[Latheesh]

Third one - again with a rental car (don't remember the year or car):
One day way through a solo drive pulled over to a Shell gas station to refill. Stopped the car, swiped the card, pulled the nozzle out from the machine and put it in the tank. Nooo... it does not go in, tried again but no luck. Stupid me tried to push the nozzle in but naa, nothing happens. As usual, I panic and start to sweat a bit. Bit later I realized that (am a mech engineer..lol) the nozzle which I was trying to push was much bigger than my car's tank opening. How can this happen? Is something wrong with my rental car? What really happened was, that I accidentally pulled the diesel nozzle from the machine, and tried to fill the petrol car with it. I think they have this additional safety measure to prevent stupid people like me from filling the wrong fuel in their vehicles. The diesel nozzle is bigger than the petrol nozzle and will never go through the small opening in the petrol tank

On a side note, I always wondered why these simple designs are not available in India so that many accidental wrong fuel fillings can be prevented.

[ask_017]

Okay, so I had taken pride in myself being an auto enthusiast and as one who knows a great deal about things in general. 10 years back, a friend of mine was checking out the Jetta and I had accompanied him to the showroom. The sales guy explained everything about the Jetta and I asked what is the engine capacity for which said it is a 2L engine. And I was wondering I asked this guy what is the CC of the engine and he is giving this reply. I challenged his wisdom saying that boss, I asked for the CC of the engine. And to my surprise he replied again it is a 2 L engine. And my friend gently grabbed my shoulder and whispered in my ear "eda, both are same (followed by some friendly expletives)". At the end of it, even though I had to be the victim of some trolling, it was a very valuable lesson

[Joli]

First incident. I was driving a Bolero and a colleague was driving a Jag XE. We were driving down a narrow village road when one of the residents said that we will have to turn due to a roadblock. There wasn't much space to make a u-turn and I being the smug one, decided to still do it. While reversing, the rear two wheels of the Bolero went off the road, into a paddy field and were now struggling for traction. My colleague was seeing this from his rear view mirror and laughing his guts out. After much workout, we managed to get the Bolero out and move on.


Second incident. A recent one. I've a Creta diesel automatic whereas the wife has a 2nd-gen Swift. She is a newbie with respect to driving and was parking her car. For some strange reason (though she parks in the same spot each day), she was struggling. I take my eyes off the road all the while watching her and my Creta goes bang into the adjacent temple's railing. At the same time, wife also happens to hit her car into the wall. You should have seen the look on the people's faces when I told them that we were related.

[alphamike_1612]

Here's mine:

Went on a movie/night out date to a multiplex far out from the city with my girlfriend. Borrowed a friend's Laura because I wanted to give her the best experience and my Alto wouldn't cut it.

At this point, I'm known as a motorhead in my college and my opinions on automobiles are respected for I am a knowledgeable guy.

Get the keys from him and open the car, search for headlights on the stalk but don't find it. Fumble around and finally find the dial on the right. Girlfriend wasn't there, didn't see it, saved face. Pick her up and we are on our merry way, singing along to songs and having a good date. Get to the theatre, parking attendant directs me to park my car and we go in, watch the movie and it's perfect. It's all perfect.

Now it's 1 at night and we have to get back. Get back in the car and she starts searching for music to play. I have to reverse the car. I can see the R on the shifter right next to 1.

"Hey, this is similar to the W-RV. All you have to do is push it all the way to the left and up and it'll fall into place." Put it into Reverse, and confidently let my foot off the clutch, the car moves forward. I panic and brake and stall the engine.

My girlfriend looks at me and continues searching for music. Aah, a stalled engine, happens even to the pros sometimes.

Crank the engine again and put the stick in neutral and back into reverse. Same thing repeats. I now realise I am not in reverse but in first. My girlfriend still oblivious to the fact something's wrong.

Swearing under my breath, I put all my effort into pushing it into R, but no, it won't budge. Falls only into 1st. I curse my friend, I curse Skoda, I curse the good lord and try again. Nothing.

By now, my girlfriend has caught on that something's wrong and I sheepishly accept. I tell her, we need to reverse. The gear stick needs to fall into R and it isn't. It only falls into 1st.

She stares at me and tries to do it herself. Still nothing. She finds out that the gear stick pushes down. I tell her the gear shaft must be loose and something is wrong.
I make a mental note to tell my friend, something is wrong with his stick and it pushes down and that isn't normal. I'm the motorhead remember?

After a few minutes of futile efforts, we both give up. We (meaning I) decide that the car is broken. I frantically call my friend, but he doesn't pick up. Why would he? He would be sleeping happily. I curse at my luck.

Had it been inside the city, I would have asked a friend or junior to get my Alto and come pick us up, leaving the Laura for until the next day. But alas, here we were 40 KMs outside the city in a fast emptying parking lot at 1 in the night and not knowing what to do. Calling a friend until he wakes up, convince him to come pick us up, would mean we would have to wait until 2 for him to arrive in an empty parking lot and we would arrive at 4 in the morning to the hostel and it would be the ruin of our plans for the rest of the night. I try calling a few of them, but all of them are sleeping happily and none of them pick up. I curse at them and their emtire family tree.

My girlfriend suddenly has a bright idea. She opens Youtube and we search at 1:30 in the night in the middle of an almost empty parking lot, "How do you put a Skoda into Reverse". The first few results are for automatics and then there is one video with a manual that shows him pushing the stick down and then putting it into R. She looks at me with a scorn. Pushes the gear stick down and into R and voila, it slots in. So much for the stick having a problem.

She looks at me, looks at the stick and back at me and bursts out laughing. I sheepishly attempt to look anywhere but her. So much for a perfect date, turned into a laughing stock. We reverse and leave and we spend the rest of the night laughing about the event and her ridiculing my motorhead prowess.

Every friend I called at night calls me back at 7 in the morning, asking me if I'm okay and whether something's wrong. I play it off cool and lie through my teeth, telling them my card wasn't working for fuel and then it did. Have to maintain the motorhead looks, you know.

To this day, people at my college know me as a motorhead. The truth is known only to me and my now ex-girlfriend (who probably forgot this ever happened) and now to the entire world

[man_of_steel]

Me and my best buddy took a trip from Bangalore to Kerala and back via the scenic hills of Munnar with a pitstop at a friend's place in Kerala. My buddy's trusty Indica Vista Quadrajet was our companion for this trip and while on it, we hit a huge pothole somewhere near Munnar. It was so bad that we both were in the classic shoulder clenched and elbows frozen pothole hit pose for a good 20 seconds. We did not notice any damage to wheels or underbody on immediate inspection, but once we were back in Bangalore a metallic clanking noise was heard from the rear side of the car while going over some potholes. We were sure that the rear suspension took a hit and was severely damaged. We mentally prepared ourselves to spend the $$$ for the comprehensive suspension work coming our way. But strangely, the Tata SVC and couple of other FNGs were never able to reproduce the issue nor were they able to find anything wrong with the suspension.

Fast forward couple of weeks, my buddy calls me while I was at work and tells me that he fixed the issue. I was like 'Whoa FINALLY!' and asked him what the issue was. He casually replied that he removed the damn pressure cooker from the boot which our friend in Kerala gave us to be transported to Bangalore!

We used to call ourselves car enthusiasts up till that day.

[vids2590]

This happened when I was 22 years old (2012). I went to a friend’s wedding and was meeting all my college friends after a year or so. I took my father’s BMW 5GT to show off a bit. It was a destination wedding in a huge—I mean, huge—resort. We were staying in these luxury tents, and I parked my car right behind my tent. No other cars were allowed in this part of the resort, but I brought my car in because I knew the owner of the resort. I stuffed my friends inside the car, and we went from one venue to another in the resort rather than taking the shuttle service or golf carts. I correctly assumed that some of my lady friends were impressed with these shenanigans. The roads in the resort were dusty and bouncy but not rough. I pushed the car with 7-8 people inside it quite a few times (I know that’s dumb, but I was 22). Now comes the day of departure; everyone else was going back to the city in Neeta Volvo buses, but I was obviously going back in my car. My car this time was parked in the assembly area for the buses, and I was waiting for the lady friend to join me on my way back. Just as I started the car, I heard a loud boom and felt my car lowering; turns out last night’s doughnuts and 11’s took their toll on the air suspension, and it simply popped/ burst. Now here I was standing embarrassed in front of all my college friends with an immovable car. The car looked like it had fallen to its wheels. The bus ride to the city was brutal; there were 20+ of my classmates. This taught me a great lesson of not being the center of attention anymore. And breathe... still feel embarrased whenever I think of the event.

[hifisharu]

First incident, we were visiting the Drive-in beach in Kannur, the Muzhappilangad beach in our friend's Zen Estilo. Being in our early 20s and given access to an open beach, I tried to drive enthusiastically, full revs and dumped the clutch, only resulted in the wheels spinning and digging into the sand. Tried to get out with more throttle, ended up getting fully stuck. Thankfully, some of the fishermen came to our rescue and helped us get unstuck.

Fast forward 5 years later, the same friend now had a Scorpio and we were at the Marwanthe beach in Kundapura. We were giggling how stupid we were last time to get the Estilo stuck on the beach and how I had promised my friend never to try a stunt like that and with an off-roader like the Scorpio, that would never happen. We were just trying to get closer to the beach and before we knew it, the rear wheels were spinning and we were digging deeper! Some sense fortunately prevailed and we were five guys in the car, immediately got out and tried to pushed the car out. Even with all that man power, the car was not getting unstuck, as there was a bit on an incline and no traction. One friend immediately suggested we try lowering the tire pressure to gain traction and that helped! Vowed from then on never to try and drive on a beach.

Just as we were preparing to leave, we heard some cries for help from two guys, about 200m from us. They had managed to drive their i20 much further towards the water and then got stuck. After revving, reverese gear and trying other possibilities, had managed to get the car completely stuck, with the wheels spinning freely in the air and the entire car now resting with its engine in the sand. Being lighter than the Scorpio, the 7 of us managed to push the car to safety and heaved a sigh of relief.

[Evyas]

So I didn’t know how to drive till my mid-20s. I literally learnt to drive a few months before we bought our first car.

Now I’m a diligent student and was (apparently) the best in my class. Reverse, park, parallel park, never stalled the engine even on inclines. Pass with flying colours, buy the car. It’s a blue Maruti Swift petrol MT, a car so basic it literally didn’t even have an audio system.

Now me and my wife decide to fulfil a college dream - to drive to town and have dinner. Pass by the places we passed by in BEST buses, dreaming one day we’ll come here in our OWN car.
So a month after I gain enough confidence in the car to drive it that far we plan date night.

We reach town (near Churchgate) and cross Flora Fountain, we’re just like 2 kids high on driving here in ‘our own’ car when we used to run for trains and buses a few years ago. By now it’s almost 9 and I realise to get to Cafe Mondegar I need to par the car in one of those ‘chakravyuh’ level circular parking lots in the middle of the road. So I find a spot, opposite what was once Regal cinema.

The ‘parking attendant’ there looks like he’s in a tragic movie as he gazes dolefully at me and says you’ll park or I get someone? I confidently say of course I will park. No one touches my *new* car.

Park it, no issues. Lovely dinner, and then it starts.

The tragic parking guy tells me to be careful, lots of cars have parked in the interim. I’ll have to reverse it and take it out. I walk in, full of stomach and full of confidence. It’s close to 11 now, the pale yellow light around the circle is romantic but you can barely see the parking lot completely.

So he gives me instructions to go a little left then hard turn and - the rest is a blur. Because by the time he finished I had already done a hard left with the confidence of Tom Cruise in Top Gun and heard a hard SCREECH. Without realising there were 2 METAL CYLINDERS placed near the entrance to prevent easy exit to errant two wheelers. In my excitement - and that low orange light of that time, I didn’t see them.

Now is when the fun starts. I panic and every time the attendant gives me an instruction I turn in the OPPOSITE direction, because I’m shattered at my car getting scratched. Forget scratched it’s literally backed into a pole on the side. So now I’m freewheeling, no idea how to get out of the mess, not being calm and thinking it through. My wife steps out and tries to help but it’s like I’m out of all good decision abilities.

I kid you not people collected to see what I was doing. Like the cry went around Mumbai for all onlookers to come see a guy unable to just straighten the wheel and drive forward and not take various angles INTO the aforementioned pole. I still remember the look on the parking attendant’s face. His eyes wide with absolutely surreal shock. He genuinely thought I was mental. Looking back it must have been like a scene from a slapstick comedy movie. Every turn of my steering wheel attempt only makes things WORSE!

He literally asked my wife : ‘isko chalana nahin aata hai kya’? Almost with a ‘you can do better girl’ type of an expression!

Till date I don’t know how I managed to get out of it with just my rear side door scratched and a little bent. Suffice to say there was a tragic silence in the car after that, as we drove back home.

And then 5 minutes in, my wife asked me if it’s too soon and right before my sweaty, flushed face started to laugh. She’s one of the most upbeat people I know and said now you’ll not drive it like it’s wrapped in wool. The first scratch is what sets you free! It’s just a dent we’ll get it fixed.

Now proud to say that was my first and last ‘dent’. The only other scratches on my car were from crazy auto and bus drivers and an idiotic biker who pressed his clutch instead of the brake on a red light. Now I can park inside the smallest of spaces where most people would fear to tread because I do it slowly, I take my time, and I trust my instincts.

Sometimes, on long, dreary nights, I still remember the dumbfounded, almost Jhonny Lever type eye popping expression of the tragic parking attendant and think : maybe his tragic look was that of a clairvoyant!

[mmxylorider]

Long long time ago - got a rental for a few days. When the time came to refuel, the fuel lid release was nowhere to be found. Scrambled around the entire front area looking for that elusive latch. Even the glove box since some vehicles had trunk release inside. No manual since this was a rental. Searching online was not an option at that time. After a good 5 frustrating meeting, thought of prying open the lid - Lo Behold, it was the press to open kinds.

[viscosity]

A recent one -- During Mohali to Manali/Atul Tunnel trip we did this April.
We (4 adults + 1 kid) were in my father in law's (FIL) Swift Diesel.
While making the trip plan I had proudly said that it will be me who will do the drive for the whole trip (kind of hinting to my FIL to pass the driving baton to the next generation ;-)) and given how tiring it could get, better not to take a chance with FIL doing the drive, though he loves to drive. Some background : I have been driving cars (petrol & diesels, manuals & automatics) for the last 14 years, so I was very confident of my driving skills. All was going well but once in a while I was feeling Swift struggling to pull forward during the steep climbs near Atul tunnel. I thought it may be because of load in the car.
Couple of times I had to literally floor the accelerator (even in 1st gear) to keep it going from a start-stop kind of situations on those steep climbs. On top of it, there was pressure to perform given how proudly I had said I will do the drive and I was sincerely hoping that the dreaded engine stall doesn't happen during the climb, more so because of the traffic behind. Well alas, not my lucky day, and at one such steep climb, the engine stalled and then under panic I tried a couple of times to somehow get the car move forward but no luck and car was just dieing down again and again without moving an inch forward. I tried giving good acceleration with clutch depressed (wheels slipping) and then releasing the clutch etc but it was not working. Traffic behind started honking and I was feeling what a shame in front of the family and the traffic. Had to swallow my ego, decided to give up, came out of the car and requested my FIL to take the charge to get us out of that situation. He did that in first go by using the handbrake technique. I was aware of that technique (had seem him and some other folks doing it over the years) but I never knew that it could make such a big difference in those situations. While coming back from the same trip, I was behind the wheels again and encountered the similar situation one more time, this time I used the same handbrake technique and showed it to my family how good and a quick learner I am and that helped me get some of my driving pride back.

[GKR9900]

Ok, so this one happened almost 15 years ago. I was doing my first year MBBS at the time. My dad and I were on our way to my college to attend a PTA meeting. We went in our just-bought Maruti Suzuki 800 Uniq edition and I was at the wheel. Upon reaching the college, I saw a few of my friends standing outside the main college building where the meeting was to be held. In an attempt to garner some eyeballs, I revved up the engine, screeched the tires, and zoomed past them. Everyone was looking at me now. Now that I had everyone's attention, I parked the car with grace. People were still looking at us. My dad and I got out of the car, I waved and smiled at my friends and closed the door with some swagger....only to realise that the key was still in the ignition and I had engaged the manual door locks. Within nanoseconds of exiting the car, my swag turned into panic. I was frantically pulling at the door flaps while - you guessed it - everyone was watching. My friends erupted in laughter. The meeting was about to start and I asked my dad to attend that while I tried figuring out a way to unlock the car. For the better part of the next 30 minutes, I stood there frantically clawing at all 4 doors in an attempt to open at least one. Other students and parents were starting to find it really amusing and soon there was a small crowd. At times, I was even accused of a carjacking attempt. Finally, I tried squeezing a small metal wire between the glass and the door frame, carefully guided it to the pull-type door lock knobs, looped around it, gave a pull, and voila! The door was unlocked. What a relief it was. Even received a small applause from some of my friends. Was truly a day to remember.

But the funny thing is this accidental locking episode did happen a few times after that. But by then I had become so proficient in unlocking the car by the slim jim method that it was not a bother anymore. Was a lifesaver for a few of my friends as well. I guess one can call it a silver lining!

[Burgman_tales]

This approximately 6 months ago and I had just purchased my Altroz DCA. I was (and still am) a noob driver. I was waiting at the Iblur U-turn on Bangalore ORR for the signal to go green. I had put the shifter on neutral and handbrake on.

When the signal did go green, I pressed brake, released the hand brake and immediately shifted to accelerator hoping to drive on but to my horror it rolled back (was a slight incline). The car behind me had luckily maintained a good gap and thus avoided collision. I immediately put the handbrake on and then retried the same 2-3 times, panicking meanwhile because of the roll back and honking from behind.

Then I realised I had forgotten putting it in Drive

[bhansali_hardik]

I beached a scorpio!

Yes, we were in Kanyakumari and this was one of the early if not the first road trips on which we went as a group of guys. We drove down from Bangalore all the way to Kanyakumari through the coast and the car had given me oodles of confidence in its ability and the ease of navigating it through all the terrains.

It was a very cold evening and the rain was pattering down, we had parked the car in the car park near the statue and we had a great time. As we were heading back to the car I had over confidently told folks to get in and we just drive off taking a U'turn in the park and over the sand because "what's the point of having a scorpio?" well, that did not go down well and we were beached.



This resulted in a long evening stuck at the beach, with the closest tow vehicle taking 2-3 hours and a price which we as students could not afford.

There were a bunch of folks (daily wage workers) who had rods and other tools used for breaking the footpath/lifting stone slabs there and they were happy to help us on one condition.

Don't give us money but come to the store nearby and buy us booze.

Obviously we did buy them booze, there was no one around to rescue us. BTW the booze which was bought was very cheap and probably costed lesser than a meal for our group! But the chaps were super enthusiastic and they arranged wooden planks and they literally pulled the car out on the plank and got it moving.




By the time I stepped out of the car the folks dispersed and were well on their way to finish up the bottles which we bought!



Aftermath : Due to high pressure in the steering pump during the rescue operation a weld on the pipe connecting the steering pump gave up and we lost some oil. Had to get that mended 30 kms away next day with a half working steering wheel and heart pounding the fastest I can think of in any situation.

To this day, my friends call me out "what's the point of having a scorpio? Right?"

[Arwin07]

After 12 years and 1.2 lakhs kilometres in motorcycle, I bought my first car in 2022, a second hand Jazz.

In the first week of car ownership, a first in my family, I thought that headlight would turn off by itself upon switching off the ignition like in motorcycles and went home happily. The next day car wouldn't start as the battery had drained. I had to get it jump started and charge the battery.

It's one of the side effects of owning a car for the first time in family with no one teach about cars unlike many lucky TeamBHPians who grew up with cars from their childhood.

[Vaastav]

I almost toppled a Mahindra Jeep.

We own an old Mahindra Jeep (1972 model), which has since been dieselised with a Mahindra DI engine replacing the Hurricane.
The jeep stays at our farm, which is near Roorkee and Patanjali's Yog Gram (this is an important detail in this story). Last year in December, we (my father, my brother and me) decided to go for a drive in the jeep. Took it out along rural tracks and everything was going swimmingly until we came to a bend in the road, and I took the turn. However, I forgot a key detail of turning, that you have to straighten out as well. The result of this was that the jeep veered to the edge of the track, from where there was a drop of about 10 feet into a field with sesame planted in it. At the last minute, noticing the impending doom I had turned the other way and brake which had caused the jeep to get stuck on a raised strip of earth that ran along the track, though it was leaning precariously. We all got out carefully, since the jeep is a soft top and no one wants to be in a vehicle on the verge of toppling.
We discussed what to do, and the general consensus was that one of us would go back to the farm and get our tractor to pull the jeep out. Right at that moment, a Scorpio pulled up with 2 sadhus of Patanjali (divine providence?) and their guests who were being shown around their farms. The senior sadhu, a man by the name of Swami Bhudev asked us what had happened and upon being told, promptly called someone on his mobile and told him to bring a tractor and some rope. 15 minutes later a Mahindra 575 drove up and after tying the rope to the jeep, it was towed to safety. After much thanks to Bhudev ji, who told my father 'isko aur seekhna hoga abhi to' we were on our way, with me studiously straightening out after every turn.