I bet we have enough of these to fill a book....this is quite possibly my most embarassing. Lifted from a similar thread on Retro-Rides (simply because I can't be arsed to type it all again!)
Winter 1985/86. I was running a £40 Mk3 Cortina (JWD 115 N RIP)...1593cc of throbbing (well, knackered to be honest) Pinto.
Being 21, living at home and having a vast disposable income meant that I was in a position to lavish heaps of money on making my ride look good, so I'd gotten busy with the spray-cans colour-coding everything in sight. Wipers, bumpers, mirrors, even my wheels (a heady mix of 1600E Rostyles on the front, with a pair of second-hand 7x13 Cobra Dragslots on the back) as was the then-current fashion. This to my mind looked great especially since tins of Car-Plan Ford Sahara Beige were seemingly cheaper than many other colours for some inexplicable reason. Add to this the latest Audioline stereo with built-in graphic and 25 watts per channel, matched to a pair of huge Harry Moss pod speakers velcro'd to the back shelf, not one but TWO fibreglass whip aerials on the rear wings and the crowning glory- a genuine 'RADIO ONE ROADSHOW 275/285' sunstrip.
Anyway, I digress. Winter 1985 was a particularly cold one, with several bouts of snow which seemed to lie on the ground for days at a time. My then-girlfriend lived at the top of an upside-down J-shaped road with a steep hill leading up to a long, sweeping right hand bend. The Cortina had struggled manfully to get up it several times, but eventually I'd made it and after spending the evening there hometime was approaching. In my desire to show off I figured that I'd leave the house in a flurry of wheelspin and perform a nice drift round the bend before dropping down the hill to join the main road. I gave the accelerator maximum attack and took off in a cloud of oil smoke, slush and bits of Pos-a-Traction G60-14. So far, so good....
It was as I reached the apex of the long left handed downhill bend, and the 12" Mountney slammed against the lockstops, that I realised that maybe I'd carried a bit too much speed into the corner. The back carried on its trajectory until I was facing back up the hill, my Lucas 20-20 spotlamps lighting the snow-covered rooves of the house I'd just passed as I slid downhill backwards. By this time I was a passenger, I closed my eyes and waited for the bang...
Which never came. Somehow I had slid backwards between two parked cars and knocked down a small 18" high wooden fence, and was now facing the road with my rear end facing the front wall of a house. All I could see were lights coming on through the frozen rear screen, so I figured I'd better make a sharp exit....
Unfortunately my mashing of the accelarator co-incided with the opening of the front door of the house who's garden I'd just destroyed. I just caught a glimpse of a very irate man in his dressing gown and slippers as 75bhp made its way to the rear wheels, covering the aforementioned gent, his hallway, and the entire front of his house in a mix of mud, slush and splinters of wood from his fence.
Once I'd driven a couple of miles, stopped and had a cigarette and calmed down, it all seemed pretty funny. Nevetheless it was a few weeks before I dared venture back there with my own car. Dad always seemed a bit bemused when I borrowed his to go to my girlfriends......
I promise this is all true, even though its now 22 years ago.
-- Edited by BrianDamaged at 18:12, 2007-07-16
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"If I'm not grounded pretty soon....I'm gonna go into orbit" Warren Oates AKA 'GTO', from the movie 'Two-Lane Blacktop', 1971
