So I needed a new car (part one... a drive down memory lane)

So one of the things that I've wanted to do since I graduated was to get a new car.  It's not that my car was really all that bad (although it wasn't all that good either), or that I felt it was nearing its failure point.

No... to me it was a sign of 'making it'.  To be able to afford a new or at least a fairly new car and do so without having to break the bank meant that I had attained a status that very few in my family had ever achieved.

Cars are kind of a big thing with my family.  I often get kidded by my friends with just how car obsessed (and car poor) my family is.  I may not be worth a limp rag when working on a car, but I can talk intelligently about almost every single american car maker, and the vast majority of foreign cars as well.  Chevy, Ford, Dodge.  Cadillac, Lincoln, Chrysler.  Toyota, Honda, Volkswagen.  Hyundai, Kia,  Mazda.  I've looked at and dreamed about cars form most of these companies and so many more.  And starting in January 2012, I started not only looking seriously at cars, but budgeting out how much I could pay.

Before I get to much into this car search I wanted to give a brief history of my cars.  As I said, my family has been 'car poor' for quite awhile.  I don't think my parents ever owned a new car, and the closest they ever got was a 2 year old Chevy Astro minivan just before my dad passed away.

My first baby!

So considering that my parents couldn't afford a decent family car (I won't even bother going into the long line of lemonesque station wagons we drove across country), I knew that they would never be able to get me a nice car.  My first car around 1989 was a 1979 Chevy Monza.  If you've never heard of a Monza, I can't blame you as it was honestly a blight on the good name of Chevrolet in the late 70s and early 80s.  (And no... Chevy DIDN'T have a a good name back then!).  It was crap.  Even if it wasn't a decade old and even if it didn't have over 190,000 miles on it, it would still be a piece of crap.  Right off the assembly line it had a 105-horsepower 196-cubic-inch V-6.  Now a days low horsepower almost always equates good gas milage.  I suppose when compared to the bohemoths back then that got 11 miles per gallon, my little beater getting 13 miles a gallon was an improvement.. but even in the late 80s that wasn't all that good.  The only saving grace on that side was that gas was regularly below $1.00 a gallon.   So working at Sbarro's pizzeria and McDonalds for around $3.00 an hour kept my car both fueled and insured.  The car had an aftermarket stereo in it so I at least had a tape player, but if I'm remembering correctly, it only had one working speaker.  It wasn't too bad... the radio wasn't in stereo anyway.  The brakes were shakey, the transmission wouldn't even attempt to go into second gear, the body panels were either rusted through or about to fall off, the tires were decent, but the wheels were out of alignment.

But it was mine.

And I loved it.

It got me to high school and work.  It got me to my friends' house and back home before curfew.  No longer would I have to beg to borrow the old grocery getter... I could grab my license and my keys and drive anywhere I damn well pleased.  Sadly the Monza didn't last all that long.  I'd love to say that the engine seized or that the tranny fell out, but no.  I hit a dear.  At 50 miles per hour.  The dear lived for a short while, but my first car died rather unspectacularly there on the road.  So after a quick search through the want ads (this was long before the Internet kiddies!) I found a 1983 Buick Skylark at a dealership for $500.

I got to rip off a car dealer!

Now, $500 was pretty big money for me at the time.  So this was also my first car loan.  I borrowed the money from Dad, and paid him back each and every week.  The one saving grace of getting this from a dealership was that they gave me a 30 day warranty.  And wouldn't you know it that the transmission died on day number 29.  They stood by their guarantee and ended up putting a $600 transmission into a car that they probably made $200 on.

Much like the Monza, this was a car from that period.  It had almost no horsepower, and no modern amenities to speak of, but at least this time it was in fairly good shape.  I still drove the doors off of it.  It didn't matter one little bit that I was one of the slowest cars on the road, I would have that gas pedal floored almost constantly.  This car lasted a few years before the engine died of natural causes.

Damn drug dealers and their fancy paint jobs.

Next up was... another Monza.  I should have known that this would be a bad car, but I got it from a police auction for $200.  It was in good condition... at least so far as I could tell when they started it up for me and let me look at it through a chain link fence.  I sometimes wonder if they knew they were taking advantage of a 17 year old kid.  Yes... the car started up.  Yes, the car looked clean.  But no.. it was not a good deal.  It seemed that the previous owner had been a small time drug dealer and had installed a nitrous system in it.  The cops took it out and the damn car never ran right again.  Sure it would start up and idle, but if you dared take it over 2000 rpm, you'd stall the damn engine out.

And that clean paint job?  Well our petty criminal evidently knew his white Chevy Monza was being searched for so he painted it black.  With spray paint.  Spray paint for wood.  I lost a good 10% of the paint job in the first two months.  Thankfully I was more of a realist back then and quickly figured out that it wasn't worth having professionally painted.  So instead I invested in several cans of matching black paint and would occasionally touch up the paint as it peeled away.

But while I could 'maintain' the paint job, I never ever go that engine to work right.  It only took about a year before I got so sick and tired of stalling out and back up traffic for blocks that I sold the car for $50.  Funny side note... I believe I sold it back to the same drug dealer as only a month later I saw the car speeding down the highway and it sounded spectacular going about 90 miles per hour (the best speed I ever eeked out of it was around 55mph).

The cruise tried to kill me.

Next up on my never ending parade of less than acceptable cars was my Pontiac 6000.  This one compared to my other cars was really nice.  Not only did the engine actually work, it had air conditioning and cruise control.  It was by no means a sport car, but it wasn't a slouch and could easily keep up with traffic in the city as well as on the highway.  But the car lacked soul.  It wasn't something that I ever loved... it was something that only got me from point A to point B.  If I had loved the car, I may well have kept it longer, but at the first sign of trouble I ditched the car.

One day while driving down a 45 mile an hour stretch of country road I flipped on the cruise and sat back for the ride home.  After a few miles I noticed that the scenery was flying by.  FAST.  A glance down the speedometer told me that I was doing just under 80mph.  And when I hit the brakes, the cruise didn't turn off.  I had to put all my weight on that pedal to get it to slow down to a reasonable speed.  When I finally got it stopped the brakes were smoking and the engine was still racing.  After getting it towed to the a mechanic friend, he informed me that the cruise was shot and he needed to disconnect it.  He knew that I wouldn't be willing to pay for that kind of repair.

Right around that time, I came into some money.  You see when I was young an optometrist did several unnecessary surgeries on my eyes ensuring that I'd never see correctly again.  When I was around 10 years old my parents sued him on my behalf and I was awarded some largish amount of money.  But after paying the lawyers, the money was put into a trust until I was 18.  I had sived off some of that money for a computer here or some college books there, but I hadn't really dived into it.  So before I went to move off across the state to a new college (Ferris State University), I went up to a larger city with a friend and a checkbook in my now untrusty 1985 Pontiac 6000 and returned in a 1990 Ford Escort.

Nicest car I owned?

This was in 1994... I remember because until now that was the newest car that I ever owned.  Oh I had a few cars newer than 1990, but none that were only four years old.  The car could have been brand new as far as I was concerned.  There were no dents and no rust.  The engine ran like it was new, and while it was no speed demon, it too could keep up with traffic.  It even sipped the least amount of gas as any car I had previously owned.  It had cruise, AC, rear window defrost, new tires.  It wasn't the sporty GT version, but it wasn't the plain jane pony version either.  It was the nicest car I had owned up to that point and at the time was newer than my parents current station wagon.  And for four years, it ran like silk.  In 1998 it still blew out cool air... the body was still in good shape (minus the dent in the rear quarter panel where a dear rammed me).  The tires had been replaced and if I am remembering correctly it had just a touch over 100,000 miles on the odemetoer.

But this still wasn't a time known for quality cars.  And when the engine died it did so quickly and completely.  The mechanic actually giggled when I had it towed there and said after a quick peek that it would need a new engine.

Now I should say that I know now and knew then that this was no where near a quality car.  It was now an 8 year old Ford Escort, and I had no illusions that this was a nice well built machine.  But it WAS the nicest car that I had owned and had served me reliably for four years.  I had spent all of my lawsuit money and was just about to finish with college and move on to Chicago.  So the choice of spending $1000 on a different lesser car or $800 on a rebuilt engine was a simple one.  It turns out to also have been a stupid decision as that engine was leaking oil like a colander after only a few months.

Knowing that there was no way this engine would last long, I did the best thing I could... I sold it for a grand or so.  The person that I sold it to knew it leaked some oil, but I doubt she knew what she was getting into.  With that money and some more borrowed from Dad I bought my brothers old car.   A 1990 Beretta GTZ.

The Black Shadow of Death

Now I should say that all the previous pictures are ones I found on the web.  They all match the year and model of car I had, but none were my cars.  This one however is my Beretta GTZ.  This car was HOT.  It only produced 180 horsepower from its Quad4 engine, but with the five speed manual transmission I could make this car sing.  Unlike any previous ride, this was not a standard run of the mill package... it was the sport trim.  So it had the shocks, brakes and engine to perform.  And perform it did.  I took this baby to Chicago and instead of being terrorized by all the crazy drivers, I terrorized them.  I recall at one point driving home from work in a particularly bad mood, and what made my mood improve reliably?  Driving like a maniac.  I turned down some side street and just rowed through the gears until I was doing about 80mph.

Yea... I looked like that.

In Chicago.  This may not have exactly been downtown, but it wasn't the burbs either.  I was maybe a mile from the heart of the city on streets that were originally laid out in the 1800s.  At one point I hit a particularly large bump and went airborn.  I swear I looked like the dude from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

It turned out I had an audience.... the police.  Surprisingly they didn't seem to care.  The next day when I went by place on my way to work, the cops were there.  I was so scared that they were going to pull me over that I was driving about 10mph past them, but all I got was him waving and smiling at me.  So don't ever say anything bad about the CPD... they're good folk.

This was also the fist car that ever had a name... well... really a title.  I didn't give the car this title, but it seemed appropriate enough that I continued the tradition.  Her title was 'The Black Shadow of Death'.  She was a really fun car right up until the time that the transmission died.  I should have taken that as a sign, but I just couldn't part with her.  It cost me $1200 to put a new tranny in her, and from that point on I was constantly putting money into her.  The master break cylinder died.  The radiator burst.  The exhast fell off.  I ran over some piece of furniture on the highway and it left a piece of wood between the ground effects and the body (I trimmed off the excess and left it in place... painted black of course).  One headlight died followed by the other.  I'm not talking about the bulbs either, I'm talking about some piece of crap in the assembly.  But with each dip into my dwindling wallet I figured that the worst was over and that I could get another few good years out of the Shadow.

Then the engine died.  I took it to the dealership figuring it was worth the money to get her fixed right... I had already put about $2500 into her in the last year and I didn't want to just throw that away.  But this time I was in for a shocker... the engine didn't just die, the block cracked.  This engine was known for that problem around 120,000 miles and the dealership said they were amazed that I had gotten up to 150,000 miles.  To replace the engine with a used one would cost me around $3000.  Even a local shade tree mechanic said that it would cost me about $2000 to get her back on the road, and even then she wouldn't be long for this world.

So with a tear in my eye and a royal pain in my wallet I sold her for scrap.  I got all of $100 out of her.  And I had to dicker to get that much... the first offer was for $20 which wouldn't have covered the tow to the scrap yard.

After losing the Shadow, I went without a car for awhile.  I was in between jobs and just couldn't afford a car.  I may have well been sixteen again as I was constantly borrowing my Dad's truck or my Mom's minivan.  When I finally did get a reliable job I borrowed a few hundred dollars from my grandfather and bought Bellulah.

Not Bellulah, but close.

Bellulah was my 1983 Chevy Impalla.  I honestly loved the styling of this car even though it was the epitome of the square early 80's car.   After driving like a crazed man for several years it was kind of nice to drive a car that wouldn't allow it.  It only produced 110 horse power out of it's smallish V6.  But damn for a car that was over 25 years old she looked damn fine.  The body was just in spectacular shape.  Not a bit of rust inside or out.  the interior wasn't bad, but was also original.  And I assure you that if somebody's fat ass sat on you for 25 years, you wouldn't look great either.  I dropped an aftermarket stereo into her with a tape deck just so I could listen to my iPod while driving around.  On the highway Bellulah struggled to maintain any type of speed and couldn't really do any passing maneuvers unless she was going downhill.  I once drove home around 4AM, and the highway was barren... so I floored it and found out just how fast she could go.  And at the bottom of a fairly long hill I got her all the way up to 82mph.  I don't think Doc Brown would have approved.

Now I loved my first car for simply being my first car.  There really couldn't have been a worse first car.  I loved the Escort because she was my first 'nice' car.  I love the Shadow because I could burn rubber going into first second third and fourth gears while making my friends squeal in the passenger seat.

But Bellulah.. she was different.  I had a real emotional bond with her.  Sure... she took money for repairs just as easily as she took gas and oil.  But I still loved her.  I had visions of keeping her long term.  Sure I'd eventually have to replace her as a daily driver, but I had the dream of restoring her interior, dropping a big V8 in her, and keeping her around as a project/toy car.

The only real conserning problem she had was the brakes.  Where I was at that point, I had a drive to work that included several miles on the highway.  The exit I needed quickly dropped down to street level and ended fairly quickly at a stop light.  The intersection was busy, so there was always cars down at the bottom of this ramp.  Well in the winter, I had to baby her down that hill as she just didn't seem to want to stop.  At first I figured it was just the fact that I was trying to stop a nearly 4000 pound car in a short amount of distnace on drum brakes.  Well it turned out that it wasn't that.  When I finally couldn't stop her one day when the road was icy... and I mean I couldn't stop her at ALL... I took her to the local brake shop.  The diagnosis was the lack of ANY rear brakes.  Consider that this car was rear wheel drive... so when I was trying to stop the front wheels were doing all the work while the rears were actually still pushing the car.  And when it was on ice and the front wheels locked, the car was basically coasting even though I was standing on the brake pedal with both wheels.

That problem though was easily fixed and I still dreamed of keeping Bellulah for years and years.  That is until the drunk ass hole in a full size Chevy pick rear ended me going almost 50mph.  That picture over there (I can't bear to look at it) is what Bellulah looked like after the accident.

The truck hit me so hard that I was pushed into the trailer of a car hauler and bent HIS bumper in.  I was fine and only had a mild case of whiplash (thank GOD for seatbelts!), but Bellulah was dead.  Her frame was actually cracked into two behind the rear wheel.

I remember that this song was playing when I was hit, and I can't hear it now without remembering what to this day is still my favorite car:

I'll always love you Bellulah

Anyway... I was in a pickle and needed a car quick. I didn't have weeks to search so I bought my next car the following day.  A 1990 Lincoln town car. It was nice to have a car almost a decade newwer, but this was in 2004 so I was buying a 14 year old two ton luxury car.  I named her Belinda because it sounded as classy as she looked.

It probably wasn't my smartest car purchase, but she was nice to drive and had a lot of amenities like power windows, power door locks, remote keyless entry, self closing trunk, and air ride suspension.  She drove like a cloud in a Disney animator's dream.  But sadly I never felt the connection with Belinda as I did with Bellulah.  Sure, she was nice and she was classy, but she just didn't have any soul.  I'm sure it wold be easy to make a connection with a car like this when it was new... but she was old.  Her engine may have been a 5.0 V8, but she never drove like a mustang.  Probably because she was heavier than Bellulah by several hundred pounds.  And when she broke... and of course she broke... she was so god damned expensive to fix.  One of the last things to break was the power window on the drivers side.  One day I rolled the window up and she never rolled back down again.  I took apart the door to figure out which motor I would need and found out that to get it out I'd have to take the frame of the door apart... something that couldn't be done while ti was till attached to the car.  And even f I was willing to do such a think the damn moter would have cost me $600.

Used.

I'm sorry, I may be a smoker and it may be VERY important that the window go up and down, but there is just no damn way I was going to put that much money and effort into a god damned window!  I rolled down the passenger window and put my butts out in the ashtray.  Thankfully I didn't have to do that long because soon thereafter the engine decided it didn't want to run any longer.  It could still get me from point A to point B, but I could never let her idle.  When I'd start her up in the morning I'd have to sit there and keep the RPMs up around 3500 for a good five minutes or she'd stall out.  Once I got her running I had to race the engine whenever I tried to brake and at any stop I'd have to pop her into neutral and keep the idle up to around 2500.

It sounded ridiculous.  I can laugh at it now, but at the time I was so damned embarrassed.  So I did something new this time.  Instead of looking through the local papers I logged into the internet and went to this new website called 'Auto Trader Dot Com' and looked for a car.

Now every car I had owned had some sort of engine problem.  I figured if I was going to get a car to last more than a few years I had to focus in on engine reliability.  I talked to many friends who worked for manufacturers and auto shops and found out that the General Motors 3800 engine was built like a bullet.  It was rock solid and unlike most american engines it would run without issue for well over 200,000 miles so long as it was maintained.  Thankfully General Motors put that engine in just about everything so I had quite the set of options to peruse through.  I ended up getting a 1999 Chevy Lumiza LTZ that told me her name was Lita.

Lita took the title of nicest car I ever owned away from the Ford Excort.  She was actually a couple years older (six years old as opposed to the Escort being four years old when I got her), but she was newer by nine years than any other car I had ever owned.  Her interior was modern and in great condition.  Her exterior was perfect except for two small issues.... the paint on the hood had faded a bit more than the rest of the car and there was the smallest bubble of rust on it.  When I say rust, I do't mean that you could see the rust... but it was a bubble on the hood that was obviously rust underneath the paint job.

Other than those two issues she was cherry.  Every feature worked, her engine ran strong and true, and she looked lovely.  Being the LTZ model also gave her some exclusivity.  As you can see her grill was taken from the Monte Carlo of the same year and had a floating emblem.  Her rear end was similarly from a Monte... even to the point that when I had to replace a tail light assembly, I got it FROM a Monte Carlo.

I drove the heck out of Lita.  Sure.. she had some problems like an alternator and thermostat (that was a COLD winter too to lose heat for a few weeks!), but her engine has NEVER faltered.  I think that's the reaosn that I've driven her for seven years now.  I've actually got to watch her go from new looking to sad and ugly.  This little fight she had with the car port didn't help her good looks.  She wasn't broken, but she had a series of dents running from her front fender, up the A pillar, across the roof, down the C pillar, and over the rear fender.

That little rust bubble... yeah that ended up bubbling through the paint and is now a big brown cancer spot about three inches in diameter.  As if having that rust spot out in front wasn't bad enough, both of the rear fenders have started to rust around the wheel wells.  Going to school the last few years has meant that I couldn't afford to fix all the little issues that came up, so now there are just to many issues to take.  Her brake shoes wore down to the bar metal at one point and my brother replaced them for me... but he did something wrong and now the anti-lock brakes don't work.  There is something wrong with the suspension as it has an odd bump going around certain types of corners.  Two of her tires can't maintain pressure and one is cracking between the sidewall and tread.  Her exhast had been replaced a few years ago and something has come loose, making her sound loud (actually that isn't a problem as she isn't TOO loud and sounds a little aggressive now!).  Her AC gave out several years ago and even if she only needed a recharge then, she undoubtedly needs a new compressor now to ever get it running again.  I tried to figure out exactly how much money I cold dump into her and get her physically running well again (I wouldn't even try to address the series of dents or rust spots), and it came up to around $1000.  I then turned around and got an honest Kelly Blue Book value on her.  By honest, I mean that I admited that she had rust, and some problems that needed repair (but wouldn't be getting them), but otherwise fixing everything else like the tires, brakes, suspension and AC.

After putting that $1000 into her, she'd be worth about $1000.  Even if I listed her as in good condition (and unless I put MAJOR body work into her, she's never going to be considered to be in 'good' condition) she's only work a little over a grand.

So when I got this job, all the dreaming I had done for a new car came to a head.  I am now driving 500 miles a week just for work.  Lita's good... but she's not that good without the repairs and new tires all around.

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I had intended to tell you the story of how I came to get a new (to me) car and really just wanted to give an overview of my previous cars.  But damn once I started down memory lane I just couldn't stop gushing.  I may have had a series of bad cars with only a few rough gems thrown in, but I have a lot of fond memories in each of my cars.  It's now just before 9PM and I have to get ready for bed... that 3:30AM alarm is a beast if I don't get enough sleep!

So I'll try to tell the tale of my car search at another time.

Love,
C