It is normal - and expected - that familiar and reoccurring objects that disappear or get smashed in one comic book story mysteriously reappear in their usual shape in the next. This often happened to the belongings of Carl Barks' primary characters in his comic book stories. Just think of Scrooge McDuck's broadcloth coat or his top hat; through the stories they were regularly damaged, sometimes beyond any logical repair - only to appear in mint condition in the next story!
If you were asked to name just one
item that can be best identified with Donald Duck you would most
probably say his little, red car with the licence number 313. No wonder, because
it is a very distinct vehicle with its balloon wheels and rumble seat. It was
quite often involved in incidents, mishaps, and crashes, in which even our
modern cars would have given up, but, as you know, the 313 drives merrily on.
The stories feature many examples of
the poor car in severe situations, and this page presents you to a few of them.
Actually, this page could also have been titled The 313 Incidents...
 VP1 'Vacation Time' A crook shoves the 313 over a cliff to certain obliteration. |
 WDCS101 'Nightmares' The 313 falls apart during a fall into a lake at the Zoo, where it sinks. |
 FC0147 Volcano Valley Donald sells the totally rundown 313 in order to pay for an airplane! |
 WDCS250 Boxed-In The 313 gets sabotaged by the nephews during Donald's and Daisy's picnic. Donald has no clue as for the goings on. |
 WDCS068 'The Giant Kite' Donald constructs a giant kite that takes him and 313 up on a skyscraper roof, whereupon both are smashed. |
 WDCS112 'Rip van Winkle' The 313 gets hooked onto a mail helicopter towline, until the line is cut and it falls to the ground. |
 U$58 1-pager Scrooge is a passenger in his stretch limousine when he hears a crash. As it turns out the limo has crashed with Donald's car at the far away front end. |
 WDCS220 'Weemite' Donald's invented fuel is so powerful that it rips the 313's motor from its suspension. |
 WDCS274 Gall of the Wild A team of outraged holiday guests in a camp grows tired of Donald and disperse of him in force. The 313 must be a wreck upon landing... |
 U$22 1-pager Scrooge sees Donald on the lookout for cheap new parts for his 313, while he is on his way to the museum to get parts for his antique one. |
 WDCS044 The Mad Chemist The 313 takes a lot of beating and it looks like a write-off halfway through! In the end Donald drives the car into a deep lake from which it was unlikely to ever surface again. |
 FC0178 1-pager Donald goes with the fad of having a big, showy visor mounted on the 313, but when he speeds up, the car gets airborne and lands on top of one of Daisy Duck's trees. |
 WDCS149 'The Flipism Story' Donald behaves totally irresponsibly in this story in which he drives his nephews around in the countryside with little - or no - consideration for their well-being. He even manages to crash the 313 in a collision by driving the wrong way on a one-way road! |
The Duck family's 313 is often seen driving so fast that it is hovering above the surface. This seems to be normal in Barks' stories but it is harder to comprehend that it should also be able to actually change direction in midair as indicated in this example panel. |
 CP2 You Can't Guess Throughout the story 313 really looks like a write-off - and the plot depends on it. Because Donald's only wish for Christmas is a new car to replace the one that breaks down constantly. In the end he gets his fill of new cars from his family. |
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EXTRA |
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In U$14 'The Gyro Fence
Story' we witness a strange incident based on an
unusual turn of events. It is a Gyro Gearloose story, in which Donald was
the other primary character, who had volunteered to try out a special
high-speed gasoline on the 313 only to wind up crashing
into a wall. |
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http://www.cbarks.dk/THECARINCIDENTS.htm |
Date 2017-09-30 |
