On Saturday Oct. 30, “Car Talk” aired a show in which a caller mentioned being saved on a remote road in Utah by a man dressed in white driving a white Ford Explorer. No joke.
You can read more about it here and listen to the podcast. The story involving the man in white is near the end of the podcast.
Here’s the summary:
The caller said she and her husband were driving up a mountain in Utah a few years back in their ’89 Toyota Camry (which they implied was pretty old at the time). Their car stopped on a remote road near the top of a mountain. The tried “a hundred times” to start the car, and the husband, who had worked in an auto shop, tried to see what was wrong. They couldn’t figure it out and thought they would have to spend the night in that remote spot.
Up drove a man in a white Ford Explorer. He is described as “very white” and dressed in white. Clean-shaven. He says “start the car.” The caller (the wife) doubts the car will start, but it does. She and the husband drive away.
The purpose of her call is to ask the Car Talk brothers for a plausible mechanical explanation for the car dying and then coming back to life. She thinks it might be 85 octane gas that they had put in the car. The Car Talk brothers can come up with no explanation. The say the car would most likely have died because of a faulty ignition or alternator, but those problems would not have resolved themselves.
There is no evidence the caller is religious, although she seems to think there is some mystical religious thing about the man she calls her “car angel.” Her husband is a skeptic, as are the Car Talk brothers.
Anyway, this story may end up joining the Utah folklore regarding random appearances of the Three Nephites. I know two Mormon-themed movies that mention this folklore (“Baptists at the BBQ” and “Single’s Ward II”). You can read more about this here.