Mine was about three hours in Norwich about 25 years ago. The town centre open air car parks all looked the same, I'd never been up their before and it took me ages to track the damn thing down.
Not as bad as this bloke, though -
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/11567504/Manchester-Marathon-runner-cannot-find-car-after-nine-days.html
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When I lost mine in London late at night, I buttonholed a policeman and said I couldn't find my car and that it might possibly have been stolen, or lifted by the authorities (I'd left it on a yellow line). They soon found it, called me on mobile and told me where it was... where I'd left it. Doh.
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Returning to Gatwick one year from holiday my Father in Law offered to pick us up to save us a taxi fare and left his car in the car park.
He got there an hour too early and then our four hour flight was delayed by an hour so we were all quite tired and fed up around 11 pm at night.
When we finally got out he could not remember which car park of the three each with 4 levels he had left it in but only that it was near the lift of which there are several in each car park ............ so we spent almost another two hours searching before we found it by which time the car park charge was twice what we would have paid to get home in a taxi.
I suppose he meant well........
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Whenever I street parked in London,I always left the sidelights on-much easier to find in the evening.
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Drove the car* into town, caught a train to visit my parents in Ottery. Came back to town a few days later and caught the bus home.
It took me two days to work it out.
*a Fiat 128 3p. A POS really, but I loved it.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Tue 28 Apr 15 at 12:30
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Approx 2 hours in Bournemouth.
A group of us were bored one evening and someone suggested going to Bournemouth to get some pick n' mix sweets! Crazy idea considering we were in Oxfordshire at the time. However off we went, 3 or 4 cars in convoy (yes, we did have CB radio at the time). Parked up in an area of Bournemouth I'd never been to before and headed off to the pier area. Somehow we managed to get split up because a group of locals tried picking a fight with us. Some of our party legged it, while the others got stuck in. To cut a long story short, the ones from our party who ran off knew where the car park was. Didn't even know the street name, or whether is was an NCP or AN Other owned one.
Like I said at the start, we found it approx 2 hours later. We couldn't even play remote control roulette in the car parks we did stumble upon to get the hazzard lights flashing on our cars as this was back in the late 80's before remote central locking was mainstream on cars.
Last edited by: VxFan on Tue 28 Apr 15 at 13:05
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>> A group of us were bored one evening and someone suggested going to Bournemouth to
>> get some pick n' mix sweets! Crazy idea
is that some kind of code?
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>> is that some kind of code?
No, we actually headed off to Bournemouth (a 150 mile round trip) just to get some sweets.
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I can't recall whether it was Top Gear or Mythbusters where they rigged the car such that if you lost it and were within half a mile, you pressed a remote and the car fired a flare through the sunroof. Gave you a clue at least.
A reasonable idea seems to me to be to tie a helium balloon to the aerial. No help if you don't even recall the car park of course.
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Bristol balloon fiesta.
Thought we'd be clever and leave before the end. It was daylight when we left the car in an anonymous field - damned if we could find it in the dark. Ended up leaving with the massed crowds - took us over an hour to get out.
Left my newly acquired, red car in Vauxhall motors car park around twenty years ago. Have you any idea how many cars were red around then? Blowed if I could remember its number: goo.gl/maps/dxft0
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about 4 hours. A Fiat hire car in Turin. Have you any idea how many fiats there are in Turin?
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A lot less time than some of you but enough to get worried. Venues were (a) Duxford and (b) NEC. Biggin Hill too but there I KNEW I was at end of a row.
Berlingos are reasonably distinctive as was, albeit less obviously, a Cit BX. OTOH a Pug 205 or a Xantia merge into the crowd.
A duster tied to the radio aerial helps.
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>>A duster tied to the radio aerial helps.
>>
My Jaguar X type has NO external aerials fo rthe radio or Sat nav.
It does have an extra button on the remote fob to turn the main beams on and also sound the alarm.
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>> A Fiat hire car in Turin. Have you any idea how many
>> fiats there are in Turin?
>>
That's nothing. Lost my bicycle in Beijing once.
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You should write a song about that.
Mine is Gatwick too. We returned on a cheapie flight from Malaga in November 1997 and, in the dark and rain couldn't remember where in the vast open-air car park we'd left our (fairly conspicuous I'd thought, until then) red Saab. Sense of humour was pretty thoroughly failed by the time we tracked it down, and this was with a remote key fob; without that we might still be there.
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Lost my 306 at the NEC. I was late arriving as an exhibitor, so didn't make a note of which park it was in, just that it was nose in to a hedge. Have you any idea how many hedges there are in the NEC carparks?
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Some years back on the way from UK to Italy I decided to stop at an autobahn service area for a meal!
It was the type spanning both carriageways with car parks at each end, had my meal came back to the car park car nowhere to be seen.
I found a policeman tried to explain what had happened (he spoke hardly any English) so he gets on his radio speaks to his base and hands me the microphone, I explain to his colleague that my car is missing and I give him the details of the car and where I am travelling to ect.
The policeman then beckons me to come with him, takes me to the carpark at the other end (to where I had been looking) and took me straight to my car!
To say I felt a complete idiot is to understate matters somewhat.
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Many years ago returned to Manchester airport in February, very early morning.
I was a little uncertain as the whereabouts, and was confused by a very heavy frost , which left EVERY car shiny white. Eventually found it with the key fob.
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>> Not as bad as this bloke, though -
He's finally found it (well, actually someone else found it for him).
www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/manchester-marathon-runners-car-found-9136875
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I hired an orange coloured Escort in the dark one evening. I then parked it on the street a hundred yards or so from the hotel I was staying in. Next morning i couldn't find the car and had a few minutes of mounting anxiety before I found it. It was a white car that had looked orange under the neon lights...........doh!
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>> Next morning i couldn't find the car and had a few minutes of mounting anxiety
>> before I found it. It was a white car that had looked orange under the
>> neon lights...........doh!
My father had a similar issue with a tomato red Granada that looked fawn under sodium lights.
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I've never lost my own car for very long, but picking up one car from a dealer compound can sometimes take me a little while. When they're all wrapped in white plastic. And in Transport mode, where the remote doesn't work. And they don't have number plates.
Half an hour's a b****y long time to fish one black A5 out of about 200 when it's snowing.
Last edited by: Dave_C220CDI on Fri 1 May 15 at 00:07
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What's The Longest You've "Lost" Your Car For? - Armel Coussine
