.

Not My Problem Anymore (Corinthian Leatherface)

Check the Carfax, if not for shits and giggles.

Corinthian Leatherface

10/04/16 4:06pm

A 1995 Chrysler LeBaron convertible ALMOST broke up my relationship. I told her to not buy it. I told her it was a piece of total shit. She bought it anyways. We were not quite married yet so I couldn’t really put the kabosh on it, but once we were wed, her bills became my bills. And, oh what bills it gave us. It was soon out of warranty and then the bills rolled in. It ALWAYS broke. Wheel bearings every 20,000 miles. Convertible top cylinder. Electrical. And never mind that it was the most poorly designed, cheaply constructed shitbox on the planet. When the transmission went tits up at only 4 years of age, we threw in the towel. Luckily, the transmission only went into its Death Howl when warmed up, so I made sure the negotiation for our new Corolla took a good long time before the dealership’s used car guy went out to look at our trade in and drive it around the lot. He didn’t hear it. We got away. But when driving off the lot in the new Toyo, I cruised past the Chrysler very slowly, hocked up the biggest phlegm I could muster, and spat on the LeBaron. No lie. And no more arguments.

EDIT: Just remembered that I Carfaxed the VIN a year later and it was resold in Rhode Island with a HEAVILY rolled-back odometer.

There Are More Important Things Than Cars (buckfiddious)

Coming out in the end stronger than before—that’s what counts.

buckfiddious

10/04/16 6:12pm

Strangely enough, it was a VW Jetta sportwagen.

At the time, we’d been having problems. I needed/wanted a new car, and I was deep in the grips of some serious undiagnosed anxiety. One of the things about anxiety is that it often makes one a control freak- the more things you can control, the less you have to worry about.

So I searched and I fretted and I worried and I searched some more to find the exact perfect car, because it had to be perfect. And I found the Sportwagen. And it was perfect, especially if I ordered it from VW and got exactly what I wanted. Because it had to be a manual. HAD. TO. BE. Because I’ve always had a manual and it just matters because when you have anxiety everything matters far more than it should.

So I ordered the car. And it would be 3 or 4 months before it arrived. And I’d been saving money since I paid off my previous car, and I saved for another couple months. And my wife started letting me know that she thought we should move. Move to a neighborhood with better schools. Get a better house. Use that money I’d been saving for my car. Just keep my old car because really, there was nothing wrong with it- 10 years old and only 70k miles on my little impreza wagon, why not just keep it?

But no, I pressed on. I HAD TO HAVE MY NEW CAR.

3-4 months later, it arrived. And my wife put her foot down. We don’t need a bigger, newer car, we need a new house. For the future. For our daughter. But I had to have my car. Because anxiety. Because want. Because maybe a new car will make me feel like I have control over my life. And after a weekend of arguing, she relented. And I got my car.

And it was bigger and more comfortable. And it was quieter on the highway. And it was clever and smart and so much better than the impreza. And she hated it. Hated that it represented her giving in.

And that was the beginning of the end. We never really recovered from that. So one night in couple’s therapy, she just gave up and quit the marriage. 10 years of dealing with someone with undiagnosed anxiety was finally too much. And we drove home silently in my perfect car, and that was basically that. The end.

Although, that wasn’t really the end. Because the real end came a few months later when I hit rock bottom, tried to die but didn’t succeed, and finally got the help I needed to deal with my anxiety. And it was a long climb back to being OK, but along the way I learned some things, like, Who the fuck cares if I drive a stick or an automatic? Why does my car have to be perfect? Why the fuck am I plowing so much of my identity into what I drive- who cares?

Anyway, I still have the car. My ex and I joke about it every now and then. I’m no longer obsessive about it getting dirty, no longer crazy about the fact that there’s an empty bottle of gatorade underneath the passenger seat where my daughter dropped it a week ago, no longer obsessed with the fact that it’s a manual. Next car I buy will probably be off the lot. Probably it’ll even be an automatic. Because there are more important things than cars.

She Lost Out To Two Cars (Katsumoto)

You have one to DD, and one to mess around with. What’s wrong with that?

Katsumoto

10/04/16 5:13pm

Let me preface this with saying I was in the military at the time and was living or stationed in Japan.

I got back from my 2nd deployment. I har roughly another year before Id be leaving the military(medical reasons). So I wanted a cheap car. Something that had just enough inspection(JCI or Shaken) until I left.

So i looked and found the car. It was a JZX90 Mark II Tourer S(same everything as the Turbo minus the turbo). The seller was leaving and wanted it gone fast. I paid 750 bucks for it, it was cheap considering it had a new inspection.

My wife was content with that purchase. Fast forward a few months and I end up buying the turbo version. So now I had 2 cars with less than 8 months left. I spent alot of time and money against my wifes better judgement on that Turbo version.

The turbo was the fun car and the other car was the DD. Since they were the same, whatver parts I pulled off the turbo went into the NA car. So my wife not being car smart thought I was buying parts for 2 cars.

No matter how many times I explained it that i wasnt. Eventually the turbo car became known on base. When the bumper is cut to fit a giant truck sized intercooler and the car was loud. It was known.

She hated that I was essentially to her “throwing money away” on a car that I couldnt take with me. The parts were cheap, and it being a popular car I could find parts anywhere for cheap.

She absolutely hated that car to the point I eventually got asked “its the car or me”. Since our marriage over the last year wasnt going great and she wanted to stay in Japan and I wanted to go back home. I told her it was the car. We filed for divorce shortly after leaving.

I enjoyed those 2 cars probably more than her. I always had something to do. Going to the track, touge, or just driving around.

To this day I miss that car, and the DD version of it. Ive been gathering parts for a 1JZ/2JZ. And saving my pennies, because Im going to import one when they hit 25 years old. Another Jade Green JZX90 Tourer V. (liked the DDs color but the turbos power, so if I can get a green turbo 90 Mark 2, ill buy one)

Yep, i picked my 2 cars over my now ex wife. But that decision was also fueled by other stuff, her poor attitude over the years. She also couldnt understand after working 14 hrs that I just wanted to relax. Plus while working, she couldnt do laundry or dishes when she sat at home all day. So im not a total dick but if I was in her shoes, id have at least done some laundry or dishes while sitting at home all day.

TechKee

These Are The Cars That Ruined Your Relationships