Ask Click And Clack: Answers From Car Talk

At the World Rally Championship Final, my fiancee, Brielle Fuller, deliberately gave me the wrong turn call. Because of her, I lost the championship. Right there on the spot, she called off our engagement and ran straight into the arms of my rival, Chase Monroe. Just when I thought I'd lost everything, my childhood friend, Naomi Sutton, proposed to me. "It's okay. To me, you'll always be number one." Seven years later, I rebuilt my career and fought my way back to the top. Just as I was preparing to break Chase's championship record, a brake failure sent my car plunging off a mountainside. While drifting in and out of consciousness at the hospital, I overheard a conversation outside my room. "You're ruthless. You actually did something like this. Weren't you afraid he might die?" "If he dies, so be it. The only person I've ever loved is Chase. I only regret that you married him before I could. Otherwise I wouldn't have had to put myself through that all these years." I stared wide-eyed into the darkness. The love I thought was so deep was nothing more than wishful thinking. If they cared so much about Chase, then maybe I should disappear.

My girlfriend and I had agreed that she would come home with me for Thanksgiving to meet my parents. However, the night before the trip, she canceled on me again. My older cousin, who had never liked me, immediately started throwing sarcastic comments my way. “Five years together and she still hasn’t met your family? Maybe she never took you seriously in the first place. And honestly, a man shouldn’t think too highly of himself. You might end up raising someone else’s kid without even knowing it,” he said. I ignored him and stepped outside to get some air, but then I found that the car parked in front of the neighbor’s house looked strangely familiar. My heart skipped a beat. Could this be a surprise from my girlfriend? I was just about to call her when my cousin clicked his tongue and pointed at the car. “Still, you’ve gotta admit Liam Crossby really knows how to live. He brought home a gorgeous and successful girlfriend. You? You’ve spent your whole life losing to him.” My eyes locked onto the license plate, and my fingers froze. Then, I dialed a hidden number I hadn’t used in years. “Bring the guys. Trash the car.”

At a highway service area, the man parked in the next space points under his van and shouts that it's leaking fuel and is about to explode. I am a veteran auto mechanic with ten years of experience. Without hesitation, I slide under the vehicle and, within ten seconds, clamp off the fuel line. The moment I crawl back out, I catch the smell of mineral water. The owner, Billy Dickson, immediately pulls out his phone and starts a livestream while several of his accomplices pin me against the hood. "Watch this, everyone! We set the perfect trap and caught a gang of catalytic converter thieves! See how smoothly he got under the chassis? He's obviously a repeat offender. Every missing part at this service area has to be his doing!" Covered in dirt and grease, I try to explain to the crowd that I only cut the line because I thought the vehicle was about to catch fire and endanger everyone nearby. Billy spits a thick wad of phlegm right onto my shoe. "Who asked you to stick your nose into my business? You crawled under my van because you wanted to steal parts! Either you pay for a brand-new vehicle today, or I'll hand you over to the police and make sure you rot in prison!" Not wanting to delay getting my wife, who's about to go into labor, to the hospital, I grit my teeth and transfer them 20,000 dollars to settle the matter privately. Three days later, on a long downhill stretch of a winding mountain road, Billy's van completely loses its brakes. Black smoke pours from the tires. He recognizes my car and frantically blares the horn. Rolling down his window, he begs me to tell him how to survive. I simply press down on the accelerator and widen the distance between us, my face completely expressionless. "Back for another livestream to chase views? Give me a break. To prove I'm not a car thief, I already threw my wrenches into the river. You'll have to figure out for yourself how to jump out of the van."

On the one-year anniversary of the company's public listing, my wife, Susan Lynn, publicly announced that she was gifting a supercar worth millions of dollars to her childhood friend, Charles Baker. Charles, with his arm around her shoulder, raised his glass and said, "Thank you, Susan. Here's a toast to our friendship!" I let out a derisive laugh and walked away. Susan, feeling upset, chased after me, shouting, "Angus, what's your problem? What's wrong with me giving the top salesperson a supercar? You're just a useless waste of space, and you still dare to throw a tantrum!"

On the last day of the long weekend, my childhood best friend asked to borrow my half-million-dollar Porsche so he could drive out to the next town over and meet some girl he had been set up with. We went way back, so I did not just fill up the tank for him. I went ahead and tossed a box of condoms in the glovebox too. Then my phone buzzed. The dashcam was still synced to my account, and my wife's voice came through the live feed. "Babe, I can't believe you actually took that idiot's car to drive us to a motel on the toll-free highway. This is so hot." I stood there and felt the ground drop out from under me. The "blind date" my best friend had gone to meet was my wife, the woman I had married less than three months ago. "You two love free rides that much? Then stay on that highway forever." I opened the Porsche's remote vehicle management app and typed in a single command. "Auto-lock all doors by midnight. Kill all power." Right then, they were cruising down an icy mountain expressway at 10,000 feet, and the temperature was dropping fast. Midnight was only minutes away.

When Dexter Welch, a security guard who works in the residential area, sees me driving my pink Toyota Corolla everywhere, he's very certain that I'm a sugar baby who's being backed by her own sugar daddy. On the first day, I see one word getting carved into the car hood. It says "bitch". I merely give the hood a wipedown without uttering a word. Later on, I swap out the current SD card of my dashcam to an SD card that has a 512 GB memory. On the second day, my car windows get smashed in. When I go over to the property management office to check the security footage, the front desk agent tells me that the security camera overseeing my car "happens" to be broken. Dexter leans against the desk with a grin on his face. "If that car of yours is ruined, then so be it. Tell your sugar daddy to buy you another one." I crouch down and take a picture of the damage. Then, I save it into a folder called "evidence" in my phone. On the third day, two of my tires have gone flat. When I bend down to pick up a spare tire, Dexter hugs me from behind all of a sudden. He murmurs into my ear, "What's so good about sleeping with an old codger? Why don't you date me instead? I'm young and strong—" That's when I grab a wrench and smash it right into his arm. As Dexter nurses his injured arm, he glares at me. "How dare you lay a finger on me! Go ahead and lodge a report, then! My uncle's the property manager here! What can you do about me, hmm?" I silently note down Dexter's work ID without saying anything. On the fourth day, I drive another pink car back to the apartment. As soon as Dexter notices the flash of pink in its usual parking slot, he smiles as he exits the guardhouse. Then, he pulls out a key from his pocket and scratches my car with all his strength. An older gentleman who happens to be walking his dog nearby freezes in his tracks. He sounds so startled that his voice actually cracks. "Have you gone nuts? Do you know the model of the car you've just scratched? That's a top-tier Rolls-Royce!"