Japanese Import
In the late 90s, there was a bit of a bargain to be had with imported Japanese sports cars. Fairly late one summer day my girlfriend and I went to a dealership to look at an imported Toyota MR2.

It looked the business so we took it for a test drive. They let us take it out on our own, so we had a nice blast and then I stopped somewhere in the countryside to have a play with all the buttons and gadgets. As I was looking around I noticed a funny yellow reflection in my side window - there was something on the carpeting behind my head (the MR2 has quite a confined 2-seater cockpit).

I twisted around in my seat to find, 3 inches from where my right ear had been, a bright yellow spider the size of my face.

I think I may have howled incomprehensibly as I tried to somehow jump out of the car door without undoing my seatbelt first. My girlfriend had no idea what was going on, until after I'd slammed the door shut from the outside, when she came around to peer through the window with me and screamed at the sight of the ghoulish horror within. Passing pedestrians observed us with bafflement as we clung to each other on the pavement.

After about 10 minutes it occurred to me that the garage were going to want their car back, and there was no way I was going to drive it with that lurking monstrosity next to my head. Also, I figured it was a Japanese car, so it must be a Japanese spider too, so it might be DEADLY POISONOUS. I resolved that it MUST DIE. I looked around for a handy weapon but all I found was some none-too-woody foliage. Have you ever tried to beat a spider to death with a bush? It's not easy, especially when your target is in a car and you are trying to keep a distance of at least 3 foot between you and it.

In the end I was victorious, but mentally shattered. Back at the showroom, the guy wanted to know where we'd been. I didn't bother explaining why the car was now full of bracken and bits of broken spider.

I didn't buy the car.
(zootius, Sat 24 Apr 2010, 19:14, 3 replies)

I hate spiders too but:
A lot of the big Japanese spiders are harmless. A couple I know lived in Japan for a couple of years and had to turn the central heating boiler on or off in the outhouse by means of a broom handle because the outhouse was infested with spiders 6 inches or so across the back!!
( Vambo, Sat 24 Apr 2010, 22:58, closed)

However
Big spiders are big and spidery and therefore really scary!
(Martin1337 was trying and failing to be funny at, Sun 25 Apr 2010, 17:14, closed)

Haha, I have a spider story
My uncle is a driving instructor and used to also run a car dealership/garage. So one time my parents' car was in for repairs (after I'd crashed it, ahem) we had his teaching car, with dual controls, as the replacement 'courtesy car'. I was driving this, in moderately dense traffic, with my sister (who must've been 15 or 16 at the time) in the passenger seat. Suddenly the car started accelerating inexplicably; after a few seconds I twigged and pushed the clutch in, causing the engine to scream up to its redline. At which point I fully twigged and screamed at my sister to take her foot off the dual-control accelerator, which she'd not noticed she was standing on. This was because she was too busy panicking about the microscopic spider crawling down the windscreen in front of her.
(julius, Sun 25 Apr 2010, 22:05, closed)