[Region Warrior]

Last year of high school during winter, my buddy would take his 68 Catalina outside of town to do burn outs on ice covered roads.
Speedo would be buried for...??? We learned to keep 2 spares in the trunk
Another fun was drive'n through plowed mounds of snow in grocery/hardware store parking lots.
Any carts left out didn't last long. He'd go after them like an angry bull.
Engine started use'n oil soon after....and had to replace the th400 that spring.

That summer we found some "not to crazy" 4x4 trails that dirt bikers used
Got it stuck on a tree trunk after nearly roll'n it over on one really steep narrow hill.
It punched a hole through the RR floor board where your feet would be.
Over heated by time we got through. Next day we had to get 4 more wheels/tires, and a radiator from the wreck'n yard.
And add couple qts oil...

There lots more, but that the worst.

[BB70]

I was coming down MLK to Hopple from Clifton one late night in my Judge. Up ahead 50 yrds or so I seen some Firebird sitting at a red light & then blow it. I said your mine sucker- MLK is a downhill 4 lane with a sweeping lefthander & there was some salt remnants on the road .

I got around them in the curb lane & coming up quick were some parked cars. I got on the brakes to slow down and went into a 4 wheel slide- came to a stop blocking their lane and the ass end pretty close to the parked car-pushed in the clutch and fired it up and got the hell out of there. Every time I came to a light I could'nt keep the clutch pedal down because my leg would shake. YYEEHAWWW. I love running that car hard.
John

[PONTIAC LARRY]

Then that time I broke my gas pedal assembly on my 68 Lemans 428 4 speed car from flooring so hard so much and had to take off my shoe strings and run it thru the firewall to my quadrajet and pull the throttle with my hand to get home and shift the 4 speed. Power shifting was a b***h and side to side with the 12 bolt 3.31 posi.

[ssj71]

An 'almost' abuse: years ago, I was working on my 74 GTO 4-speed out on my slightly sloped street. Without using my brain, I saw no apparent problem with taking out my driveshaft to go have the u-joints replaced. Driveshaft came out problem-free, but when I lowered the car of its jack stands, the fun began.

Car started rolling down the street (e-brake was rusted and inoperative), and of course it was headed right at my neighbor's 1970 silver Cadillac Coupe DeVille. Car started picking up some steam (my attempts to hold it by hand were ignored), and in a fleeting moment of genius, I grabbed the floor jack and swung it up under the front tire with surprisingly great success. The car somehow stopped.....about 15 feet from the Cadillac!

My heart was racing and I still feel tense about it when I bring it up. Scary as to what could have happened.

[72projectbird]

Hah, this is a cool old thread.

The "worst" thing was taking the 71 T/A out in fresh 6" of snow to do some donuts in the cul-de-sac. The poor thing barely made it out of the garage, and almost didn't make it back.

I think I have a short vid of that somewhere.

[bird72]

1984. 78 Trans Am WS6, W72, 4 speed. Back then I was a desert rat for years with almost no snow driving experience. Was in Arizona when a rare snow dump of a few inches hit. No snow plows there. I had to get to work and the TA was my driver. So thinking I am great with a 4 speed and posi I am going 45 on a giant wide 4 lane with huge wide open turn lane in the middle.

Hardly any traffic, things were grand until someone turned in front of me from side road.

No braking ability at all, going to rear end the car..... which was prudently going slow. So I hit left on the steering mildly, slo mo rear end swing out to pass side..... Big 8" rim WS6 option was great for big wide hydroplaning on snow.... so I'm now sideways...... giant sweeping arc. ahhh then slo mo slide full around.... going backwards 45 wheee yikes.... big eyeballs no doubt..... I somehow thought, well, my only hope is downshift and as I was pointed square 180 to the road direction I was, going backwards..... I nailed it on the gas....

Unbelievably it hooked, I was slinging snow like a madman and soon going south, not the original north, oh well, but most important I was going straight.

Got to work, a guy I worked with, unknown to me saw the debacle from his car. He said "Wow! Did you mean to do that?" I said........ Yup. Evidently it appeared stunt car driver grade workmanship.

[geeteeohguy]

Having no 4x4 yet, in the '80's and early '90's, I used my '67 GTO for all my off-road camping trips. The most hair-raising was an extended trip into the Panamint Mountians, east of Death Valley. I got it up over Mengele Pass up a long, steep, narrow canyon, moving rocks and building road surfaces as needed. When I got to the top, guys in a 4x4 Blazer and a Jeep couldn't believe it....a '67 GTO with the top down, loaded up with camping equipment. I totally trashed the exhaust system on the return trip down-canyon. No other casualties. After that, I bought a 4x4, and spruced up the GTO, returning it to paved road duty exclusively in the years since.

[AGTO8U]

Yikes! nothing like a snowpacked harmonic balancer pulley.

[sprintbird]

wtf? Christmas Vacation?...

[goatwgn]

Originally Posted by PONTIAC LARRY

This reminds me when I was "test" driving my 68 GTO automatic w 2.93 Safe T Track, I had put in a torquey 455 and was punching it from a slow roll and lighting up the back tires in a drift on the Farm to Market roads by the house, I would go into second gear s with it screaming along carrying a smokey drift for hundreds of feet of twin stripes and eventually hooking up at the top of 2nd gear at 88 mph. Only my tires were abused but what fun a little sideways at 80+ mph !

Did you go back in time when you hit "88 miles per hour" lol???

[goatwgn]

I used to use my '66 Tempest Custom wagon for a truck back in the early to mid '80s when it was my only vehicle. I had air bags in the rear springs at the time. One time I had a Chrysler 318 and a Chevy 307 back there at the same time that I hauled away for scrap. Used it to haul various engines, transmissions, and even rear ends I would install or remove from peoples cars. Would hoist them up onto a pad I had on the tailgate with an engine hoist, then slide them in. Nowadays I don't haul anything back there unless it is clean boxes or the like.

[Sirrotica]

I hauled a new boxed full size electric water heater in the rear of my 97 T/A with the hatch open. Needed a new water heater and didn't have access to a truck.

My other abuses of Pontiacs were tied to dirt track racing, and building a demo car from a 71 Bonneville 4 door hdtp. Many of the dirt track cars ended with a crash to devastating to repair the cars.

Ran my 65 GTO 389 with a rod knock until the rod went through the side of the block and was close enough to home that I coasted home. The next day day just for grins I hit the key and it started up, shook terribly with one rod off of the crank, but it didn't want to die............LOL. I replaced it with a freshly rebuilt 67 Bonneville 400 engine I rebuilt myself at home, summer of 1971.

76 Catalina Safari wagon I loaded about 25 sheets of T111 in it to sheet my garage at home. I owned 2 of these clam shell wagons (71 and a 76) and they were like a 1/2 ton PU with a cap for hauling. In the signature pic you can see the blue 71 Grand Safari parked behind the 69 GP race car.

[goatwgn]

Originally Posted by Sirrotica

I hauled a new boxed full size electric water heater in the rear of my 97 T/A with the hatch open. Needed a new water heater and didn't have access to a truck.

My other abuses of Pontiacs were tied to dirt track racing, and building a demo car from a 71 Bonneville 4 door hdtp. Many of the dirt track cars ended with a crash to devastating to repair the cars.

Ran my 65 GTO 389 with a rod knock until the rod went through the side of the block and was close enough to home that I coasted home. The next day day just for grins I hit the key and it started up, shook terribly with one rod off of the crank, but it didn't want to die............LOL. I replaced it with a freshly rebuilt 67 Bonneville 400 engine I rebuilt myself at home, summer of 1971.

76 Catalina Safari wagon I loaded about 25 sheets of T111 in it to sheet my garage at home. I owned 2 of these clam shell wagons (71 and a 76) and they were like a 1/2 ton PU with a cap for hauling. In the signature pic you can see the blue 71 Grand Safari parked behind the 69 GP race car.

Those clamshell wagons are great for hauling. Big stack of leafsprings, heavy duty 9.3 inch rear ends, big wide openings with tailgates out of the way.

[73LeMans]

I was 16. Infamous GM Hot start issue. Brought car to girlfriends and parked in driveway. Needed to move it and it wouldn't start, so I decided to roll it.....in neutral...while not in the car. Down the driveway it went, over the curb, down a small hill and smack dab into a house. That sucked. Pretty good house. Car had so much bondo on it, it just folded up leaving only small dent in the home.

[dataway]

Thought it would be fun to drive my 68 GTO along the surf at Daytona at speed ..... thought the ocean spray would look cool. It did look cool. And 40 years later I'm still paying for it .... literally.

[Jeff Hamlin]

Once used a '66 Tempest to tow a '67 GTO from North Jersey down to Middletown in the eighties.
This was with a bumper mount tow bar and man did it jack up both bumpers.

Couple years ago I thought it would be nice for my daughter and I to drive the '66 over to the farmers market to pick up our Christmas tree,
Big mistake! I still find pine needles every now & then

[stags]

Winter of ? '75 I think, used my '69 GTO 4spd convt. to deliver newspapers. I would drive along all bundled up with the heat blasting and top down chucking them as I went. I thought it would be a good way to earn some extra part-time cash 'till I burned the clutch out. Also had an irresistible urge to play in the snow with that poor thing. Had studded snow tires and loved to gun it up hilly roads other cars couldn't make. Donuts in the mall parking lot were pretty good too.

[Sirrotica]

I used my 1970 Judge to tow the 1967 GTO stock car from home to the races when the guy that usually towed my race car with his truck didn't show up.

In about 20 minutes the car (70 Judge) went from not having a tow hitch to a very hastily welded up hitch out of roll bar tubing and angle iron. No time for a ball hitch, made a hole in both mating area and dropped a T shaped pin made from pipe through the hole.

Years later I found the judge and identified it as mine by the pieces of angle iron cut off, but the remainder was still welded to the rear frame rails. Picture of my wife and I standing in front of the Judge years later after finding it at a car show and meeting the current owner:



And below is the race car I hauled with it:



Also a picture of the 97 T/A I used to haul the water heater in the rear with the hatch open. This is taken at the start/finish line in front of the flagmans stand at the dirt track I raced at (Eriez Speedway, Erie PA) I used to race at in 1971-1986. This picture was taken in 2005.



Many years later the 97 T/A had an under hood fire and I decided to sell it as is, and used my 2005 GTO to tow dolly it from home, to the T/A Nationals in Dayton to sell it at the swap meet. I also regularly used the 2005 GTO to tow the 6X10 trailer with all the paraphernalia we transported to Pontiac shows during the time we sold Pontiac T shirts. The announcer a the T/A nationals spied me pulling in to the grounds and said over the PA system, "Now there's something you don't see everday, a late model GTO towing a T/A".

Whether it was use or abuse, I have used my cars for whatever I have needed to get done with them for many years. Below the 2005 GTO used to haul many things through the years, and the 1997 T/A beside it.

[importsmasher]

In 1972-73, my dad was building his house, and he didn't own a truck, so his (now mine) 66 GTO convertible was used as a truck. When I bought it from him 13 years later, there were still a ton of nails that had fallen down the sides of the trunk. He used it to haul lumber on a number of occasions, and one of those times he was hauling 2x4s if I recall the story correctly, and the corner of one of them hit the dash pad and put a crack in it. That crack is still there, in an otherwise nearly perfect dash pad (still soft and otherwise uncracked after 38 years in Arizona).....I have no plans to repair it, because there is a story to it.

My parents still live in the same house too....

Importsmasher

[Will]

Originally Posted by geeteeohguy

Having no 4x4 yet, in the '80's and early '90's, I used my '67 GTO for all my off-road camping trips. The most hair-raising was an extended trip into the Panamint Mountians, east of Death Valley. I got it up over Mengele Pass up a long, steep, narrow canyon, moving rocks and building road surfaces as needed. When I got to the top, guys in a 4x4 Blazer and a Jeep couldn't believe it....a '67 GTO with the top down, loaded up with camping equipment. I totally trashed the exhaust system on the return trip down-canyon. No other casualties. After that, I bought a 4x4, and spruced up the GTO, returning it to paved road duty exclusively in the years since.

That beats my camping story.

My Formula was my first and only car from the time I was 18 - 21, back in the late '80s. So, it got driven everywhere in all weather, including up to the passes to go skiing. I actually had ski racks on it. Wish I had a picture of that. Had to be real careful about where I parked so I could be sure to get back on the road. Kept some big sand bags in the trunk in the winter to aid traction.


One summer a bunch of us went camping so three of my friends and I loaded that car up with all our gear and set off. It's not like a Firebird trunk is very big so the guys in the back seat ended up with a cooler and a BBQ in their laps. It was a 3 hour drive and about half an hour of hat was on a dirt/gravel road to get to the camp spot.


Then there was the time my girlfriend and one of her friends both wanted to ride in the front seat. The console has never been the same...