This isn't a particularly funny story, but I'm going to tell it anyway. Since Spring is almost upon us and the convertibles will be out soon, my own included, I figured I'd recount the tale of me, The Slug, and his mother's 1972 Cutlass Supreme Convertible, which looked exactly like this:
Except for the minor fact that the one in the picture isn't dented and rusted and covered in chalky blue paint, and the top probably isn't made almost entirely of duct tape with a rear window cut from a section of clear shower curtain. But trust me, other than that, it's exact.
As tired as his mom's car was when we were finally old enough to drive, it still had a Rocket 350 engine with a 4-barrel carb that applied approximately 250 net horsepower directly to the pavement via 2 almost completely bald Goodyear tires. While 250 horses doesn't sound like much today, that was plenty enough back then to get us into trouble, even with an automatic tranny. To make the engine sound louder, we'd flip the air filter cover upside down. This made the car idle like shit when it was cold, and it probably didn't help with the fuel/air mix, but it sure did make the engine sound bad-ass when you hit the gas -- at least from inside the car.
I mentioned that the tires were bald, however they didn't start out that way. We tended to um... accelerate their wear just a little bit.
How? Well, The Slug discovered that if you put the car in reverse and start coasting backwards, then drop it into neutral while you were still rolling, you could then rev the engine up to the red-line and slam the transmission into drive while simultaneously stomping on the gas pedal.
While admittedly rough on the transmission, the end result was that the car would sit in one place for about 10 seconds with the tires spinning, billowing clouds of foul, white smoke that would eventually engulf the entire car. As the car gained traction and the tires started to squeal, we would scream "WHOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOO!" at the top of our lungs. I don't know why, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
Usually, 'the time' was approximately 3 am outside our ex-girlfriend's house, or, failing that, outside Pat C's house because his father really, really hated when we did that. Actually, I'm pretty sure his father just hated us on general principles. He would get pissed at Pat for having such douche-bag friends, and then Pat would get pissed at us (and probably himself) for the very same reason.
Truth be told, we spent an inordinate amount of time pissing off Pat's dad because we ran out of ex-girlfriends after visiting just one house. (Hey, I dated her first. I wasn't a loser. I wasn't. I broke up with her.) Eventually he just started calling the cops on us and that put a damper on our late-night wake-up calls, but the street outside his house was covered in thick, black, intertwining tread marks for years afterward.
Just to give you a little more background on our relationship with this car: We would drive it in the middle of February with the top down just for fun, the heat on full-blast, huddled in the bubble of hot air behind the windshield. We'd do donuts on the ice patches in the mall parking lot, trying to slide sideways and hit the dry pavement fast enough to put the car up on two wheels. In the summer, The Slug would sit on the back of the front seat and steer with his feet while I worked the pedals with my hands based on his commands.
(Dad, if you're reading this, take off your coat and sit down. There's no need to drive to my house just to tell me what a disappointment I am and then take away my car keys for the rest of my life. I know it was horribly irresponsible, and I'm sorry. Also, driving that way successfully is a lot harder than it sounds.)
At the end of the night, we'd scrape the melted rubber off the outside of the rear fenders, and The Slug would head home. When we went out, we always preferred to use his mother's car because my car was tiny and orange, and had a top speed of about 49 mph before it felt like it was going to just say fuck it and disintegrate. You can read about it here if you're so inclined. The Cutlass, on the other hand, was glass smooth right up to the point where the red needle slammed itself into the right hand side of the speedometer. With at least a half mile of straight blacktop, it had a top-speed of about 120 miles per hour. At that speed it was a sick-scary, floating, mostly unstable ride that made the hair on your neck stand up and your asshole pucker, but it was smooth.
At any rate, it never really occurred to us that we might actually do some permanent damage to something that didn't belong to us.
Until, that is, we did permanent damage to something that didn't belong to us.
I'm out of time for tonight, so I'll have to finish this thing up in my next post.
I will leave you all with this: In retrospect, it wasn't the most brilliant decision to try to get the car airborne.
I know that now. 
The myth, the man, the legend.
continue to Gearheads in Training: Part II
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Humor me. Check out the rest of the rest.
32 drops of water in an ocean of compromise:
Good lord.
You remind me so much of my brother.
Insane driving, cow-pie fights, present dissections. . .
Are all guys like this?
My first car was a Toyota Corolla and we called it Yoda the Toyota because it had "Secret Hidden Powers".
In hind sight I think that the aforementioned "powers" might have been just not letting us (me and my bro) getting killed. So I guess I'm grateful for that. Yoda. (Wherever you are.)
Oh. Hell. Yeah! A 1972 Cutlass Supreme hardtop was the first car I ever bought for myself. At one point in my late teens I had the hardtop, my brother had a '72 convertible, and my dad had a '72 Cutlass S. Add to that two other Oldsmobiles and the driveway looked like an Oldsmobile lot. The convertible is the only one of the three which we kept, and it's in my hands now. Over the next few years I hope to take 20-30 years off it's looks. http://72cutlassconvertible.blogspot.com/
Your description of how they ride is dead-on. The cars are fast (for their size) and feel like you're floating at high-speed. I took mine over a number of railroad crossings where I took years off of the suspension.
One of my old high school boyfriends had a 1969 orange chevelle. I have no idea if these are similar cars, but I do not that those old cars were fast and powerful.
He used to put Armour All on the seats so that his passengers would slide all over the place when he took the turns too fast.
Ahhh, good times.
My 1st car was a 1985 Ford Escort stationwagon. Yee-Haw!
Great Story JV
Looking forward to part 2.
Yeah, I think every guy did serious damage to their parent's cars back then. It never occured to me that they would get upset (and strangely, they never did). I completely torched the engine in my Dad's 72 Monaco--it was a boat but man could it fly. And it was the best make out car I ever had--kind of a rolling sofa.
My favorite memory is trying to do a "bat turn" in my 68 Mustang (at 50 mph) and ending up with both tie rods broken.
Can't wait to see what happened to the Slugmobile.
OMG, what a creamy car. My husband still drove a '72 when we got married (in '98), but it was a Chevy Impala. Given the fact that I am a total slut for hot cars, I consider it the ultimate proof of my love that I not only tolerated that car, but was proud of it.
This post is a tremendous story. Given the 2-wheels-on-ice thing, I can see it's all downhill on the continuation, but I still can't wait.
Great post. I love the slug stories.
My first car was a poop brown Dodge Dart named Wilberforce. Don't ask me why, it sounded cool at the time. Yeah ok I'm a dork. :)
Looking forwarded to the next installment..
I am very glad my parents' most powerful car had a sum total of 0.5 hp yet the trouble we did get into was amazing nonetheless!! Nothing about totalling it though, i like being alive.
Dang I envy you your childhood escapades!!! waiting for part II... and this makes me feel small now... I still can't drive... I'm 23!!!
My friend and I used to rampage in my dad's pick up until he happened to be standing outside one day and heard us burning the tires off from about 1/4 mile away.
My first car was a yellow 70 Chevy Impala. It would seat 7 comfortably in the front seat. That car was a beast. My little bro and his little friends would sit outside the cafe and tell me to "burn some rubber". Yeah, I was a totally cool big sis back then! Aging sucks.
I am only a bit younger than you, but just enough to have edged into an era where 'first cars' were a piece d'merde... most of my friends drove the '85 Ford Escort. I had a 1983 Datsun pickup...five speed, engine slightly larger than a push mower, and a marine plywood flatbed where the rusted out box used to be. It looked like it belonged in a pepper field with a stack of baskets on the back. It cost exactly $100 less than my first firearm.
My first car was a 1963 (?) Corvair and the police pulled me over every where I went because it didn't have a tail pipe. I kept a piece of a metal vacuum in the back seat and when I got pulled over, I showed 'em the pipe and told the officer, it just fell off and I was on my way home to have it fixed by my father. I never did get a ticket.
I had some very similar experiences, growing up in small towns or something. OF course getting airborn is never a good idea, but doing it in a 1978 volkswagon van is a REALLY bad idea.
Excellent! Reminds me of my '72 Duster with a 440 in it! Good times!
Can't wait to hear the rest of the story!
Talk about a dork... I had an '80 Honda Civic hatchback, and I didn't get it until I was 21 (although it burned pretty good rubber and did awesome doughnuts!). My mom had a Mustang, but it was one of the ones that looked almost exactly like a Pinto, so I was never inclined to drive it...
In my teens, I made the mistake once of telling the driver of the old piece of crap car that we were in that "this car can't get up to 100!".....
Next thing I knew we were doing 120!!
not funny
Yeah, we've all done some dumb stuff in cars. I got my '92 sideways going 60 in a 25. And later that week I went 100 in a 35. After that I realized I should have probably died doing those stunts and I never did it again... except on a race track.
So that's what I'm going to do with my children. Take them to the race track to get the "wild car juice" out of them... either that or stick them in the passenger seat and get that car so fast it scares them to near death.
OMG. My first car was a 1974 Toyota Corolla 2 door coupe. I think it was initially white, but when I got it, it looked like it'd been dipped in nicotine. We affectionately referred to it as the Clown Car because I could get 11 or 12 people in it on a good day. And that baby would go airborne and not bat an eyelash! I eventually killed that car, though. Sad.
I LOVE the disclaimer to your dad; that's fuckin' hysterical.
I have always wondered why people seemed to rev their engines only in front of MY house at night! Bitter trolls.
My first car was a 52 chevy deluxe painted the color of a new copper penny and with flames on the front in purple that faded to pink. My friends referred to it as "the flaming loaf".
My stepdad put a governer on it at 45. I didn't know this until I took it on the 57 freeway...
Ah, first cars. "Gym-suite blue" '76 Chevette. We tried calling it "the Vet" but at the end of the day it was just a piece of shit.
My first car was a 67 Ford Galaxie fastback. It was nearly as long as an Impala, with two doors that were about four feet long. You could fit a Corolla in the trunk. It was primer gray with a green interior - bench seats - and room for six comfortably. I think I had ten in there once.
The engine was the venerable 390. I don't know how much power it had, but the dual glasspack exhaust made it loud and it would easily go 120.
It was also lowered a bit. One time I had some friends in the car and we were going to some event at night when we hit a bump I didn't see. The transmission cross-member, which was huge, slammed onto the pavement and everybody was yelling, "That was awesome! We saw sparks flying out the back end!"
Good times. I miss that car.
1974 Chevy Vega. I painted it flat black. It was like driving a hibachi grill.
Chick magnet? Not so much, but it could do some bad-ass 360s on a dirt road or the WTHS parking lot on a cold day.
So funny, AC and Lew! I was reading all the posts and thinking about my first cars...
Sophomore year, I drove my parent's '67 Ford Galaxie fastback with a 390 engine. Robin's egg blue, with matching wheels. I did a full tune up on her myself to prove a girl could do it.
I remember being out one night and the road coming to a T. Squealed a left turn just before it woulda hopped a ditch into a field. My heart rate was about 200, because unlike brainless boys, I tried to avoid killing myself.
The gas gauge broke at one point and it always registered FULL until you had about a gallon left. That would be about 10 miles. After college I bought it from them for a dollar. My ex ran it out of gas and it never would start again, even with gas in the carbeurator. It was a sad day the day it was towed away for parts.
But my other car junior and senior years of high school was my older brother's '74 POSVega (we always called it that). He gave it to ME to drive while he was overseas. Now it was just 2-3 years old, but everything leaked because my brother had totalled it in Florida and it was rusted out everywhere due to bad repairs. My dad kept fixing leaks for me... Once I got stuck on a hill with 3 other people in the car because it bogged down and stalled in first gear. Had to roll back down the hill, have everybody get out, and turn around in a mud hole driveway. Try explaining the mud to a dad who thinks you're at your friend's house studying when you are really out cruising around getting stoned. What sounds logical to you stoned does not necessarily impress your father...
Not such a sad day the day my brother reclaimed his car right after my graduation.
Keeping gas in it isn't the most enjoyable part of ownership, but in my experience these cars don't like to be ignored. If I put mine on the road regularly it pays me back by not costing me more than the gas to drive it. Only regular maintenance is all I've done since my dad gave it to me.
Since we're all talking about our first cars, mine was the 1974 Plymouth Valiant Dad gave me when he bought a new car. The thing you have to know about my Dad is that his tactic for getting "up to highway speed", was to come to a dead stop at the bottom of the entry ramp and then floor it. Every time he ever bought a new car, he'd tell the salesman, "put in the biggest engine that will fit under the hood".
My valiant was retired shortly after I drove around the barricades to try it out on a new section of highway that wasn't opened yet. I was going to see how fast it would go. I punched it and the torque finally broke the mounting bolts and the engine fell out the bottom. I'd gotten up to about 35mph by then and the car jumped like hell while rolling over its own engine.
And no. Dad was not pleased.
I'm just wondering what happened to the Special Dark "I have a fantasy" blog. Did you yank it for some reason? Damn... I knew I waiting too long to forward that on.
dude...
I had some fabulous errr....moments in a similar Olds in 1975. The car in question was a 1970 442, same color as yours. The car belonged to my then-boyfriend.
i swear I'm going to buy one as soon as I win the lottery.
ps - my first car was a 1970 Camaro. Forest green with tan interior.
My first car was a baby blue '77 Ford Granada. If you needed to turn the heat on, you had to pop the hood and flip some switch.It was not a pretty car by any stretch of the mind. Somewhat luckily, it got totalled when a drunk ran a red light and broadsided me, so I got my dad's '78 Pontiac Grand Prix, with much trepidation on his part. He knew how fast that car could move, and boy, could it haul ass! That sucker got me home in time for curfew after tearing around the interstate over 100 mph too many times to mention! I also remember cramming 10 people in it once, and considering it had bucket seats up front, that was no small feat.
It was apparently a popular car - it got stolen twice. The first time, my boyfriend saw it happen and chased the guy til the cops could catch up (damn thing started better using the screwdriver than it did with the keys!). The second time, the car was missing for close to a year when my dad saw it pass him in traffic. He followed it, called police, and sure enough, it was my car. Poor woman bought it off her brother-in-law; I imagine that following conversation didn't go well. It was like Christine - that car was damn well gonna stick to me no matter what!
bex, my car shared that power.
Muskego, nice. I have a 69 impala sitting in my garage awaiting the same fate. I don't know if I could afford to put gas in it at this point, but...
Nicole, some of them probably shared parts. They were both GM.
KC - that was a serious boat. That's bigger than the 69-70.
Michelle - awesome name for a car!
Jen - My 69 custom could fit 6 people in the trunk. The drive-in was totally worth the money when we went.
Shieldmaiden -- your FIRST firearm? We could hang out.
Kristina -- the mustang II did not deserve to wear the badge.
Susan - oddly, my story has a similar bit of dialogue yet to come.
Ion - medium speeds in slow zones will get you every time...good luck with the kids. It might just whet their appetite.
Alex, dear god. Did you live in LA?
Archie - damn, I loved those cars. The 390 was shoe-horned in there.
Lew, that made me laugh out loud. Awesome.
Miss Lo, that car had some balls.
That's what sucks about these days...you can't do stunts like that anymore.
Our vehicle of choice was my dad's prized 1968 Oldsmobile 442 SS. He had it all mod'd for street racing and we abused that thing.
Man, those were the days!
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