This is why I often leave the keys in the ignition of my manual beater Suzuki. Teenage hooligans can’t drive it and its value doubles when the gas tank is full anyways, not much to lose.

Y’all wanna talk hoopties? Let’s talk hoopties.

Two great stories below all the issues.

I had a 1990 Oldsmobile Regency. Google it for the full understanding of just how hoopty this hoopty was. I had it in ≈2012-15

An automatic, the gears were fucked, you drove in neutral, neutral was reverse, and park was reverse. There was no park. You put it in neutral and put on the e brake.

To crank it did not require a key. You just turned the little plastic nubs on the ignition.

The doors did not open from the inside, you had to reach out the window to open them from the outside. It also did not lock correctly, so it could always be opened from outside. Occasionally the driver’s door would stick shut and could not be opened, so you had to scooch to the passengers door, or climb out through the window.

If you turned on the windshield wipers the radio turned on or off, depending on if you had it on or off when you turned on the wipers.

If you turned on the headlights the wipers came on. Period. Which then fucked with the radio. I used to have to physically take the wipers off and raise the little metal bars if it wasn’t raining, so that they didn’t screech on dry glass.

It had no muffler, and was so fucking loud

It had no blinkers or tail lights, so I bought a set of trailer lights and stuck them on the trunk. Wired toggle switches. If you wanna turn on left blinker, rapidly switch the toggle for the left blinker.

In short. Hot fucking mess.

Stories:

We drove this car from Tennessee to Florida when helping someone move. He put us up at Fontainebleau in Miami. We drove this hoopty in, and had it valet parked. The look on their faces was absolutely fucking priceless. They thought we were the clampetts.

But the best story is when my brother and I were at a campground. For reasons I won’t go into, we were staying at a campground with our dogs. No one could know we were there. My brother has IBS. He and I went to bed in our tents, and at some point he got up to drive to the bathroom/shower room things. He gets in the car and goes to crank it and it won’t crank. His stomach is upset and he decides he just has the walk the half mile. But oh no! The windows are up, the car won’t crank, and he can’t open the doors!

He repeatedly called my name and phone, and I just slept through it. He sat in the car for nearly 5 hours while he watched a family of raccoons eat all of our food. Including each individual egg from the carton. He had video of it for years. The only person who could know where we were was our mom, and he called her repeatedly, leaving the saddest voicemails that she kept for years.

“Mama… Please help me… I’m locked in the car… The raccoons are eating our food… I have to go to the bathroom… Please help… Mama… Please help”

When my parents finally got there, he told them not to wake me up. He went to the bathroom, and then when he got back he crawled into my tent, put his mouth by my ear and screamed my name as loud as humanly possible. Scared the hell out of me. He then made me watch the raccoon videos while he berated me for sleeping through it.

I had a Jetta. One of the least hoopty hoopties I’ve owned. But as the years went on and miles piled up, in typical VW fashion, the check engine light would come on for no reason. Would pull codes and nothing. But of course inspection would fail.

It hadn’t come on for a few days so I took it in to renew reg (would reset after about 100 miles). Sitting there in the inspection lane, light winks on. I screamed at the dashboard and it blinked off. I stared in disbelief for a moment and it passed.

Thought it was a fluke but, no — any time it came on after that I would scream and it would turn off.

The bobble heads are load bearing???

Life hack: let someone steal your car. They get easy loot, you get 1. conveniently rid of your beater and 2. insurance money.

Disclaimer: i’m not the first to think of this and they made it illegal long before your beater was even built

My first car did this rattle thing when you drove it past 15 miles. The windows would shake. Sometimes, the lock would stick and I had to “shake” the door to exit. One time, I turned the car on with the wrong key. The brakes were loose, where I had to slam on it to get it to stop. The backseat chairs were filled with stains. There were multiple dents on the side - I lived in a bad neighborhood so random dings all the time from other drivers.

When I finally upgraded, I really felt like I had to pay THEM to take it. So when they made me an offer like $400, I said yes immediately. It was their problem now.

My first car had some faulty wiring or might have been possessed. The radio didn’t work, the front passenger window had to be disabled because it rolled down but not up, and it locked the doors any time you opened or closed the front driver side door. Hell, sometimes it would lock the doors for no apparent reason, just because you looked at it funny or something. I carried three keys in different pockets because I learned the hard way that only having one backup isn’t enough, and also just how easy it is to not notice a hole in your pocket.

The entire lower half of the body had been rusting out, so the previous owner patched it with fiber glass screen and driveway patching material then spray painted over that with a bright silver that didn’t even remotely match the dark grey of the rest of the car. There was also a hole in the trunk that had been partially covered with some plywood and foam insulation.

The muffler fell off and dragged behind me while I was driving. I replaced it but kept the original on the floor of the back seat and before giving anyone a ride I’d pick it up and ask if it looked important to them while they were still taking in the sight of my car’s exterior and wondering if they just made a huge mistake.

The hood latch broke while I was on the highway, causing the hood to pop up and try to kill me. Had to make an emergency stop and duct tape the thing down. I did eventually fix it.

thank you for acknowledging my 94 ford tempo

I think, if you’ve never had to lay in the mud in your work uniform and kick the muffler off your car so it won’t catch on a pothole and yeet itself through your trunk/gas tank, then you’ve never really experienced owning a car in your early 20’s.

I don’t know why but the “fwip!” on pulling out the gun and then the carjacker’s shocked look are sending me today!

I guess the tape didn’t hold, mirror fell off sometime during the car jackers time in the car.