I had a 70 Skylark when I lived in New Mexico, I was only 14-15 at the time and not yet licensed to drive. We lived out in the country with dirt roads and that's where I would practice my driving. The hood latch didn't work so my Granddad had it chained shut.
One day I got brave and wanted to see how fast I could go, so I got it out on the big dirt road and hammered it. I got to about 65 and BAM, the damn hood lost the chain and flew open smashing the windshield and bending back the back corners of the hood. Scared the s**t outta me. I got up on the hood and was jumping up and down to flatten it back out. It didn't work so well.....that one wasn't fun to explain. Ended up selling it for a few hundred bucks.
Second one, when I was stationed in San Diego my wife and I came home to Texas on leave. We were in my new to me '84 Z28. We were a few hours east of El Paso going back to SD and I had the cruise set to 70.
There was a leak at the top of the drivers side window, so the wind was whistling in pretty loudly. I reached over and stuck a piece of paper in it to seal it. In the spit second I looked over at the window I managed to ease off the hi way into the dirt between hi way and access road. It never occurred to me to take it off cruise. I was going to ease back onto the hi way but there were metal reflector poles and I was afraid I'd hit them, so I decided to just ease onto the access road. Well before I knew it I came face to face with a concrete drainage ditch that was running perpendicular to me. It was only a couple feet deep, pretty wide and had a pretty tame slope to the edges. Unless you are in a Camaro doing 70..........we hit the bottom of the ditch and then jumped out of the ditch like the damn Dukes of Hazzard. I know we caught a good foot or more of air.
Once we landed I got the car stopped with no other trouble. When we landed I watched the dash, steering wheel, console, all move down a few inches. I managed to bend the frame, the shocks were pushed up through the fender wells and every panel on the car was mis aligned. I was able to get to the next town and get an alignment, didn't do much but it helped a little bit. We got into SD the next day after getting another alignment in New Mexico. I don't remember the total cost of repairs, but they didn't total the car. So we got it fixed and traded it in on my 454SS.
