Got A Car!!!

[Sailor Steve]

Yes, for the first time in eight years I actually own an automobile. First, a little bit of my experience with driving.

I learned to drive in a 1962 Corvair Monza. That was 1966. Then I got my learner's permit and found out I could ride my dad's little 50cc bike without an adult along with me, so I did that for a year and finally got my license in 1967. When I joined the navy my dad took the money he had set aside for my second year of college and bought a '67 Corvette convertible. When I came back from Vietnam in 1970 my dad trusted me to drive the 'Vette, which impressed my girlfriend quite a bit.

After I moved to Utah I bought my first car, a 1963 Ford Van. I sold it when I got married, and we bought our only new car, a 1974 Mustang II. Since then I've owned a '65 Chevy panel truck, an '73 Pinto wagon, and '85 Buick wagon and a 1994 Ford Escort wagon which I bought almost new in 1996. I loved that car. It handled very well and carried a lot of stuff. I was sad when I wrecked it in 2005.

I haven't had a car since. I just couldn't afford one, especially when I went through my homeless phase. My dad's death last July left me a little (very little) insurance settlement, and I've been sitting on it while looking for the right car. I found cheap cars I didn't want and not-so-cheap cars I wanted but couldn't afford. I wanted another Escort wagon but there just aren't any. The Focus replaced the Escort, and they say it's a better car in every way, but I could only see one thing: They're UGLY! I drove one, and it was nice, but every time I look at one I want to run the other way. I saw some minivans that I could afford, but there are so many of them on the road that they get boring. Yes, I'm being obsessive about it, but that's just the way I am.

So yesterday I was looking online and something jumped off the screen at me. It wasn't a wagon, and it wasn't a van, and it wasn't like anything I had looked at. It was a 1994 Eagle Summit. The Summit was actually a Mitsubishi Mirage, marketed in the US by Chrysler's Eagle division after they bought out American Motors in 1989. They were built in the US in Normal, Illinois. The Summit was a rather nondescript standard subcompact sedan, and if that was all there were I wouldn't have given it a second glance. The Summit wagon, however, was a complete redesign and looked nothing at all like it's sedan brother. It's actually the forerunner of today's Mitsubishi RVR, though it looks nothing like that either.

The Summit wagon is, well, what it is. It looks nothing like anything else I looked at, which is why I like it.

The Bad: It's nineteen years old. It doesn't have a CD player. It's got some dents and dings. The gas mileage isn't going to be nearly as good as my old Escort got. It's not going to handle as well as the Escort did. Finally, it cost quite a bit more than I wanted to pay.

The Good: Despite the age, it only has 78,000 miles on it. That's pretty amazing. A CD player would do me no good, as all my music is on my computer anyway. The radio works, and if I like the car and keep it I'll add an MP3 player hookup somewhere down the line. The dents and dings are to be expected in a car that old. The fuel economy won't bother me too much because sooner or later all my "driving" will be on a bike anyway. The handling I can live with, since whatever bike I end up with will be a lot more fun anyway. I love the way it looks. Like a van it only has the sliding door for the rear seat. It has a stick shift, which is something I was looking for. I rejected several cars I saw on that basis alone. A minivan would have hauled more, but you don't see them with manual transmissions, and I like to drive the car rather than have it drive me. As to the price, well, they really did make me an offer I couldn't refuse.

So, all-in-all I'm happy with my new mini-minivan. It's just different enough to be cool, at least to me. And I can always trade it in or sell it, if need be.