These Are The Ways You've Ruined Your Own Car

I have a clean title, relatively low mile, white-on-red S2000 that I drilled a bunch of holes in and turned into a track car over the winter. In the eyes of everyone who sees appreciating vehicles as a way to make money and as something to feel guilt over using, I certainly ruined my own car.

Submitted by: BigRed91

How many of you have left a convertible top open on a nice day, and then had a micro-thunderstorm arrive while you’re a 10 minute walk away, eating dinner at a nice little Thai place?

The car is rarely “ruined” per se, but you’re going to be wet as hell on the drive home, and you’ll need a Shop Vac, and de-humidifier, and the heat running full blast for about a day to dry the damn thing out. (And you’ll be lucky if you didn’t ruin a few electrical switches.)

Just put the top up, okay?

Submitted by: Shane Morris

I did this to a perfectly innocent 2000 Nissan Frontier.

(I would count that E34, but I kind of love it!)

Submitted by: Unacceptably Dry Scones

‘96 200 SX SE-R. Fun out of the box. What should I do to it?

Fmax turbo @7psi? Sure. 211 whp and 199.8 wtq

Stronger clutch? Yep.

How strong? Too strong. So strong that it bends the bracket for the clutch cable and that you can change it on the side of the road in less than 12 minutes without burning the sh out of yourself.

Maybe you want a 4-point roll cage? I will, if I do say so myself. I just have to tear out that back seat and leave a gaping hole into the trunk so that all those sweet, sweet exhaust notes can resonate just a bit longer in the song of their people.

Maybe some FBU racing seats, that give you an extra inch of width? Go ahead and throw out the stockers the day before the others arrive. Then realize that an extra inch on a skinny Italian ass is still not that much room.

OOH, OOH! Enter into a burnout contest at a national import drag event! Hit 5th gear standing still? Rip the tread off the passenger’s front tire and take out your wheel liner? Move the rears to the front, put the spare on the rear, and use duct tape to fix what was the driver’s front? Realize that there isn’t that much damage because you turned your VLSD into snot? Drive 45 miles home on I-95 with a slippery-assed, FWD, and extremely torquey vehicle? Check.

Get a page in SCC during Coleman’s burnout of the month days? Priceless.

Submitted by: Krymdog

I spray painted my dash as a teenager, which turned out about like you’d expect.

And

I did this to the door panels of an S-10 I had in high school, using that “stone texture” paint. (A buddy of mine did it to freshen up certain sun-bleached interior parts of an old Dodge Aries he had, to good effect). He was smart enough to only paint the hard plastic bits, remove them from the car first, and painstakingly prep them. I was not, and just opened the door and spray-bombed the whole door panel. The paint alternately flaked off all the hard plastic parts of the door panel, or never-quite-cured on the softer vinyl parts (armrests, etc) leaving them sticky. It looked like my door panels had leprosy.

Submitted by: Idiot who sold e39 m5, BigPaul1e

Current Golf R is kinda ruined due to extensive modification.

It’s low (not stanced, just low), so getting in/out of parking lots is an adventure. You eventually learn which entrances and exits are shallow enough to not bottom out.

Fuel system modifications to allow for E85 use mean I can’t really run much below 1/2 a tank without risking one of the fuel pumps getting dry and ruining itself, which would also cause a very lean condition that could cause big damage. I get to fill up every 150 miles or so.

E85 means it doesn’t really start in winter time. It will eventually run, but not before putting that poor starter motor through hell. I expect this winter will be the death of it. I could run pump gas, but then why did I do all the fuel mods?

It’s loud and smells like gas (or corn) all the time.

But at least it’s fast. Too fast for street use. A 3rd gear pull anywhere but the interstate can send you to jail if the cops see it, and it pulls just as hard in 4th. Can’t really let it loose on the street without worrying about arrest/death in fireball.

It’s an absolute riot in the right situations, but those situations aren’t all that common. In hindsight I shoulda just tuned it and left it at that, it would be 9/10ths as fun without nearly as many downsides.

Submitted by: FastAssGolf

Absolutely I ruined a car. Fortunately it wasn’t a flawless example to begin with, but I was young, inexperienced, and made some pretty poor decisions.

My first car was a 1984 Audi 4000S, my grandparents had bought it new and it was in great shape. Silver with a blue interior, 4 speed auto, 4 cylinder, no power to speak of. A few years down the line I found an ‘84 4000S Quattro which was AWD with the NA 5 cylinder and a 5 speed manual. It was the victim of a lousy respray and everything needed a little bit of work, but it was at my budget. Up to that point, all my vehicle ‘modification’ had been in the form of neon footwell lights and stereo upgrades. I didn’t come from car people and I knew nothing about anything but I was handy enough and I came up with some pretty grand ideas. I shaved the door handles and filled the recesses with bondo. Like a brick of bondo per door. I pulled off all the plastic trim and the bumpers. I don’t know what exactly I had planned for the front and rear, but I made some pretty sweet mockups in MS Paint and tore apart everything I could. I had a muffler shop concoct a pretty hellacious custom exhaust, I spray tinted the rear lights and mirror tinted the windows. Not all of it was bad, I swapped the brown interior out for black quattro script seats and changed the carpet, dash, and door cards to match. I upgraded to the sealed euro style headlights and I cobbled together a short shifter. I learned how to do a lot of maintenance on that car too. After a few years though the door solenoids were inoperative and I had to open the rear door with a manual release I built into the trunk, then reach in to open the driver door. The license plate was zip tied to the structure behind the front bumper and the car pretty much just looked like a 19 year old owned and modded it. I loved that car and I’d like to do one right one day.

New (to me)...

Submitted by: icrashbikes

Not “ruined” but not taking as good a care of as I had hoped. I’ve DD’d a Mustang GT since Spring of ‘19 (I’ve had a work truck I’ve bummed when weather required) and while I bought the car to drive it, I’ve unexpectedly given it a hard life. Even though I moved to an office based job, I still do a fair bit of driving to construction sites, which can obviously be unkind. Furthermore, I spent a year living down the road from a quarry, and spending a decent chunk of my commute behind dumptrucks has brutally rock chipped the nose. I know Mustangs aren’t rare, but I mine deserves a better life than this.

The plan has always been to eventually park it for most of the year, and I’m on track to due that having actually bought a beater 4Runner to drive to construction sites, but the Mustang is going to need a LOT of TLC to get back to garage king status.

Submitted by: GMT800 Tahoe Guy

Oh, boy. Fresh out of high school, I bought a new Cavalier and went to town with cheap and tacky “mods”: Fifteen inch chrome wheels straight from Sears. A dual fart can Magnaflow catback. Illegal window tint. Neon lights from Autozone. Really stupid stickers.

Then, I decided I’d polish the whole car with a power buffer. I left swirl marks all over that thing. Looking back, it was a blessing that the car got totaled.

Submitted by: Fluffy6079

I gave my daily driver to a high school art class once many years ago. the wings went immediately and the paint job lasted a few years.

Submitted by: 4jim

I live in Washington DC and I jumped on some larger lower-profile wheels (going from 17 to 18) someone was selling off an A8 for my A3. I’ve cracked one rim thanks to a pothole helpfully obscured by the darkness at the entrance to a tunnel, and parallel parking close to the curb is always an exercise in precision and mirror angles.

Look: A+

Ride: C

Submitted by: TehRuben