Bye Bye, Old Car

[Koliedrus]

For me, it was a Plymouth station wagon.

It was the color of cream and was the vehicle that hauled me and my cohorts from our neighborhood to places only a small town during the '60's could provide.

I vividly recall one instance when my best friend couldn't come with us. I asked mom to roll down the back window so that I could proudly proclaim my newfound spelling abilities. Only, I forgot. I needed a memory cue.

"Momma? How do you spell 'ship'?"

"S H I P. We need to get going so we can get back in time for dinner."

"OK. Hey Mark! S H I T!"

"MIKEY!!!!" (my mom's tolerant but she knows when to shut me up.)

Up went the window and off we drove.

There were no silly seatbelt rules back then, much less car-seats. We were a mobile troup of monkeys jumping around inside one of the best hunks of steel Detroit could manufacture.

The station wagon became one of my brothers' first cars. It sat in neglect in front of the house as he grew older. A nest of yellow-jackets made a home inside before it was finally hauled away.


Today, my kids are parting with a Saturn they've known for their entire lives.

There were some tears shed over the attachment.

What really helped was that my kids helped to pick out the replacement. Not only are they ready for the new car, they're able to part with the old one.

Just some S H I P you may not think about every day.

Hope it helps.

[ms. bing]

it's weird how that happens. when i was a kid my family had a couple old trucks that i would like to say i was never really attached to, but i did learn to drive in one of them. but they were just farm trucks. however, my dad had a really cool plymouth gran fury that was bought the same year my mom bought a really cool ford ltd. as time went on, the plymouth became mac's car and i got the ltd. well, mac's car lasted a lot longer than mine. it was replaced with a vw bug when i was 16 (an older one, this was prior to the reintroduction of the beetle). still, that ltd goes down in my memory as one of the coolest cars ever. it was really big, really smooth, and had soooo much power. of course, the smoothness couldn't help us with hitting deer, fences, and whatever else finally killed it. since then i have driven small cars, big vans, and a bevy of in between sizes, but i've always held a special place in my heart for big, powerful cars with big, powerful engines and smoooth handling. they don't really make much to satisfy me now.
the first car i drove with eva was a small, fast dodge daytona. she still likes that car, even though it has been replaced with something newer and more reliable. guess the penchant for fast cars will carry through another generation of women in my family.

[SimpleSimon]

Old cars are such a joy. Especially when paying one off, which I did today. Julie and I bought the Corolla when it was 15 months old, with 17,000 miles on it. In the 8 months she drove it before her death she put 30,000 more on it. Since her death, I have driven it almost exclusively - in fact, I gave the Dakota to SLH after he'd driven it for 2 years.

Went to the bank and paid it off today - 30 days late but paid off, finally! In the 44 months I've driven it, I've put another 50K on it - it's at 107K, runs well, and is reasonably reliable. It needs a timing belt, and a brake job, and a tune up, but it gets us around.

Best car I ever owned was a 1967 Impala coupe, with a 327 with a 6-pack. Bought it new when it was sitting at the back of the local dealers lot after the 1969's had already arrived - got a hell of a good deal. Big, fast, and a hell of a lot of fun!

Finally sold it after one to many run-ins with the local county mounties left one of them upside down in a creek bed, and they couldn't prove he'd been chasing me. Didn't matter to them - they made my life hell thereafter till I got rid of it.

[skalie]

Originally posted by SimpleSimon
Finally sold it after one to many run-ins with the local county mounties left one of them upside down in a creek bed, and they couldn't prove he'd been chasing me.

Excellent.

Killed a Merc this summer, too much rust, not enough time.

The grill is going to end up on a friends Trabant.

[SimpleSimon]

The car I enjoyed the most in my life was a Subaru 360 van - looked like a VW van, only small enough to park in the cargo area of a regular VW van. Had a 356 cc two-cylinder horizontally opposed two-stroke engine, and would do a really swift 50mph on a dead level road with no headwind. Going up any kind of grade meant 7,000 rpm in 1st gear at 12 mphs.

Damned thing had 10 inch wheels (it looked like a shoe-box on roller skate wheels), and weighed 800 pounds with a full tank of gas. I went places in that van most people wouldn't go on a dirt-bike - I just went slowly.

Rear ended a guy in it once - the whole front end folded in on a nice neat line the height of his bumper. All it did to his car was scuff the dirt on the back bumper. I drove it home, took the bottom of the front seat out, sat down and shoved the crease back out with my feet.

Got a speeding ticket once from a county cop in it - he claimed he had me on radar at 82 mph! I drove the car to the courthouse on the day of the trial, and explained what it was to the judge. He didn't believe me - so I talked him into coming out to the parking lot and looking at it. He looked at it, drove it round the lot (had to downshift to 1st gear to come back up the slope to the front of the courthouse), and said to come back in to court. He dismissed the charge as a patent absurdity, then instructed the court clerk to invalidate every speeding ticket issued by that officer since the date of the last state certification examination of his radar unit.

Boy, was that cop hot!

[skalie]

Had to Google that..........

[Cruise Director]

My first car was a 1970 Monte Carlo. I got to pay for it but the folks got to pick it? It was not the most memorable, though. That goes to the subaru wagon that belonged to my best friend's mom. We would sluff school and go down to a big parking lot where he taught me to drive a stick shift. I miss that car.

[Torque]

My first was a 68 roadrunner, and I miss it some. The one I really miss was a 83 Camaro that just sort of wore out all at the same time. Within a few months, after many happy years, it split seats, tranny started rattling and shaking the shifter, the tires got shitty, it stopped charging right, and sprang a nasty water leak. Then I spun a bearing. I got 300 bucks for it from a guy that wanted to build it into a race car. About 2 years after that, it was one of the cars I helped him cut up with a sawzall to toss them in the back of a truck to take to the dump. His wife was unreasonable, and thought 25 cars in the back yard was too many.

My 4 year old cried the day I sold my 96 LT4 vette, because that was just the me and him fun car. No room for anyone else. He asked me for a week if I would call the guy and tell him to bring the car back. We'll build something even cooler later on anyway.

[Mudflap]

My first car was a 1980 dark blue Chevette with over 100K miles on it. It had the 4 banger and automatic transmission. That was back in 1986. I had to run it on 93 octane just to get it to make 0 to 55 mph in less than 30 seconds. I gave it more horsepower with some cheap American Racing Outlaw II chrome rims, a Pioneer AM/FM reciever with cassette player, and a 75 watt 2-way amplifer powering the original Becker hatchback speaker box -- 10 inch subwoofer and two 8 inch 3-way coaxial woofers. Tom Petty, Beastie Boys, AC/DC, and Whitesnake cassettes were played proudly at high volumes most anytime I was behind the wheel. Any Bon Jovi tapes that were discovered smuggled into the 'Vette were promptly tossed out the driver's side window at highway speeds.

I miss that car and the kid that used to drive it.

[Rabble Rouser]

Adding on the tale of my first (and present) car...a 94 Dodge Shadow.

I was in an accident about a month ago, and in spite of the minor cosmetic damage (smashed hood, headlight, and front corner panel), the car has been totaled because it's ten years old. It's still perfectly functional, but I'm going to have to get rid of it in March because that's when the inspection runs out, and unless I sink thousands of dollars into a $1600 car, it's not gonna pass.

Just the thought of seeing my perfectly functional little Shadow sitting in a junkyard being harvested for parts and left to rust makes me cry. Seriously. :( That little car has been so good to me. It's had its breakdowns, but each time, it made sure I wasn't stranded on the side of the road...it always had just enough to get me to a parking lot or somewhere with civilization. I learned to drive on it, and we've had a lot of fun together.

March won't be a good month for me. :(

[skalie]

Originally posted by skalie
Killed a Merc this summer, too much rust, not enough time.


Fuck fuck fuck.

Merc almost, almost scrapped, then my brother in law rings up "You know my old boss who had that Merc in his parking lot, you can have it if you want, it's a rust bucket though"

= straight 6, 280 (petrol) motor.

A bit of time and ambition and I be driving a class motor.

Life's a cunt, working means enough money and not enough time to make good use of it, not working means too much time and not enough money to make good use of it.