The Cars

The Cars

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This is not going to be much of a post. I’m trying to concentrate on finishing my novel. With a title like the one up there you would think I would be paying tribute to the great band of the same name. While they were one of my favorite bands in the 80’s and I was sad to hear about the passing of lead singer Rick Ocasek last fall, this is not a post about them.

If you frequent Facebook you might have seen a trend going around where you post pictures of all the models of cars you owned during your life. I’m not one that usually jumps on all these FB trends but this one piqued my interest so I did it. Thought I would post it here too. Enjoy the car show.

1975 Chevy Impala. First car I bought from my great grandmother for 75 cents when I was 16. This is a picture of the actual car. Notice the dent in the right front fender? It’s exactly half the size of a standard telephone pole.

1988 Mercury Tracer. First car I really bought right after getting married for the first time. I was on leave from the Navy in Texas to get married and had to buy a car to drive back to California.

1988 Hyundai Excel. Bought this used POS as a second car so my wife and I could both go to work. Got it cheap because the transmission was shot. Had a very educational time changing it out with my buddy.

1994 Nissan Quest. Had two kids and had to do the mini-van thing! This was a great road trip car.

1999 Nissan Sentra. Basic car but it got me around my new home in California when my lease was up on the van.

2004 GMC Envoy XUV. Michelle and I bought this at a killer discount through her work. It was the only year they made this model with the sliding roof and back that could convert into a truck bed. This was my workhorse baby! We put over 200,000 miles on her.

2005 Ford Mustang. This was Michelle’s promotion present but I drove it every time I wanted to feel cool! I even put a spoiler on the back myself.

2011 Nissan Rogue. When our old bones started having trouble getting in the Mustang we traded it for this. Still have it.

2016 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. This is the baby I always wanted! Michelle surprised me with it because she knew I wanted one so bad. We had always declined special options on our other vehicles to keep the price low but for once we decided to splurge and go all out for every option this thing offered. I could climb Mt. Everest in this thing!

This one could be our next vehicle if all the stars align, but that’s a future post; I hope.

Do you have a fond memory of a favorite car. Maybe even named it? Let me know (and show me) in the comments.

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18 thoughts on “The Cars”

  1. The only car I’ll mention, this time, is the one prominently featured in this article:

    https://tombeingtom.com/2019/12/14/a-week-of-sundays/

    It’s a lease, so I’m returning it to the dealer next month, but it was fun owning a Star Wars car while it lasted. 😉

    (Ford Granada, Chevy Chevette, Ford Fairlane station wagon, really old really beatup small Ford pickup, Nissan Pickup (first NEW vehicle), ’98 Dodge Durango, Honda Civic, and this Rogue — I think that’s all of ’em in order 🙂 ).

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  3. I can no longer remember the exact year of the car, but I took my Driver’s License test in a late 1940’s – early 1950’s Mercedes Benz Sedan. I had a fever of 102 when I took the test and the examiner took one look at the car and wanted to flunk me before the test began. Fortunately, I passed the first time and it became the car I got to use the most (previously owned by an Uncle). When you are an 18 year old female, everybody looks at you funny when you drive a “hoity toity” car like that. Should have been a Mustang! I’ve never actually owned a car by myself – I went from my parents’ cars, to my brothers’ cars to sharing ownership with my husband. No wonder I never had a Mustang!

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    1. Wow, you must have had “the fever” to take that test. I took my test right after a snow storm in Texas which was not a common occurrence.

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    1. You are not a car person as in you don’t own cars or you don’t ride in them? I drove several clunkers until I finally got my dream one.

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  6. I passed my driver’s license exam in a late 1960s Buick station wagon. We called it The Tank. The fact that I was able to parallel park it was a miracle.
    At that time my father had a 1971 Camaro. OMG, so fun to drive in high school. I felt so cool.
    My first car: a Chevy Vega. The Vegematic. Red. Hatchback. My father replaced the factory radiator with a beefier one so it wouldn’t overheat (their primary defect). I actually loved that car. It got me through seven years of college.
    Then a 1984 Subaru because I needed a car that could drive on snow with 4WD. While I still had that, I splurged on a 1991 Miata. Best car ever! But, not a dog carrying vehicle. So when the Subaru got too old, I replaced it with a Honda Civic hatchback. I sold the Miata to go back to school. With two big Malamutes in the back of the Honda I couldn’t see out the windows so I traded that for a Mazda Tribute which I loved so much I bought another when the first one had 220,000 mls. Still driving the second one.

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    1. Figures the pilot would have the cool car. Bet you were looked on in envy in high school by the likes of me that were driving a beat up ’75 Chevy Impala. Your amazement of passing the parallel parking portion of the test reminds me of my own “incident” (why do I have so many incidents?) with that particular task. As you see from me response to River and Barbara, I took my test in a Chevy Malibu station wagon after a snow storm. I included that story in my Sophomore memoir:

      Now a sixteenth birthday is special. It means you’re growing up but it also means your old enough to drive, if you take the test. I was so nervous that I didn’t know if I wanted to take it or not today.
      “Are you going to take the test today?” my mom asked me.
      “I don’t know. Do you think they’ll give it with the snow and all?” Actually it hadn’t snowed in two days but there was still ice everywhere.
      “There’s one way to find out.” Before I could protest she picked up the phone and dialed the driver license office. She spoke for a few minutes then hung up.
      “He said he would give it to you if you come before 12:00.”
      It was almost 11:00 now. That didn’t give me any time to decide. It was now or never. “All right,” I said reluctantly. I got dressed and my dad drove me down there in our big yellow station wagon. What a car to take the test in! But it was better than the old stick shift truck we had. We pulled up to the courthouse and got out and went to the office. I could feel my stomach knotting up.
      Inside there was a lady clerk and a state trooper. The state trooper was a big man and he looked meaner than a bear. I was scared to death.
      “Do you have your driver’s ed certificate?” the clerk asked me.
      “Uh… Y-yes,” I said handing her the slip of paper. My hand was obviously shaking. “O.K.,” the state trooper said, “Let’s go.”
      I didn’t want to go but I made my feet move. We went out to the car.
      “O.K. Get in the car and roll down your window, then do everything I say,” he said.
      I got in and rolled down the window.
      “Left turn signal.”
      Left turn signal? What was that? I couldn’t think, my mind was blank. Then I delved into the vast knowledge I received while in driver’s education. Oh, left turn signal. I managed to get it turned on.
      “Right.”
      I got that one right too. We proceeded through the rest of the checks and everything went all right. Then he got in the car.
      “Start up the car.”
      I started to turn the key but I thought I was forgetting something. Then I had it, the seat belt. I reached up and pulled it across me then buckled it. I looked over at him and he just stared back. I pushed down on the gas a little and turned the key. The car started up.
      “Back up and go left.”
      I put her in reverse and slowly backed up, then I shifted to drive and went to the left. There was a stop sign up ahead and I started to slow down.
      “Go right here.”
      I stopped ever so slightly and put on my right turn signal, then proceeded to the right. We went all though these roads and I was doing pretty good. I started to calm down and thought that maybe he wouldn’t make me parallel park. But as fate would have it, that didn’t happen. We turned down a road and there was the monster. Two yellow poles that I was suppose to get my car between.
      “Parallel park between the poles,” he said.
      Oh my God. How was I going to get this big thing in there? I pulled up beside the poles and put the car in reverse. I slowly maneuvered the car between the poles until I thought it was in there pretty good. Then I remembered that my cousin had told me she failed the parallel parking because she didn’t back up far enough. So I let off the brake a little to back up. BOOM! I hit the back pole and knocked it over. I almost died. That was it, I had blown it now.
      “Just pull out,” he said to me. I put the car in drive and pulled out. We circled the courthouse then parked. I looked in the mirror and saw that my face looked like death warmed over. How would I face my friends now that I had failed the driver’s test?
      “You passed,” he said to me.
      “What?” I asked surprised.
      “Yes. You only messed up on parallel parking and that’s not enough to fail you.”
      All right! I couldn’t believe it. We went inside and I got my picture taken. I signed all the forms and the clerk wrote me out a temporary license until my permanent one came in the mail.

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  7. I was very late getting my driver’s license: married for almost fifteen years, and my wife had already traded out both her Jeeps for a Honda CRV and then added a van. I’d learned to drive in other cars but that CRV was my first real gettin’-around vehicle. It saw us through a lot of other milestones too.
    We had to replace it last year, with another, more recent CRV. The model’s looks have changed but hopefully this one will get us through another nineteen years.
    If I could have any car, though, it would be something sleek and stylish from the 1920s.
    Christopher recently posted…Doing The Math.My Profile

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  8. I haven’t seen this on Facebook, but it sounds enjoyable.
    The car I learned to drive in was a 1963 Ford Falcon deluxe squire station wagon, which had wood on the sides and vacuum wipers. The fastest it could go was 55 miles per hour, and that’s if you were lucky and had a strong wind pushing you from behind.

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