It's Not Just a Car. It's an Adventure.
One of the funny things about my 4 a.m. adventure is that my father's reaction on hearing it was to blame the car, not my distracted pissed-offedness, for the light still being on. The Albatross gets a bad rap, not all of it undeserved....
I still miss my old '88 Mercury Topaz, which I'd called Topa_ due to a piece being missing from its nameplate when I bought it used. I can admit that nostalgia has gilded my memories a bit. Damage from before I bought it led to its trunk being a rusty swamp with its own ecosystem, which meant anything I put in the trunk had to be covered in a plastic bag for its own protection first. The driver's side heat baked my right foot while leaving my left to freeze, so I'd have to turn the heat on and off to let my right one get a break. It got so stuffy while the heat was on that I had to leave a window open a crack. During its last four years I replaced part after part after part as everything started to break. The aging air conditioning system would have cost so much to replace that I spent my last two Topa_ summers with the windows down praying for a breeze. In its last year it went through two transmissions, and in its final months could only achieve a top speed of 25 mph.
But its first years with me had been nearly trouble-free. It carried me 350 miles each way to and from college for four years. It died in 1999 with its original windshield (unlike the 2-year-old Albatross, a Saturn SL-1, which is now on its third from bad dings and self-inflicted-by-wipers scratches). A burning tread once flew off the back wheel of a tractor trailer truck and hit the driver's side of Topa_'s front window at about 80 mph without leaving a scratch, though I was a little shook up. Since the car had real paint instead of scratch-at-a-whisper clearcoat, I could sit on the trunk with my feet propped on the bumper while having a snack bought at some middle-of-nowhere gas station convenience store. In its glory days it let me fly past sports cars, to the horror of their drivers. It looked lustrous black in a rainstorm, even the parts of it where I had repainted over the rust spots. The star of countless road trip stories, it had over 130,000 miles on it as I watched the tow truck carry it away for the last time.
In my eight years of Topa_ ownership I only had one accident in it instead of the four I've had in the two years I've owned the Albatross. The Albatross' rear bumper is a moron magnet.
Topa_ had a feeling of weight and presence newer cars just don't have. I'm sure it's the metal, something fast disappearing from car design. Driving an old junker had other benefits. I figure I'd come out of most accidents better than the other guy, and I didn't have to worry about dinging the paint. I flew down streets and merged lanes while entering tunnels boldly. Topa_ was so old that my insurance company didn't even bother with collision coverage anymore, so why worry? I think the attitude was apparent in my driving, since people gave me space.
This car was so much a part of my life and my family's life that my brother wanted to give it a Viking funeral--set it aflame or drop it off a bridge. Of course, he's also a destruction junkie, but still. In the end, I decided on the far more staid course of donating it to charity, making sure I chose a charity that would tow it instead of trying to drive it away.
I miss chrome. It's only the illusion of metal, but it shows effort at least. Plastic and rubber are great for fetish wear, but they don't do anything for me as part of a car's shell. You'd think that new cars would have chrome window guards so your hand can't push the scraper too far while removing ice from a window and scratch the oh-so-delicate clearcoat. Car makers don't see it that way.
It's weird being my age but sounding like an old fogey longing for the good old days.
I still miss my old '88 Mercury Topaz, which I'd called Topa_ due to a piece being missing from its nameplate when I bought it used. I can admit that nostalgia has gilded my memories a bit. Damage from before I bought it led to its trunk being a rusty swamp with its own ecosystem, which meant anything I put in the trunk had to be covered in a plastic bag for its own protection first. The driver's side heat baked my right foot while leaving my left to freeze, so I'd have to turn the heat on and off to let my right one get a break. It got so stuffy while the heat was on that I had to leave a window open a crack. During its last four years I replaced part after part after part as everything started to break. The aging air conditioning system would have cost so much to replace that I spent my last two Topa_ summers with the windows down praying for a breeze. In its last year it went through two transmissions, and in its final months could only achieve a top speed of 25 mph.
But its first years with me had been nearly trouble-free. It carried me 350 miles each way to and from college for four years. It died in 1999 with its original windshield (unlike the 2-year-old Albatross, a Saturn SL-1, which is now on its third from bad dings and self-inflicted-by-wipers scratches). A burning tread once flew off the back wheel of a tractor trailer truck and hit the driver's side of Topa_'s front window at about 80 mph without leaving a scratch, though I was a little shook up. Since the car had real paint instead of scratch-at-a-whisper clearcoat, I could sit on the trunk with my feet propped on the bumper while having a snack bought at some middle-of-nowhere gas station convenience store. In its glory days it let me fly past sports cars, to the horror of their drivers. It looked lustrous black in a rainstorm, even the parts of it where I had repainted over the rust spots. The star of countless road trip stories, it had over 130,000 miles on it as I watched the tow truck carry it away for the last time.
In my eight years of Topa_ ownership I only had one accident in it instead of the four I've had in the two years I've owned the Albatross. The Albatross' rear bumper is a moron magnet.
Topa_ had a feeling of weight and presence newer cars just don't have. I'm sure it's the metal, something fast disappearing from car design. Driving an old junker had other benefits. I figure I'd come out of most accidents better than the other guy, and I didn't have to worry about dinging the paint. I flew down streets and merged lanes while entering tunnels boldly. Topa_ was so old that my insurance company didn't even bother with collision coverage anymore, so why worry? I think the attitude was apparent in my driving, since people gave me space.
This car was so much a part of my life and my family's life that my brother wanted to give it a Viking funeral--set it aflame or drop it off a bridge. Of course, he's also a destruction junkie, but still. In the end, I decided on the far more staid course of donating it to charity, making sure I chose a charity that would tow it instead of trying to drive it away.
I miss chrome. It's only the illusion of metal, but it shows effort at least. Plastic and rubber are great for fetish wear, but they don't do anything for me as part of a car's shell. You'd think that new cars would have chrome window guards so your hand can't push the scraper too far while removing ice from a window and scratch the oh-so-delicate clearcoat. Car makers don't see it that way.
It's weird being my age but sounding like an old fogey longing for the good old days.