This is exactly what it looked like, down to the color. British Vomit Green.

In my teenage years, I started long road trips. I commuted between Texas and California, as my dad lived in California and my mom lived in Texas. I finally decided I would move in with my dad and try school again. I loaded a U-Haul with my belongings and towed it behind my 1972 Caprice.  This would be the third Texas to California commute with the giant green dinosaur.

I brought along a friend who wanted to see California and a bag of Burger Box burgers, which at the time were .75 cents a piece. We wore onions on our belts, because that was the style at the time.

The Caprice made a good showing. It made it almost to the border of New Mexico before THE ENTIRE RIGHT WHEEL CAME OFF. Like a Ron White story, THE WHEEL CAME OFF. But not just the wheel, meaning the rim and tire. The entire brake assembly, everything came off at the seized bearing. I had time to see it shoot off into the desert before the front end came down, hard. That was a very abrupt stop. The trailer jack knifed into the car, broke open at the back and spilled my belongings all over the road.

Good thing nobody was coming for another day and a half. It gave me and my friend plenty of time to nurse forehead goose eggs and pick up all the belongings scattered on the highway. In the afternoon of day two, a car came by and promised to go into town to get a tow truck. We were about to run out of burgers, so just in time.

Tow truck man brought an extra truck to tow the car and trailer separately. It took another two days to find a new spindle and brake assembly (it was trashed after impacting a big desert rock.) It also cost me almost everything I had. At least the damn car made it back on the road. It failed again outside of Vegas, necessitating a new fan belt and thermostat.  Ever spent much time in the desert outside Vegas?  All those little white crosses for traffic fatalities… By the time my friend and I got into Vegas we had to push brochures on tourists to raise gas money. We slept in the car at the Circus Circus Hotel for days while we raised cash.  Thankfully we made it to our final destination in San Jose without any more issues.

Ever since then I have had no love lost for any General Motors product.  Was it the fault of the car, or the man who didn’t check everything before a long road trip?  Maybe both?  Thinking back on it, every car my parents owned in childhood was a General Motors car, and every one of them was a steaming pile.

So what are your bad car failure stories?

By the way, I misspelled Glib Car on purpose last week just to see if you were all paying attention. Well done, you grammar fascists!