Used Car History

When I got my driver's license, I found a job working at the local movie theatre. A number of friends before me had worked there briefly and after interviewing with Ms. L, a soon-to-be-pregnant 20-something, I became Cineplex Odeon's usher. Among my duties was tearing tickets and showing patrons which of the six screens their movies were screening, hopping behind the counter and working the register or making batches of popcorn and filling sodas.

My dad soon after decided that he better go ahead and buy me a car so that my parents wouldn't have to pick me up late at night. The first car ever gifted to me was a 1980 Honda Accord. It was a fine specimen. The car was about $600 and had been parked behind an Annandale gas station. My dad was real proud of it. He said he needed some time with it to figure out why it wouldn't start unless you hold down the gas pedal for a minute. I drove this car down to Richmond eventually. No air conditioning but upgraded with a at-that-time new Blaupunkt sound system. When I went to college, my sister got in a car accident in this Honda Accord. We never got to say good-bye (the car, not my sister - she's doing fine).

The next one was a silver 1978 manual transmission Volvo. I can say for certain that this car was absolutely no fun... because I never got to drive it. It was driven to my house and never driven again. The power windows stopped working and soon it disappeared.

The whole time I was cheating on these two vehicles with a 1990 Honda Civic hatchback. I loved this little car. It was already putting in some serious miles with my dad's paper route, but I certainly ground it down to the nub. Some of those turns I used to take and the numerous joggers I almost ran over... quite the driver I was. But I know friends of mine who've seen their car burn or fly off a road, so I'm not complaining. It's just that it put up with lots of abuse - tires deflating on their way to amusement parks, round trip commutes between a photo-processing hut on Maine Avenue and the dock in Old Town where I used to snap photos of couples getting on the Dandy. One summer on 66, the hood of the car flipped backwards onto my windshield. I pulled over and waited for the police to show up. Eventually, this car stopped turning over and lived on my parents' driveway for the better part of a decade. To this day, my dad still insists that had we invested a little bit of money, it would be an amazing car to drive. My dad is a Republican, too.

When I lived at home following my escape from New York, I drove a 1998 Toyota Celica. It was fine. Almost fine. I took it to New York. But I think it had digested some bad fluids because it started smoking and overheating every half hour or so. Eventually, we got rid of that. But it's the car I dated my wife in and it played my CD's beautifully (which came in handy when you're standing on the side of a road wishing you had a gallon of water in the trunk). For all this, I'm certain she loves me.

I then drove a Ford station wagon. It was a piece of crap. It was first given to my brother, who rejected it cause he said the wheel sounded like it was going to fall off. I laughed at that notion and claimed it. Eventually, it did lose its wheel. On Route 66 of all places. It sat on my lawn for a month before being given over to a non-profit.

A Frenchman who worked with me at the wine shop suggested I purchase his wife's car - Mazda Protege. Can't recall the miles, but it came with the check engine light on (and scribbled stations up and down the East Coast where one could listen to Rush Limbaugh). This was no fun to have to pay for the repairs at the beginning of a used car relationship. But the car did pretty well for me. It got me around and I secured a number of important jobs during that era.

Soon enough, the necessary costs to maintain the car in working condition outweighed its actual costs. I traded it in for the wonderful Subaru "Obamobile" Forester. It had been well oiled and maintained by one single owner, but the car was also old and its odometer showed its age. But it's taken me further than any car before it. And only recently can I admit that I've been looking at newer models. Please know that it has nothing to do with not loving what you got. Obamobile's got tens of thousands of miles left in it -- another trip to Boston or first time to Florida... Chicago. Some serious breakdowns and renewals. But damn... aren't those new Ford Mustangs sexy?