So we’ve heard a slew of nightmare stories about dirty repair jobs as well as garish color combinations. But what about cars at night, while you’re asleep? I woke up a couple of nights ago with a very vivid dream where there were cop cars everywhere, but every one was a 1967 Impala fastback hardtop, in flat black paint, no less. Well, that’s actually pretty mild. I do tend to have lots of vivid car dreams, and I find myself thinking if only I could screen-save this! right while I’m dreaming it. My car dreams tend to fall into two categories: that regular cars can actually fly, if you know the right inputs why didn’t I know about this before?, and very bizarre cars. And quite often, a colorful combination of the two.
The flying car dreams have actually dissipated in recent years, but there was a time in my thirties and forties when they were a regular night-time feature, although not quite as common as being able to just lift off and fly myself (why don’t I dream that so much anymore…?)
It’s a wonderful feeling, just taking off in your body, sometimes just a low level levitation, other times more ambitiously. Thank you Peter Pan! It’s so easy… But I do/did often have recurring problems tangling with overhead electrical wires…not again!
Anyway, the flying car dream was also very common, and always associated with a certain sense of now just how and why is this working? Why don’t other folks realize their cars can fly? Oh right, the car is actually shaped in cross section like an airfoil…makes perfect sense...and what exactly is propelling the car? The spinning wheels, of course. Why didn’t I think of this sooner? Never mind.
someone built one of my dream cars: hemmingsblog
Sometimes, my flying cars are regular production models. But often, I’d find myself at an “airport”, and the cars parked there are all fantasmagoric. I can’t begin to describe them in detail, but they usually involve various elements of real cars mixed up with far-out aspects from the imagination. And I am so utterly entranced by them, and I feel so brilliant for imagining them…Oh wow; there’s a 1962 Dodge rear quarter panel, and there’s a ’53 Studebaker headlight, and there’s a….if only I could show everyone what I’m seeing here.. And there’s dozens of these cars parked there. And I get to pick which one I can take for a flight.
It’s very frustrating to not be able to photograph them at the time, because I know they would be so awesome in the light of daytime consciousness. Or so I think at the time. Let’s just say that Virgil Exner’s Turboflyte “dream car” is perhaps the most readily available image I have on hand to give you a very rough idea of what I’m trying to describe. But it’s rather mild in comparison.
Well, I could go on and one, as vivid cars of one kind or another in my dreams are a recurring theme. So now it’s your turn; what cars show up in your dreams?
I don’t recall my dreams in vivid detail, but they seem to take a more pragmatic approach in my subconscious. Oftentimes, I’ll wake up in the morning with a solution to some vexing under-hood problem, solved through some form of sleep-based processing.
In fact, my wife tells me I often talk in my sleep, working out my latest mechanical challenge. Not as exciting as vehicular flight, but it’s quite satisfying to wake up with a solution to that random misfire or annoying rattle.
The “personal flying and tangling with power lines” was a recurring dream when I was young, maybe into my mid-teens. I have occasional car chase dreams, too, but usually with normal gravitational physics involved.
+1
I always use a transporter in my dreams, it’s the only way to fly
Sometimes I can remember the car,the last one involving a car I was driving(make unknown) to a blind date in a restaurant.I dreamed I was being chased by the police as I drove a red AMC Javelin(year unknown) all smoking tyres and flying over a hump backed bridge.
Had you watched “The Man with the Golden Gun” recently?
http://youtu.be/_F8gTRmrmgI
I saw it a few times but not recently
Wow – the CC effect is strong today. Just this morning, I woke up to a car dream. Mrs. JPC and I were leaving a casual restaurant when a young hispanic guy started showing off his lowrider to me. I recall being satisfied with the explanation that it bounced higher in the back vs. the front because he had only two hydraulic cylinders in front vs. 3 in the back – more room, you know.
I thanked him for showing it to me, then the Mrs. and I slid into the white leather seat of my 76 Cadillac DeVille convertible (top down, of course) and smugly burbled on out of the parking lot.
Other than the fact that I have no interest in low riders, and that there is no such thing as a 76 DeVille convertible, and the fact that it is about the last car I would choose to buy, it was quite realistic.
Yes, I will take comments from any psychologists who follow this site directly to email. Everyone else already had a pretty good idea that something was wrong with me anyway. 🙂
I often dream about driving cars, a recurring theme is backing up and being unable to stop the car no matter what. I try to park and the car keeps moving backwards, very frustrating. Other scenarios are more interesting but I do not think I have ever had the flying dream with a car. I still have dreams about personal flying though I had more of them when I was younger. They are without a doubt my personal favorite.
I’ll dream of cars especially when I’m looking at buying one. The Cc effect guarantees it tonight since #1 son and I are looking at cars for him today. Too bad there’s not such a thing as a manual transmission 05 Taurus!
As for personal lying, the trick (per Douglas Adams) is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
On occasion I will. There was one a week or so ago about driving my ’63 Ford around, likely due as it should be road ready in about a week.
Most of the time I’m simply driving a car I like; nothing too exciting.
My favorite car-related dream was when I dreamed I was a crewman on a space ship, going back in time to land on Earth in the 1950’s. You could tell it was the 50’s by the cars. Right as we were landing, a 1955 Chrysler 300 drove by, followed by a two-tone 1957 Fairlane. It was a very vivid dream, and as is the case with most of my dreams, the colors had a sort of sepia tone. (Cinematography by Lawrence Jones, if you will.)
I think the dream was mostly inspired by a mechanic’s joking remark that he’d found parts for my old Pontiac by using a time machine.
I often dream about my first car; my 82 Honda Civic. The dream usually involves it being lost, or stolen, or that I found it again some 15 years later and am trying to buy it back again. Not sure why, but I never seem to dream about any of my “cooler cars”.
Also, I can’t fly in my dreams, but I am often falling. With or without my car.
I have occasionally had one about how an old car I sold years ago is actually in storage for some reason and I get it out. I always wonder how I could have forgotten all about it. Last time was a couple months ago when I realized that I still had my 71 Scamp. It’s kind of disappointing when I wake up. 🙁
The same thing happens to me now and then. I’ll dream that my first car, a 1991 Volvo 940SE, was never really sold but was just in storage. I will get all happy and take it for a ride, then wake up and get mad because it’s really gone 🙁
A while ago I had a dream about a butter yellow ’67 or ’68 Camaro with a black convertible top. What was striking to me in the dream was that the Camaro had military tank or model T era hand controls in lieu of a steering wheel. My grandfather was in the dream but he passed away when I was two and I don’t remember him. He had a used car dealership and auto repair business but lost it in the great depression. I figure the vertical hand controls in the dream had something to do with the antique cars from the very early part of the 20th century. I saw a ’67 butter yellow Camaro (non-convertible) the other night parked on the street here in LA. Made me think of that dream.
I worked for a short while as a mechanic when I first got out of high school. I remember one night after work I had a dream in which I couldn’t stop thinking about how urgently I had to change the rear differential fluid in this pickup truck. I just HAD to change that fluid, it needed to be done very soon. Then I woke up and I had to pee. That is when I knew I needed a different job.
The only car I have ever dreamt about is and was re-acquiring my 1964 Chevy – my avatar.
Too bad this dream will most likely never come true…
I dream more about places than cars, but since around 12 years of age (1986!), I’ve had the only car dream I can recall,m and which recurs once or twice a year.
I’m on one of the narrow country roads that leads away from my home town. The countryside along the road is gently rolling to steeper hills. 4-5km along the road there’s a small cone-shaped hill, maybe 3010-15 metres high, with a house on top. So far, this is all real, and exists in real life. But in my recurring dream I’m either driving in, chasing, or being chased around the base of this small hill by a grubby white VG Chrysler Valiant ute. I know it’s a VG because it has the VG-only rectangular headlights. It’s like the white one below, but has jellybean alloy wheels, like on the blue one. Whether I’m driving it or not, the tail is always sliding out, and there’s dirt and mud being thrown everywhere as it bounces over bumps and through potholes. No one in our family has ever owned a VG Valiant, let alone the ute version. The closest was my late Uncle’s VF Valiant VIP that was my parents’ wedding car in 1969, but that Val was long gone when I was born. Weird huh…!
The one dream I remember most about cars was back when I was in high school and just getting into car collecting. I’d discovered how, during the depression, rich people who were suddenly broke were selling their luxury cars for only $75-150. In my dream I somehow managed to get back to the early 30s and bought up a beautiful collection of custom bodied Cords, Packards, Dusenbergs, it was glorious. Then I bought a half-block plot of land and had a large garage built where I parked the cars. I carefully greased, oiled, moth-proofed all the cars and locked them up more securely than fort knox. Then, just as mysteriously, I was in the present.
I remember how, in the dream, my sister and parents were suprised that I was back and asked where I had gone. Just you wait, I replied and had a BIG dinner. Then, getting into the old family Buick, we drove over to the garage…to find a ten-year old drugstore! I researched through the library and city hall and found that the city had taken the land through eminent domain and since they could not contact the owner, broke into the garage & hauled off all the old cars to be crushed and recycled.
I woke up with a wet pillow from crying…