Monday, October 12, 2009

Cars I've owned

2000 Rav4. It left the factory 10 years ago as of next week. Still going strong, no problems other than routine maintenance.
1996 Ford Ranger. I miss my truck, warts and all. I drove it off the lot and it already had an oil leak. But the dealer fixed it and I drove it happily for years with no problems. It did like to bounce around a lot, though. It handled like... can't think of an anology. A large mass of Silly Putty on wheels? Had to get rid of it because there's no safe place in it for small children.

A 1993 Toyota Corolla. I never had a problem with this car except for some annoying wind noise around the front right windshield. I will say that it was the most boring car I have ever had. When I bought the house I decided I wanted a truck.

My first new car was a 1988 Honda CRX. I paid $12.5k and mounted a very expensive bike rack on the roof. I put tens of thousands of miles on this car driving to various bike rides around Texas. For a Honda it was a piece of crap. The exhaust system was very prone to rust, and the water pump exploded on IH-610 during rush hour. After less than 40,000 miles.

My first car was a used 1978 Datsun 200-SX. I bought it in Pasadena for $4500 when I was 17 and I got ripped off. Remember those stupid louvers people put over the rear windows? I had 'em. The A/C broke down after a year or so, and it got to a point during my senior year in college where I'd have to park on hills in order to start the car. Nacogdoches is hilly, so I never bothered to get it repaired. (I was also broke.) Come to think of it, the car lasted me through college and many miles of pizza/sandwich shop deliveries, so $4500 was a bargain.

I am an oddity in many ways. One of which is I prefer manual. I've never owned an automatic and don't plan to. I'll probably be forced to go automatic once everything on the road is a hybrid or complete electric.

7 comments:

Tom said...

I'm with you on the manual vs. automatic thing but I'm a Brit and nearly all of us drive manuals. You just feel a little more in control (and it's more fun!). In fact our company insists on people being able to drive stick shifts up and down the mountain and I think it's a little safer - most of the accidents I've witnessed up there involve automatics losing control on the way back down from the summit.

Tom

PS. Word verification for this comment was rentrucc - somewhat amusing!

TCN said...

I had to look twice at that Datsun. At first glance, I thought it was an AMC Matador.

w said...

As a typical American I gave up manual when I realized I could drink a cup of coffee, eat my lunch, floss my teeth and talk on the phone while checking my notes if I had an automatic.

When will you have pics of the new house?

bogalusan said...

Learned to drive a manual when I bought my first car, a 1973 Super Beetle. Had a bunch of automatics since then, some good, some POSs.

Bought a 2006 Kia Rio last year, cheap, because it was a manual. Decent but boring car. DD is learning to drive it.

I prefer manuals. Also, it's fun to slow down for a turn with a dumbass tailgater by downshifting without applying the brakes, lol.

NoVa Sideliner said...

Weird, the only automatic I've owned was in... the UK of all places! It sucked.

I hate automatics, or maybe as some of my friends tell me, underpowered automatics. If you have an underpowered car with manual, you can manage OK; with auto, it just converts petrol to noise as it downshifts and yet still gains no speed climbing hills.

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