First Cars

Recently Egbert has started mentioning an interest in buying a car. He doesn't need one on campus, and when he's home for the summer he commutes to work on his bike and takes my car when he needs to go somewhere in the evenings. Owning a car is a pretty ridiculously expensive thing to do these days if you don't have actual need of one. That didn't used to be quite so much the case, but as he's started mentioning cars he's thinking he might want to buy, it's made me think about my first three cars...

My first car: 1971 Volvo 144 sedan

I bought this car for $300 with money I made planting trees, picking berries, and babysitting. I bought it from someone I knew (and I didn't even have the entire $300 when I bought it). I was 18. The car had lived in Massachusetts most of its life, and they hadn't really perfected rust-proofing back then--so even though the car was not all that old, the rocker panels and bottoms of the doors had huge rusted-out holes. The car was a medium blue. I bought some cans of Rustoleum paint in green, red, and magenta, and spray painted the rust to stop its spread--and as well, added a magenta swoosh to the rear fender, red roses on the front doors, and green leaves on the hood. Since Volvo parts were expensive and I was making very little money, I learned to do my own repairs. I changed the oil myself (it burned oil too, so I had to constantly add it), and I did more extensive repairs, even replacing a bad U-joint, which took me two days (and some help, though not much).

The gas gauge was broken, so I often ran out of gas--once late at night on a country road (I had to walk several miles home, but luckily I had my very large part-wolf dog with me, so I felt pretty safe -- and none of the few cars out that night offered me a ride).

The first time I drove the car in snow, I oversteered when avoiding another car that crossed the yellow line, and ended up going down an embankment and into a tree. It was a slow-motion crash, so no one in the car was hurt, and I was able to tow it home a few days later with a friend's truck. The front end was pretty well smashed in, but I was able to straighten it out enough to pull the fan back out of the radiator--and from an acquaintance's dead Volvo, purchased a hood and replaced my crumpled one. The hood latch didn't catch any longer, so I had to tie the hood down with baling wire (I started with rope, but when the hood flew up while driving I realized it wasn't strong enough). Later, I tried replacing the bent tie rods in the front suspension with ones from the dead Volvo, but they didn't work so I had to have new ones installed by a mechanic. Darn.

As the car got older, the windshield wiper motor started to fail. For a long time, I could reach under the dash and give it a little shove and it would work again, but it finally stopped altogether. So, I did what anyone would do: attached a wire to one windshield wiper, ran it in through one wing window (remember those?) and out the other, and connected it to the other windshield wiper, creating manually-operated wipers, which worked just fine, though it did require having the wing windows open when it rained or snowed. But one day a cop stopped me in the rain because my muffler had fallen off, and when he saw my windshield wiper arrangement he was outraged. Didn't I have another car I could drive? (um, no...) didn't I have a husband who could fix it for me? (no... and my boyfriend was not as good at car repairs as I was, as he happily told the guys at auto parts stores when they tried to talk to him about the parts I was buying). I had to buy a new windshield wiper motor and new muffler (and pay the tickets). Grr. (But, later when the end of the tailpipe rusted away, I just jammed a piece of shiny tailpipe on the end and was able to pass inspection, though the shiny pipe fell off on my way home.)

The car got me through art school and into my first real job. Then, I finally had some money, so when the rear main seal blew, I was able to have it replaced. My trusty blue and magenta Volvo with green leaves and red roses with the rear plastered with bumper stickers had now nearly 200,000 miles. My car had valiantly gotten me where I needed to go for four years, and the engine had held out until I could actually afford to repair it. And then... a few weeks later, a drunk driver smashed into the front fender, totaling it. I was so saddened by its loss--especially when I had finally been able to replace some of its ancient failing parts!

My second car: Datsun B210.

My insurance company (of course, the other driver was uninsured) hadn't wanted to give me more than a couple of hundred bucks for my old, rusted, painted, bumper-stickered Volvo, but I argued that I couldn't buy anything comparable for that, so I ended up with $800, with which I bought a blue Datsun B210, a hatchback whose roof was so low that I had to tilt my head if I wore my hair up. I don't remember the vintage, but I didn't have it for very long before it developed a terminal engine problem. I did own it long enough to plaster it with bumperstickers, though.

My third car: 1977(?) Toyota Corolla SR5 liftback

The Corolla had originally been silver -- but apparently, silver paint hadn't been perfected yet, and over the years it had worn off, leaving the car primer red with rough greyish patches. So, the first thing I did was to order a can of automotive fleet paint, rent a sprayer, and paint the car. I did an ok job, though I did overspray in a few places, leaving a few drips. And since I was outdoors, the wind interfered with the spray so there were a few orangepeel-textured spots -- but you didn't notice if you didn't look closely. The color was a sort of seafoam -- a highly visible vivid bluish-green. I drove this trusty car for several years, with almost no repairs, until it reached about 250,000 miles. Then something electronic broke on it, and the garage kept telling me they were waiting for a part to arrive from Japan. Finally after a couple of weeks they admitted they hadn't ordered the part: They just didn't think it was worth replacing in a car with that many miles, but didn't want to tell me. (My next car was also Toyota Corolla, this time a sedan, 1985-ish. It was silver, and the first car I had that didn't look like a hunk of junk. It went to well over 250,000 miles. I was starting to think it would make 300,000 when it died. Oh well.)