When I was young and stupid (as opposed to old and stupid) I owned a Mercury Capri. Sucker was built by idiots and had about 20 recalls, but it was faster than watermelon (V-6).
Well one night it was broken into and the seats were stolen. I sent in my insurance claim, saying I would do the repairs, and received a check for $700. This equaled about 1 months salary at the time, so I decided to cut some corners. First of all...no need for a passenger seat right? That is just valuable storage space and it just reduces access to the back seat! I shopped for a drivers seat briefly, but then inspiration took hold. I had one of those folding, short legged beach chairs. I snapped the sucker open and jammed it into the drivers seat location. It fit wonderfully! Just the right hight and width. I now had $700 to spend on something much more important, like food and women!
Sure it was a death trap, but stupid is as stupid does!
Well after about 6 months of this configuration I had some money to actually buy seats. I had managed to avoid any and all confrontations with the police or CHP and had become pretty confident.
I made an appointment to get 2 seats at a local shop, hopped on the freeway and drove about 5 miles when smoke began billowing out of my hood. This was in a semi rural area, but as I pulled to the side of the road I looked and there was a CHP parked on the opposite side of the freeway. I was very hesistant to open my hood, because the smoke was really thick now. The CHP made it over to my car in just a few minutes and brought his extinguisher. We popped the hood and the fire was tremendous! He couldn't put it out with his little bottle, so he went to call for help. I sat off to the side and watched my car burn. The fire was so intense it burned through the fire wall and had engulfed the back seat before the fire trucks arrived. The beach chair was a distant memory, and was the furhest thing from my mind when the police officer came up to me.............."That's an incredibly hot fire son....why your bucket seats have just melted away"
He probably wondered why I thought this was funny. But I started giggling and couldn't stop for quite a while.
