When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
Auto Detailing and AppearanceShare tips and tricks on how to make your Third Gen shine! Get opinions on products or how something tasteful looks on your Chevrolet Camaro or Pontiac Firebird.
89 - total frame twistage - a tree collied with the car at low speed - 80k miles
"a tree collied with the car" those bastards NEVER yield.
the pics are probably long gone, but i had my license for 3 months and learned the hard way that bald tires + rain and leaves are no fun. Rear end stepped out at 20-25 mph on a sharp turn, went to correct and the fronts decided to do a little dance too. I got things straightened out about .002 seconds before she hoped the the curb and a tree collided with the the rear quarter. Luckily it wasn't hard enough to pop the hatch glass and the car was already scheduled for paint the following month. I just added a quarter panel install to the work for an extra 500$. it was on the side of my sig pic, clearly only emotional scars remain today....
My God this is the saddest thred I have ever seen. My heart sunk more and more with every story. I'm deeply sorry for everyone who has lost their Thirds in accidents and wrecks. I luckily have my Third gen and will hopefully never crash it or wreck it. about a year before I bought mine I was 17 and was taking my dog for a walk around the neighborhood. I walked around the corner and saw a giant tower of black smoke. I walked... well ran, to see what the commotion was and there on the street was a third gen Firebird engulfed in flames. The fire trucks came shortly and by the time they got it out all that was left was a shell of a Firebird. I talked to the owner who seemed to be fairly un affected by the event. I asked him how he was so calm after watching his car go up in flames when he told me that this was his new project. After talking about his car and how I hoped to one day own one he opened his garage for me and that's where his 1990 IROC was sitting. Exact same as my GTA as far as options, year and color but his is a hard top not a T-top. I believe his exact quote was Well as long as this one's still safe I'll be happy.
man my wreck was nothing compared to these, sad thing was it got totaled and happened while i was waiting in the drive thru at mc donalds. truck infront of me got tired of waiting and backed up real fast... so much for using mirrors.
jacked my hood up, cracked my bumper, broke the headlights and headlight bar... it has been in my family since like 93 and has over 300k miles so to insurance its worth like 1200 bucks.... never thought to have it appraised.
Little rain and a lotta curb (plus too heavy of a right foot). I was very lucky.
Sent the rim off to Nu Wheels, $125.00 to fix and should have the rim back this week.
Last edited by CrimsonDragon; Dec 7, 2008 at 11:40 PM.
Any thoughts or opinions as to what I should do with mine? I have to talk to insurance company today and see what I can do with it. If I had a house with a garage I would consider dumping it in there and storing it till I can find a fairly mint project to use my good interior parts on. I hate to just scrap it and I don't really have a ton of time to figure all this out. I keep seeing more and more banged up third gens...I'm still in shock over mine and its been a few days for it to wear off...oh well.
After my mom spun it out in the rain and went offroading backwards. Luckily she walked away without a scratch. The underside of the car was gone though (these pics only show half the carnage)
Might want to also add, car had 56,000 miles on it and a brand new paintjob that cost way way too much. Oh well.
Wow What caught on fire first? the car or the house?
The burned out 84 Z is my former daily driver. I had retired it and was using an angle grinder to cut up the floor plan for a potential donor patch for another Camaro ( I'd never do that again ). As I was zipping long the trans tunnel towards the firewall, I hacked through the fuel line that passes over the tunnel ( carbed LG-4 ). I didn't notice the puddle of fuel that had started to leak onto the floor and when I touched my grinder down to make another pass....POOF! Took about 5 minutes to have flames 20 feet in the air. Fire department about 5 minutes after that.
no offence but my mom will never be driving Rockie I gave my mom a ride to walmart in it before I oulled it off the road for the winter.
Yea shes not allowed to drive either of my cars anymore. I love her to death but she just totaled her own car too (this time it wasnt her fault but still) No more camaro for her.
Jose -
There must be some storage yards around where you can rent a space. Talk with your insurance agent and see what it will cost you to buy it back. It was pretty straight forward when another car of mine was totalled and I wanted my new motor out of it. Keep the Third Gen faith...
Yah I'm thinking that...I've never cared too much for lawyers but mine may be a saving grace this time. I will have to see how much it will cost to buy it back and store somewhere...the parts (headers, spohn suspension, interior, etc...) are too go to just junk. I kinda wondering about the integrity of the engine...I went today and took some pics, which I will try to get up this week. The radiator did not bust and the engine except for the air intake and all that plastic crap is appears decent...we'll see though, I might be able to resurrect her in a new form or something, I guess I've needed a good project...more to come guys!
Anyway, here's my little contribution, after a woman in a CRV rear ended me. Three bright red traffic lights, one over each lane, and cars already stopped, about two to three cars deep. How could she not see THAT? I didn't even bother asking if it was makeup or a cell phone...
but man, I love Belairdirect. My original purchase price was under $1000 canadian, and the damage was nearly twice that, at 1800. First they asked me if I did any restoration and how much - faithfully noting it all down in my file - rebuilt engine, new transmission, interior parts, lots of bodywork... apparently, it's now worth about 8K, they say... They also asked me to let them know when I finish the restoration and give it the final paint job so that they can cover it properly. And apparently my insurance was doubled now, and I actually pay a bit less. Wow. Are all insurance companies this cool?
Doesn't look so bad on the outside, but the back wall of the trunk went in a couple of inches, the rebar was GONE, and I'm still finding little cracks here and there in plastic bits of the interior, or tailight housings, etc.
What was left of the rebar... if she was going any faster, it would have broken in two (was rotten) and the damage would be pretty much catastrophic.
Now, since it was pointless to repaint parts on a car that's going to be completely repainted anyway, the money saved there went into fixing the underside, parts of fenders and quarter panels, and even completely patching my rotten doors. I just resprayed the black anti-rust coating myself afterwards.
That was just before New Year, and they didn't manage to finish everything before closing down for a 10-day holiday, so I'm still going back to get the GFX back on.
the owner of the shop, who's pretty much a friend by now, said the accident must have been a Christmas gift from heavens, LOL in the end, we ended up fixing up a lot more.
87 iroc full optioned car had under 36k miles on it
car has alil bit of history, was one of our shops friends who owned the car
he bought the car new in 87 fully optioned. the car was stolen within the first year and recovered a month later striped.insurance paid to have the car put back together.
he then drove the car for another 2 or 3 years before letting his son take it to prom, were he crashed it into a parked schoolbus doing a decent speed.
car sat in his driveway after till late sometime in 2006 when i picked up the car for 400$'s,
the l98 and trans went into another 3rdgen while all the suspension and some interior pieces/tailights made there way into my 89 rs, and the 9bolt rear end got sold to a guy down in maryland.
the car was fixable and i would to have love to have repaired it but i couldnt afford to have the frame pulled and paint work done, but it did help a few more 3rdgens live on
this is all that was left when i sent it to the junkyard
i still have many parts form this thing in storage at my shop i dont think i left anything in it when i sent it to the junkyard
Last edited by project89; Jan 4, 2009 at 01:11 AM.
cant really complain too much after seeing this thread, i thought i had it rough lol
Girl pulled out in front of me while i was on a test drive with a datalogging setup my school provided me with. I was pulling back into the parking lot and she rolled the stop at the end of the lane marked with a big red STOP sign.... on her phone...imagine that, she looked right, then went and never saw me comin, i was clippin along at about 20 because it was almost time for me to head to work and i didnt wanna have to rush there. So she pulled out, then looked left, and slammed on her brakes halfway thru the turn. I cut right, locked up the wheels and drilled her in the side of her car with my front left portion. Thank god i hadnt done my struts at that point because i dipped low enough to save my GFX She got out and told me it was my fault, even though its on tape, i watched that thing like 15 times and every time i couldnt help but laugh because her little subaru wagon was MESSED up lol , i had a rippled fender, cracked front fascia and a blown turn light (whoopie) i didnt realize how bad it was until watching it because her whole car was slung into the curb and smashed in while i walked away (sorta) unscathed. i wasnt about to call my insurance on it becuase id rather avoid having a big black claim on my record before i turn 20 lol
That really sucks...i hate this thread...i hope it doesnt happen to mine!! I just got it all painted up!! check it out below!! Im worried about driving it now especially because of all the old folks who run lights and signs lol ohh man...
yeah im JUST now recovering totally from it (my car i mean) i just picked up a new (to me) front clip with the aero GFX for $20 at a pick n pull by me, im finishing up paitning my dads bike and after we roll it out of the booth my car goes in
sorry guys, but this is a little off car year, but i was watching destroyed in seconds and wut happened to pop up is a 69 camaro. short way of putting. is that the guy who built the car was running down the track that day running low 10's. decided to let his friend drive it since he worked on it with him. sorry have to see if the video post on here, becasue it had a song on it that was copyrighted or soemhting.
cant really complain too much after seeing this thread, i thought i had it rough lol
Girl pulled out in front of me while i was on a test drive with a datalogging setup my school provided me with. I was pulling back into the parking lot and she rolled the stop at the end of the lane marked with a big red STOP sign.... on her phone...imagine that, she looked right, then went and never saw me comin, i was clippin along at about 20 because it was almost time for me to head to work and i didnt wanna have to rush there. So she pulled out, then looked left, and slammed on her brakes halfway thru the turn. I cut right, locked up the wheels and drilled her in the side of her car with my front left portion. Thank god i hadnt done my struts at that point because i dipped low enough to save my GFX She got out and told me it was my fault, even though its on tape, i watched that thing like 15 times and every time i couldnt help but laugh because her little subaru wagon was MESSED up lol , i had a rippled fender, cracked front fascia and a blown turn light (whoopie) i didnt realize how bad it was until watching it because her whole car was slung into the curb and smashed in while i walked away (sorta) unscathed. i wasnt about to call my insurance on it becuase id rather avoid having a big black claim on my record before i turn 20 lol
my god...
3 years later and this thread still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. What a horrible shame to people that really invest time into getting to KNOW their car and some idiot in a minivan, oblivious to the world around them, cuts you off. God have mercy on thirdgens...
This thread makes me sad....it's sad to see another third gen gone forever. I hope this never happens to my car. If my car has any chance of being fixed, it's going to get fixed
This thread makes me want to get a new daily driver. Maybe I'll try to get my neighbors 02 ford escort with 28k miles on it for free if she stops driving
Sorry to revive the thread but I have a couple of stories to share about my GTA and the **** I got into recently. In December of '09 I got into my 1st fender bender (literally) which wasn't too bad compared to the scary pics I've seen on this thread. I was doing a u-turn onto an opposite road and thinking I was cool in my GTA, I gunned it causing the car to fish-tail right, than left, then right again slamming into a pole denting the DS fender just in front of the wheel all the way down. I ended up breaking a chunk off the DS rear wheel as well but luckily the tire didn't get flat until I got to my friend's house nearby. I ended up buying a replacement off of a member on these boards so that was fixed.
As if that wasn't enough, my GTA (and me) ended up in a ditch near where I crashed the first time on February of last year. I was unharmed thank god and admittantly fled the scene. The next day I found out the car was at the impound and had to pay a hefty price to get it out. The GTA now needs a new windshield, front bumper cover, PS fender and gfx panels.
Third times a charm I guess because I got into some more a couple of days ago 3/16/11. After a 'few' drinks I got kinda hungry and decided to take a trip to a nearby carls jr. Getting into "cool" mode again I was making a left turn and decided to gun it. The car fish-tailed and I lost control just like my 1st incident but smashed into a bus stop sign this time. My recently replaced DS fender, door gfx and both tires on that side now need to be replaced .
Mr. policeman caught up with me as well and long story short I ended up with an extreme dui, criminal damage and my car impounded with no job to pay for the fees to get it out. Luckily I didn't go to jail that night but do have to spend a mandatory 1 night there soon (yay). I now have to find a way to come up with some money to pay for the damages and fines. You guys don't know how embarassing it is to just type this and would just like to say that the worst thing you could put your third gen through is driving it while under the influence of alcohol and crashing. Its not worth it! I apologize for the long essay but I seriously needed to vent this out. BTW heres what my car looked like in its cherry form from the fender forward. The rear is unmolested thank god.
Drunk driving is no joke! At least you didnt hurt yourself or anyone else! Couldve been worse. We all make mistakes, at least you wont be paying for it the rest of your life. In my younger years, I drove home drunk more than once. Never got caught, though. (Just lucky.) They suspend your lic?
Last edited by drknow90rs_ss@y; Mar 20, 2011 at 02:48 AM.
I bought this 84 Z28 from a friend who at this point wrecked it for a second time. Once his fault, not so bad and then this time.
Car needed entire front clip, here is the unlucky donor
Under construction, changed it to '85 GFX at this point from the donor
Turned out pretty nice, this is how it was when I sold it to my future brother in law.
Drunk driving is no joke! At least you didnt hurt yourself or anyone else! Couldve been worse. We all make mistakes, at least you wont be paying for it the rest of your life. In my younger years, I drove home drunk more than once. Never got caught, though. (Just lucky.) They suspend your lic?
Yeah I've actually driven buzzed many times and never got caught either; luck was on my side too I guess except for recently. My license was already suspended prior to this incident so I'm also bieng fined for driving on a suspended license . Like one of me friends told me "you live and you learn" and trust me I've learned from this situation to NEVER EVER do it again.
It sucks to learn things the hard way, but on the bright side: The lessons tend to stick! At least you will have some time on your hands to get it fixed!
It sucks to learn things the hard way, but on the bright side: The lessons tend to stick! At least you will have some time on your hands to get it fixed!
Thats for sure! I haven't been able to keep my mind off of the possible 30 days in jail or fines I have to pay not to mention the time its going to take to get this all taken care of. My baby is still impounded which makes the whole situation that much worse. Its just not worth the headaches!
Man that really sux 88 trans am she probably thought she could get some easy money from your insurance company. Did you get the car fixed?
Last edited by The_Phoenix; Mar 24, 2011 at 02:33 AM.
terrifying vid. i wish that upon none of us, with that said drive smart, and becareful of other drivers, which is how a majority of our cars end this way.