Would-be Carjackers Choose Wrong Man And Car – IOTW Report

Would-be Carjackers Choose Wrong Man And Car

BPR

Using his mixed martial arts training, a Virginia man fought off three would-be alleged carjackers.

In addition to perhaps picking the wrong potential victim, i.e., someone who has a particular set of skills (to quote Liam Neeson’s memorable line from the movie “Taken), the alleged suspects’ attempt to flee the scene in the vehicle, moreover, was apparently thwarted because the ability to operate a stick shift has become a lost art. More

29 Comments on Would-be Carjackers Choose Wrong Man And Car

  1. Auto theft insurance – a real transmission.

    I hate it that most cars are automatic only. However, it gets worse as the automatic transmissions are being replaced with the dreaded CVT which makes them virtually shiftless.

    In Honda Accord, for example, the tiny 1.5 L turbo only comes with a CVT. You have to pay thousands more for the 2.0 L turbo to get a 10 speed automatic transmission which also has sport mode paddle shifters.

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  2. @Geoff
    Whoever designed the three on the tree was a demented sum bitch. Neither the ease of an automatic, nor the control of a stick. Nobody enjoyed driving those, and I doubt you could find many that even could now.

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  3. When we purchased our 2018 Mazda 3, we got an excellent deal. It was sitting on the lot and no one wanted to buy it because they didn’t know how to drive a manual car.
    Even the kid that took us for a test drive was lacking this fundamental skill. I asked if he wanted to drive it off the lot and he said he couldn’t, because he didn’t know how to!
    I wrote him a thank you note in cursive! LOL

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  4. I read the story and had a personal insight. The story says that some people never learned how to drive a stick shift. I learned on one. Until my last vehicle, all of my cars have been sticks.
    I sold my previous car to my brother for his daughter (it was a stick). My brother left it with my parents this year while he went hunting. My dad called me up and asked how to start the car. I asked if he has pushed in the clutch. Stunned silence for about 5 seconds before we both cracked up since he taught me how to drive one 🙂

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  5. I had to rebuild that transmission because I was stupid enough to try and push my friends behemoth 48 Chrysler up the short hill in front of our houses to give him a push start. The next day when another friend and I were going out to a local lake the tranny completely gave out and wouldn’t engage because the clutch plate was ground as smooth as a plate of glass. My dad was pissed and that was back in the day of pay phones was how we got ahold of him by walking to and finding the nearest pay phone a few miles away. They towed it to my dads garage and I got an impromptu lesson on removing and rebuilding that clutch. Moral, never try and push a large 6000 pound car up a hill to start it. I never did that again. Fortunately transmissions and clutches were fairly easy to fix and repair on older cars like that 53 Chevy.

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  6. First of all, how stupid do you have to be to try a car jacking at a FITNESS GYM??? If you are going to steal a car, at least do it at a yoga studio, or a Starbucks. Sheesh.

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  7. My first car was a ’75 Ford Granada, with a three on the tree. I was a Guided Missile School, Dam Neck, Virginia for Polaris Electronics “A” school, in 1978. At that point I didn’t know how to drive a stick. My future wife, at a school in Kentucky suggested I visit for the weekend. So, I learned how to operate that three on the tree out of necessity. (That car was a real pos,btw).

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  8. So 3 thugs got their asses handed to them because they were stupid and couldn’t drive a manual transmission. I hope it hurt… a lot, because that level of stupidly should be very painful, if not fatal.
    They’re just lucky it wasn’t a push button Rambler.

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  9. My Jeep and my GMC are both stick and that’s why I won’t buy a new vehicle. I don’t want automatic, I don’t need vehicle assistance backing up a trailer or parallel parking. I do all my own repair work and just hope these two vehicles can eke it out till the days I’m no longer driving. Fingers crossed.

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  10. @wonky honky;

    Plymoth Belvedere (looks like the Roadrunner). Column shift. It was a nothing car but never broke down. I also learned column shift at 9 years old in grandpa’s chevy truck out in the pasture. Cousin on the gas pedal. No clutch was used, just easing off the gas and slowly shifting as the engine wound down.

  11. Had a ’52 Dodge step van. It had a 4 speed and what they called fluid drive.
    Had a torque converter instead of a flywheel and a clutch.
    It was kinda cool as a motorcycle hauler/camper van.
    I could put it in granny low gear, get out and it would meander down the dirt roads in the desert, staying in the ruts.
    Didn’t have to turn around and go back to it, as long as you stayed in sight, it would follow you like a dog.
    You could pull up to the road it was on, kick stand the bike, catch it like a street car.
    I miss that truck more than all my other vehicles combined.
    The brothers called me Ironside, because of the Raymond Burr TV show, he rode around in an old cop van.

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  12. There used to be a TeeVee show where they would put hidden cameras and a remote shut off device in a car, and park it on a city street and wait for it to be stolen. They went to different cities across the US. I suspect the reason the show was taken off the air is because no matter where they were filming, the thieves almost always shared one thing in common. Can you guess what that was?

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  13. NIdahoCatholic, remember when Lauren Bacall used to shill Ford Grenada’s in TV commercials back in the late 70’s and said that their quality could be compared to that of a Mercedes Benz. Yeah right, when was the last time anyone saw a running Ford Grenada, it was a POS. My mother in law had one and my wife called it a Ford Granola.

  14. The only car that my wife’s parents ever bought new was a barf yellowish green AMC Hornet station wagon in the mid 70’s. I don’t know which was worse the Granola or the Hornet station wagon. It got sold to a kid my in laws knew just to get rid of it. And my father in law had a behemoth late 60’s Chrysler Newport that we called a tuna boat because it was so damned big.

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