Bob Lutz version.
Bob Lutz version.
Ah, James Garner. How many teenage boys have you inspired?
At one point in my highly varied automotive life I found myself driving a 1976 Ford Courier. 1.8 liters of kitten level fury, four speed manual transmission, four wheel manually adjusted drum brakes and an under-dash hand brake lever you had to pull and twist to release. One snowy night I practiced doing the Rockford in a parking lot (while a bored security guard watched with amusement) until I mastered it. I figure if I could do it in that, I could do it in anything...yet only did it once that I can recall in a company fleet Ford Taurus in the grass.
To do it in the Courier (Weber carb swap FTW!) I had to be flat to the floor and screaming in reverse, do a quick left-right bobble with the wheel to unsettle the front, spin the wheel hard with one hand to rotate it while using the E-brake with the other, release the E-brake and grab the shifter into second, straighten the wheel and mat the accelerator again. Though my hat is off the Jim Garner I'm betting he never had to do all of THAT!
I can be a business here ,
An old firebird , a sports jacket and a class on how to do it ,
I wonder how long the firebird would last ?
californiamilleghia said:I can be a business here ,
An old firebird , a sports jacket and a class on how to do it ,
I wonder how long the firebird would last ?
Rock-U ^tm. Brilliant!
If you shift at the right point, it isn’t hard on the tranny. Right as you get to 90*, drop it into gear (unless there is a reason not to, I just toss the shifter down until it stops - usually in low).
In Drive, we did a reverse 270 drift in the mustang During testing, the computer kept disallowing drive to engage until the car had slowed down to maybe 5 mph. So we would throw this great reverse 180 and the car would just coast
We asked and asked for picture cars to have that feature deleted and they kept giving us bogus excuses. Finally they started arguing that it was going to munch the tranny. I tried in vain to explain that when we shift, the rear wheels are not rotating (or just starting to roll forwards - better a little late than a little early) so it’s no harder on the car than shifting in the parking lot but they couldn’t wrap their minds around it. We eventually got a manual transmission car to do it in. They fought us so unusually hard and lied numerous times about having it deprogrammed that we suspect they must have had a sweet buy-back deal
I used to start unwinding the steering wheel at that mid-point but learned that if you keep the initial input there longer with a rwd and time it right, you can hang the back out on exit (I did this on john Wick 2, right after he takes out the motorcyclist. It actually could have drifted out more but I had to back out with the camera vehicle being as close as it was).
Both in life and Rockfords,, brakes only slow you down :(
In reply to jfryjfry :
Ooh, I'm gonna have to try that, with the leaving the wheel turned a little longer!
Pff. I’ve been doing J turns since I was 13. That’s amateur hour. Automatics, manual, fwd, rwd, don’t matter. I’m not impressed until you can 360° into a power slide around a corner and finish like a gentleman. Nothin’ but net.
Wow, yeah, thanks for sharing. I would have expected more, too, like two or three per episode.
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