Does Your Hybrid Attract Crazy People?

[Z-Gad]

I have been driving my Z all over the place, and I get many curious people that ask what I have under the hood, but not one has challenged me, revved at me, or anything like that. Maybe it is the fuel cell sticking out from under the rear valance, or perhaps the 4" exhaust pipe... who knows. I can't say that I would indulge them anyway.

[steal my nametag]

i think everyone who's ever driven the streets can think of at least one entertaining story... i guess i can share my favorite, ok two... the first was shortly after i moved back home for awhile, totally different story, i was cruising the 95 in las vegas right past downtown in the '71 chevelle some kid pulls up next to me and said "OH WHAT YOU THINK YOU'RE BAD A** BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO HOOD!?" (it was being prepped and painted in my mom's garage haha) so i just responded with a simple "no, not really." for some odd reason he got really upset =/ he started revving his eclipse and i heard the faint sound of a BOV... naturally at this point my interest is peaked since up until then it was just a kid being a kid... i indulged him and snapped the speedo over gaining maybe a car or two before he let out of it which i of course laughed at thinking he was worried about losing face until i saw the highway patrol car up ahead and flipped... the cop pulled over the kid in the eclipse!! ...made me feel pretty good to be back home. the second happened a few weeks later when i was teaching my girl friend of the time how to drive stick in my step dad's little pontiac grand prix... some guy at the local parts store who drove a primered F150 Lightning (you guys remember those?) no clue why but he revved his engine up which scared her since she was still unsure of how to drive the car... so i told her just to let it go which of course she refused and revved back... the guy launches hard leaving a nice cloud of smoke behind him. when i asked her why she did it she said "watch... he's going to learn a lesson here..." then you see those good ol' blue and reds flashing comin' from the turn lane to the left of us! i had to bite my lip to keep from cracking up, she didn't hold the same courresy haha... it's never what you drive or even how you drive it... it's just that some people feel the need for the ego boost... they're the guys that've never had a REAL race in their cars.

[e_racer1999]

some guy at the local parts store who drove a primered F150 Lightning (you guys remember those?) no clue why but he revved his engine up which scared her since she was still unsure of how to drive the car... so i told her just to let it go which of course she refused and revved back... the guy launches hard leaving a nice cloud of smoke behind him. when i asked her why she did it she said "watch... he's going to learn a lesson here..." then you see those good ol' blue and reds flashing comin' from the turn lane to the left of us! i had to bite my lip to keep from cracking up, she didn't hold the same courresy haha... it's never what you drive or even how you drive it... it's just that some people feel the need for the ego boost... they're the guys that've never had a REAL race in their cars.

 

BWAHAHAHAA... that's CLASSIC

[ZDrifter]

I get a good amount of civics rev at me. I dont take the time to race them and usually just drive normal but sometimes Ill let them here my BOV, just because I like to see their faces turn white I have had my friend follow in his s4 (chipped) behind me and I can pull away from him fairly well. Pulled away from a rx-8 easily. But its funny to see people from my school crowd around my car while its in the shop and ask who put my motor in for me and stuff like that, I just chuckle and say no one... I did it. Its great when they say hey you should race this kid!!! and then they say hell no, I have seen that thing on the freeway. I hardly ever speed or race on the streets all I do is get on it going on the freeway, I learned my lesson the hard way about speeding and was able to keep my record clean so with that said keep it on the track guys, also it keeps our hybrid's more unexpected;) Like to hear the stories tho!! My car in 4th on the dyno at 7,000rpm was at 140mph. haha

[OlderThanMe]

I had a buddy in my welding class that thought My Z was slow.

so out comes his 2004 F150 5.9 liter V8 with headers and a 5 speed...

I had my illuminas on 5 so there was no launching traction whatsoever.

With tirespin I still stayed ahead and hooked into second and pulled a carlength ahead...lol

 

Another was vs. an RX7 with a BRAND NEW +50hp exhaust on it...lol

Well we have some fun for a couple lights and then we are coming around a curve (I'm like 3 lengths ahead) and I slow down because there are cops around the curve a lot...

Well guess what. When I hit the brakes and get back down to 45 he rockets by me at about 80 and then sees that bumper guard poking out at the intersection... lol

The cop follows him for about 2 miles and then fires up his lights. As I follow along slowly and laugh my head off.

[Adam393]

I had a moment akin to the first Fast and the Furious. I wasnt in the Z, but i was screwing around with some kid in a riced out Focus sedan with NOS, and i floor it on the highway (at night, it was virtually deserted) and i gain about 1.5 cars on him before i shut down. So of course he does the ricer fly-by on me (at that point we were still going pretty fast, so its obvious he was using his NOS) lo-and-behold after hes about 2 cars in front of me i see a huge plum of smoke come out of his engine bay, and he swerves from the left lane to the exit lane. The next day, i was looking at my car since i thought i that some tar had gotten on the hood and bumper, but when i went to wipe it off, it was engine oil all over the front of the car from the Focus:lol:

[alexideways]

Sure Hybrids attract some crazy people... How many members are we on this sit anyways LOL.

[Shift]

Not really related, but....

 

Crazy thing happend to me the other day. I was driving my old beat-up POS and almost no other cars on the road, going like 45. Ahead of me was a Dodge Ram, about 200 ft. For some reason the guy feels the need to rev. Next thing I see, was the front left wheel pop right off O_o.

its starts to slide towards the inside lane and then shoots off to the outside. The wheel kept rolling, hit the median and bounced off and smacked the rear of the same truck. I drove by and all th wheel studs were still on there, so I guessing someone forgot to put the lugnuts one.

[Lukaniuk]

I was driving the Z home late at night and I come up to a red light. I move over to the empty spot in the far right lane and slow down so I don't have to stop. When the light turned green I continued to roll through the intersection and this red mustang GT flies by me. I stop next to him at the next red light and when it turns green we both go for it. I got half way through second when I was a good car and a half in front of him so I hit the brakes to slow back down to the 60km/h speedlimit. The driver must have thought she really kicked some a$$ because the car flies by me with the driver's window down and there was the driver, a middle aged woman, sticking her tongue out at me. But the best part is, right when she was turned all the way around looking at me, she had her head completely out of the window and her tongue out like a st.bernard FLASH - photoradar. I would have loved to see the picture that she got in the mail.

[veritech-z]

I was taking the Zzzap! over to a buddy's house to give him a ride shortly after I finished my turbo install. Two guys in a MkIII VW Golf that was painted rattlecan olive drab primer with the rusty hood look came zooming up next to me and I saw their heads whip around to check out my intercooler. I noticed that they had "rattlecan mafia" stenciled on the quarter panel, and I just had to laugh. I can only assume they ran up on me to appreciate my fine rattlecan spray job, but they were blocking the lane I need to be in in order to get off at the proper exit. I had to downshift into third and floor it so I could get around them, and they clearly weren't ready for that maneuver...the looks of astonishment were priceless, made moreso by the fact that they were in my rearview. That was the first time I'd actually seen that rusty hood thing besides the time Auxiliary posted it to the non-tech section that one time way back...

[Guest Twistershift]

When I bought my current car, a 2002 protege 5, the former douche owner had put 2 giant black vinyl racing stripes on the roof and down the hood. It was a week or so before I could remove them, and evrytime I drove it, I would get at least 2 "challenges". It's not fast by any stretch of the imagination, so of course I never raced anyone, it's for daily duty.

 

I took the stripes off after a week or so...no one has ever tried to race me since.

 

Back when I had the '79 ZX, no one ever tried to race me either. Maybe they knew it was a slow, high-milage turd?

[240hoke]

Nobody has ever messed with me I could hardly even provoke a race. Ive only had one good race in my 240z when it was L28 powered.

[OlderThanMe]

Once in my VG33 frontier Vs. one of those $50k 4 liter Lexus cars (sc400 I think? Something that had 400 in the name.)

He had me by about half a car BUT... with an LD28 in my bed. (tied down like Fort Knox...LOL)

That was pretty fun with my glorious 175hp and 2000RPM torque peak + a lot of weight.

With all the weight and the tall suspension it just squats like a stock Z's rear suspension and feels like the front is about to come off the ground...lol I guess it was the engine sitting at the very back of the bed.

[strotter]

I was coming home from a long day at work one afternoon a couple of years ago in a heavy rain, past a little lake in my town, in fairly heavy traffic, when some subnormal kid in an Acura with this just furious look on his face pulls up next to me and bumps his throttle real hard, clearly wanting to throw down right now. Now, when I say "rain", I mean a downpour, a gully washer, a cloudburst, a deluge: and my wipers, as is correct for a 30-some-year-old Z, are heroically stroking the windshield every, maybe, five seconds, so I can see nothing ahead of me other than that wall of water. I look at this kid like he's nuts, he couldn't possibly be serious, and he looks back at me like I've done his sister wrong - he looked livid. He's freaking me out a little bit, so I wave and point up, indicating "the sky is falling, you 'tard, this isn't the time or place," and that sends him into a fit of octane-fueled rage. He clutches his car and just stands on the throttle, and I mean you can see him flex to *stand* on it, bringing to bear the unrestrained scream of two liters of fart-piped fury, the rpm limiter kicking in and out. I'm starting to think I shouldn't go home right away, on account of I don't want this guy to know where I live.

 

At this point, God apparently became angry at me, because the light we were coming up to, side-by-side, turned red and we're the first two cars lined up. I sat there, watching Taureses and F-150's and Hyundas shrewdly creep through the rain-soaked intersection for a full minute, while this guy revved his poor car over and over next to me. "Brimmmmmm buhhhhhh, Brimmmmmm buhhhhhh, Brimmmmmm buhhhhhh, Brimmmmmm buhhhhhh, Brimmmmmm buhhhhhh". It was a long minute, and I was the whole time trying to remember where all the heavy portable objects were in the cockpit without actually looking to my right.

 

Ultimately, the light for the cross-lane turned yellow. "I'll just take off normally, and he'll get bored and go away," I kept saying to myself, so I ever-so-slowly depressed the clutch and pushed it into 1st. My light turned green, and I just as slowly began to release the clutch...

 

...and the guy went berserk. He dropped the clutch, straight dropped it 'clunk', throttle floored and, as you might expect, nothing much happened. One of his front tires started to spin on the soaked asphalt, scrabbling for traction that just wasn't there, and he just sat, tire spinning, creeping forward at perhaps a foot a second. A little bit of tire smoke accompanied the show, but that was all. I took off cautiously, 'cause it was pouring, and made it perhaps 500 feet before I noticed he had finally started moving, possibly having learned that traction can sometimes be gained by letting off the throttle, not pushing it down even harder. I was just about to my street, a left turn, so I put on the turn signal and brakes and pulled it to a stop waiting for oncoming traffic to clear, when the guy, likely frothing by now, passed me at maybe 60 (in a 35) half way into my lane, missing my car by a couple of inches - I felt the Z rock from the wind of his car passing. That kind of pissed me off, and I considered following him and getting his plate, but it was late and I wanted to take a nap. Not very heroic or anything, but the nap can sometimes be the most important part of the day.

[hughdogz]

Late one night, I'm driving up Pacific highway in my 280ZX and a semi-riced out Honda is coming towards me from the oncoming direction. He sees my car and sticks his head out of the window as as he passes. That made me look in my rearview mirror and I can't believe I see him pull the e-brake at 40 mph and pull an illegal u-turn in the middle of an intersection (this was right after F&F 1 came out). He comes after me and I just ignore him. I'm sure he was driving around at 2 am just looking for someone to street race. Stupid kid was trying to get me in trouble!