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Small cars
- Thread starter Cavman
- Start date
johnsimion
New member
I am 6'-4" and nearly 200 lbs and I find small cars to be so much more fun to drive than big ones ... as long as I can shoehorn myself inside. Wish I could fit in a Miata but alas the Japanese always shortchange me by an inch or two of headroom and legroom so it's not an option. I had restored an MG TD replica just before I got my Spyder. I originally couldn't fit in that one, either, but it was a replica and so I was able to modify it so I could fit comfortably. Fun car when it ran, but after tens of thousands of dollars wasted on restoration and being ripped off by every mechanic, upholsterer and body shop in Vegas, it was still so unreliable that I nicknamed it the "OMG" and ultimately got mad and sold it. Now I have the Spyder as a substitute, with unlimited headroom and legroom and even more fun to drive/ride. Of course, part of the reason it's more fun to ride/drive is that the Spyder doesn't break down and leave me stranded like the OMG.
RinconRyder
New member
The first car shown, the American made Elio, is not yet in production nor do its prospects look very good.
The Heinkel Kabine was built in Germany and sold in the USA in the 50's as a Messerschmidt. I remember one humorous story where one of the first owners drove it to work and parked face first in his parking garage and then could not find reverse. Nor could he exit the car as the door was hard against the wall. Got a ton of publicity but very few sales.
The Heinkel Kabine was built in Germany and sold in the USA in the 50's as a Messerschmidt. I remember one humorous story where one of the first owners drove it to work and parked face first in his parking garage and then could not find reverse. Nor could he exit the car as the door was hard against the wall. Got a ton of publicity but very few sales.
RinconRyder
New member
Those replica's were usually based upon the original VW Beetle frame and engine so I am curious why you found its reliability poor?
There were a ton of the original TD's running around Tucson when I grew up. The air force people would do a tour in the UK and bring them back.
johnsimion
New member
Yeah, I used to think a VW-based replica would be reliable, too. Maybe they would be if one had a decent mechanic, but I didn't have one and I was also cursed.
The brakes would always howl. Sounded like a torture chamber. One day I had to stop for a couple of school buses and all the children pointed and laughed at me. It was bad enough for me but my wife wanted to die. I had almost every piece replaced in those brakes and machined and they still howled to the very end. Even my second mechanic couldn't ever figure that one out.
The original mechanic had set it up with a new Weber carb and electronic ignition but it always had a really fast idle -- 2500 rpm. Well, I ignored that and it seemed okay until I took it to a car show and it stalled on me - then I discovered that the original owner had failed to vent the gas tank and I had to stop periodically to open the cap so it would keep running. Fixed that myself. Then there was the leaking joint between the new muffler and the manifold. Fixed that myself but what kind of mechanic does work like that? Anyway, it still had the fast idle until one day my friend says, "That idle isn't right. I can slow it down to normal." So he works on it a while and reduces the idle to normal and that was when we discovered that it had a miss. Well, we couldn't figure it out so I took it to a second mechanic, who fixed the "miss" in 10 seconds by reversing the spark plug wires to the 3 & 4 cylinders -- the original mechanic had set up the fast idle to cover up the fact he didn't know how to attach the spark plug wires properly.
So other than the perpetual oil leak and howling brakes, by that time it seemed all right. It was time to learn to love the car, so on Christmas eve 2016 I took it out for a drive, just to get past all the old hard feelings and get out there and enjoy it. And I did enjoy my drive. The weather was glorious and the car ran great -- for about five miles. Then it stalled on me again. Wouldn't run. Left me stranded. Had to call AAA to tow it home, then I had to tow it to the second mechanic on the 26th. This time we discovered that (a) the carb installed by the original mechanic was loose and leaking gas, (b) there was dirt in the gas (supposedly all new gas lines but original mechanic lied), and (c) the fuel pump had failed.
Oh, I didn't mention the upholsterer who screwed me over, didn't do all the work he promised for the money paid -- and covered up my access point where I was going to weld in supports for shoulder belts.
Or the fact that my beautiful paint job kept getting rub marks around the doors no matter how many times I adjusted them -- which the one halfway decent mechanic I had told me was due to using a VW pan -- the fiberglass body wasn't strong enough to keep it from flexing and so the doors would always flex no matter what I did to it.
By my Christmas Eve drive, my wife had already determined that she was never going ride with me for fear of getting stranded and embarrassed by the howling brakes. Now bear in mind that in the entire time I owned this car, I had all this trouble in less than 500 miles. So, I decided that I had enjoyed that car about all I could stand in one lifetime. I took some nice pictures of it because in the pictures it's beautiful and you can't see all the pain that ownership of this car caused me, and then I sold it. And good riddance, too. I concluded that I love antique cars but antique cars don't love me.
SPECTACUALR SPIDERMAN
New member
I like the pea
Rogue Hawk
Active member
I see some Smart Cars around. It would be embarrassing to drive one.
