High school drivers ed. "Did you hear about so-n-so on the range today? They shoved the tranny into park while the car was still moving. The whole thing spun around and fell out."
How about the Legend heard several times by me . They would say" I used to have a car that was so fast that the cops made me sell it" . Too fast to be legal for the street. When asked if they ever ran it at the track they always say no I sold it before they could take it to the track. Maybe more bullshit than Legend.
This was floating around in the mid 70's "Back in 1963, a young man bought a brand new 1963 Corvette Split Window Coupe (a very collectible one-year-only model). He drove it around for a year or so, and was then drafted into the Army. He carefully prepped the car for storage, went to Viet Nam, and was promptly killed. Years later (when the car had achieved a rare collectible status), his mother decided she was tired of looking at his car up on blocks and decided to sell. She put an ad in the newspaper (or alternately, a sign in front of the house) that stated “’63 Chevy for sale. $50. As is.” Of course, the first person to call on her bought it and got the deal of the century."
"The dumbest Urban Legend is the gal who had a Corvette with "if you can beat me you can eat me" painted on it. On thissite some HAMBer's even said they saw it." 1968, downtown Buffalo NY, used car lot, pink Corvette, written on the hood.
How about the urban legend of the two year old Vette for sale for $500? The old guy that owned it died in it and they didn't find him for a month and now they can't rid the odor from it?
every body back in the early seventies knew that guy that bought that new ford pinto that was getting 70 mpg and they saw ford come and confiscate it, wasn't suppose to be sold to the public you know
How about the chemist that formulated a pill that when mixed with water created gasolene, was later found dead and the gas and oil industry supposedly was to have hired a hit man to save the industry from extinction.
From the 80s: The guy with a 283 in a '57 Chevy that regularly turned it to 12,000rpm coming off the line at the dragstrip. The guy with the special carburetor he developed and put on a '69 350 C10 pickup that got over 100 mpg. The oil companies bought it and he delivered it to a warehouse where it was stored with many other vehicles gathering dust (I picture the end of Indiana Jones).
I don't get the whole idea about peddling such BS. I have owned and driven my 62 Vette to shows since 1977 when I bought it and have had to listen to so many stories on old Vettes that are nothing but fantasy and BS. I just listen and say nothing so as not to encourage any further nonsense. The whole beat me bang me Vette or other similar nonsense is just pure clap trap. The thing that bothers me now more than anything I suppose are the alleged times that guys turned on the drag strip back in the 60s. I just shake my head and walk away so as to not make enemies out of car guys I see on occasion.
Me either, Jim. I've got enough real stories that don't need embellishing either. I guess, if you can't walk the walk, you have to talk the talk. What it really comes down to, I figure.
In '64, my uncle had a '62 409, 425 HP 4 speed, and he would tell stories about the magic $20 bill...
Not a Dumb Urban Legend, but in Philadelphia,there was a fun loving girl, who hung out at big boys, I won't mention her name, but she had a very fast 1960 light blue/white top corvette "if you beat me you can eat me"
With all of the cameras in existence and all of the millions of pics on the internet, it seems to be a bit strange to me at least that we do not have any more pictures of these urban legends anymore than we have definitive pictures of big foot. You would have thunk that someone would have thought that beat me bang me or eat me was so clever that they would have snapped a picture. I mean these so called ladies were regular runners with their 427 Vette or whatever. What were there names and can we get just even one to join us on the HAMB? If there was the corpse Corvette I would have thought there would have been some documentation and on and on etc.
Back when they were still playing with Hydrazine I can imagine that being a problem. There is a reason that they banned it. I did window a Ford 6 once on the interstate and a chunk of the rod ended up sticking though my inner fender, and I did see the top blown clear off of an Edelbrock Bread Box more then once. But those cars usually already had a square hole in the hood as a rule. LOL Anyway I can imagine the head coming off of a car running hydrazine with enough force to make a hole in the hood. Actually that was someone's car/truck on the other side of the track and they were pissed about it. If it were me I would have laughed and put it in my shrine of broken race stuff. But you are correct a piece of the flywheel hit someone's car way out in the back 40. I had forgotten all about that.
Yup, in my oldest brother’s day the local version was a dead guy in a lincoln, by the time it made it around to me the dead guy was in a 57 t-bird. Neither one of us ever saw the car oddly enough.
i heard that vette left in a garage / barn by soldier who never returned story so many times i groand when i heard the word corvette for a time after words
There was a used car lot on Army Street in San Francisco when I was a kid. I don't recall the name of the guy that had the lot but he used to do those crazy ads on TV where he was hitting and old car with an axe and was slashing prices and stuff like that. I digress he had a Caddy that he bought salvage that he could nit sell for a couple of years. It was a car that they found with a body in it and try as he might he could not get the smell out of it. The dead guy was a well known "Businessman" from Portreo Hill. So urban legend or not it did really happen. Now for the "beat me and eat me" deal The real question is not if it is real. The question becomes would anyone actually eat that? You know everyone has already been in it and it would be like licking a, well you know, right?
Actually, every time I hear that one, I think, "well it may rhyme, but where is the equity in THAT??" Seems to me if You beat Her...... She should do the 'honors' on YOU! Ray
The real joke is that a Corvette is a heavy brick, most of them have small blocks and they are really not that fast. (the operative word being most here) The better legend would have been a small block Nova.
My father used to say "That thing came with a 'back-flip button" when he ever he saw an expensive new car.....usually a Cadillac - true story!!
This was hilarious at the time. Fred and I had some girls out in Fred's 55 ford one night and we ended up driving down by the river and parking next to some Juniper trees. Talk eventually got around to the urban legend about the murderer with the hook for a hand and these girls were getting more and more nervous. Fred told the story so well his date was squirming around and obviously scared to death. It was a hot night and all the windows were down. Fred had pulled up so close to a tree that a tree limb was bent back by the windshield with a lot of tension on it. Just when Fred got to the part where the hook was found on the car door's handle the next morning, that tree limb let loose and actually came inside the car through the open passenger window with a big swooshing noise. Fred's girl screamed which caused my date to scream and all hell broke loose! Needless to say, those girls were so cranked up by then we struck out big time that night.
The Jalopy Journal
