I noticed, yet again, another posting about a car or truck where someone said "it was ugly as sin, and I kicked the snot out of that beast, and it just kept coming back for more".
Does anyone ever say that about a nice car or truck? The truth, do you ever PURPOSELY "ride a NICE car/truck hard, and put it away wet"?
Nicest car or truck you owned and REALLY thrashed it was a ..............?
Rentals...there will be lots of rentals.
And company cars. Nobody is kind to company cars, at least not one that is shared between several employees, making it hard to pin any strange engine noises or excessive oil consumption on a particular person.
Case in point, the Toyota Hilux ute at the Survey company I used to work for. In wet weather it was the drift hack, and during off-road/rural jobs, it was the rally hack.
my miata get driven hard. all the time. i consider it nice. it just begs for more.
2001 E46 325i
My buddy's brother picked it up at an auction and then couldn't sell it cause it was a manual and had been a smoker's car.
Drove the piss out of it for 3 years, and all I ever did was change the oil. I might have washed it once.
Let all my friends beat on it too. Parked it on the street in downtown Charm City and never cared about door dings or anything else.
That car just wanted to be driven hard all the time, and I was happy to oblige.
Traded it in when I found out the twins were on the way, but man do I miss it.
I drive every slow vehicle I have hard. I drive them all hard its just that the fast ones take less pushing to potentially get me in trouble.
My bridgeported RX3, raced 40 weekends a year for 5 years with one engine which never came out, the nicest treatment it ever got was getting it on or off the trailer
My E30.
I beat that car senselessly every time it's on a non-public paved surface. On public roads, I scale it back maybe two notches just for license preservation. I swear this car is into automotive S&M.
All cars are ridden hard and put away wet, the only ones that are exempt are the ones that are currently broken from being driven in said manner.
I think my Samurai counts...it gets proper maintenance but that's after flying down trails at terrifying speeds, launching off of things, sliding around in and flinging mud for no good reason, mowing down foliage, and driving right over all but the biggest potholes if they happen to get in the way. Washing is a waste of time so I don't really bother. The engine's also sort of new right now so I keep away from the high revving zones, but that'll change soon.
I took a clean, low miles 1998 M3 that I bought in '02 to the track 30 days a year, drove it in snow, eventually gutted, caged and dedicated it to a life above 5k RPMs.
I sold it last year after 40k street and 45k track miles and it still had never had the engine opened or missed a single run session because of failure.
I sold it in the fall to build another race car so I took the 911 to the track... here we go again :)
Heheheheheee...
All of my stuff has been thrashed with regularity. It is true however that the slower the car the more it begs to be beaten mercilessly. My poor 96 Nissan 4x4 with the gutless KA never went anywhere without being redlined. Both of my Hardbody's were great trucks that never failed no matter the abuse.
Now there's the RX-7, and it's like being a teenager with a fresh license every time I get into the thing! I just feel like going to 9,000RPM's and shooting off down some mountain road, and most of the time I do! I figured out it's only like a 4-mile drive to my work, yet it takes me 13 or so to get home in the RX-7... :D
Back in 1977 I had a Fiat 124 Spider that I drove into a tree and totalled out. The insurance company gave me 3200 bucks for it, and I went to the Toyota dealership and bought a brand new '78 Corolla 1200 for $2851. I started to college in that car; 2 years in Millegeville and 2 years in Atlanta, commuting back to Macon every week, sometimes twice. I drove the crap out of that thing, rarely changed the oil, drove it into a ditch, a guardrail (backwards), dirt roads, mudholes, and practiced e-brake moonshine turns with it all the time. I almost never washed it, It got close to 30 mpg in a time when that was seriously good mileage, hardly ever spent a dime on it. After college I continued to drive it daily, beating it mercilessly. After 16 years of abuse, I sold it to a kid down the street for a dollar.
If I had known how good a car it was going to be, I'd have bought 2 of 'em! Slow, but fun.
I get compliments on how nice my 98 Impreza is, and how I'm pretty good at keeping up with maintenence on it. Those same people are horrified at how hard I thrash it! 
I fly up and down onramps, I've autocrossed it a few times, and I'm often sideways in it on snowy or dirt roads.
My friends (who are all pickup truck guys, BTW) say my engine is screaming for help whenever I drive it! I just say, "Well, it's a four-banger with a stick-shift. It's meant to rev high." Even with how hard I flog it, my Scooby gets 27-30mpg on the highway and it has needed very little in the way of maintenence or repairs. I'm very happy with it, and can only hope my RX-7 will be just as fun and floggable when it's ready.
at the time my 91 caprice(1999 or so) was by far the nicest car i had ever owned. i took absolute poor care of it and drove it hard, towed with it, beat the crap out of it, didn't change the oil for 49,000 miles, and it kept going and going and never left me stranded anywhere.
I've gotten to upset a couple ricers in my pickup, totally low key. It has a 5speed and 22RE, which was one of the best engines toyota ever made coupled to an excellent manual transmission. It is a gutless wonder but keeps on ticking. Real fun above 80mph, if you jerk the wheel the car starts a nasty wobble and gives a sense of renewed life. Never been pulled over and have rolled stop signs in front of cops, the trick is to take off sos slowly it looks like your car is dying. I take it easy most of the time but sometimes have a little fun. I am going to clean it not for aesthetics, but for health purposes. I think something is living in there.
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