Peapeapearoast! It's a record even for me!!!
The A5
Some years ago I was the proud owner of an Austin/MG Maestro turbo (fairly rare, I later found out) a truly mental car with far more power than the stone-age chassis and suspension could safely handle.

I was driving along the A5 on the straight bit just west of Cerigyddrudion at about 6 am on a fine, clear june morning when I decided to see just what the car was capable of. Silly, I know, but there was no traffic about, and this was before the advent of GATSO cameras (bastard bastard bastard things).

Pedal to the metal etc and I was flying! As I hit the 119mph mark I spied a couple of lorries in the distance coming the other way. "No prob", thought I, "the closing speed is fairly rapid but they're on the other side and I've got lots of time to slow down".

As I got within about 400 yards of them I eased off the throttle. All was well.


Then the front offside wheel blew into a million bits.

According to the marks on the road, I pirouetted three times, swerved BETWEEN the lorries and back to my side of the road before coasting to a stop, facing the wrong way and shaking like a freshly raped whippet. I don't remember the accident itself, just the aftermath of incoherent babbling and crying to the two rural coppers that turned up. I was mentally going through the rest of the route through the mountains in my mind and picturing all the places I could have plunged to my death. The shock took me weeks to get over and I was very close to jacking in my job.

It seemed that there was a casting fault that had caused the wheel to crack between the bolt-holes on the wheel, under the paint, which meant that it could have come off (leaving the centre of the wheel still attached) at any time.

On examination by the dealer, three of the wheels had the same fault, albeit to a lesser degree. I'd done over 12,000 miles in this car, transporting my then wife (pregnant with our first child), my parents, her parents and loads of mates on various jaunts.

Never drove it again.
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Sat 21 Aug 2010, 17:28, 2 replies)

"shaking like a freshly raped whippet"?!
I'm SO stealing that line!
(brumguvnor www.twitter.com/brumguvnor, Sat 21 Aug 2010, 19:12, closed)

Dodgy Alloys
Having helped a mate out who raced Maestros in the MG owners club, I can tell you we saw quite a few of our alloys go the same way. I don't know if it was a design fault or just that they were being used beyond their limits, but it happened quite a lot and it became difficult to find replacement originals. Overtorquing the nuts or smacking the wheels into kerbs also had the same effect!
(What Could Possibly Go Wrong? ..., Wed 25 Aug 2010, 0:21, closed)