This sounds a lot like my first car. I won't mention the model for security reasons :D (This topic is going to be a goldmine for hackers!) It's funny because I

This sounds a lot like my first car. I won't mention the model for security reasons :D (This topic is going to be a goldmine for hackers!) It's funny because I had very similar issues. In my case the gearshift link bar fell out of the bottom twice. Both cases I was parked in a high-security area at work and I had get special authorisation for the road service. To much amusement of the security staff, especially the second time which was about a week after the first. Also, the lights would not auto switch off when turning off the ignition (no fancy newfangled electronics there!), but my colleagues were willing to give me a push once a week or so. All the above did give my car a very special reputation at work and it was the butt of many jokes. It also had a manual choke which caused me to empty many a fuel tank unnecessarily. I carried a 5L jerrycan around after the first time I found out what happens if you forget to switch the choke off after starting. With the choke off it would go more than 100km on this reserve! The ignition switch was also so far gone it could be turned with a teaspoon, but unfortunately this worked both ways. Sometimes going over a bump in the road would flick it off. So for this reason I hotwired the foglight switch (which was rarely allowed to be used in the Netherlands, you may only use it in basically undrivable conditions) as an "ignition on" switch to bridge it. In this sense it was like a modern car which you can turn on with a button. For the foglight itself I just had two wires hanging under the dash which I could simply connect when needed. No need for this modern "switch" nonsense. There was also no power steering nor braking and the engine (1.0L) was so small you could literally set foot inside the engine compartment (standing on the road as it didn't have a bottom). My father hated me for braking so hard when I drove his car, but on mine you really had to pump it if you had any hope of stopping. Steering was super light though, even without power steering. Probably because the car weighed practically nothing, and the tyres could use a bit more grip. When I had people sitting in the back I literally had trouble steering at high speeds because there wasn't enough weight on the front. So I would limit myself to 80km/h on the motorway in those cases to be safe. It did have no trouble reaching 120km/h though, to my surprise. I also had to make sure not to fuel up above 80% or so because when splashing it leaked somewhere around the neck of the fuel filler pipe and the smell was horrible. Still, it was MY car. My friends bought me a bumper sticker saying "Laugh all you want, this one is paid off!". It was also special in the sense that it was the only car I've had where the (Sony) stereo was worth more than the car itself. It was one of the first with a CD player. Not that it was particularly expensive, but you probably gathered that the car was even cheaper. PS: Funnily enough it passed the safety inspection twice. I did have to wire the foglight switch back up before the test though O:-)