Jim Beaux wrote:In the 80's I read a news article about a guy who worked in a multi office building that had a large parking lot.C-dub wrote:A lot of Fords used to be like that. I don't know how many models are now. A father of a family I was friends with back in the 80's worked for Ford at the Mahwah plant in NJ. They had 5-6 fords of different models and years from the 70's and into the 80's. One set of keys worked in at least 4 of them.mescobar_rpls wrote:So about 12 yrs ago, my wife and I were getting dinner. We came out of the restaurant to go home. I unlocked our minivan with the key, get in and try to start the vehicle. It did not start. I began cussing, then noticed that the van was quite a bit messier than I remembered. We both look around and realize that it was not our van.
It was the same make, model, year and color. The outside keys worked the locks, wow!
I went back inside the restaurant and located the owners and explained the situation, which was probably overkill, but oh well.
He was in a rush to leave on a business trip and gave his secretary his credit card & sent her to gas up his car. She gassed the car and returned only to meet her boss in the parking lot demanding to know why she hadnt yet taken his car! As you can deduct, she took the wrong car!
The article went on to explain that at the time GM didnt have that many different keys and the odds of keys interchanging was ridiculously low - something like one in ten or so.
Interestingly enough, that's not that all uncommon. about 10 or so years ago, my sister had taken ownership of a Gen1 Ford focus hatch that I had driven for a bit. One day I had to do some work on it for her, and when I pulled my keys out, unlocked the door, and got in, I was hit with a realization. I didn't have HER keys. What I had with me, were my keys, which didn't have a Ford Focus key on them. What they did have however was the key to my old 89 Supra, which is the key that unlocked the door. Thankfully they wouldn't fit the ignition, which sort of helped with the aforementioned moment of what the heck.