Unauthorized use of a motor vehicle
 

I'd imagine most of us have done it. My first offense was before I even had a license. I borrowed my dads '69 Chrysler Imperial and took a couple friends for a drive down by the lake. I drove down a very narrow dirt road to get to the lake and somehow managed a scratch down the length of the passenger side. The rest of the drive was uneventful and I returned the car to the exact spot where it had been parked. Mind you this was before sidewalk chalk. We had marked the tire locations in the driveway with twigs and hoped they were there when we returned. Dad didn't notice the scratch until a couple days later and he was convinced some kids riding their bikes in a parking lot had done it.
Dad passed long ago so I don't worry about him finding out but I know karma never forgets.

Don't forget to water the plants
on the patio.

I made a list, it's on the refrigerator door.

Dad, should I start your car?



The car will be fine, Joel.



For the battery, I mean.

Please, you're not to use my car.
You're not insured for it.



- Use the station wagon.
- Use my car, honey.

Do we understand each other?

Okay!

As far as the house is concerned,
just use your best judgment.

We trust you.

Have a great time.

Be good.

I don't think you are going to hell for that. ;)

Sheeeeit...

I was 16 0r 17. There was a big party in the Berkeley Hills I NEEDED to get to. No wheels. Mom's visiting her sister. Dad's working midnight to eight as a cop. But... He has a construction business!

I broke into dad's corporation yard and unhitched a ten wheel truck from a trailer that held a D8 Caterpiller. I had wheels!

I drove that truck all over the Berkeley hills. Stayed at the party till 3 AM then took a half dozen drunks home in the bed of the dump truck. It was about 5 AM when I attempted to back the truck up to the trailer hitch. First attempt... CLANG! Hitch connects and locks. Sweet!

When I worked at the GOP convention in San Diego in '96, my boss stole a golf cart from the convention center and put a sign on it that read "Finance 7." No one ever asked him about it and he drove it around for a week before he went back to DC. That "Finance 7" sign made people think it was legit.

Lots of escapades in my dad's vehicles. :D
I drove my dad's Toyota truck across the San Lorenzo river train trestle at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk one night with one of my buddies on a dare. We made it across about half way "balanced on the rails" and then slipped off. The remainder of the ride was a very loud BANG BANG BANG....etc. as the frame of the truck was slamming the rails over every tie. This was about 1:30 in the morning. We made it across no problem but I forgot we had to go another 1/4 mile before we could get off the tracks. The wheels had slipped off on the left side of the track. We needed to go right. No worries. We had made so much noise by the time we got where we needed to get off the tracks that we had quite an audience waiting for us. They helped us lift the truck off the rails before the cops got there.
I am sure there is some karma waiting for me. Not sure what though. I have a daughter not a son. Yeah. I'm probably in deep DO DO.
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My 66 'Vair(before my dad actually gave it to me;)).

I was probably 14 and didn't have my learner's permit even. A buddy and I took it around the block(suburbs so no real traffic). It ran out of fuel in the back portion of the block so we started pushing it.

As we crested a small hill at the intersection of my street and theone we were on my parents I saw a car that looked familiar. Yep, it was my parents coming back from the market. They didn't even stop.

When we got it back to the house my Dad asked me what I was thinking. "I don't know" was probably my answer.

Man, I have GOT to start finding hiding spots for my keys now.

I just typed out a story from my youth and then deleted it. Enough said.

I'm sure the statue of limitations has run out by now.

I just remembered a story I can tell. Once again, I had to delete it. But it involved too much alcohol, an acquaintance that wanted my drunk friend and I to beat it so he could put his moves on a gal without us around, with him giving us the keys to his 740IL, with us deciding to go to Vegas (from Montecito), with excessive speeding on the freeway, and with acquaintance striking out with gal, realizing his horrible error, and reporting his car as stolen. Not a real good memory.

Criminal sanctions are the least of my concerns . . .

Reading the stories above and thinking about similar stories from yesteryear has given me a stomache ache.

I did it all the time with the 'rents cars. Joy riding in the Porsche, doing burn outs in the Vette in high school. The one that takes the cake was mom's 1984 Olds custom cruiser station wagon. The parents left town for the weekend and it was on. 15 years old, hitting every place where it was cool to be seen, me and 4 of my buddies, one was 18 and I had a learners permit, he was drunk off his ass though, so it may not have been legal for me to be behind the wheel.

I took a sweeping turn a little too fast and the rear end broke loose. It was like a perfect baseball swing with the back end of the wagon pounding a brick mail box. The aftermath was disastrous, the people next door also lost one of their brick lighting platforms in the carnage.

I drove it home, didn't leave a note or anything, just left. The next morning there were bricks in my parents driveway, whole bricks. The street where the accident occurred was littered with bricks and mortar.

Our neighbors thought it would be wise to park it in the garage, I suppose they were right, the police never came by.

That was my mothers first and last brand new vehicle, and she'd probably still be driving it had I not destroyed it. She wouldn't even look at it afterward and I know she cried.

That was a difficult call to let them know at 2am, while they were on vacation.

if my 14 YO son does HALF the crap i did, it will be the death of me for sure.
I do take the coil wire with me when i go out of town just in case though
I also put a penny on one of the tires & make sure it's still there when i get back.
Don't get me wrong, he's a great kid, i just remember too much of what i did.

I think my folks don't believe me to this day, but I really never did take their cars out without their permission. I had to move them around to get the tractor out of the garage to mow the lawn, but that was it.

One time I was trying to push start my mom's VW cab, which had a starter issue and I lost it. It rolled back on me. I dove into the driver's seat and yanked up the handbrake, but by then it was already on the wet grass and slid a good 100' down the hill into the backyard. I knew our nextdoor neighbor would see the car there and immediately call my folks at their vacation place and I had to catch a ride to work with another neighbor. I called the nextdoor neighbor and just said, "Sandy, I don't have time to explain, but I lost control while trying to push start my mom's car to get to work. I'll deal with it tonight." She was kind of stunned. Sure enough, the car started on the first turn that night and I drove it back into the garage. Though I had my mom's permission to take her car to work.

I used to always "take the car"......it was very easy, everyones asleep, driveway had a hill and could make it a full block away without having to start it.........dad wrote down the milage? Odometers were REAL easy to unhook in the 80s......
The trick was to time the early morning arrival when the neighbor would be starting his work truck.....yes I'd wait down the street like a stakeout...... then......home :D

Nothing too exciting. My grandpa's old truck ('70 F-100 that I still have) was parked at my parent's place after he died and after playing around with it for a while I was able to coax it back to life. It was nowhere near roadworthy; it had 10 or 20 year old bias ply tires all around, safety inspection expired 6 years prior, and everything else on the truck like brakes was pretty run down. On top of that I didn't know how to drive a manual. But I wanted to drive it after going to all that trouble to make the engine run again...

Both my parents worked as teachers and go home 2 or 3 hours after I got home, and their place is in a subdivision a few miles out of town so I had lots of nearly empty roads and a long window of time to play around with. I didn't do anything too crazy - just driving around learning how to drive the thing, shift around and get it in gear from a stop without peeling out. When I came home I'd have to park the truck exactly as it was on the concrete driveway because there was leaves and dirt all around where all 4 wheels sat. I only nearly got caught once because I laid a pretty good streak of rubber on the driveway backing out that I had to scrub off. My parents came home early but I saw their car coming down the street, so by the time they pulled in it looked like I was just washing the truck.

They never had any idea any of this happened; the only clue was that when my dad taught me how to drive manual on my mom's Nissan a few years later he was surprised how it seemed like I figured it out right away.

When I was about 13 or 14 my school buddy Peter took me for a ride in his brothers MK1 Cortina GT (has a Lotus engine). He was doing quite well for a 13 or 14 year old but oversteer got the better of him and we were traveling fast towards the curb. The car mounted the curb - we were lucky it didn't roll when it hit the curb, it shot over the footpath, wiped out about 12 rose bushes, slid across a lawn and stopped between a tall wooden fence and a house. The car was fine but the fence was about 6 inches in front of the front bumper and the back bumper was about the same from the house so there is no way we could get the car out. Not knowing what to do we ran home to Peters place. Ummm, the police were there about 10 minutes later :( to cut a long story short the car had to be towed out sideways and we got let off if we bought the lady 12 new rose bushes LOL.

I was steering on my Dads lap and was driving his car by 10 with him in the passenger seat. I swear I was the DD. :) Anyways, by 12 I would take the car (without permission) to do my paper-route when the weather was bad. I would push it in and out of the garage to not wake anyone. He only had to pick me up once from the cop-shop at 4am. All the other times no one knew about.

Then when I was 15 no adult in the car I got stopped with my learners permit for 'racing' which I wasn't I was flirting with a couple of girls and I get an exibition ticket. Oh well, that's the past.

The 80's were the last of 'getting away' with stuff... The 90's and on it went WAY down hill....

I started driving a stick at 12 years old in 1976. I detailed a 1975 911S Targa and the owner gave me the keys and left. He lived in the hills of Tustin California - great start. My father had several cars I used to drive in the back hills. Fond memories of driving around a right hand drive 1934 Type 57 Bugatti with cable brakes. Perfected stick shift on a Mercedes 280SL. Also had a 1967 Ferrari 330GTC that I put many miles on long before I had a license. All these cars were not that expensive at the time - just neat toys. Got pulled over at 15 on my Dad's R90S with my 13 year old brother on the back, I had to push it home. Did not seem like a big deal at the time, I was just having fun to the red line. I was driving all the time.

I "borrowed" dad's 1987 Maserati Bi Turbo Spyder once, when i was fresh out of the Army.

http://www.carpictures.com/media/ima...71831668A.jpeg
(spitting image of dad's car)

I learned much about boost induced oversteer that day...

a great story of unauthorized use.

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double unauthorized use, or is it squared?

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when I was 13, my best friend & I used to take his dad's car at night. We'd sneak out around 12:00 or 1:00 and joy ride around town. We'd push the car out of the garage, my buddy would get in and back it down the driveway incline (pretty steep), then we'd push it down the street & start it up. When we returned, we'd turn out the lights and coast up the driveway into the garage with the engine off. One time we clipped the upright on the driveway cover, but nobody ever woke up. One night, he & another guy went out driving. Around 2:00 the police stopped them, took them to jail and called his parents to come get him & the car. The reason the police stopped them was they couldn't see anything but a little bump sticking up above the driver side seat. Maybe they should have taken pillows to set on.

These sorts of things which have long been "rites of passage" for American youth would probably lead you to be pulled over at gunpoint from a dozen cops in "tactical" gear with a couple of helicopters circling overhead. You'd be given a permanent record, accused of endangering the public to the level of domestic terrorism and probably scarred for life. You'd then be sued by some gold-digging lawyer on behalf of the public you supposedly endangered for half of your projected income over the rest of your life.














I wish I were kidding, I'm only half joking. And yes, I "borrowed" the car a few times too.

I was probably about 4 or 5 when I found mom had left the keys in the old Pontiac Chieftain. turning the key I found she also left it in gear. also found out that you can drive thru the utlity room wall no problem. funny thing is, I did sort of the same thing 40 something years later with the 911

Mom had a 1961 Chevy station wagon that had been around the world. It had an old 283 and three speed auto.

Would wait until she was asleep then push it out the drive and roll down the street then start it, and joyride from time to time. Never got caught doing this thank God!

Was playing "boy racer" one night and rev'ed it up dropping it into drive to peel out when one of the axles decided it had had enough punishment and broke. We got it back into the driveway and Mom got talked into that it had just died the next day. We put a new one in and away it went.

Years later she had a 1967 Malibu that was showing its age. We told her that we would do a tune up on it but needed it all weekend. A friend of mine had totaled his Corvette and I bought the like new 327. In it went into Moms car and it was home for her on Sunday ready to drive. Did not say a thing to her about the engine. Returned the next weekend for the Sunday dinner and asked her about the car. She commented that this was the best tuneup she had ever had on the car. Took her out and showed her the new engine and she just cried, but dinner was excellent that night.

We got tired of pulling her out of the side of the driveway in the snow a few years after that and bought her a Volvo 242 which she loved. She had that car until she passed. I kinda figured that the last two things with Volvo and new engine helped make up for my breaking the axle on the station wagon...

Joe A

As a sophomore in high school I had a friend (not much a friend really, he was kind of a d^ck) who came from lots of money- first car was a Vette. C4. He went on vacation and myself and another friend knew where the spare key to his house was.

We borrowed the car.... and the house... for a few days of partying and what have you. Drove it all around town, everyone saw us. Everyone knew it was Jake's car.

When he got back and found out... well... we were no longer friends. :)

15 years old.. i lived on a corner..i didnt get far. i backed down the driveway, and with my crappy driving skills..i hit the stopsign. the stop sign wasnt even close. i was that crappy. i pulled it back into the driveway, and started praying. the man upstairs wasnt listening. BUSTED!

This doesn't involve unauthorized use, just unauthorized MISS-use.

The parents used to have a 4 door gran torino with a 400 cu in. 2 bbl engine but it was still a heavy slug.
I was 17 and one day, I showed my 16 year old brother how to power brake it and get one leg spinning. He thought that was cool but wanted to see if I could get em both going.

So I power-braked in reverse and then dumped it into low without lifting, two black marks.
He said do it again, I said no and explained how hard that was on the car.

About two weeks later the phone rings and my dad gets pissed.
He made me go with him to pick up my little brother.
Seems the transmission had just broken for no reason while my brother was driving really slow.
My dad (who is no fool) followed the line of tranny fluid on the road around the corner, where there was a big puddle, a few gear parts, and two long black marks. seems like lil brother didn't push the car far enough from the scene of the crime.

Of course he threw me under the bus and told dear old dad that i had showed him how to do it.
Neither of us did very much that summer. Except for chores of course.

Man, you were living the life. Long Beach used to have its share of exotics, but all I got to do was watch them go by. (Now, an "exoctic" in the LB is an Escalade with 22's.)

Sounds almost like the basis for the movie "Risky Business."

C'mon, John. Out with it. This happened when you were 4 or 5, and you're (amazingly, beating all odds) an old fart now, so let's hear some of the other stories. I'm never going to forget the story about dipping your brother in the water on a wrecking ball. Two trips through walls in cars....that's lame. Bring it on.

well, I did "borrow" my father's work truck a "few" times late at night when I was 15-16. one of the rare times I didn't have a car or 12. had a little jumper wire to run the coil and screwdriver to jump the solenoid since I didn't have a key. always made it back before daylight though. hard to believe I never got caught because my father may have slept 3-4 hours a night and was usually up. I didn't live with them so he wouldn't have heard me moving around inside the house. there was that time with the seismograph marsh buggies in the cane field also. rode them around a while before jumping off and letting them keep going. not sure where they ended up. now, I was just an observer... sort of.