Drive it like ya stole it!

I saw this meme over at AtomicPop and Voenix Rising and decided to steal it. Feel free to steal it from me as well if you like. These are the cars I’ve owned over my life, well actually these are images off the internet that resemble the cars I’ve owned since I don’t know where the pictures to most of these old clunkers are.

1. My very first car was a 1976 Chevy Vega station wagon. My parents bought if for me for the grand price of $350 from a friend of my dad. I had to pay them back each month until I had paid for half of it. My Vega was cowpie brown not this lovely orange-red color and when I pulled into the gas station I would tell them to check the gas and fill the oil. (I grew up in Oregon - no self serve for me I might accidentally blow myself up ya know!) I drove this until a guy blew a red light and t-boned me at the intersection in front of the police station. The only reason I got a car of my own was that I almost totaled my mom & dad’s brand new car on a date one night when I hit black ice and almost rolled it.

2. My next car was a 1973 Super Beetle. Gold with a sunroof and a curved windshield. This car was hot and fun to drive. Unfortunately the cables were broken for the sunroof and they were too expensive for a high school student to replace so to use the sunroof I had to slide it back by hand. This actually came in handy one night in Boise after a rock concert. (was that you I was with JT?) It was pouring down rain, we came out of the concert and got back to the car, I stuck the key in the door to unlock it and the key broke off in the door. Luck was with us in two ways; first it was a separate key for the door and the ignition so if we could get into the car we could get it started and second we were able to pry the sunroof open since I was too cheap to replace those cables. I then had to crawl in through the sunroof and unlock the door, thank the goddess I was a skinny mofo back then! The other problem with the bug was that it was rear wheel drive in eastern Oregon where it snowed and got icy. I think that car spent more time in the ditch in the winter than it did on the road. I was a horrible winter driver in that car (or any if the truth be told). Ask my brother about the time we hit black ice on the freeway and did 360’s down the middle of I-84! My dad and I rebuilt the engine in this car, well actually dad did it I just handed him tools when he asked for them. I traded it in on my next car, but I don’t really remember why because I remember that I really liked this one, most of the time.

3. My next car was a 1983 Ford Escort GT that I drove until I was almost done with college and was living with Bryan. I had to have the engine in this one rebuilt twice (wtf with me and engines?) and I replaced the CV joints in the front end 3 different times over the years that I owned it. All in all it wasn’t a bad car and it took me back and forth across Oregon too many times to count while I was in college. The weirdest thing is that when I met Bryan he had a 1985 model of the exact same car but with 4 doors instead of 2, so when we moved in together I had brown one and he had a red one until he replaced his with a pickup and I bought my first Nissan Sentra.

4. The next car was a 1992 Nissan Sentra. It also had the dubious distinction of being the first car I bought without my dad’s input which scared the shit out of me. Luckily Bryan knows a thing or two about cars and was able to steer me in the right direction. I was still in college and working part-time at an office job on campus and making next to no money so I couldn’t get a car loan. Bryan’s mom loaned me the cash to buy the car and then I paid her back every month. The weird thing was we couldn’t tell Bryan’s dad because his mom didn’t want him to know she had that kind of cash laying around to loan to me. I drove this car until I started commuting to Portland every day (200 miles round trip) and needed something much more reliable.

5. This car, my silver 1995 Nissan Sentra, had the honor of being my very first brand new to me car and the very first car that I had to take out a conventional bank loan to purchase. Bryan and I stopped by the Nissan dealership one night just to see what used cars they had on the lot and this brand new beauty was lit with flood-lights and under a tent in the middle of the lot. Yes, I’m a sucker for good advertising since I came back the very next day and bought it. I drove that car for about 12 months put close to 80k miles on it and traded it off just as it started to fall apart.

6. I replaced the Sentra with a 1998 Honda Civic about 6 months before we moved to Seattle. This car was my last standard transmission car. Once we got to Seattle I hated driving it because of having to shift in rush hour traffic and on all the hills downtown. My left knee also got really bad and I had to have two more surgeries (in addition to the one in college when I hurt it the first time) to repair it. It basically became torture to drive a stick shift so that car sat in the driveway a lot. I finally sold it privately and we entered the first period of having only one car between the two of us. Bryan rode the bus to work and I worked at home so much that we just didn’t need two cars.

7. We bought the 1999 Honda Passport for Bryan about 2 months before we moved to Seattle and he was the primary driver until he started riding the bus to work and I sold the Civic. The reason we sold the Civic instead of the Passport was that the Passport was an automatic and my knee was making it impossible to shift, we had a large dog and getting him into a two door car was a pain in the ass and we had paid cash for the SUV and had a loan out on the Civic so we got to get rid of a bill which is always a good thing. I loved driving this thing even though it was a gas guzzler, a planet killer, etc etc etc. We had it shipped to Houston and then I drove it back by myself when we moved home 18mos later with the dog and cat in the back. Now that was a fun trip. I continued to drive this back and forth to Bellevue which was only about 25 miles a day until one day some exhaust pipe thingy (yes that’s the technical term) broke and cost $1500 to fix. We decided it was time to sell it so it went up on Craig’s List and we sold it last June, once again reducing us to one car. But yet again Bryan was able to ride the bus to work and I could drive car #8 back and forth to work so we’re a one car family again. Sometimes it’s tough but we make it work and we go most places except work together anyway so a second car would just sit on the street gathering dust.

8. Bryan picked this car out (in white) when he came home first from Houston and needed a car to commute to the first job he had in Federal Way. So once again he was the primary driver and I drove the Passport. He switched jobs and started working downtown and riding the bus and we had the repair issue with the Passport so we sold it. I started driving the 2002 Honda Accord on a daily basis. I HATE this car, no specific reason I just don’t like it. The plan is to trade it in this summer on a brand new car that we both like.

9. So in theory this will be car #9 - though we haven’t bought it yet but plan to do so before the end of the year! A 2008 Toyota Prius in gun metal gray. Quite a leap from an SUV to a Hybrid but one we’re eager to make. We’ve test driven the Prius and love it. Expect lots of glowing posts about it once we actually buy it.