Falcon Gets Lucky on a Friday Night!

This is how my Falcon looked shortly after it was rear ended as my wife and I were heading home from a wedding one Friday night in Seattle. A bystander took the photo and emailed it to me. The car that ended up under me was actually rearended and pushed forward. We were completely stopped at a light when it happened. Luckily nobody was critically injured and the damage was not as bad (to my car) as it seems in the photo. The tow truck had to hook chains to my bumper and use its crane to lift the Falcon up and push the other car out from under me. It happened on a very busy street, in front of a local landmark bar in the University District, and there were lots of people around to talk to and console us.

The underside of the gas tank took most of the impact of the crash after the car that hit us rolled under the bumper. Although it didn't leak after the wreck, I used the insurance money to install a new one. Thankfully I had installed a new tank about two years earlier. The tank that was in the car when I bought it had a few tiny leaks and had been patched with fiberglass. Since the tank ended up directly above the hot engine of the car that rearended me, I think the patches and rusted metal of the original tank would have split open and spilled gas on impact. That would have probably resulted in fire and possibly an explosion. You can see the new muffler I had installed the day after the wreck. The old one was torn off in the wreck and the tow truck driver bent the exhaust pipe around the axle housing so it wouldn't drag on the ground.

The bumper had a fair amount of damage but it did take a pretty good hit. The brackets were bent so when I went to a junk yard to get a bumper to have rechromed, I took the straight brackets as well.

This is the only damage to the body of the car. Two chips in the paint where some bondo had been applied. Since they are mostly hidden by the new bumper, I applied a few coats of paint over the damage with a small brush and it's hardly noticeable.

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