tragic classic car crash

[jeffb]

just north of detroit a young lady was killed and two men in theyre 20's are in critical condition after hitting a light pole in a 65 coronet. dont have any other info, but the bystanders say the owner of the car ran up to the scene after the rescue folks got there.

[Ben]

A test drive gone bad maybe?

[george 53]

Din't hear about this on the news,Jeff. You mean someone let somebody drive their car, an that someone wrecked it???? Sorry bout the loss of life, but at 20 years old, them kids DIDN'T know what kinda power one of those cars put out! If he didn't have a good suspension and brakes, it was an accident jus waitin ta happen. Todays kids DON'T understand just how FAST a musclecar can get outta control . Their too used to all the Hi tech stuff cars do NOWADAYS, and don't understand one of OUR cars can kill ya pretty quick if ya don't treat it right, an respect the power under that right foot!!! Sorry to hear about that,it IS a shame.

[jeffb]

it was on the 11;00 pm news. seemed like he was trying to make a left. sad part is they probably didnt have seat belts in the car, im thinkin chrysler didnt have them as standard in 65.

[george 53]

Dave, unless it's about a murder, kwami, or martha conyers,Detroit news stations don't really give a poo about the common person here in Deeetroit! I'll look for it in this mornin's Sunday Free Press, maybe I can find it there an see what happened. Still a shame though, no matter how ya look at it.

[old-hermit]

http://www.wxyz.com/news/story/1-Killed-2-Injured-In-Classic-Car-Crash/f7pLCZvmXEO2u4xj9wpWgw.cspx

[Harold]

it was on the 11;00 pm news. seemed like he was trying to make a left. sad part is they probably didnt have seat belts in the car, im thinkin chrysler didnt have them as standard in 65.

Front seat belts were a federal requirement in '65. However, I remember in those days people would actually remove the seat belts from their cars.

[jbwelda]

not trying to make light of death, but i often chuckle when i see some 60s amped-out muscle car come roaring up on me while im doing 60 on a momentarily straight stretch of country road out here. typically i will just keep going at my steady 60 and wait till the 20 mph deadmans curve i know is coming up and then keep at 60 right through it (in my "girlie car" miata, lowered konis big anti sway bars etc) and then watch in amusement as the tweeker-heads in the pile of straight-line-only junk about blow it trying to slow down in time for the curve. works great for old men on harley davidsons too. try it sometime...it will bring a smile to your face and some well needed change of underwear for the hicks in the "muscle" car.

[Joe Handley]

not trying to make light of death, but i often chuckle when i see some 60s amped-out muscle car come roaring up on me while im doing 60 on a momentarily straight stretch of country road out here. typically i will just keep going at my steady 60 and wait till the 20 mph deadmans curve i know is coming up and then keep at 60 right through it (in my "girlie car" miata, lowered konis big anti sway bars etc) and then watch in amusement as the tweeker-heads in the pile of straight-line-only junk about blow it trying to slow down in time for the curve. works great for old men on harley davidsons too. try it sometime...it will bring a smile to your face and some well needed change of underwear for the hicks in the "muscle" car.

Done that a few times with my Jeep, the Cherokee's are more capapable that many suspect in corners

Had some hot shot in an Acura RSX chase me into a 15mph right hand corner at about 35 or so a couple years ago and by the time I was back up to 45 I looked back to see that he was stopped dead mid-corner with the front tires turned full right lock with the car's left front corner just to the left of the yellow center lines

Edited May 26, 2010 by Joe Handley

[Junkman]

This:

is a tragic classic car crash.

[Joe Handley]

No, not really......................

[ChrisPflug]

not trying to make light of death, but i often chuckle when i see some 60s amped-out muscle car come roaring up on me while im doing 60 on a momentarily straight stretch of country road out here. typically i will just keep going at my steady 60 and wait till the 20 mph deadmans curve i know is coming up and then keep at 60 right through it (in my "girlie car" miata, lowered konis big anti sway bars etc) and then watch in amusement as the tweeker-heads in the pile of straight-line-only junk about blow it trying to slow down in time for the curve. works great for old men on harley davidsons too. try it sometime...it will bring a smile to your face and some well needed change of underwear for the hicks in the "muscle" car.

No thanks- modern advances in tires as well as suspension and brake technology make it possible to have a real car with power and decent handling without having to resort to girlie cars

[my name is nobody]

This:

is a tragic classic car crash.

Thats a shame. Glad I drive an F250 SuperDuty though.

[Chuck Most]

Thats a shame. Glad I drive an F250 SuperDuty though.

Same here! Not that body style, but an F250 just the same!

Edited May 26, 2010 by Chuck Most

[MrObsessive]

Front seat belts were a federal requirement in '65. However, I remember in those days people would actually remove the seat belts from their cars.

Hmmm.................I'm not so sure Harold. I had a '65 Dart Convertible once and it didn't have seat belts. I don't think they were "taken out" either as I never saw any anchors for them on the floor of the car.

I was thinking that seat belts were federally mandated for 1968 cars and later.

[Longbox55]

I may be wrong, but I seem to recall that seatbelts were mandated in '66. At least they were in Illinois.

This topic does remind me of something similar that happened to a local MoPar collector. He had a garage up around the Chicago area (shared with another collector) that he stored his cars in. They had a fella that took care of cleaning and detailling them as well as taking them to the shows. This guy was supposed to take one of Kennys (the local collector) cars to a show, a '71 'Cuda convertible, 383 automatic, Hemi Orange w/white interior/white billboard/white top. I seem to recal Kenny said there was only like 3 or 4 with that particular color scheme. Well, this guy had a few beers in him while he detailled the car, and on the way to the show, decided to see what it would do. ended up planting it into a telephone pole. According to the police report, he was only "doing 55", but we figure he was doing at least 70 or better, judgeing from the damage. The only salvable body panel was the trunk lid, everything else was bent. Even the engine block was cracked from the impact, and the tailshaft was split on the trans, diff was bowed out, too. About the only good thing is that it wasn't one of Kennys Hemi cars.

[whale392]

Not to argue with you Harold, but one of my 65 Dodges did have front belts but the other one did not. The car that did not didn't even have the provisions in the floorpans for them. 1974 was when it was federally mandated as front belts were to be standard equipment, 1984 rears.

[David G.]

not trying to make light of death, but i often chuckle when i see some 60s amped-out muscle car come roaring up on me while im doing 60 on a momentarily straight stretch of country road out here. typically i will just keep going at my steady 60 and wait till the 20 mph deadmans curve i know is coming up and then keep at 60 right through it (in my "girlie car" miata, lowered konis big anti sway bars etc) and then watch in amusement as the tweeker-heads in the pile of straight-line-only junk about blow it trying to slow down in time for the curve. works great for old men on harley davidsons too. try it sometime...it will bring a smile to your face and some well needed change of underwear for the hicks in the "muscle" car.

They just don't know how to powerslide.

I can take my '71 Delta 88 town sedan through some fairly sharp curves without losing too much momentum. You just have to have the stones to break the rear wheels loose as you sling into the curve and use the vehicle's centripetal force to more or less sling-shot you through the remainder of the turn. You know you're doing it right if you're cornering to the left and you have the front wheels pointed a bit to the right.

It's rather difficult to do and takes practice. It's also extremely hard on the car. You're trying to push the car sideways while it wants to go straight and that loads the suspension and frame in ways that the designers never intended.

One of the advantages of this cornering method is that, if done properly, at the end of the curve your car is pointed straight down the road and you're already accelerating. That and it can be rather intimidating to be near a car, espesially a 5,000 lb sedan, when it breaks into one of these slides. Think of "Drifting" at 80mph in a tank.

They're only "Straight-Line-Only Junk" if you don't know how to make them dance.

[David G.]

you guys need to remember here that a young girl lost her life in this accident and that the others involved were seriously hurt. pretty much we will probably never hear "the rest of the story" as typically news reports never follow up but there is alot more to this than the initial report. supposedly the owner of the car showed up on scene after the crash, the girl who died could have been his daughter or even wife, maybe one of the men in the car was his kid who knows.

great that you guys can drive your cars the way you do, but it's not really appropriate in this thread.

Dave

Maybe this thread isn't appropriate for this forum?

[Harold]

Not to argue with you Harold, but one of my 65 Dodges did have front belts but the other one did not. The car that did not didn't even have the provisions in the floorpans for them. 1974 was when it was federally mandated as front belts were to be standard equipment, 1984 rears.

It depends on the build date of the car- while the model year, say '65, started in October of '64, the federal regs didn't kick in 'til the beginning of the calendar year. Seat belts were a requirement in the mid- '60's, my dad's '65 Vista Cruiser, '63 Corvair and '64 F-85 all had front belts. They became a requirement for the rears in '66. Dad also had a '68 Ranchero that he bought new, and since it was built before 01-01-'68, it did not have the federally mandated shoulder belts. His '69 Fairlane wagon (which, as a fourteen year old kid, I got to help him order it- he nixed my idea for the 390 ), had seat belts from stem to stern, shoulder harnesses for the front and the federal requirement for '69- head rests.

Edited May 27, 2010 by Harold

[jbwelda]

>No thanks- modern advances in tires as well as suspension and brake technology make it possible to have a real car with power and

>decent handling without having to resort to girlie cars

yep just keep telling yourself that.

reality is a whole different manner.

a "real car"...now thats funny.

as for powersliding, yep thats fun on the roads around here. with a 20 foot drop on either side of a narrow two lane road, and those drops going into 20 feet of muddy water on one side and 20 feet into a farmers field on the other side, its very entertaining to watch someone attempt a "powerslide" in his 66 jacked up camaro in your rear view mirror.

not to mention i am pretty much an expert on "powersliding" my miata (or my nissan 240 sx for that matter) on these roads so again its gonna be fun.

as for the girl, well dont mean to be rude but theres a reason darwin is still known many years after his theories were first postulated.

[Scale-Master]

What’s a 66 Camaro look like?

[old-hermit]

What’s a 66 Camaro look like?

1966 Chevrolet Corvair Corsa. [the basic body of the '67 Camaro]

[jbwelda]

what i actually meant was the camaro you see in every gas station in the midwest and for that matter anywhere barely post-teen tweekers congregate: blue with one primer fender, lifted about a foot all around, mag wheels on three wheels and a steelie on the fourth, minimal or no muffler...the model year is irrelevant so insert any year you think is appropriate.

sorry i wasnt familiar enough with them to get the year right...i was around when they were introduced but they just didnt make that much of an impact on me. i was driving big healys and jaguars at that point.

nope i dont drink butwiper either!

[David G.]

as for powersliding, yep thats fun on the roads around here. with a 20 foot drop on either side of a narrow two lane road, and those drops going into 20 feet of muddy water on one side and 20 feet into a farmers field on the other side, its very entertaining to watch someone attempt a "powerslide" in his 66 jacked up camaro in your rear view mirror.

not to mention i am pretty much an expert on "powersliding" my miata (or my nissan 240 sx for that matter) on these roads so again its gonna be fun.

Yup, you're absolutely correct. It takes more skill to powerslide with an old Detroit monster than most of the Japanese speedsters. An unskilled driver is much more likely to make a fatal error in judging the limitations of those old vehicles. And they had some serious limitations. That's why the insurance companies and the feds brought an end to the true "muscle cars." The cars were just too much for most average drivers to properly control, let alone the inexperienced kids that craved them.

I've driven many different types of cars from VW Beetles to an '84 Jaguar XJS V-12, and the only car that truely frightened me, the only car I couldn't push to its limits was a '68 Firebird with a supercharged 350 in it. I could tell within the first few minutes of driving it that it was beyond the skills I had at the time.

So I agree with you 100%. If you just want to go fast and have fun doing it, stay away from the Detroit Supercars from the 60's and 70's, and get a Honda or Mazda, they're much safer and easier to drive.