Fox T-Bird/Cougar Forums

you can tell what i mean by the title, well heres the story i was goin south on gore and some lady in a ford freestar or sumthin hits me on the passanger side, the car ends up slidin and ends up on the median. MY WHOLE PASSANGER SIDE IS GONE!!!! and so was that bitches front end. man i miss her already. I just bought a scanner to and was about to post pics, ill show you what it looked like and what it looks like now. oh by the was it was her fault.

sorry to her the VERY BAD NEWS  :brick:  hope you will get another

Man it  me off, I cant even sleep, I mean, you never know what you got until its gone, My car was my life still is my life, and to see your hard work and multiple thousands of dollars you put into it being 16 with a job at MC Donalds, you have to work pretty  hard for that much money!  :disappoin And to see your car taken out in one split second BY A  FORD FREESTAR!!!! cuz some bitch speeds and runs a stop sign. it does a hell of a lot of emotional damage, I f#ckin love my car and its gone and i cant do nuthin about it, thats whats eatin away at me, I mean I dont have the power to just snap my finger and booyah my car just appears in the driveway. I dont even know if i can even stand goin to the salvage yard to even get my stuff out, I might cry like aa f%ckin baby. I really dont know if you people really understand. I wish i was totaled along with the car..... It kinda gives me an idea.....

will you get any insurance money from it?

More than likely, it was her fault, so i better get paid

As sad as it is that you lost your car, it's only a car. At least it wasn't your fault, so you should get paid and you'll be able to replace it. Just thank God nobody was hurt or killed. Just consider this a chance to find another T-Bird or Cougar even better than your last one.

Yeah, I know how it feels. I had $3k in damage to my 87 t/c, didn't cause the accident and almost got nailed with the blame.

It sucks, but like carmen said, at least nobody was hurt and you can always find a better one. There are a lot of things I'd do differently given a fresh start, and I could probably do half of what I did a lot cheaper this time around.

Go pull off what's salvagable and start over, it sucks, but what else can you do? Once a car getshiznit pretty good it's never the same anyway.

nothing hurts more then watching you first car hauled away on the back of a truck though.

I'm sure, I luckily am still driving mine almost 4 years later. I was b/s when it got hit and it was minimal damage!

I had a 20th anniversary edition about 11 years ago.  It got totaled.  I know how you feel.

You know what though?  At the end of July I bought a 20th anniversary edition.  It is just a car.  You can find another.  It may take time.  It took me 2 1/2 years to find a decent 20th but I found one.  You will be able to replace it.

P.S.  It doesn't hurt to cry when you lose something that you love.

It's easy for us to sit back and say "it's just a car" when it's happening to someone else. Sure, maybe a week or a month from now when there's been some time to cool down, it may be "just a car".. but right now it's a disruption of his life, it's damage to his property, and it's a violation of something he's invested some amount of emotion in.

You may think it's just a car while it's sitting out there in the driveway looking all Fox-y.. but every time you swear at it when it doesn't do something you think it should, every time you personify it with a "she", every time you beg it to start right up after a long and complicated repair, every time you post a picture of it on a forum like this for others to see, you invest a little emotion into it. Then someone comes along and disrupts a significant part of your world.. you wouldn't be faulted for examining all those investments.

All I can say is, if I just had one of my T-birds defiled or destroyed, probably the last thing I'd wanna hear right afterword is "it's just a car".. no matter how correct that turns out to be in the end.

Went to pull out my system yesterday,and theres NO salvagable parts, when i got hit my Whole dashboard started to curve, the clock broke the dash doesnt work, The only thing i can save was the driver seat, The engine is leaking oil. ALL OF MY RIMS ARE CRACKED, other thing i can save were my semi- New headlights. I keep havin flashbacks about the impact, It was like the sound of all your hard work and money ripped to shreds, everything, your hope, your future plans, That starsky and hutch stipe i was gonna get painted on this weekend, just gone. I dont think i can find a better cougar than that one it was almost 100 percent restored, But now im gettin a Diamante but my heart will still be here. Man she hit me so hard you can practically see FORD where she hit me :shakehead  :disappoin  There like  a one and a billion chance it can be saved even the salvage dude said  and I quote  " that was a clean ass cougar but im afraid that sucker's gone"

And what really trips me out is that the people in my school know me by The guy with the clean ass cougar, so basically my cougar was my trademark, now its were you in that wreck 2 days ago,  did u total that cougar, or  how did u wreck. like i really wanna talk about it whenever i figure out how to post pics iss show you pictures of the wreck cuz it was in the newspaper

same thing happened to me and my tc, i still dont like driveing by that spot except i was run off the road by some old jack ass in a esclade ext driving on the wrong side of the road... took me a few months(didnt get money from it because he left), but i saved and bought another one.

Bird351, I say it was "just a car" from experience. I have been in this situation, when I wrecked my near-perfect, pride-and-joy 1988 Cougar LS 5.0. I was extremely upset at the loss of that car. To this day I'd still take it over my current T-Bird, even though the T-Bird is in just as pristine shape with lower mileage. It was my first "Perfect" fox car. By "Perfect" I mean it was everything I wanted in a car: V8 engine, no rust, low miles, mint gark grey interior, excellent charcoal paint - I loved that Cougar (the only Cougar I ever owned), so the loss of it hurt BAD. Hell, it was the first car I had ever bought honest-to-goodness, brand spankin' new tires for. I lost that car in 1999 and did not find a suitable replacement until 2003 when I found my '88 Bird. Four years of substandard driving (as much as I liked my '87 Sport it was not near the car that Cougar was).
 
I was not injured, something I was very fortunate for, since my wreck was the result of tangling with a Peterbilt tractor-trailer at 60MPH. To add insult to injury, the truck driver lied about the accident. I was driving along and a diesel Jetta pulled off an offramp in front of me at about 30 MPH. I slowed and the truck driver started to either try to avoid me or pass me on a double-yellow when a car came the other way, so he pulled back into my lane, hitting my left rear quarter and sending me out of control. Bouncing wildly between a guard rail and a tractor trailer at 60 MPH will put fear into the heart of ANYONE. The police showed up, and the truck driver said that I was passing him on the shoulder (what you Americans would call the "Breakdown lane". The cop looked at me, covered in grease, (having just gotten off work at the auto dealership), and in a strange state of half anger, half fear and said "The truck driver is a professional. He'd know better than to try to pass you here. Your fault."
 
I only had PL & PD. The truck driver who had just nearly killed me lied to a cop to avoid a ticket and I ended up losing my car as well. Life is sometimes really, REALLY unfair.
 
Even still, as much as I loved that car, it was "just a car".  I was scared silly and learned a whole lot of new respect for life, but I was unhurt. I lost a car, but I could've ended up in a wheelchair or dead. It took four years, but I did find a replacement. You can not find a replacement for a spinal cord, or a father, or a brother, or a son. Yes, it was "Just a car".

You're missing the point.

NO, I'm not. As sad as he is that he lost his pride and joy, it can be replaced. Whether it be a Fox Cougar, or a Ford GT, or a Bugatti, it is still just a car. As mad as he is that it is gone, he will get over it. It is a far better thing for him to be telling us he lost his car than it would have been for him to be telling us he lost a leg, or broke his back, or his passenger was killed, or not writing anything at all because he is dead. The point I, and everyone else who said "It's just a car", was making is that cars can be replaced. People can't. Cars, no matter how badly damaged, can be repaired if you're willing to sink the money into it. All the money in the world will not fix a severed spinal column. The very fact that the value of the car would not justify repairing it only proves my point that it is just a car.

YES, you ARE missing the point. In fact, I directly addressed replies like yours in my first post by saying:



Regardless of whether he can replace it or not.. there's an emotional investment involved, and he's examining that investment right now. I don't care what justifications and possible scenarios you use, that will not change.

Personally, if I came in here after a major accident and said I was very upset that someone trashed one of my Birds, and you told me "it's just a car", quite bluntly I would tell you to f*** off.. even though *I* know it's "just a car" in the end. If you told me such a thing in person while I was at my most upset, to be honest I'd probably punch you in the face for something like that. (hypothetically speaking) At the time something happens, sometimes you just have to let out the frustration.. and at times like that, poo-pooing the feeling with generic dismissive statements can be infuriating.

That's one of the reasons my fiance and I get along so well.. she seems to have realized that, when I'm worked up over something, it's usually best to just stand aside and let me have that initial outburst, and get it over with.

Now, I realize that he's REALLY worked up.. and even hinted at doing stupid s*** over this. THAT is a bit much.. and I don't condone doing something crazy over a car (or a woman, or whatever) no matter what car it is. But I do think he needs to get it out of his system and come to his OWN conclusion that it's "just a car", and move on.

Let me give you a vaguely similar but very much unrelated scenario:

8 years ago as of this past weekend, my father died. We had just been patching up a more or less rotten relationship over our lifetimes, including having kicked him out of the house at gunpoint in utter fear of my life twice. Although we had been slowly patching things up, his last words to me that night were involved with calling me an asshole.

Now, even after all that, I was still pretty emotional over the whole thing. However, when I would talk to friends and tell them, and they'd respond to me in a normal conversational manner, I wouldn't have any problem continuing to talk about it. But when I would tell someone who would proceed to get all emotional and try to console me, I would have a tough time dealing with that.. like when I told the wife of a friend of mine that I wouldn't be making an appointment we had, and she got that high-pitched "oh I'm so sorry" tone, I almost lost it right there.. (I understood that she meant well, but it was extremely annoying nonetheless) and I hated every situation where people would react like that, even though it would seem to be the most sensible and sensitive course of action to take.

Obviously losing a parent is a bit more significant than losing a car.. but the thing I'm getting at is this: Try just telling him "yeah man, that sucks.. it was a beautiful car" and let HIM deal with figuring out things and working out his feelings than trying to tell him what you think you SHOULD say.

You don't understand. Saying "It's just a car" and "You'll find another one" was not meant in any way to hint that his car might not be valuable. Hell, my car is the most valuable thing I own. My statements were meant to try to make him feel better, not worse. Would you rather everyone replied with"Man, I'd be PISSED if someone did that to me! You should find the bitch and burn her house down!" or something to that effect? Personally, I'd rather have somebody say "It's just a car" than "So how are you gonna get even?" or "Oh, man, you'll never find another one like that!" If "having that initial outburst" goes no further than ranting about it in a messageboard then no harm is done, but if that outburst involves dangerous thougts, pointing out that it's just a car and showing encouragement by saying that it can be replaced could go a long way to help preventing his doing something stupid before he comes to his own conclusions. You're taking the whole thing the wrong way.
 
I think every person who said "It's just a car" was trying to help this person see that it is not the end of the world. We are trying to make him feel better about it. Nobody was belittling his car or how he feels about it. I only mentioned my own experiences to show that yes, I have experienced this, and yes, it sucked, but I got over it and replaced the car. And yes, after the accident, I did have stupid thoughts running through my head (I knew where the trucker lived), especially after he lied to the cops. I was there, and I was merely trying to offer help through experience.
 
Sheesh! Why doncha go pick on Oldraven for awhile.:2gunsfiri Rumour has it he likes Chevies :evilgrin:

My second post addresses your response.

Yes, I do understand. It's not about dollar value. You could have a Yugo you bought for $10 and spent a year slapping a SBF/5.0 'Stang drivetrain into, and it'd still be a Yugo with a common drivetrain, but the EMOTIONAL value to you may be much much higher than the dollar value.

In my case, yeah, I'd probably rather hear the hypothetical response you presented. I wouldn't go do something stupid over it, but I'd rather hear that than the generic blowoff. I would interpret your "just a car" comment as a devaluation of my emotional investment in my own car, regardless of its dollar value before the accident.

The point is, you may THINK you're making him feel better about it.. but the proactive (there's a fun word to use after several beers) response isn't always the best thing.

It's funny that you bring up fighting with Oldraven.. he was using a term that was, where I live, a thinly-veiled racist remark. HE did not know this.. and was apparently rather shocked and upset to find this out. I was not accusing him of *being* racist for saying it.. merely pointing out that the term itself was racist where I live. See how you can intend one thing and it can end up being something COMPLETELY different?

Yes, I advocate just saying to someone like Kissmaoss something like: "wow, that sucks about your car.. what a bitch" (referring to the driver of the other car) You acknowledge his loss, you acknowledge his rage against the intrusion upon his life, but you don't really encourage anything. He may make insinuations about doing stupid things over it, but unless he's truly an unstable person to begin with I doubt he'll do anything bad over it.

Hell, I talk about shooting people and their vehicles all the time over road rage, stupid driving, whatever.. out of frustration over whatever happens.. doesn't mean I have my Mauser loaded and sitting in the back seat waiting for the next guy to cut me off so I can put 5 armor-piercing rounds through his engine block.

BTW, none of this is said with any malice or ill-will. You just have to understand that some stuff needs to run its course, and that the things you say may be more dismissive and counter-productive than you realize.

Everything i say is counter-productive, pal, and don't you forget it :hick:

YOU GO NOW! YOU BEEN HERE FOUR HOUR! YOU EAT EVERY-TEENG! HOW YOU GET SO BEEG? :p

Just a car.  That they don't make any more (haven't for 16 years, not even anything close), that has been maintained meticulously since it was new, that has only been worked on by someone who truly gives a s***, but it's "just a car".  And the insurance company will total it for $500.  What a crock.

I'm pretty sure the argument's over.  If this says anything.... when I took my very first car, that I'd done so much work on and put so much time into, driven so many miles, to the junkyard, as I was leaving I had tears in my eyes and  it was all I could do to hold them back.  I'll get another one someday though, and while it won't be the same, I'll make it just as good or better.

I don't suppose kissmaoss8701 is anywhere near Florida?

From the old board (Bird351 has been there already):

87 Cougar free to good home...

http://p089.ezboard.com/ffoxthunderbirdswantedforsale.showMessage?topicID=1642.topic

now this is called productive support :)

if your trademark was "the guy with the clean ass cougar" then snap back to reality and start shopping and get out of the demante or whatever that thing is.
If you dont snap back,, your passing up an opportunity to set an example.

Well since im in the "great" state of oklahoma ive been searching, theres no Cougar in good shape for at least 400 miles, and... I dont have a car.. so i cant get it. But look on the bright side.... I might be goin to catjam 05... I just wont have a cat :giggle:

I wrecked my Bird about a month after spending hundreds of dollars and hours rebuilding the motor and driveline.  Its not a good feeling, and I still dont like to drive around the corner where it happened, but after hundreds more dolars and hours the car is my daily driver.