Jeff Crabtree owns a red Stealth Twin Turbo, which ran into a little trouble one day. Here's his story and pictures of the car...
I had just bought my '93 Jeep Wrangler about three weeks earlier.
It was almost like something was warning me that I was going to need a second car(well, that plus my insatiable need to spend money that I don't have). I hadn't driven the Stealth for about three weeks because I had been having so much fun tooling around in my new toy. She had been parked at a good friend and co-worker's house in his garage because I really didn't have a good place to keep it at mine and I needed to get something out of the glove box so I stopped by on my way to work. I decided to go ahead and drive the car to work and have my buddy follow me in the Jeep.
We got about 100 yards from the parking lot of the TV station that I work at(FOX 2), and stopped at a red light at the intersection of Hampton and Oakland Avenues in St. Louis. This is a NOTORIOUS intersection for accidents because it is poorly designed and many people ignore the "no turn" signs as well as the traffic signals here. I was the first at the light, my buddy in my Jeep was right behind me. To my right was another car traveling the same direction as me and I needed to get over behind him so that I could make a right hand turn into my parking lot.
The light turned green.
I'm not sure why I waited, instead of jumping on it and outrunning the guy like I usually would, for a few seconds until he had entered the intersection enough so that I could squeeze in behind him. After probably 3-5 seconds of my light changing to green, I took off...but I didn't get far.
WHACK!
I never even saw it until the cars had come to a stop. There's a funky blind corner coming off of the nearby highway at this intersection. An ambulance(no lights, no siren, no emergency, no patient) had come off of the highway and completely blown their red light. The had to have been traveling at least 25 MPH at impact. The pictures tell the story. Their bumper caught the front clip of my car. We ended up parallel to one another sort of diagonal in the intersection, I was in shock. My initial reaction was HOLY SHIT!! I just hit an ambulance. But I then realized that they were just driving. Then anger took over.
I slammed the car into first gear(amazingly it was still running) and pulled off to the side. Oil was bleeding badly from the mangled oil cooler. The intercooler: gone. Front bumper: torn. Side fender and hood: crumpled. I've been in few accidents but nothing as bad as this. Well by the time I realized that the car was STILL running, most of the oil was now coating Hamton avenue. Scratch one engine(and the $130 pair of Oakley E-wires that I threw for this very reason).
I was lucky for several reasons. First, if I had lurched out into the intersection when the light changed to green, the ambulance would have hit me broadside. I'm sure that if I was writing this at all, that I would be writing it from a hospital bed. Second, remember the guy driving my Jeep? Well behind him was another of my co-workers. Both of which corroborated my story to the police on the scene that my light was six different colors of green by the time I decided to go. Third, if I had been driving the Wrangler, a lighter vehicle with less passenger protection, who knows what would have happened.
I walked away with a mild concussion, a possible fracture to a bone in my hand, and without my beautiful car. I had intended on only driving her on warm sunny days from that point on and saving it so that my grand kids would argue over who got it when I kicked. That's not just any Dodge Stealth, it's MY Dodge Stealth. There's alot of blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifice in that car. I'm not sure I'll ever love another the same way....but then again only another 3S owner will understand.
I'm still waiting to find out if it's repairable or not......I'm not so sure I want it to be(11/22/98)
Jeff Crabtree
'91 Stealth R/T Turbo
'93 Jeep YJ Wrangler Sport
St. Louis, MO
