I was confused by this until I searched for "Porsche 914 shift pattern" on Google Images. I guess it's a dog-leg gearbox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-leg_gearbox).
HN supports shift pattern unicode!
Ⓡ②⑤
|–|–|
①③④
I learned this driving my first car which was a similar vintage Karmann Ghia. It still did it out of habit twenty years later driving my stick-shift Jetta. The second YouTube video I found of someone learning to drive a KG was doing it instinctively as well. [1] I guess there's so much play you just learn to wig-wag a little to see if you're in gear or not.
One thing I don't see mentioned is that you first have to press down onto the knob, then shift forward, in order to shift the transmission into R. Simply pushing the knob forward won't go from N to R.
The 1->4 mistake OTOH, having drifted a little too far right in Neverland, was easily fallen into, and the shuddering deceleration that follows may have been the cause of a few rear-end collisions over the years.
1 2
R 3
I consider personally most automatic transmissions horrible. The gear is either to high to overtake or so low that the engine is running with too much RPM. The only exception is the gear-less Multitronic[1] by Audi. Sadly replaced by DSG. Nasty rumors say VW did that because the Multitronic had no more issues and worked well ;)
The DSG works somehow and the shifting is somehow acceptable. The automatic transmission Ford uses (e.g. C-Max) is horror for the driver, passengers and the engine. Adventurous people may proceed to double-clutching[2].
The car in question is at least 45 years old. That the transmission was never great and has degraded since is not at all odd. At no point did I see ragging on a manual, only the transmission being shot (and having a weird pattern).
Good cars have good transmissions, regardless of transmission style.
The ZF8 is an excellent transmission that's seen everywhere.
PDK does justice to the most performant modern Porsches in a way that manuals struggle to keep up with.
Even relatively small volume DCTs like the one in the 4C are pretty great these days.
Japanese ones have always been smooth and fun.
Source: I taught three teenagers to drive stick recently, and there are still teeth on the gears. Yay me!
It is always entertaining to see European exceptionalism schooling up people in car forums. Please tell us about diesel engines too!
That is nothing new to a true European. Look up the Renault 4 shifter :-)
I love when people have such a deep knowledge of something that they can write an essay as unique and thoughtful as this. It reminds me of Kitchen Confidential, Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman!, or any rant about British politics by David Mitchell.
The fact this essay works for someone with limited domain knowledge and someone with lots is a testament to the quality of writing.
I was about to write more or less the same thing. I can barely drive and never owned a car, but this article was beautiful.
The BMW car forum is good, bimmerforums.com. Pelicanpart forum is good. BMW/Porsche GrassrootMotorsports is good. General racing, falls back to bmw/porsche/corvette/mazda Miata.net is fantastic. Corvette forums are great, but I can't recall them now. Subaru Forum is fantastic, humour though is needed. NASIOC.com priuschat is great, though it goes quite different from above forums. Tesla forums are good, but I can't recall any off the top of my hand. And then landcruiser ones, wrangler/jeep ones, etc.
The more less hobby a car is, the decrease in quality in forum posts, not that a corolla is a bad car per se, or even a camry/accord. It's just, different folks for different hobbies.
Spend a week on there, and you'll learn the lingo (it's universal throughout cars, especially per car generation/period, 70's/80's/90's,etc)
Then you also have other motorsports too, motorcycles and even planes, which share the same sentiment. Pilot chat/bicker is very similar. ;)
> Norman Garrett was the Concept Engineer for the original Miata back in his days at Mazda’s Southern California Design Studio
The author could be bullshitting (he's not) but how would anyone who's not driven vehicles that are decades beyond their design life know?
I still like to casually drop "oh yeah, I used to have a Porsche back when I was 16." Although I must say it was in immeasurably better shape than this one :D
I still dream of finding an old 914 and giving it an electric conversion… I'd have to do something about that rear window, though, it whips air forward when you drive with the top down.
It was a really fun car to drive although it also shared many of the same quirks as mentioned in this story.
There was a six cylinder version of this as well (super rare) and they made a prototype 914/8 which was never offered for sale, afaik only two were made (one for Ferdinand Porsche, one for Ferdinand Piëch).
Unfortunately the application was so unstable that any attempts to SQLI, or really send any kind of malformed request would simply crash the entire site for hours, presumably until an admin came and restarted the server. DoS wasn't included in the programme so I never won a bounty. I'm sure it could have been exploited, but it was simply so rickety and shoddy that I couldn't figure out how.
Security through instability?
http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/xbugto...
It all went down in a heap and I felt very guilty for a few minutes until I realised that this infrastructure was so fantastically unstable that a TCP half-open (just a SYN packet!) could kill it stone dead. That's not my fault.
You can't blame the postman if knocking on the front door demolishes your building.
Among all the other security issues they had (easily gained a root shell via template injection, multiple XSS issues, CSRF, basically everything in the OWASP Top 10), to call their security posture Swiss cheese would be an understatement.
A couple months after my test, the entire project was scrapped.
Secure, Available, Unattended, choose any 2? You can have a secure&available app but you need to keep patching it. You can have an available&unattended app but it won't be secure. Or you can have a secure&unattended app, it will just need to crash a lot.
I have a quick release wheel to deter the average opportunist from breaking my glass and ignition barrel, and with some wiring trickery and the bits I remove it's never going to start. It's aftermarket enough that stock parts won't help the thief, so unless they have a laptop, an aftermarket ECU, and a tuner handy, they probably won't get far.
Sucks to have to bother with all that, but alarms have never helped me, and you just can't fix woeful 90s physical security.
One attempt on my car was only foiled because when I park up at my girlfriends house, I remove some 90s era fuses you can't get anymore and take the box covers with me. A paperclip would work, but you've got to figure out that the specific fuses are missing first.
It's not about being perfect when it comes to car security, it's about being too much of a pain in the ass, so they'll give up and move on. Just like bicycle security.
Yeah, my Dad had a Ford F-100 that had a gear shift that would come out. He drove it to work and took the gear shift inside and left it in his locker. Not the best location (a town in Oregon in the 70's), but he never had any trouble with someone stealing his ride out of the parking lot. I still remember the sound of the gas sloshing in the tank behind the seat.
It isn't hidden or super secret. Just adds extra work and time for someone probably being stressed out already.
A friends' T3 was left in the middle of the road, because her gearbox was broken-ish and finding the reverse a learned skill. Halfway through turning her bus, thieves just gave up. She found her car perpendicular to the road in the morning.
At some point the solenoid died (or some other electrical component). So to start it, you'd have to reach under the car with a screwdriver (or some other piece of metal, but I kept a screwdriver in the car for this purpose), and short out across two terminals.
You then had 10-20 seconds to get out from under the car, into the driver's seat, and turn the key. As a practiced manouver, it was pretty quick.
I remember one guy who would always show up in a Porsche 914 with racing tires, and he would run circles around us amateurs.
I knew a guy that was an incredible mountain biker, won all the races he entered etc. He used to show up with crappy bikes probably 10lbs heavier than everyone else... he'd still win. Sometimes you either have it or you don't, and all the equipment in the world won't help you.
More programs should be run like that. Set a goal, create a program, then periodically evaluate if the goal is still the same and if the program is effective.
https://www.ncdot.gov/dmv/title-registration/emissions-safet...
There's also an emissions inspection that varies by county, but vehicles older than 20 years are exempt.
https://www.ncdot.gov/dmv/title-registration/emissions-safet...
Does it make any sense to exempt older vehicles that are most likely to fail these inspections? No, of course it doesn't.
New vehicles within the most recent 3 model years are also exempt.
The fact that you start your comment with "in the US" when anyone even slightly familiar with the place knows that pretty much everything about it is a state by state deal is a massive red flag for a comment that serves no purpose but to convert pearl clutching into internet virtue points. The fact that you end your comment with a back handed quip deriding some imagined notion of freedom more or less confirms it.
I would choose an Audi/BMW if I wanted that sort trepidation in my life.
I now drive a '21 Camry and man, it's just nice. Things work. I mean, I don't mind pulling things apart, but it's like, do I really want to run Gentoo constantly if I don't budget 4-6 hours/mo to maintain it? (no)
Amazing the breadth of preconceived notions that can be leveraged with a badge on a grill. Having the presence of mind and ability to leverage readership demographics like this is what really separates good writers and editors from the mediocre.
A better comparison to the Porsche 914 would be an MG roadster - or if you want to stick with Chrysler, then a Dodge Omni GLH. By modern standards both of these are unreliable, uncomfortable, and hard to drive, but like the 914 they are celebrated by enthusiasts. Part of the reason is because despite their flaws, and despite being relatively hard to drive, they reward skill. While slow to accelerate, they handle well - allowing a skilled driver to make good lap times on a track.
The engineering Puritan will want to know that the Webers are a retrofit, a hack for escape from the factory's refractory -- but cutting edge tech in the 70s! -- VW electronic fuel injection. The EFI "brain" was a box the size of a small modern laptop, stuffed with individual transistors, inductors, capacitors and resistors.
No one in North America, it seemed, had any idea how to diagnose an internal fault. The owner's options were to buy a secondhand brain taken from a junked car, presumably there for some other reason, or the Webers. Junkyard brains were refundable, but the several hours installing, testing, and possibly uninstalling were not, so careful deliberation was in order.
Access to the brain, like most engine compartment work on the 914, demanded the sort of agility, strength, and determination required of large-animal veterinarians, with access for most tasks from underneath, wedged as it was in a sort of triangular gap below and behind the seats and ahead of the rear trunk and transmission.
Previous owners could not figure out the issue. The car's engine would rev "bounce" at idle like it had a big cam, but it didn't go away when driving, making driving not very fun. So I got the Scirocco for dirt cheap.
I realized on day that if you opened and closed the hood a couple times, the issue would fix it self, and it was very repeatable.
I realized the computer is mounted next to the hood hinge!
I got lucky and just blindly resoldering all the joints in the computer fixed it.
We later swapped that 400k mile motor setup to a modern turbo motor with a sequential gearbox, and it's a rally car now. :)
(not super important to story but the "ECU" from 1982 was a bit more modern, Jetronic as it was called was "only" roughly the size of a few old TI-82s).
hahaha. This whole time I was thinking "I know the car is lovely, but this is why people love Miatas"
Reliable, fun, and economical. The only thing they lack is practicality, being a two-seater with a small trunk. But if you don't have to worry about carrying kids or cargo, they're great cars!
① it was '83, not '85 (and thus air-cooled);
② it was an aftermarket camper van conversion with some slight design issues in the pop top, not a Westfalia;
③ after I rebuilt the engine a second time we sold it, so, blessedly, it's not mine anymore. My engine rebuild survived for a couple of years until the new owner drove it in second gear for an hour at highway speeds, overheating the engine to the point where it punched a pushrod through the crankcase.
The clapped out heap of junk has an integrity, and dignity, worthy of respect. This car should most properly be exhibited on blocks in the front yard, surrounded by tall grass, possibly with a tree beginning to grow out of it somewhere.
Between a trophy and a salute to both the soul of the machine itself and the many people who made it. "Well done thou good and faithful servant"
It should be a habitation for dogs.
Does it begin with J and end with Y? (I'm a London-based bean!)
Left my MGB in the dust, of course
step 1. prepare a usb with files needed to jailbreak the car and be able to connect to your wifi
step 2. setup a home network with dns/ntp and a reverse engineered tesla server that will authorize the car to work
step 3 set date to reasonable values that the car will accept
step 4 do some button dances to start the car from the usb
…
ill leave the rest to your imagination
Eventually I cut a hole in the floor and welded a shifter direct to the transmission.
I can't believe you managed to do that for a month.
1. https://ibb.co/CMW3SdS (I sold it over a decade ago.)
It's kind of sad that a lot of younger folks won't have this kind of experience. Muscling a 1973 Ford F150 around with no power steering, I learned many, many things about driving. Having to do hill starts with a 3-on-the-tree, I learned many, many more.
A recalcitrant, finicky, or otherwise nearly broken car is a source of much distress, but also character building. And often a source of many fond rememberances--albeit far, far in the future.
Frankly I'm more intrigued by the fact that this seems to have gotten an easy #1 spot on hn. Writing about sketchy clutches on old cars does not generally attract wide hn acclaim.
I'd love to hear opinions as to what made the difference...clearly something here is different.
I’m a long-time project car builder and this post strikes all the chords of a labor of love.
Clever content, technical concepts but written in plain english, relishing in the almost hostile user experiences that some engineering can produce. It smacks of everything HN is to me.
Lucas, the manufacturer of many MG parts, colloquially known as ‘the Prince of Darkness’ because of a tendency for the lights to suddenly stop working.
The tell-tale crimp in many trunk lids, caused by attempting to shut it without disengaging the little rod that kept it open.
Don’t bother locking the doors if you don’t want the expensive convertible top sliced through.
The battery is behind the passenger seat.
Having the reverse gear go out leads to an interesting perspective change while parking/driving.
I ended up going to votech in auto mechanics because of this car, because I got so irritated about getting ripped off.
Ah well, I love the damn thing. Even now, 10 years after I sold it.
1. The "springs" under the seats were bent wood slats (my dad and I put in new carpeting and found that one out when we removed the seats).
2. The heater was literally sliding a door to the engine way down the foot well. I remember several winter top down drives in the Midwest where my face and hands were frozen but my legs felt like they were being branded.
3. The manual choke.
4. The small cascade of water in your face when you drove in the rain and took a corner.
5. The electric 5th that seemed to break every few months.
All good memories though.
Error code: SSL_ERROR_UNSAFE_NEGOTIATION
https://web.archive.org/web/20220401144722/https://www.hager...
edit: just got to the author’s blurb at the bottom. He was an engineer on the original Miata, so it’s no surprise that he knows what he’s talking about.
A lot of the article is about "you'll never find 2nd" which is in large part to the weird shifting pattern. Reverse is where first usually is, first is where second usually is and the rest are in a kind of off by one pattern from there. This was actually considered a feature since supposedly it allows the driver to make the shift from first to second faster.
The vagueness of the stick is very true and something every 914 owner can relate to. Those first couple weeks you spend some time hunting for the right slot. I went from first to fifth many times before a muscle memory was developed and I didn't have to think about it.
I one had to leave it in a parking lot and later have it towed while I was at work. The tow truck driver could not figure out how to get it started even with me walking him through it on the phone! The ignition is 'wiggly' where it won't start until you jiggle the steering wheel to allow the key to turn to start the car. Also a screwdriver will work fine (if you wiggle the steering wheel just right while attempting to turn the ignition). So ya, Similar quirks :).
I love our westy and usually take it to the beach to surf. It also has an old air-cooled 914 pancake engine in it.
I appreciate the design from another era - mechanical simplicity from when folks weren't concerned about maximizing efficiency, thin window frames and door pillars that would fare embarrassingly in a modern crash test, etc. Sure, it doesn't fit the standards of today, but that's why these older cars are so different - they're literally from a different era.
Occasionally I'll go down an Internet rabbithole and imagine buying a 60s muscle car or series Land Rover or what have you. But then I'll be near a decades-old machine on the street and be overwhelmed by the smell of the exhaust. I think I must be more sensitive to it than others, but that mostly kills that idea for me. I guess I could try swapping in a modern, emissions-controlled drivetrain but that's a whole 'nother yak to shave.
I have a '95 Rover 216 Coupe which is mechanically very solid (Honda engine and running gear) and very well maintained, but the rest of the car is full of quirks caused by age deterioration. The numerous "rituals" include things like never closing your frameless door with the window down (a nasty cracking sound follows), manually pulling the tooth of the release latch before closing the boot, care when washing it so not to let water enter the spare wheel area permanently and cause rust, etc.
This resonates with me: I've got an old, kinda beaten up, "sister" of that 914: an old Porsche 911. I've got it since 22 years and it's 33 years old atm (so 2/3rd of its life with me). Over the decades I only ever put oil and gasoline in that thing (ok, ok, the fuel pump died once and it was a 100 EUR part). Every single time I hook the battery up, it starts... While doing some blue smoke, granted. Although back from 1999 to 2004 I drove this beauty daily, since 2004 it's a garage queen: a piece of art that hardly ever hits the road. It's also prevented from seeing any kind of water: no rain water, no cleaning water (I much rather scratch the paint a tiny bit with microfibers towels and "dry cleaning" detailers or whatnots than risk having water idling for months in some sneaky spot and create corrosion).
Original paint (hardly anyone still has this). First clutch (yup: same clutch since 33 years): this one is so rare it's actually problematic because my MY has a clutch that's not made anymore and there's some modification that needs to be done... But not a single mechanic know anymore what needs to be done to adapt a "still made" clutch on mine (basically a 1988/1989 clutch will not work on a 1987 if the 1987 is still on its first clutch for it hasn't seen the mandatory mod done). Tires are from... 2004 (yes it's illegal and, no, I don't care seen how I drive it). About twice a year, on a non-rainy day, the old lady starts and goes for a drive around the block at 20 mph. And then back into the garage.
One day I should probably have it restored: the problem is these old Porsche engines (all 911 pre the 993 model) are notorious for their long bolts breaking when trying to adjust the timing. So a restoration means taking the engine out. That'd set me $10K easily I think with all that needs to be done.
And in the end I'll have a polluting gas-guzzler which I'll feel bad using anyway.
No really: old cars are also great as art pieces that hardly ever go out.
Some people like to collect them, others like to drive them, others like to restore them (met a gentleman the other day whose passion was neither driving nor collecting but restoring incredible cars). I'm sure some even like to write about them!
And don't get me started on my even crankiest old italian car! (this one won't shift into 2nd when the gearbox is cold, so it's 1st to 3rd gear during the first x minutes of driving... But being italian, of course, it's not starting anymore and needs to go see a mechanic).
As I'm a recovering petrolhead I begin to see these more and more as art pieces: weird remnants of an insanely dangerous (and polluting) past.
The Porsche 911 Yellow Bird 50fps hot lap around the Nürburgring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzjQXxktxbs
Several rabbit-holes in Linux have tested my patience less than that
You buy it with a trivial occasional issue that can be worked around, and the issue gradually starts happening more and more often and getting harder and harder to work around. And at the same time, another trivial issue will develop....
That's how my motorcycle went from 'needs to be kick-started' through 'sometimes it takes a few tries', through 'bump starting works though', to 'you can bump start it within 6 attempts', to 'you can bump start it within 6 attempts, as long as you didn't use the headlights too much last time you rode it'
I am eagerly awaiting the opportunity to stick this into docs or a tutorial someday. What a brilliant line that really captures that thrill of a newcomer to a problem feeling like they've accomplished something only to find the worst is yet to come.
If someone really wants to buy the old Porsche, send me a message.
1966 Fleetwood 75 - If it's sat for more than three weeks: Stab to set choke. Crank, pausing every 10 seconds...it's got a LONG way to pump the fuel and you don't want to overheat the starter. Car will then, if driven weekly, start on the first half of the first crank every time. Battery has gone 14 months without a tender or external charge and continues to start the car just fine.
[giggle] This reminds me of putting my Toyota 4x4 (Hilux) in 4-Low, First gear, pressing the Clutch Start Cancel switch and turning the ignition key, making it an electric vehicle for a few seconds. The starter was powerful enough to move the truck uphill in that gear on its own until the engine started.
My Dart, an ol' 4 door from '69 has this really cool thing were in the event you do get the cruel idea to wake her up on a cold morning; you'll end up doing three sets of ignition on, wait 3-5 seconds, ignition off, pump the gas pedal a few times (first set 20, then 10, then 5) and if you haven't deviated from this formula you should be able to start the engine. After about 3 seconds she will be quietly resting once more, then you can attempt to wake her again, this time once you hear the engine come to life you need to ease onto the accelerator, and hold it at an obnoxiously loud "idle" for about 1-2 minute. Then from there you will put her in first, and while still tickling the accelerator, release the brake slowly (this girl is a TorqueFlite auto transmission).
Though i love that car because i drove it as my daily for several months during the cold winter... it had no heater, no defrost and no hope of going highway speeds safely (though I have flown at 80 mph before, down a hill in neutral, that was terrifying), you have to bleed the brakes once every two months or she will try to kill you.. and she's unapologetically mine, for fear of the guilt I would incur if i sold her to someone that she accidentally ends up killing and my undying love for a car that usually got me to where i need to be (12 mpg, 91 oct).
Even electric motor conversions in older cars are coming along as seen here https://youtu.be/qpcSF1kRcFY?t=55
The starter did not work. This meant parking on a hill always and 'pop starting.' You put it in 2nd gear, get a good rolling start, then crank the engine. Be mindful to not run out of runway.
This was alleviated after a year or two when a friend of my mom showed me how to arc the starter directly. Pop the hood, take a screw driver and connect the two opposing bolts on the starter. A shower of sparks and a section of screwdriver missing later and, boom, a running engine. It was true freedom not having to park on a hill anymore!
You couldn't start or stop too fast. The bench seat's lock failed, so the entire bench seat would shift forward or backward if you changed velocity too quickly. A tight seat belt helped by using you to keep the seat back.
The driver side window went halfway down... usually. You had to press against it just right and you had to pull up on it to help the hand crank lift it. Best to just leave it up.
Onto the instruments. On a hard left hand turn, the radio and dashboard would light up ... until the end of the turn. Otherwise, no dash lights and no radio. The other problem with the left hand turn was that if it was too sharp, the keys would fly from the ignition and land on the passenger floor board. But that was ok because the truck would continue to run.
Turning on the headlights would cause the gas gauge to drop to zero. This was a problem at night since due to the lack of dash lights. To check the gas, you had to turn off the headlights and use a flashlight to see the fuel level.
Thinking of levels of fluids: oil. There was no dip stick and it burnt oil. So you mostly guessed daily how much oil to add based on experience. Somehow it never occurred to me to, you know, purchase a dip stick. I grew up poor, you didn't just buy things. And I didn't think to make a makeshift one because I was inexperienced at life with little guidance.
One night in 16 degree fahrenheit, icy weather, and not dressed for said weather, the truck gave up the ghost. I didn't estimate my remaining oil correctly and seized the engine. The wrecker gave me $35 for the truck and drove off into the sunset the following day.
One time, someone broke into one of the Ladas. No problem for us, it was hard to start even with a key and the would-be auto thief apparently couldn’t get it going. Who needs an alarm?
Met a guy that threw a V8 in one of these - must have been absolutely insane.
The best was when I got out of this tiny car with manual everything and drove the land-yacht Pontiac Parisienne we used for driver's ed in highschool. Its brakes were so sensitive, and I was so used to having to use a LOT of force to stop the TR4, that the first few times I'd stop the car everybody's seatbelt would lock up.
A lot of 1970's manual transmission cars were like this. I had an early 70's AMC Gremlin. The shift knob was just a vertical rectangular rod. The transmission linkage were two parallel horizontal rods with a notch cut in each. The vertical rod just floated between these, and you had to pull left or right and slide back or forth until you found one of the notches - then once you were engaged, you could push or pull the linkage to go into a gear. When the knob drifted, you really had to have a visual in your head of where the notches were and what gear you where in.
Though it’s usually my goal to chase all manner of unreliability out of a car I own (I confess, I absolutely love just getting in a car and driving, no fuss, no muss), there is a pang of sadness that comes with knowing I’ve made it that much more reliable, and frankly, boring.
Excellent writing.
The odds of a car thief in 2022 in a modern American city being old enough to be in the age cohort that knows how to drive stick are minimal.
Probably more secure than the class-5 alarm on my current car :)
This was a great read, thank you.
Inquiring mind wants to know, push rods or overhead cams?
According to Wikipedia, the 914 could have either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_914#Technical_specific...
... does this sound to anyone else like he's basically got a Permissive Action Link protecting his car?
This was the only text that was visible below the title and author byline.
It's funny because I had very similar issues. In my case the gearshift link bar fell out of the bottom twice. Both cases I was parked in a high-security area at work and I had get special authorisation for the road service. To much amusement of the security staff, especially the second time which was about a week after the first.
Also, the lights would not auto switch off when turning off the ignition (no fancy newfangled electronics there!), but my colleagues were willing to give me a push once a week or so. All the above did give my car a very special reputation at work and it was the butt of many jokes. It also had a manual choke which caused me to empty many a fuel tank unnecessarily. I carried a 5L jerrycan around after the first time I found out what happens if you forget to switch the choke off after starting. With the choke off it would go more than 100km on this reserve!
The ignition switch was also so far gone it could be turned with a teaspoon, but unfortunately this worked both ways. Sometimes going over a bump in the road would flick it off. So for this reason I hotwired the foglight switch (which was rarely allowed to be used in the Netherlands, you may only use it in basically undrivable conditions) as an "ignition on" switch to bridge it. In this sense it was like a modern car which you can turn on with a button. For the foglight itself I just had two wires hanging under the dash which I could simply connect when needed. No need for this modern "switch" nonsense.
There was also no power steering nor braking and the engine (1.0L) was so small you could literally set foot inside the engine compartment (standing on the road as it didn't have a bottom). My father hated me for braking so hard when I drove his car, but on mine you really had to pump it if you had any hope of stopping. Steering was super light though, even without power steering. Probably because the car weighed practically nothing, and the tyres could use a bit more grip. When I had people sitting in the back I literally had trouble steering at high speeds because there wasn't enough weight on the front. So I would limit myself to 80km/h on the motorway in those cases to be safe. It did have no trouble reaching 120km/h though, to my surprise.
I also had to make sure not to fuel up above 80% or so because when splashing it leaked somewhere around the neck of the fuel filler pipe and the smell was horrible.
Still, it was MY car. My friends bought me a bumper sticker saying "Laugh all you want, this one is paid off!". It was also special in the sense that it was the only car I've had where the (Sony) stereo was worth more than the car itself. It was one of the first with a CD player. Not that it was particularly expensive, but you probably gathered that the car was even cheaper.
PS: Funnily enough it passed the safety inspection twice. I did have to wire the foglight switch back up before the test though O:-)
Signed, The Thief"
Very creative malapropism!
I doubt anyone from Hagerty is reading this but genuinely thank you for making the car content you do. Automotive journalism sometimes feels like a dying industry but you give me hope.
As a reformed air-cooled VW enthusiast, these are my natural driving tendencies.