Not a disaster story but you may find it amusing.
Many years ago I had an HB Viva. It was before the days of steering locks, it just had an ignition key that fitted into a lock on the dashboard. The lock and key were very worn and you could pull the key out without turning the lock, thus you could remove the key while leaving the engine running.
One morning I started the car then remembered I had left something indoors. Because my house key was on the same keyring as the car key I simply removed the entire ring from the car inorder to open the front door. I collected the item I had forgotten then drove 25 miles to work. It was only when I arrived and went to switch off the engine that I realised my keys were still at home indoors.
I stopped the engine by stalling it, then borrowed another old style key from a colleague to open the boot and use my tool kit to hot wire the car to get me home again that evening. Much leg-pulling in the office that day. It could never happen now with our sophisticated cars, but there's a lot to be said for the simple old cars we used to run.
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