For those of you who didn't catch my reference.

2 Weeks ago, I was involved in my first car accident (I'm 20) and I totaled my baby. Trust me, she was slow and she needed a lot of work, but you never forget your first car :'^).

It was a Purple Pearl Metallic 1994 3.4L V6 w/ ~210k on the day it was totaled. I picked her up four years ago from some guy in the middle of nowhere, who wanted $1500 w/ 160k miles.

She needed some tlc from the start, but I made her come out. The paint, for being 20 years old, was in fantastic shape. It was all stock (why would I put massive work into it?), but it was finally starting to go - rear intake gasket just went and I was losing about a qt/week of oil. I was looking at doing a swap in the body, just because it was in such good shape.

From what I can recall from the accident, I was driving in the left lane about ~60 in a 55, roughly 9am, roads were still misty from the rain overnight.

The right lane was clear - the car in front of me slammed on her brakes when we were doing 60 and I was tailed only 2-3 cars behind, but because of the roads, I knew I wasn't going to stop on time, so I swerved to avoid hitting her. On swerving, the car fishtailed, (and after looking at pictures), found out that the passenger rear tire popped, and that's when I lost control my the vehicle and rear ended some guy's truck. On impact, the car caught on fire (I'm assuming the fuel lines snapped in the front of the car, but maybe one of you can see it), so I frantically crawled out the passenger side (as the driver side was pinned under the guys truck). No one was injured, I walked away with cuts and bruises (and glass in my legs) but I'm alive.

Here's some pictures of before the crash:








And after:









Everything in the car was ruined - as it was all soaked after the fire dept. put it out.

It was an old car, so I only had liability on it (if I hit someone), so everyone was covered but me. It was leaking gas and other fluids, so we took it right to the junkyard and got $300 for it on the spot - shame though, I was so shaken up, I should have stripped it for everything I could of before doing that, but oh well.

And that's the end of that story. I'm pursing the options of another F-Body. I wanted to stay away from the 3.4L. Too many issues on this motor, hence why it was used for a short period of time. I really only have about $3k to spend atm, but I found a mint '02 Firebird (v6 again, 3.8l this time tho - because my insurance will kill me if I don't), with 100k for $2500. I'm going to check it out tomorrow so hopefully that happens.

If you have any questions, let me know.

 

I am glad you walked away.
Faithful service and it kept you alive in a very dangerous situation. Your emotional attachment to that car is very understandable even it was not your first car. If you didn’t have that attachment you would not be a car guy.

These fourth gens are built really well. The fuel line breaking is not surprising looking at where you hit but normally when the fuel line breaks the car is complete engulfed in flames long before the fire trucks get there. Cars are normally burned so bad just telling what color the car was is difficult. Engine oil can ignite and would burn much slower that gas.

 

It was probably a mixture of the two. It was definitely the gas lines, it would have been worse, had someone on the other side of the road not pull over and use a fire extinguisher to keep the fire down until the Fire Dept. came.

 

wow, good to hear you got out ok. believe it or not, your lucky day

 

glad your ok, thanks for the pics.

What was it like when the airbag went off? Any pics on the passenger bag/dash? just curious do know what it looks like after inflation lol

 

Dash was really damaged pre-accident, but here's the passenger airbag. The only thing I remember from inside the car was me going 'Oh ****', seeing the passenger airbag deploy, and then the car on fire. I didn't feel the driver side go off (obv it did). Here's the passenger side:

 

wow!! thanks for the response

One more question - did the driver bag hurt much when it slammed you in the face?