First-person experience of car setting on fire & fire crew response

It started with a smell. A soldering iron smell, like hot metal wires. 

But I was driving through an industrial estate in Miles Platting, so I didn’t give it a second thought. 

I was on my way back from a job in Ramsbottom. After almost seven miles on the motorway, I’d made my way towards a junction with Manchester Road and was waiting at a traffic light before the plunge into a labyrinth of 20mph residential roads that eventually wound their way to my home. 

It was at this junction that my ABS (automatic brake system) warning light started flashing at me from my dashboard. 

Now, I’m no mechanic. I bought my second-hand Fiat Panda Pop less than a year ago, a month or so after passing my test, and I just about knew how to open the bonnet and check my tire pressure. But I did know the ABS light coming on is generally not a good sign. 

I passed through the junction and pulled over as soon as I could. As I came to a stop, the soldering smell grew stronger, and something caught my eye in the left-hand side of my peripheral vision. I turned my head and watched, mesmerised, as a needle-thin wisp of smoke slowly snaked its way out of the far side of my dashboard.

This was also not a good sign. 

All my belongings were scattered across the passenger seat – a backpack with my work laptop, two phones, my housekeys and press card. I knew I had to act quickly and get my stuff out as quickly as possible, and thought it would be easier to access from the passenger door. So, I darted out and around my car. The door wouldn’t budge. 

I ran back round to the driver’s seat and swooped up my belongings. By this point more tendrils of smoke had started to emerge from around the dashboard, and the smell of burning plastic and metal pierced into my nostrils. Now I was starting to panic. 

I slammed the door shut behind me and for some reason even locked my car as I crossed the street. 

By the time I got through to the fire department on 999, my car had started going batshit. The lights were flickering, the alarm started going off, the horn was blaring. A thick plume of smoke gathered inside the windscreen. The passenger seat, where I’d fished for my belongings just moments before, was ablaze. Minutes later – as I called my editor to tell him, in disbelief, what was happening, all the glass shattered with a tremendous bang and a three-metre high flame shot out of the top of the vehicle. 

The Panda – nicknamed Frieda – was my first ever car. I bought it for £4,000 from a garage in Manchester, with the help of money gifted from my dad, who has since passed away. It was massively granny-core. 2013 license plate. Top speed 80mph (on flat road, with a run-up). And the only way to play anything other than Heritage Radio was to buy a CD. 

But I loved my little granny-mobile, which helped me zip across my patch in Oldham and Bury, and across the Peaks to visit my partner in Sheffield without a single problem. 

At least until it suddenly burst into flames. 

After what could only have been a few minutes but felt like an eternity, a fire engine appeared and fire crew made quick work of Frieda. They left a sad, burnt husk. 

Still in shock, I spoke to one of the firefighters. He told me to take myself home and ‘make yourself a brew’. 

“It’s not like there’s anything more that could go wrong with your car at this point,” he quipped. “Don’t think anyone’s going to steal it in that state.” 

Except – someone did. 

The next day, when the recovery crew arranged by my insurance company turned up, I got a call out of the blue to inform me my Fiat Panda had disappeared, leaving nothing but a sprinkling of shattered glass. 

After some stressed-out calls, it turned out the thieves were not thieves, but GMP – who’d ordered the vehicle to be removed. Probably because at this stage it looked like someone had taken it for a joy-ride, then dumped and petrol bombed it. 

Thankfully, I was completely unharmed. But I did spend a few days in shock wondering – What if I’d been a few minutes slower to pull over? What if I’d been on the motorway? Or come to a stop somewhere busy?

Most of all, I just kept thinking ‘What the actual hell just happened’. 

So I asked a mechanic.

“It sounds a bit like a brake failure,” said Dave, whose full name and garage I’m omitting for his peace of mind, after a moment of shocked silence over the phone. “I couldn’t say with any certainty without taking it apart, but it’s the number one cause for truck fires.” 

Brake failures are when a mechanical or technical fault stops the brakes from disengaging properly. The friction builds up so much heat, which is funnelled through a ventilation shaft close to the car’s electrics, it can lead to a fire. 

It’s likely I might never know what happened. I’ll miss Frieda. But I also feel incredibly lucky that the situation didn’t turn out far worse. 

The only thing that keeps haunting me is that smell. At odd moments, when I’m telling this story, or thinking about finding a new car… I’m sure I can smell it wafting in the air. That soldering iron smell, like metal wires melting. 

For now, I shall be taking the bus.