“We found a car with a free sign in the canyons of Colorado while on a snowboarding trip with my friends. We got it started with nothing but a screwdriver, crescent wrench, and a big rock. Me and Tony Gower drove it back to our hotel and on the way we decided we should drive it home instead of catching our flight.”
Indulge me in resharing my favorite story of 2021 about a couple dudes from Virginia on a snowboarding trip in Colorado randomly coming across a 1992 Subaru station wagon marked “FREE”, ditching their flights home and making an impromptu cross country trip in a certified shitbox.
The Virginia Pilot reports Elijah Knapp, 24, and Tony Gower, 25, were driving near Aspen when they slammed on the breaks after seeing a Subi with a free sign on the side of the road. They talked to the dude who owned the property, he said the car was on the property when he bought it and was just looking to get rid of it. He had only just put the sign in the windshield a couple of hours before they stopped and they were the first to inquire.
Knapp and Gower co-own an auto business back in Virginia and had no problem hot-wiring the car after the property owner told them it didn’t have keys. The pair got the Subi back to their hotel in Granby and decided it would be fun to drive it all the way home. They asked their friends for help with the $500 to $600 needed for repairs and gas, did a little work on the engine and pointed wagon east.
After a few breakdowns, some push-starts, and some friendly assistance from strangers who can wrench, the pair made it home. They covered 2,150 miles and in 47 hours in a free stumbled upon snowboard trip…hell yeah. Knapp can’t decide whether he’s gonna scrap the wagon for parts, enter it into a demolition derby in October, or put it in front of the dealership with the “FREE” sign back in the windshield. I vote for the latter. Scroll through pics and vids below for travel chronicle:
“We did it! Actually we made it home Monday night at 9pm.
We found a car with a free sign in the canyons of Colorado while on a snowboarding trip with my friends. We got it started with nothing but a screwdriver, crescent wrench, and a big rock. Me and Tony Gower drove it back to our hotel and on the way we decided we should drive it home instead of catching our flight.
2150 miles and 47 hours later, the car is at our dealership! This 1992 Subaru Legacy with 283k miles on it is a champ! The only issue we ran into was the crank bolt coming loose 3 hours into the trip.
We went through Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia.
Thanks to everybody who donated to us for the trip! We made it home with $3 to spare!
