The beautiful thing about being a freelance mechanic in New York City is having the freedom to take outlandish jobs to keep the dream alive and pay the bills. You know, like rescuing a busted limo from a random farm deep on Long Island for a television show.
Last week, the outlandish job came from my close friend Doug, who always seemed to be up to something in the world of motorsports. We met years ago when I was a freshly independent mechanic having just left an apprenticeship at Cavalier Customs, one of those old-school motorcycle shops where everyone spoke in thick Brooklyn accents and the parking lot was always filled with old Harleys and cigarette butts.
Doug had needed help getting the wiring in the taillight on his custom cyberpunk BMW R9T to play well with its temperamental CAN bus system at the time, and I ended up coming by to work on every one of his projects since then. It seems like he has a thing for projects with electrical gremlins, because our most recent quality time was spent on a 70-hour wiring harness overhaul on his 1987 F150 prerunner, whose previous owner was presumably a colorblind crackhead.
This time, he had something special for me from his friends at Top Gear France: a limousine rescue from a farm out on Long Island. He knew about my Facebook Marketplace addiction and my willingness to travel thousands of miles for a good deal and thousands of miles back home in clapped-out shitboxes, so in his eyes, I was the perfect candidate for the job.
Mission Improbable
The mission was simple, if not slightly batshit. Get myself to the limo, get it running, and drive it to the logistics warehouse in Port Newark to be shipped off to the folks at Top Gear France. The limo allegedly ran when parked at the farm years ago, so all it needed was a jump. I’ve heard that story before. This usually meant whichever Facebook Marketplace seller giving that excuse had limped the poor vehicle into what would become its final resting place, refusing to sell for any reasonable offer until it became one with nature. I hoped this wasn’t the case with the limo.
My phone lit up with a notification, and I swiped to reveal a group chat Doug set up. He has a thing for AI-generated memes, so of course, the group chat photo was set to a super-stretched Lincoln Town Car jumping off a flaming ramp. He introduced me to Franck Galiegue, the Top Gear host who presumably parked the limo in its current resting place. Jokingly, I asked if I could jump the limo if I rescued it, and he replied with a thumbs up. Whatever outlandish plans I had for the limo were now officially endorsed by the man himself.
The farm was located at the furthest point on the North Fork of Long Island. To get there, I would have to take the Hampton Jitney, a bus whose three-hour-long route would place me within walking distance of the farm. The overcast morning sky turned into a midday drizzle as I stepped off the Jitney. I prayed that whatever the limo needed, it would be something in the engine bay and not under the car I had just washed my hair last night). As I pushed onward, I spied the familiar silhouette of the limo amongst the autumn foliage.
The rear airbags had completely deflated, giving it a squat that would make a Carolina redneck proud. Surprisingly, the exterior of the car was clean except for the edges of the trunk lid, where mold had grown. “What a perfect place to hide a body,” I thought to myself as I tested the driver’s door handle. It swung open, and I was greeted with a time capsule of mid-’90s luxury: chrome accents, leather front row seats, velvet headliner, and plastic imitation wood grain on every corner of the interior. The cabin was more of the same, with furnishings that echoed decades of booze, cocaine, and hookers. An expired pink slip in the glove box showed a 30-day travel authorization for November 2022. No problem,I brought my own plate to use instead.
Airbags minus air. Photo: Andrea Huang
Turning the keys in the ignition gave no response, not even a whimper, but the engine bay revealed the issue: a disconnected battery cable. Upon reconnecting it, a compressor roared to life, and the rear end of the limo began to rise as the airbags began to fill. As I tried the ignition again, the 4.6-liter V8 awakened with a soft purr that was immediately drowned out by the drone of the door sensor alarm. I was going to go crazy if I had to endure a three-hour drive back to the warehouse without fixing this, but a hard slam on the rear passenger door took care of the problem. I normally perform a comprehensive checkup on every car I rescue, but the rain was picking up, and the warehouse was closing in a few hours, so it was time to hit the road. If it runs and drives, that’s good enough for me.
LSD Is Better Than Coke
The backroads leading to the Long Island Expressway were the perfect testing grounds for the limo. The motor whispered at cruising speed. The soft, compliant suspension soaked up road imperfections, though this also meant that the body rolled and bobbed whenever I took a corner. With the dried-out wipers fruitlessly battling the worsening storm, it felt more like I was a captain at the helm of a ship than a chauffeur driving a limo. As I approached the ramp to the LIE, there was one final test to conduct: traction control and ABS. “It’s the safe thing to do,” I said to myself as I floored the gas pedal mid-turn. Immediately, the once-quiet small block screamed as the rear end of the limo broke loose. Slowly but surely, the car was set adrift like a ship in the ocean. The limo may not have been the best car to take a corner in, but it was an excellent car to enter a corner sideways. Restraint is the watchword of the professional chauffeur, which is to say I would be a terrible chauffeur if I had to do this for a living.
Unfortunately, the same conditions that made for perfect drifting also wrecked my chances of making it to the warehouse on time. For whatever reason, in New York, people forget how to drive when it’s anything other than a sunny day. The controlled drift I initiated was also happening uncontrollably to drivers all across Long Island, and the green route estimate on Google Maps turned amber and finally red. The delivery of the asset would have to wait until tomorrow, when the warehouse reopened. On the bright side, this meant I would have the limo for another day.
On the way home, I decided to pick up my friend Myles and head to a well-known parking lot in our neighborhood. He had personally documented every stunt and breakdown I had on our trip through Route 66 last year, so if anything happened at this parking lot, he would be the one to capture it. The parking lot was made of smooth concrete, and whenever it rained, water would pool, forming a shallow pond that spanned across the entire lot. This place was so popular with the local car community that the tire marks they left were visible from satellite images in space.
Ah, angular momentum. Photo: Andrea Huang
For my math people, the law of angular momentum meant that drifting a long wheelbase vehicle translated to the passenger’s direction and magnitude being multiplied tenfold at the rear of the vehicle. My poor passenger was violently thrown against the walls of the cabin as I skidded across the parking lot. I forgot to tell him the seatbelts didn’t work, and he spent the rest of the time watching from outside the car. From a healthy distance, he pointed out that the limo had been upgraded with a limited-slip differential (LSD, now you get it?), as both drive tires produced beautiful white trails of smoke.
The next morning brought freezing temperatures and flurries of snow, though the highways thankfully remained accident-free. I couldn’t believe my luck as I pulled into the warehouse. The limo had made it over 150 miles without a single issue. My phone lit up with a notification. It’s Franck. He saw my Instagram stories, and he’s horrified. I have a feeling I probably won’t be asked to rescue any more Top Gear vehicles in the future. Oh well.
Top graphic image: Andrea Huang