Back in the day, when you owned a police radio scanner, the world was your oyster. Juicy gossip, the latest crimes-in-progress, even just a glimpse into a day-to-day that was nothing like yours at all. Then the cops started encrypting their radios, took all that juicy money that was left to prevent terrorists from blowing up the Blockbuster in a town of a thousand people and threw it at Motorola. It went like that for years. My job was made a lot more difficult, but there is always margin for those who can keep up with the times.
Me? I’m an accident deconstructor. No, you didn’t hear that wrong. I patrol my favourite roads looking for vehicles with particularly valuable salvage, wait for a crash, and then loot the machines of their parts before the cops and paramedics have a chance to arrive. I have a trunk full of electric impacts, each pre-loaded with their own imperial or metric socket and full batteries. It’s no exaggeration to say that I can rip a Grand Prix GXP down to its unibody and have anything valuable (rear shocks, that V8, the staggered front tires) into my trunk in under ten minutes.
On weekends, my days start at the local Cars & Coffee meets. I know what you’re saying: Mustangs, eh? In reality, Mustangs carry very few re-sellable parts, and when they do crash, it’s into a crowd of witnesses. With my line of work, showing up in someone’s World Star crash video is a terrible idea, even with the latest suite of CCD-damaging ultraviolet privacy software installed in my smart helmet.
No. What I do is hang down the road a bit, wait until the fatigue of goofing off starts to set in. I wait for the drift to end, for them to jerk the wheel dead straight. Then I pounce.
The Hellcat Challenger was at the top of my list for a reason, and that reason was that it contained one of my Most Wanted parts: a low-mileage TR6060 6-speed manual transmission. From its massive bellhousing to its overbuilt tailshaft shell, this thing could withstand a bomb. With the kind of engines I was building for the war rigs, a bombproof transmission is exactly what I needed.
I timed my throttle hit perfectly, the rear drag slicks of the Valiant wrinkling their high-profile meat into the damp tarmac. I was halfway through first gear when the window switch engaged and my wide-open-throttle antics pushed enough squeeze into the cylinders to get me into the quarter panel of the Hellcat in time. He careened into the ditch, helplessly, a pirouette that I hoped would look close enough to a legitimate spinout to the cops to distract them while I put distance between us.
The owner looked at me in horror, and reached one hand outwards for help through the maze of side-impact airbags which had saved his life. I spat at it: help would not be forthcoming. It was then that I realized the depth of my error: I had miscalculated badly and was filled with regret.
As I fled the scene, I wondered how I could have been so stupid. Of course it was a ZF 8-speed automatic, I sneered. This country is going to Hell in a handbasket when you can’t even trust a Dodge rolled over in a ditch to have a workable transmission.