Spouse Car Stories

One of the other posts triggered this thought;

In the late 80s my wife owned a Nissan Pulsar NX SE. It was her first and only sporty car. These cars were actually pretty fun; they had a revvy CA18DE and R&T tested them as pulling .83 lateral Gs on their grippy monster 14" wheels.

One her way back from lunch she was hustling the car a bit because she thought she'd be late. There's a guy behind in a 911 whose tailgating.  She gets to the down hill off camber right hander just before her office and in an unusual show of aggression decides to try and leave this guy behind.

After rounding the corner she looks in the mirror and the 911 is about 4 car lengths back doing a really big tank slapper. She said it made her smile.  Thankfully the only thing damaged was the drivers pride. 

It's her one and only aggressive moment in 35 years of driving.   

I had a car load of kids in my 1990 Suburban.  I was pulling onto a highway with some traffic in view, so I stepped on it a little aggressively. My real wheels were on gravel, so there was definitely more wheel spin than I intended. 
 

My wife was in the passenger seat. She gave me the stern "Mom comment", and chided me for misbehaving with kids in the car. 
 

The next thing I heard was the small voice of my 8 year old commenting from the third row of seating... "Hey Mom!  It's a LOT more fun if you stick your hands in the air and yell "Wheee"!"

My wife is doing motorsports for a living with me and plans to run her first endurance race this year.

My father-in-law worked for General Motor and the wife was going to order a new 1986 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS.  Not a rocket but still a decent car.  She opted out and ordered a new Pontiac Grand Am SE instead.  

We were dating expecting to get married and eventually the Grand Am was the beater I got to drive down the road. 

Almost 40 years later and I'm still annoyed.  

SKJSS (formerly Klayfish) said:

My wife is doing motorsports for a living with me and plans to run her first endurance race this year.

Hopefully her knee is better soon!

When the transmission went out for the second time on our Oddity, I sent my wife a link to the page for the Mazda 5 on Madza's website.  I heard a "click...click....click" and her first comment was "this comes in a manual!!"

I was catching up with my wife tonight, getting the details on her trip this week to western NC. 
 

She said was headed over Soko gap between Waynesville and Cherokee (if you've been up there, do you know that the tail of the dragon is just a typical road) and had someone in a Mercedes riding close behind her.

As she told it, she figured that she had a GRM sticker on the back of her Mazda five and it was up to her to show she deserved it. She was gapping the Mercedes by accelerating out of the turns and was pulling away until she caught up with traffic. 
 

Her other incentive was having a Florida plate her car. She said that growing up there, they always complained about the Florida drivers that didn't know how to go around turns. 
 

She's only autocrossed twice, but was way better than I was when I started. 
 

I was guest bartending in Pittsburgh.  My (now ex) wife and our friend Erin went with me.  I ended up getting a bit tipsy, so my wife drove us home.  Car was my 96 Impala SS.  At the light before the hot metal bridge, a cammed-up Camaro pulled up beside and revved.  My wife held the brake and blipped the throttle to chirp the rear tires.  My first thought was "oh crap, she's going to kill us when the ass end of this car goes off the bridge."  The light turns green, the Camaro launches.... and my wife simply let her foot off the brake and gently accelerated.  Which was really good, because the car behind the Camaro was an umarked police car and he instantly got pulled over.

Not a spouse, but a girl I dated in HS had me and her dad teach her how to drive a manual.  She was actually really good.  She got a used Accord 5 speed and she drove it for about a month.  One day she said it was overheating and smoking, so I went over and she took me for a ride so I could see what the smoke was.  I was excited to see how her clutchwork had progressed.  First gear, clutch out, nice work dear, clutch, second.... and she never shifted out of second as she got on the highway.  Flashback to when her dad and I had tried to explain the tach and what it means, and she was all kinds of confused, so we simplified it by saying, "see that number 6 on the gauge?  Shift before it goes past that 6."  She interpreted that as "you don't have to shift if it doesn't go above 6."  She had been driving for a month in second gear at 6000 rpm.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Driving around at 6000 rpm is not normal

Maybe that's why my Yamaha RD350 got such bad mileage.

I have many as my wife is a car girl and we do many car related things together. I'll not publicize the ones where we were in Mexico doing triple digits, but here are a couple.

Wife had her Grand Cherokee in my shop to change the oil or something, well she did not use mirrors at the time to back up, so she had the door open and she was leaning out to see behind her. CRUNCH. Door hits the side of the barn door frame. Neither the frame nor the door of the Jeep suffered too badly but she did have to slam the door of the Jeep shut for the rest of it's life. She has since learned to use mirrors.

Then she wanted a summer car so we got a Miata. She did not know how to drive a stick, so I gave her some pointers. One of which was to hit the gas harder if the car started bucking. She did. And proceeded to mat the gas and one wheel peeled right past a local officer. He pulled her over and she started crying. "My husband, *snif*, told me, *snif, to do that, *snif*, if the car started bucking." The officer laughed and said "You're just learning to drive a standard huh? Well he's not wrong but you don't need to give it all the pedal." He gave her a warning.

As a side note, I had to take the GC keys away from here because instead of practicing in the miata, she would just use the Jeep.

My favorite one was when we were on the Tail of the Dragon in the cayman for the first time. I was driving sportily not not over doing it because she was in the car. Doing the Dragon Dance and I feel her hand on my right knee putting pressure on it. It was her subtle way of telling me to go faster. I did.

Tom1200 said:

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Driving around at 6000 rpm is not normal

Maybe that's why my Yamaha RD350 got such bad mileage.

Or... because they were a fun 2-stroke that you couldn't prevent your right hand from twisting really hard?

In reply to preach (dudeist priest) :

 Doing the Dragon Dance and I feel her hand on my right knee putting pressure on it. It was her subtle way of telling me to go faster. I did.

Was it really on your knee, or is that a euphemism for hootus? 

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Being an Accord of vintage, guessing but you did say you were in high school, I'd be surprised if it couldn't do 100k miles in second gear at 6000.

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to preach (dudeist priest) :

 Doing the Dragon Dance and I feel her hand on my right knee putting pressure on it. It was her subtle way of telling me to go faster. I did.

Was it really on your knee, or is that a euphemism for hootus? 

Knee, she did not want to wreck out. Haha.

When I married Mrs DDV in the 1990s she had a purchased-new Cavalier RS...automatic. The only time that car was fun was in the snow. At 55,000 miles, the clearcoat was starting to crack, the door bottoms were getting rusty and the power window regulators had both broken once. I suggested we bail while it was still worth more than pocket lint. 

I worked for a Saab dealer at the time and we traded in a 100,000 mile A2 Jetta GLI 16v. She had indicated a like for VWs so I brought her down to look at it. She did not drive stick. The GLI was most certainly not an automatic. I'd tried to get her to learn stick shift early in our marriage but she didn't have an interest. Suddenly, seeing the red VW with Recaro seats and many multiple engine valves, she decided it was not an insurmountable task to learn.

I sold a 55,000 mile Cavalier and paid about the same money for the GLI with 100,000 on the clock. I thought it was an exceptional deal. So did she. Mastered manual transmission driving in short order and ran the wheels off that thing to about 180,000 IIRC when it finally began being a VW and developing problems. Replaced that with a Subaru Impreza, again manual.

Today, she is more aggressive than I am driving and regularly does a horrible Jeremy Clarkson impression of "Get out of my waaaaay!".

Wife and I worked a couple Imagine Lifestyles at the IMS driving/instructing Lambo's and Ferrari's. At the time I had the Forte in full kill mode for STF and it was pretty competitive and she had ridden with me for a few of those faster runs before. The owner told me to take her out in the drop top Gallardo. Course was set up inside T1 on the pit exit side and you could squeeze 90 in the F430 Scud, the Lambo about 85. We get back, and the owner asked what she thought. Her reply "I've had more exciting runs in his Kia". 

This folks is why I've been married for 21 years.

My wife taught me how to drive a manual. I was 25 years old and bought a used 1988 VW GTI 16v. The only slow car she ever owned was a 1973 VW Beetle, before she met me. She didn't ever check the oil in it and went through 3 engines before her father bought a  Plymouth Road Runner for her that he kept for himself and bought her a 1977 Monte Carlo 350. She had that when I met her. She really liked driving the E28 M5 when we had it though I think her Forester XT she currently has is objectively faster, its not as easy to drive really fast as the M5 according to her. She would never define what she meant by really fast. I kept asking her to autocross with me back when I used to do that but she told me she never would because she didn't want to embarrass me in front of all the other guys. Cute.

I attempted once, just once, to teach my wife how to drive a standard transmission.  It was the worst arguement we've had in 41 years of marriage.  To her, a car is an appliance on the end of a key that takes you places.  The other day, in her car, I turned on the rain sensors for the wipers.  She asked me why the wipers were working funny.  She's had the car for over a decade.  She has lots of strong points, driving is not one of them.

In reply to car39 :

Um, yeah, all this...

preach (dudeist priest) said:

I have many as my wife is a car girl and ,,,

I glanced at this and read "...my wife is a c.a.l.l. girl" (edited because of stupid grammar filter) and thought that it didn't take this thread long to go sideways, but admit to wondering what the rest of the post was about.

My wife is not really a car enthusiast, but had a car salesman dad, so she's open to interesting cars, manuals etc. 

Stories:

She is not the best at holding a steady speed on the road.  I ride her a bit about this, sometimes its a 20mph delta for no apparent reason. She had a '94 Legacy wagon at the time of this story (well over 200K on the clock) and I was driving it on a road trip. The speedo began hanging up (i.e you're driving 80, you slow down and the speedo is still indicating 80 until you tap it.) She (jokingly) exclaimed "You broke my car! you made the gauges seize up by driving at too steady a speed!" 

Same car, she was driving and we were rounding a corner in the snow- the rear end started coming around. She deftly dialed in a bunch of opposite lock and then unwound it at the exact right time.  I was not expecting that level of composure under the circumstances. I guess growing up in Michigan teaches those kind of skills. 

My dear wife was driving, when she moved into a left turn lane at a light. She didn't pull left far enough, ending up with the right wheels still on the white line. I said that she needs to pull further left to avoid possibly getting sideswiped. She said - no kidding - "I'm not familiar with this part of town!" as though it was a good reason. Right then a car came by to the right and honked. I said, "See?!", and of course it all became my fault.

Chick logic...

My wife is the opposite of a car enthusiast. She got her license at age 27 after leaving New York. She went directly from the DMV to the nearest Subaru dealership because she and her father had heard they were good cars, and they drove away in a brand new Legacy-shaped appliance. 10 years later it has only 50k miles. We put more research effort into our recent refrigerator purchase. It was eye-opening to hear that really is how normal people buy cars. 

My wife is an indifferent driver but we do have a few tales about her and cars.

We were driving a Wolseley 6/99 once (think Austin Westminster with big straight 6) and the Lucas electric fuel pump started to give up.  In order to get where we were going, I asked her to climb into the huge trunk and listen for my cue to tap on the failing fuel pump with a wrench every time I noticed a loss of power.

It worked great, every tap waking the pump up again, and the only issue was when we stopped temporarily and parked to pick something up.  I got out and went to the trunk to let her out and as I did an elderly couple walked by just as she was climbing out. On the spur of the moment I said "Any more back talk and you'll go back in there again!"  The elderly couple were astounded and raced away and I ended up in the doghouse for awhile, but it was worth it.

A 401 CJ said:

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

Being an Accord of vintage, guessing but you did say you were in high school, I'd be surprised if it couldn't do 100k miles in second gear at 6000.

Well, it already had 200k on it when she got it.  It was way down on compression in 3/4 cylinders, so my guess is that it broke the rings, or the vibes scored the cylinders.