Today I’m grateful for my car. Well, my cars to be exact. I’ve had the good fortune to have some really great rides over the years. I’m not really much of a “car guy”, meaning I don’t buy or drive cars because they’re cool or fancy or popular. They’re not a status symbol; they’re just a way for me to get from one place to another. And hopefully I can crank my music while I’m doing so.
It started back in 1993 when I bought my first car: a 1982 Nissan 200SX. I saw an ad on a campus bulletin board (back when they were physical bulletin boards, rather than online forums). Some Turkish exchange student was heading back home, and wanted to unload his car. It seemed like a good deal, so I paid $1,200 and enjoyed my first set of wheels.
This photo was taken about two weeks later, after I’d crashed into a highway barrier and destroyed the left side of the car. Also, the clutch had burned out a few days before, costing me $600 at a little repair shop in the middle of rural Tennessee (we were on a spring break road trip). Despite a rough start, I loved that car.
Two years later, I started my first job out of college. My little Nissan had brought me to Colorado, but died upon arrival when the emergency brake locked up and the car wouldn’t move. Flush with cash from my first “real” job, I took out a $12,000 loan and bought a 1995 Saturn SL1:
It looked black but was actually a pretty shade of dark blue. Saturn was an up-and-coming brand, and you’d see them everywhere. They were fairly cheap but well-made, and it served me well for a few years. Then some kid pulled out in front of me while I was driving 50mph, and the Saturn was no more. I took the insurance money (which was strangely more than I’d paid for the car) and dropped $14,000 on… another Saturn.
Yeah, the four-door sedan felt like a “big” car after my Nissan, so it was great to fall back to another two-door car. This was a 1997 SC2, complete with a “sports bra” which ostensibly protected the paint from bug splatters. Although it was small, the fold-down rear seats gave it quite a bit of cargo space. I loved the tinted windows and motorized sunroof.
The years passed, and it was starting to show some age. In 2010 I spent $15,000 on a 2008 Honda Civic EXL to replace it.
(You can see the Saturn parked on the street in the background, ready for someone to notice my Craigslist ad.) The Civic was, again, a two-door car with tinted windows and fold-down seats and a powered sunroof. It was an absolute dream. It was my fourth manual-transmission car, and I loved driving a stick shift. The car was small and zippy and just fun to drive.
Upon moving to Montana, the Civic struggled with our driveway. The front-wheel drive and low curb weight meant it had trouble climbing the steep, slippery gravel. Since our Honda CR-V handled the driveway like a champ, we decided a car with all-wheel drive would be a smarter option. I sold the Civic to Zack, and we bought a Tesla Model 3.
Although it’s not a stick shift and doesn’t have a sunroof (although the entire top of the car is glass), it’s a beast. Like all electric cars, the acceleration is staggering. It takes a little time to get used to the touchscreen interface, and driving without using brakes, but once you do it’s hard to go back to a sluggish old internal-combustion vehicle. Tesla has a fabulous network of charging stations around the country, and despite the naysayers, I’ve never had trouble getting charged… even on road trips covering thousands of miles.
The reason I was thinking about my cars today is that Alex texted me this photo just now.
He’d driven the Tesla to the airport to drop us off, and back at home he misjudged the distance to the side of the garage as he was backing in. He sheared off the mirror and put a huge scratch in the door. He felt terrible about it, but I reassured him that as long as he wasn’t hurt, cars can be fixed.
So, five cars in thirty years. And since Zack still has my Civic, he lets me drive it now and then just to remind myself how awesome stick shift can be. All five of these cars were fun in their own way, and I have great memories of them all.