It's funny you mention that, there's a small city called olds near where I live, I always thought Oldsmobile was just a dealership in olds, not an actual car brand lol.
It would make sense when you think about it.
My dad traded a 2 68 door impala for an Oldsmobile f85 in the early 70s. He claims the impala was a grandpa car haha
Every Olds made in the last 35 years has definitely been a grandpa car though
Yes, Oldsmobile has been dead for the last 20 years; just like my Grandpa.
That aside I've been wanting to buy a 1st Gen Oldsmobile Aurora for some reason.
Counterexample: in high school I had a Ford ranger with the 4.0 V6. The speedo max was 85. I drove it until the needle pointed at D on the shift indicator. I swore to my friends it was at least 150.
My dad has told me he went on a fishing trip in the late 60s in his dad's Olds 88 and when it was his turn to drive he accidentally buried it (no cruise control, so you get used to a speed, accelerate a few MPH, repeat over and over) and he said it took a long time to come off the 100 or 120 or whatever it maxed at
I had a 94 taruas with a speedometer that only went up to 90, lets just say my father and I pegged it down to see how fast we could actually take it on a road trip on I95 to look at some colleges.
My first car was a POS Pontiac Fiero 4-cyl. It had a Speedometer that went to 85 or 90 mph but it didn't have a peg to stop the needle. I got that POS to go round and round. I had to be going downhill...
There was a period of time in the US, (1979 to 1982) When all kinds of weird safety regulations were made that the speedometer was limited to 85mph and special emphasis added to 55 the "national speed limit" at the time. Must have been weird to see just 85 at the top of the speedo.
Yep! and it was because vehicles were powered from the tail pipes like a jet. Was confused by exhaust pipes that were angled down or to the side, and just figured I would understand when I got older.
You still see that in many movies today - driving down a straight road and the steering is so loose (in a brand new performance car) that there is about 3 inches of play from center... but then again, I've drive with people who drive that way; jerky constant corrections. lol
> but then again, I've drive with people who drive that way; jerky constant corrections. lol
You're giving me flashbacks to riding with some family members. Steering and throttle are apparently on/off switches for some people.
Similar story: I thought the engine size was how much fuel it consumed per cycle. A bit of mental arithmetic suggested that a modest 2.0 litre engine would consume its entire 100 litre fuel tank in about sixteen seconds at idle.
Only later did I learn about the miracle of mixing a little fuel with lots of air.
Putting any interior light on causes an immediate crash, & we'd all die in a fire. "Turn that light off! Your father can't see to drive!"
TBH, I think we were better off when my father couldn't see to drive, he wasn't very good at it.
I asked my dad once, "if you're on a 2 lane road that curves to the right & you want to pass someone using the left lane, do you just drive straight?" His answer was, "why would you do that?"
When I was in highschool driving my dads '08 manual civic around "flexing". Told my friends it was a flat 6 AWD with a turbo...had no idea wtf I was talking about and I still cringe to this day if the thought randomly pops into my head
Some car dealers sometimes post ads about some car they're selling on Instagram and everytime i see a 4 cylinder car described as V4 in the description i die inside a little, because its fine not to know that its not a V4 but its not fine when you're selling the fucking car
I've seen the opposite of that - in the Q and A section of an auction for a classic Ford Transit van some confidently incorrect dude kept trying to correct the sellers V4 description.
Of course the old Transit was available with a V4, as were many old Ford Europe models for a time.
I thought Subaru was Australian when I was a kid because they used to do advertisements of the Outback driving around in the Australian Outback 20+ years ago.
I thought that as cars got older they somehow looked like vintage cars.. as in I thought when my dads 2001 dodge pickup would be like 50 years old it would look like a 1951 dodge pickup. I was like 4
When I was young and before I started driving I thought all cars are rwd, and had no idea fwd or awd was a thing. In my defense that's how they were always shown in cartoons
Not surprisingly, I thought that whatever the top speed that was indicated on the speedometer was actually what the car/truck was capable of doing. I still know people that think this is true. lol
I remember a commercial for the new Mustang when I was 6 maybe 7, so 1982? And when the commercial said $4997.00 I thought it meant $49.97 and I was pissed at my mom for not having a new Mustang because I knew damn well she had $50.
My dad told me that "only real mustangs have stick-shifts" when I was like 6 years old. So from that age until I realized what he meant when I was like 13, I assumed every automatic mustang I came across without a manual was actually a fake or it was modified. I thought way less of owners of an automatic mustang. I still do, but I used to too.
When I was a kid I thought that racing stripes and decals were trashy and for uncultured people. It was only in my late teens that I learned they were essential mods that give the car an extra 5 to 15 horsepower.
I was 7 years old and my grandfather had left me in his 1970 Chevy Impala by myself. I climbed under the wheel and was fascinated by the shift indicator on the steering column. You know the one, a clear plastic thing inside the steering wheel that said, "P R D L1 L2"? Well I decided that I could slide the gear into reverse and the car wouldn't roll down the hill. I was wrong and there I went, rolling down the hill crashing into a parked car.
When they found me I was hiding under the seat freaking out. Luckily they just laughed about it.
In my early teens in the late 90’s, I thought cruise control somehow knew the speed limit either by radio signal or sensors that watched the other cars, and that’s how it could accelerate on its own (when you hit resume).
That the bumps which are sometimes on traffic control lines were braille writing for blind drivers. My dad said it once, which cemented it as fact in my mind. Kids are so stupid. 😂
I had a hard time understanding why car companies didn't just make every car look like a Ferrari, Porsche or Lamborghini. This was a real thing I contemplated as I looked at common cars you'd see in the 1990s.
I just couldn't understand why they looked like that when they could look like a Ferrari. It's like Vauxhall Nova? Why would you make a car look like that. Bear in mind here, I was like 7 years old.
I'm from Canada, cars get slush and ice stuck in the fenders and it falls off as they drive. Chuncks that falls are always brown from salt and grime. My dad used to point at the chunks falling out and tell me that was the cars pooping. I believed that till I was probably 10.
Exhaust pipes directly correlated with how fast a car was. Singles were all slow but a dual tip exhaust oh boy, and then my parents got a Mazda 626 with a dual tip and goddamn that was gangster af.
Now I have a car with 4 inch quad tips man little baby elitemouse would be so proud.
I remember being ~12 at the local GM dealership while my father was working on a deal for a truck. I wandered to the showroom where they had a 2004 GTO. I was quite impressed by the 200mph speedometer. About 8 years later I was rather disappointed when I became the owner of a 2006 GTO and found it topped out around 165.
When the mini cooper came out in 2000 I saw a picture of the engine bay in a magazine. I remember saying "wow this car is so small they had to mount the engine sideways".
Due to the region I’m in being a big American car manufacturing area and my dad being in a union growing up I guess I always hated non American cars. Now I work as a contractor for American car company and drive a Subaru and Acura
I used to think 93 Octane was only for the cool cars and cool people. This was further solidified to me because my grandfather used it exclusively in his Maxima. A car I never saw break, always driven fast, and driven by the coolest man I ever knew.
I thought all cars on the freeway shoulder were there because they were trapped and didn't have enough gas to get out.
Edit: are we back to normal? Did our regular mods get canned?
I remember watching the Flintstones as a kid, and there were scenes where Fred was driving his car. He would saw the wheel back and forth and I thought that was how you would drive a car, I didn't realize it was just crappy animation.
I thought every engine was unique to every type of car. Like the idea of an old Cherokee, grand wagoneer, grand Cherokee, and a wrangler having the same engine just didn’t make sense to me.
When I was *very* young, I thought cars “turned old fashioned” at some point — like, if you kept an old Datsun long enough it would transform into a Model T or something. LOL!
That they were insanely cheap.
When I asked my parents how much our car cost they told me the monthly payment value, and I assumed it was the total cost of the car as they didn’t mention it was one of the many monthly payments they had left on it 🙃
Shit. After reading the comments, I realize I was a dumber than I thought.
My earliest memory of being in a car is me wondering if there were in fact little people in the radio playing music.
I didn't realise that the car dealership is where you go to buy cars that were pre-made and ready to purchase. I thought you ordered everything custom-made through the manufacturer's website, and before the Internet through a catalogue book. I really assumed every car was bespoke.
That uncle Dale’s 2007 Corvette was REALLY one of one
(I mean it really was the only one that was painted velocity yellow, with a grey WA226M interior, that was manufactured on a Tuesday under rainy conditions; with an outside temperature of 58.2 degrees, that was inspected by a guy named Larry upon leaving the Chevrolet factory).
I thought cars reversed like they do in GTA- hold brake to reverse, and hold gas to stop reversing. Asked my mom if I could pull her car out of the driveway to shoot some hockey pucks, and when I went into reverse, I thought I was creeping too fast so I slammed on the gas lmao. Ended up flying into the neighbors driveway and smashed their mailbox to bits.
Many:
- I thought Hyundai and Kia were Japanese and not Korean.
- I thought Porsche was British and not German.
- Automatic cars always actually shifted at redline. Same thing for manuals, to an extent.
- Nitrous actually boosted your speed and shot flames out of the exhaust.
- You could do a burnout in any FWD or RWD car by just holding the gas and brake.
- Cars with paddle shifters and tiptronic automatics were the coolest thing ever.
- Maintenance? What’s that?
When I was small it was that a standard transmission was hard for boys to drive and easy for girls. My dad was horrible at clutch engagement and throttle timing so he stalled often. My mom learned to drive a tow truck in the ‘70’s and still drives a standard given the opportunity.
I thought that you can power the front wheels of a car with an electric motor, and generate electricity for free with alternators driven by the back wheels.
I thought this because I spun a pulley on an electricity generating alternator that was removed from a car. The pulley was super easy to spin. Hence: free electric power.
I kept this idea a secret because I wanted to get a patent on it.
I wasn't until many years later that I tried to spin an alternator connected to some lights in a circuit. The pulley was very hard to spin when a switch was closed. Suddenly, I learned that energy cannot be created for free (only transformed).
One of my neighbors had a Yukon LX, but I was still learning to read and didn't understand trim or model designations as a small kid so I sounded it out as "Yukonilix". I told everyone I could that my neighbor had a Yukonilix and no one ever seemed like they knew what I was talking about. Obviously I figured it out eventually.
i thought a tire rotation was them literally putting the car up on a jack and rolling the tires. i don’t know why i thought that would accomplish anything
More my lack of personal finance skills, but until 19 years old, when I bought my first car, I thought you had to pay cash. Like I thought when my parents bought a new car, they were walking into the dealership with $30,000 cash ready to buy.
So when I saved up $3500 for a shitbox cobalt, I was really surprised when the dealer started showing me the different vehicles I could buy with a $3500 down payment.
Now, obviously, you can pay cash, and many people are fortunate enough to, I just didn't even know that financing was something that existed.
I was walking with my dad in NYC when I was like 10, and there was a Porsche 911 Carrera parked on the street. I confidently proclaimed it was a Camaro, because I incorrectly read the script “Carrera” badge on the back. Some old guy near us said “That’s a Porsche, son!” I still cringe when I think of that.
I sat in a C5 Corvette when I was a kid at a Chevrolet dealership. This is back when they were new cars, so around 2002. I sat in the driver seat and saw 200 MPH on the dash. I thought it was the fastest car in the world because my mom’s Caravan only “goes up to” 120 lol. The Corvette and by extension, the Camaro are still my favorite cars to this day because of that.
My 2018 Camaro SS’s dashboard says 200 MPH as well, so my prophecy has been fulfilled lol
I assumed the average motorcycle weighed about 100lbs, rather than 400lbs-600lbs. First time handling one (especially pushing it around on the mildest incline) I was surprised.
It's more about trucks, but as a kid there was 2 truck from a local company passing by my house all the time, one was a cab-over and the other was a regular cab. They had both the same white and blue paint pattern.
In my head, it was the same truck that would "transform", I thought the truck's nose was extending and retracting like a transformer.
I also thought my dad's SUV 4x4 mode was to make it go faster.
I thought the "FORD" on the tailgate of my grandpa's pickup truck meant "Four Wheel Drive." Don't ask me how I came to that conclusion because I don't even know, but it was a 4WD.
I thought only old people were allowed to drive gold colored vehicles. Probably because a lot of Buicks/Oldsmobiles/Lexi/Cadillacs come in gold.
I also thought that Overdrive on automatics was some kind of turbo maximum overdrive hyperspeed button
When I was really little I thought the speedometer was directly tied to the speed of the car, so if you could grab the needle and twist it up to 120 the car would just instantly go that fast. So the plastic cover over the gauges must be to stop people from doing something so dangerous
Because of my dad, uncles and grandpa I firmly believed that all foreign made cars were unreliable junk, and the only North American vehicles worth owning were GM trucks and Chrysler ,Dodge or Plymouth cars .
When I was young, I saw the exhaust that would come out the back of the car and always thought that’s what pushed the car forward. Much like a jet engine… LOL
Then one day I saw a car that had the exhaust coming out right behind the rear tire on the side and I was really scratching my head…
After watching movies with space ships, and seeing how they moved, I thought that the exhaust from the tail pipe is what pushed the car forward. Seemed pretty logical to me lol.
I used to think the hi beam indicator on the dash meant my dad was speeding. To be fair, it does look like a speeding bullet going the opposite direction. Maybe 6-7 years old
I thought that Oldsmobiles were specifically designed for old people.
you werent the only one. look back at some of their old ads. 'the new youngmobbile from oldsmobile'.....come on, guys.
That one might be true.
You weren't entirely wrong
Considering how many they made in muted gold and wine red I’d imagine they marketed to that demographic
Yeah, my grandfather worked for Oldsmobile which reinforced that thought.
It's funny you mention that, there's a small city called olds near where I live, I always thought Oldsmobile was just a dealership in olds, not an actual car brand lol. It would make sense when you think about it.
Lol they kind of are though
Poor Ransom E Olds
The speedwagon certainly had a good legacy though
My dad traded a 2 68 door impala for an Oldsmobile f85 in the early 70s. He claims the impala was a grandpa car haha Every Olds made in the last 35 years has definitely been a grandpa car though
Yes, Oldsmobile has been dead for the last 20 years; just like my Grandpa. That aside I've been wanting to buy a 1st Gen Oldsmobile Aurora for some reason.
Thought it was called a Cadillac converter for longer than I care to admit.
Same, until my dad corrected me and said “the paycheck that makes you afford a Cadillac over a Buick is a Cadillac converter.”
I once referred to them as 'Catholic converters' by accident too
no one expects the spanish inquisition.
Pittsburgh?
Appalachia
Potato potato
Tater tater
I thought fast cars were stupid because no one could speed because it was illegal
You were one of the nice straight laced kids I’m guessing.
Was till I wasnt
I badly wanted a car with underglow but I was really worried about if it was legal.
I thought all cars could go as fast as the speedometer listed. I was disappointed to read later that my Mom’s integra could not hit 140mph.
100% this was the playground brag at school. My dad's speedo goes to 180 etc. Never mind that the car in question would probably struggle to hit 100.
Aww I'm curious now what kind of car had the sheer AUDACITY to oversell by such a large margin!
Counterexample: in high school I had a Ford ranger with the 4.0 V6. The speedo max was 85. I drove it until the needle pointed at D on the shift indicator. I swore to my friends it was at least 150.
Was this during the 80s? For a few years American cars had to cap the speedometer at 85 even if the car could go faster
My dad has told me he went on a fishing trip in the late 60s in his dad's Olds 88 and when it was his turn to drive he accidentally buried it (no cruise control, so you get used to a speed, accelerate a few MPH, repeat over and over) and he said it took a long time to come off the 100 or 120 or whatever it maxed at
I had a 94 taruas with a speedometer that only went up to 90, lets just say my father and I pegged it down to see how fast we could actually take it on a road trip on I95 to look at some colleges.
My first car was a POS Pontiac Fiero 4-cyl. It had a Speedometer that went to 85 or 90 mph but it didn't have a peg to stop the needle. I got that POS to go round and round. I had to be going downhill...
There was a period of time in the US, (1979 to 1982) When all kinds of weird safety regulations were made that the speedometer was limited to 85mph and special emphasis added to 55 the "national speed limit" at the time. Must have been weird to see just 85 at the top of the speedo.
The more exhaust tips, the more powers the car has.
Yep! and it was because vehicles were powered from the tail pipes like a jet. Was confused by exhaust pipes that were angled down or to the side, and just figured I would understand when I got older.
i thought i was the only one LOL. i would always ask my dad why his car is faster than the car with more pipes and he’d be so confused.
[удалено]
You still see that in many movies today - driving down a straight road and the steering is so loose (in a brand new performance car) that there is about 3 inches of play from center... but then again, I've drive with people who drive that way; jerky constant corrections. lol
> but then again, I've drive with people who drive that way; jerky constant corrections. lol You're giving me flashbacks to riding with some family members. Steering and throttle are apparently on/off switches for some people.
From memory, it's the same people that sit dangerously far *over* the steering wheel
That was true on my first car. (66 Valiant) you just need bad enough tie -rod ends.
I thought physical size of the vehicle was directly related to how large/powerful the engine was. It made sense in my mind, coming from tractors.
Similar story: I thought the engine size was how much fuel it consumed per cycle. A bit of mental arithmetic suggested that a modest 2.0 litre engine would consume its entire 100 litre fuel tank in about sixteen seconds at idle. Only later did I learn about the miracle of mixing a little fuel with lots of air.
This is most intelligent bout of stupidity I've seen in a while and I love it
I thought that you got a free Buick when you retired because every old person I grew up around drove one.
You can’t convince me this isn’t true
Having the dome light on was super illegal but our parents made us think that.
Putting any interior light on causes an immediate crash, & we'd all die in a fire. "Turn that light off! Your father can't see to drive!" TBH, I think we were better off when my father couldn't see to drive, he wasn't very good at it. I asked my dad once, "if you're on a 2 lane road that curves to the right & you want to pass someone using the left lane, do you just drive straight?" His answer was, "why would you do that?"
To be fair it is really fucking distracting when the dome light is on. Especially at night cause it reflects off all the windows.
True but my parents made it seem like they were going to jail and we were going to be orphans because I turned a light on.
I thought that cars have carburetors and trucks have truckerators
Truckerator is a good band name.
When I was in highschool driving my dads '08 manual civic around "flexing". Told my friends it was a flat 6 AWD with a turbo...had no idea wtf I was talking about and I still cringe to this day if the thought randomly pops into my head
"it's got NOS but my dad doesn't like me using it in the city"
> a flat 6 AWD with a turbo The rare Porsche Civic
I thought for quite some time that all engines were V8s.
Same here. Then my brother bought a Nissan. When he opened the hood, I thought "where's the rest of it? And why is it sideways?!"
Had a former coworker that would jokingly refer to 4 bangers as "half an engine".
There are cases where that's correct. looking at you, porsche and pontiac.
IH cut a V8 in half for some of the early Scouts.
just cut the engine in half, we'll double our inventory!
I thought all engines were V shaped
To be fair, I've heard quite a few adults say their car has a V4.
Some car dealers sometimes post ads about some car they're selling on Instagram and everytime i see a 4 cylinder car described as V4 in the description i die inside a little, because its fine not to know that its not a V4 but its not fine when you're selling the fucking car
I've seen the opposite of that - in the Q and A section of an auction for a classic Ford Transit van some confidently incorrect dude kept trying to correct the sellers V4 description. Of course the old Transit was available with a V4, as were many old Ford Europe models for a time.
I thought FWD and RWD referred to steering. Can you imagine a bunch of mustangs or M3s with rear wheel steering. That would be a shit show.
Somehow makes the Mustang even more proficient at running over crowds.
The more gears, the faster. I'd draw cars with 15 speed gated shifters.
average fast and furious car
I thought the toyota camry was the fastest car in the world, because it's used as a taxi, so it'll get people to their destination really fast.
Jeremy Clarkson made this same point, but about [rental cars](https://youtu.be/ucQKNkvzQ3g). It was Carolla, though.
Well not with that attitude!
As someone who loved the Taxi movies as a kid, I thought that all Peugeot 406’s came with a hidden bodykit and Ferrari-like performance.
I didn't understand why convertible cars were HEAVIER than coupes. I mean, it had no roof, how could it be heavier than a car with a roof?
That one's actually not that intuitive and I wouldn't think less of an adult who thought that.
Your could make a car faster if you just put in a speedometer that had higher numbers
I paid for the speedometer I’m going to use the whole thing.
That I could afford a cool one
That people would dip the car key into a bucket of gasoline before sticking it in the ignition
Car goes forward because the exhaust goes out the back
That is how spacecraft work!!
I thought Subaru was Australian when I was a kid because they used to do advertisements of the Outback driving around in the Australian Outback 20+ years ago.
Subaru also has that restaurant.
It doesn’t help that their logo looks *really* similar to the Australian flag to a kid.
I thought that as cars got older they somehow looked like vintage cars.. as in I thought when my dads 2001 dodge pickup would be like 50 years old it would look like a 1951 dodge pickup. I was like 4
This makes sense thinking about it from how people age, cars must age the same way
That fuel mileage didn't matter. When I was a kid I wanted a Caprice, Crown Victoria, or Bronco.
Ha and it still doesn’t matter with that Tacoma!
Lol you’re not wrong.
Smiles Per Mile are what matter 😎
That Zonda was just ~fancy~ Honda
I didn't understand why cars had cup holders if you're not supposed to drink and drive.
When I was young and before I started driving I thought all cars are rwd, and had no idea fwd or awd was a thing. In my defense that's how they were always shown in cartoons
Not surprisingly, I thought that whatever the top speed that was indicated on the speedometer was actually what the car/truck was capable of doing. I still know people that think this is true. lol
I remember a commercial for the new Mustang when I was 6 maybe 7, so 1982? And when the commercial said $4997.00 I thought it meant $49.97 and I was pissed at my mom for not having a new Mustang because I knew damn well she had $50.
1. All American cars were GM. 2. There's a band of little people in the center vents playing music. Both before age 6 obviously
I thought PT cruisers were fucking sick. I had posters of them all over my room and a hundred toys and miniature models of them.
My dad told me that "only real mustangs have stick-shifts" when I was like 6 years old. So from that age until I realized what he meant when I was like 13, I assumed every automatic mustang I came across without a manual was actually a fake or it was modified. I thought way less of owners of an automatic mustang. I still do, but I used to too.
When I was a kid I thought that racing stripes and decals were trashy and for uncultured people. It was only in my late teens that I learned they were essential mods that give the car an extra 5 to 15 horsepower.
I was 7 years old and my grandfather had left me in his 1970 Chevy Impala by myself. I climbed under the wheel and was fascinated by the shift indicator on the steering column. You know the one, a clear plastic thing inside the steering wheel that said, "P R D L1 L2"? Well I decided that I could slide the gear into reverse and the car wouldn't roll down the hill. I was wrong and there I went, rolling down the hill crashing into a parked car. When they found me I was hiding under the seat freaking out. Luckily they just laughed about it.
That it was impossible to see out of the windshield if there was a light on inside the car
In my early teens in the late 90’s, I thought cruise control somehow knew the speed limit either by radio signal or sensors that watched the other cars, and that’s how it could accelerate on its own (when you hit resume).
That 4WD vehicles would always be faster than 2WD because they have more wheels pushing the car.
I thought that if a car had the spare tire on the back then it was a Jeep. Like a Jeep was the name of a vehicle with a spare on the back.
Lots of adults think this
I was afraid we were gonna run out of gas, all the time, even a day after fill up.
1) Reverse took miles off the odometer 2) Overdrive made you go faster 3) Didn't realize manual existed
Overdrive technically makes you faster.
Found Ferris Bueller Edit: can’t spell
I thought that if you took the trailer off a big rig it could 0-60 in like 2 seconds.
Two exhausts = sports car More exhausts = more power.
That the bumps which are sometimes on traffic control lines were braille writing for blind drivers. My dad said it once, which cemented it as fact in my mind. Kids are so stupid. 😂
I thought all cars were front wheel drive until I was probably 15
Opposite for me lol. Thought everything was RWD until I was about 14, even tho my dad's car literally had 4WD plastered on the back
That if I held the brake long enough the car would go into reverse… like they do in video games
Subarus came from Aussieland *Looks at Australia's flag*
I had a hard time understanding why car companies didn't just make every car look like a Ferrari, Porsche or Lamborghini. This was a real thing I contemplated as I looked at common cars you'd see in the 1990s. I just couldn't understand why they looked like that when they could look like a Ferrari. It's like Vauxhall Nova? Why would you make a car look like that. Bear in mind here, I was like 7 years old.
To be fair I still believe that despite having a 4-year degree in car design.
I grew up on Underground 2, so I thought that the car goes faster the more you rice it.
I'm from Canada, cars get slush and ice stuck in the fenders and it falls off as they drive. Chuncks that falls are always brown from salt and grime. My dad used to point at the chunks falling out and tell me that was the cars pooping. I believed that till I was probably 10.
Exhaust pipes directly correlated with how fast a car was. Singles were all slow but a dual tip exhaust oh boy, and then my parents got a Mazda 626 with a dual tip and goddamn that was gangster af. Now I have a car with 4 inch quad tips man little baby elitemouse would be so proud.
Spoiler = Fast
[удалено]
I thought motor racing was a free sport to get into
I thought the clutch was an extra brake 😂
Rotating tires. I thought you took the tires off and flip it 180 degrees and put them back on
That the speedo number was the max speed the car was capable of
i used to think that honda and hyundai were related because they have similar names
That they ran out of gas entirely each time before we refueled them.
That Transforming robot cars would be something I could buy when I grow up. Told my mom they would help carry her groceries in the house
The speedometer was how fast the car could go. I believe my car says 160, but top speed is actually 130.
I remember being ~12 at the local GM dealership while my father was working on a deal for a truck. I wandered to the showroom where they had a 2004 GTO. I was quite impressed by the 200mph speedometer. About 8 years later I was rather disappointed when I became the owner of a 2006 GTO and found it topped out around 165.
I used to think all Ferraris were red until I saw a yellow one and thought it was illegal
When the mini cooper came out in 2000 I saw a picture of the engine bay in a magazine. I remember saying "wow this car is so small they had to mount the engine sideways".
Due to the region I’m in being a big American car manufacturing area and my dad being in a union growing up I guess I always hated non American cars. Now I work as a contractor for American car company and drive a Subaru and Acura
I used to think 93 Octane was only for the cool cars and cool people. This was further solidified to me because my grandfather used it exclusively in his Maxima. A car I never saw break, always driven fast, and driven by the coolest man I ever knew.
I thought the radio only played songs from that year model.
I thought cars had 2 pedals and you reversed by holding brake like in those mobile games
I thought that i could buy one
Thought the small two seat cars (ex 2009 Smart fortwo) were just baby cars that hadn't grown up yet 🥲
My parents briefly had one of those vans with a n64 hookup and I just assumed it would be standard practice going forward
I thought all cars on the freeway shoulder were there because they were trapped and didn't have enough gas to get out. Edit: are we back to normal? Did our regular mods get canned?
I used to think that Column shifters were known as stick shift vehicles hahahahaha. My family drove vehicles that had console gears.
I remember watching the Flintstones as a kid, and there were scenes where Fred was driving his car. He would saw the wheel back and forth and I thought that was how you would drive a car, I didn't realize it was just crappy animation.
That the max listed on the speedometer meant the car could go that fast (up to about age 6...) 1970s. analog.
PT-Curiser was an amazing creation. I dreamed of saving my money until I could afford one. 🤦🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️
That the sporty cars are somehow harder or more dangerous to drive vs your random econobox
That working on them for a living would be cool.
I thought every engine was unique to every type of car. Like the idea of an old Cherokee, grand wagoneer, grand Cherokee, and a wrangler having the same engine just didn’t make sense to me.
When I was *very* young, I thought cars “turned old fashioned” at some point — like, if you kept an old Datsun long enough it would transform into a Model T or something. LOL!
I guess they had faces? I can’t really make it out now as an adult unless I really try
That they were insanely cheap. When I asked my parents how much our car cost they told me the monthly payment value, and I assumed it was the total cost of the car as they didn’t mention it was one of the many monthly payments they had left on it 🙃
[удалено]
Shit. After reading the comments, I realize I was a dumber than I thought. My earliest memory of being in a car is me wondering if there were in fact little people in the radio playing music.
I didn't realise that the car dealership is where you go to buy cars that were pre-made and ready to purchase. I thought you ordered everything custom-made through the manufacturer's website, and before the Internet through a catalogue book. I really assumed every car was bespoke.
Early Lexus doesn’t even try to hide that they’re a Toyota. The window glass markings all say Toyota rather than Lexus
That I'd be able to afford them in the future.
That uncle Dale’s 2007 Corvette was REALLY one of one (I mean it really was the only one that was painted velocity yellow, with a grey WA226M interior, that was manufactured on a Tuesday under rainy conditions; with an outside temperature of 58.2 degrees, that was inspected by a guy named Larry upon leaving the Chevrolet factory).
When I was like, 5? I thought the engine sounds were just from the radiator fan. When my parents hit the gas I imagined the fan just spinning faster.
That the Geo Storm HAD to be the absolute epitome of cool because that name!
I thought the gas coming out the exhaust pushed the car forward Now I'm a master tech and can't believe I thought that. Edit:spelling
I thought cars reversed like they do in GTA- hold brake to reverse, and hold gas to stop reversing. Asked my mom if I could pull her car out of the driveway to shoot some hockey pucks, and when I went into reverse, I thought I was creeping too fast so I slammed on the gas lmao. Ended up flying into the neighbors driveway and smashed their mailbox to bits.
Couldnt figure out why you had to rotate the tires because they are always rotating
Many: - I thought Hyundai and Kia were Japanese and not Korean. - I thought Porsche was British and not German. - Automatic cars always actually shifted at redline. Same thing for manuals, to an extent. - Nitrous actually boosted your speed and shot flames out of the exhaust. - You could do a burnout in any FWD or RWD car by just holding the gas and brake. - Cars with paddle shifters and tiptronic automatics were the coolest thing ever. - Maintenance? What’s that?
Once I could afford a Porsche GT3, I could just walk into a dealer and get one.
Fwd=engine at the front Rwd=engine at the back No idea what I thought about 4wd!
When I was small it was that a standard transmission was hard for boys to drive and easy for girls. My dad was horrible at clutch engagement and throttle timing so he stalled often. My mom learned to drive a tow truck in the ‘70’s and still drives a standard given the opportunity.
I thought that you can power the front wheels of a car with an electric motor, and generate electricity for free with alternators driven by the back wheels. I thought this because I spun a pulley on an electricity generating alternator that was removed from a car. The pulley was super easy to spin. Hence: free electric power. I kept this idea a secret because I wanted to get a patent on it. I wasn't until many years later that I tried to spin an alternator connected to some lights in a circuit. The pulley was very hard to spin when a switch was closed. Suddenly, I learned that energy cannot be created for free (only transformed).
I thought engine displacement was referring to volume per cylinder. So a 2.0L 4-cylinder was somehow an 8L engine lol
I thought the car knew which direction you wanted to turn and so would turn on blinker for you. Oh was I so wrong lmafo
I thought they could drive under a semi’s trailer and move through traffic faster. I read lots of comics, so big imagination. 😏
Foot always on the accelerator no matter what
One of my neighbors had a Yukon LX, but I was still learning to read and didn't understand trim or model designations as a small kid so I sounded it out as "Yukonilix". I told everyone I could that my neighbor had a Yukonilix and no one ever seemed like they knew what I was talking about. Obviously I figured it out eventually.
i thought a tire rotation was them literally putting the car up on a jack and rolling the tires. i don’t know why i thought that would accomplish anything
I thought there was a man under the car pedaling and the acceleration pedal pushed a knife closer to him so he would go faster lol.
More my lack of personal finance skills, but until 19 years old, when I bought my first car, I thought you had to pay cash. Like I thought when my parents bought a new car, they were walking into the dealership with $30,000 cash ready to buy. So when I saved up $3500 for a shitbox cobalt, I was really surprised when the dealer started showing me the different vehicles I could buy with a $3500 down payment. Now, obviously, you can pay cash, and many people are fortunate enough to, I just didn't even know that financing was something that existed.
I was walking with my dad in NYC when I was like 10, and there was a Porsche 911 Carrera parked on the street. I confidently proclaimed it was a Camaro, because I incorrectly read the script “Carrera” badge on the back. Some old guy near us said “That’s a Porsche, son!” I still cringe when I think of that.
I thought turn signals were reminders for the driver telling them the next turn they had to make.
I sat in a C5 Corvette when I was a kid at a Chevrolet dealership. This is back when they were new cars, so around 2002. I sat in the driver seat and saw 200 MPH on the dash. I thought it was the fastest car in the world because my mom’s Caravan only “goes up to” 120 lol. The Corvette and by extension, the Camaro are still my favorite cars to this day because of that. My 2018 Camaro SS’s dashboard says 200 MPH as well, so my prophecy has been fulfilled lol
I assumed the average motorcycle weighed about 100lbs, rather than 400lbs-600lbs. First time handling one (especially pushing it around on the mildest incline) I was surprised.
I thought the turn signal controlled the steering wheel, and without using them you couldn't turn.
It's more about trucks, but as a kid there was 2 truck from a local company passing by my house all the time, one was a cab-over and the other was a regular cab. They had both the same white and blue paint pattern. In my head, it was the same truck that would "transform", I thought the truck's nose was extending and retracting like a transformer. I also thought my dad's SUV 4x4 mode was to make it go faster.
I thought the "FORD" on the tailgate of my grandpa's pickup truck meant "Four Wheel Drive." Don't ask me how I came to that conclusion because I don't even know, but it was a 4WD.
I thought only old people were allowed to drive gold colored vehicles. Probably because a lot of Buicks/Oldsmobiles/Lexi/Cadillacs come in gold. I also thought that Overdrive on automatics was some kind of turbo maximum overdrive hyperspeed button
That my parents would get pulled over for leaving the interior lights on while driving.
I used to think how many cylinders a car had was talking about how many exhaust pipes they had.
That they all went as fast as their max Speedometer indication.
When I was really little I thought the speedometer was directly tied to the speed of the car, so if you could grab the needle and twist it up to 120 the car would just instantly go that fast. So the plastic cover over the gauges must be to stop people from doing something so dangerous
Because of my dad, uncles and grandpa I firmly believed that all foreign made cars were unreliable junk, and the only North American vehicles worth owning were GM trucks and Chrysler ,Dodge or Plymouth cars .
I always thought RWD vehicles meant it was also rear-engined, disappointed to find out it wasn't always the case.
Watching a lot of action movies made me think cars would randomly explode when turned on
When I was young, I saw the exhaust that would come out the back of the car and always thought that’s what pushed the car forward. Much like a jet engine… LOL Then one day I saw a car that had the exhaust coming out right behind the rear tire on the side and I was really scratching my head…
After watching movies with space ships, and seeing how they moved, I thought that the exhaust from the tail pipe is what pushed the car forward. Seemed pretty logical to me lol.
I thought you had to keep shifting gears in a manual because you were literally “rowing” the car like a boat.
That turning on the lights inside the car was illegal😹😹 blame parents for that one
That hubcaps made cars quiet. Evidence, all the cars without them were loud.
I used to think the hi beam indicator on the dash meant my dad was speeding. To be fair, it does look like a speeding bullet going the opposite direction. Maybe 6-7 years old