Cars/vehicles in your work

My guy is in a perpetual money struggle, so I might make him have to start the car Bukowski-style (always park on a hill so you can use gravity in lieu of your burnt-out starter motor)

 

Cars are rare in mine due to the setting- the infrastructure isn't in place for their mass production- but there are other machines that the narrator gets his nerd on for and admits to being a bit of an anorak about. I've made him (reasonably) assume that the reader is not a similarly colossal nerd about them and couch his descriptions accordingly, though he does sometimes supply little bits of detail that only a complete nerd would know or care about because he can't help himself.

I do that because I have a buggered fuel gauge. I always park outside my house with the fuel tank higher than the engine, as I'm never sure just quite how much is still in there. I should probably fix that.

 

...but don't forget to put it in gears, especially if the parking break isn't well adjusted or, as you walk away, you might see out the corner of your eye that it is following you like a faithful old dog.

 

One of the characters in my latest novel gets eaten by werewolves because he drives a twenty-year-old Italian hatchback that won't start in the rain because Italian electricians. I thought maybe I shouldn't name the specific car in case I get sued for implying you might get eaten by werewolves if you buy one.

Another novel that I need to finish soon is about a bunch of English piston-heads driving their Plymouth Roadrunner to a car show in Berlin when they accidentally end up in World War II.

 

I love both time travel and Road Runners. I would totally read that.

 

I want to write a story that's just a conversation between an American visiting a pal in the U.K., the Brit picks up the Yank in this little number, and then having an animated conversation about how in the world Ford let Aston Martin build what is basically an alt-universe Mustang.

 

Aston Martin Gelding eh?

 

Somewhat relevant, I read a WWII spy thriller once that I can't remember anything about save that the Allied spy, who had been parachuted into occupied France, found some piece of information that he desperately needed to get to the Americans. It was early June of 1944 though, and the only means of transport he could find was a big, black Mercedes staff car.