The Cars of My Past

I’ve had some great cars, and some less than great cars. Here’s my car history:

Pimped-Out Cozy Coupe®. My parents gave me my first ride, a red Cozy Coupewith a yellow roof, in the early 1980s. Most children were tickled pink with the standard Coupe. But I decided mine needed some customizing. I stole some spare piping, and affixed it to the side with duct tape. Instant Flowmasters. I took old license plates my dad had saved from my mother’s old ’71 Ford Maverick, and taped one on each end. I could have Fred Flintstoned onto U.S. Route 11 and not been pulled over (and might have gone faster than that strange woman with a ‘62 Barracuda who always wore a pillbox hat).

1981 Volvo DL Wagon. My dad bought this car in 1990 from a man with whom he worked, as we needed a replacement quick for Dad’s ailing 1972 Audi 100 LS (which he didn’t shed until 13 years later, actually). It was dark green over tan vinyl, with a garish luggage rack. We were very familiar with Volvos, as they were the business vehicle of choice where my father worked for a long time, and whenever Dad drove home in a shiny 740 or 960, my sister and I bolted out of the house like Mexican

Imagine this car as a wagon, in dark green.

restaurant patrons headed to the crapper and climbed all over the damn thing. Brand new cars just were not in the budget at that point. When I got my learner’s permit at age 15, six years after we got the Volvo, this was what I drove, either with Dad telling me to look behind me and use the side-view mirrors for changing lanes (bah!), or Mom sucking air through her teeth and bracing herself every time I committed various driving atrocities, such as shifting, turning, braking, accelerating, merging, and passing Ethel in her Delta 88.

I drove this car during my junior year of high school. At the time, I mostly loathed it. It weighed well over two tons, and to move this weight, Volvo decided a 2.3 liter four-banger with an epic, the-envy-of-Atlas, another-dimesion-portal-opening, Triple-H-horrifying 114 horsepower would be the best-suited powerplant. With this mighty colossus of internal combustion mastery, this car did 0 to 60 in a three-day weekend, and whenever it was necessary to floor the accelerator, the car shook like the previously-mentioned Mexican restaurant patrons. This car was my transportation when Van Halen was my favorite musical group. To accommodate Eddie’s firefingers and David Lee Roth’s ego, the car had an AM/FM radio with two speakers. That would have been fine if my favorite musician was Garrison Keillor. Maybe, in that case, no speakers would have been best.

Problems associated with age included no air conditioning, horrendous brake disc noise, and plenty of confidence-building squeaks and rattles. Confidence. That’s a touchy matter for a 16-year-old kid at a Camaro Z28- and Mustang GT-infested high school who drives an ’81 Volvo. It was as if this car made every zit on my face 10 times greasier. The Volvo drew more than its share of mean-spirited laughter. There was a dual-axle F350 which was considering giving the Volvo a swirly, I think.

I could have had no car at all to drive. When I look back on it, there was at least one cute girl at school who thought my Volvo was like Bono on wheels (of course, she was taken). I could have carried Jimmy Hoffa and the rest of the Teamsters in that trunk. One more thing about the car which really was remarkable was the turning radius. Even with its size, I could throw that Swedish meatball into any parking space from any angle and do U-turns that’d iron the wrinkles out of your sack.

The car met its end in the summer of ’98 when I was rear-ended at a stoplight by a Chevy Venture. Strangely enough, the Chevy was being driven by the man my parents had hired to build their new house. You wanna talk about eyes as big as dinner plates. . . . Anyway, that Venture was decimated quite well, but was repaired soon after. The Volvo was totaled, but not in the way you’d think. There was a noticeable dent in the trunk and rear bumper, and you couldn’t open the rear passenger doors, but what only my father could see, from looking at the roofline, was the frame was bent. The Volvo lives on gloriously now in our flatware, and the Chevy driver visits my parents often in the house he built.

1987 Audi 5000 wagon. After the Volvo bought the farm, Mom and Dad flirted briefly with the idea of buying me an older car. Man, I tore through those classifieds and circled all kinds of things I wanted to try out. BMWs, M-Bs, Camaros, even a 1970 Dodge Coronet convertible. Sweet Jesus, I wanted a girl to be attracted to me! But things typically do not go as I would like, and I got Mom’s ’87 Audi wagon while Mom got a new car.

Uber-meaningful teen angst aside, this was a vast improvement over the meatball. The Audi had an oddball, five-cylinder engine, which had an output similar to that of the Volvo, but the Audi didn’t weigh hardly anything. That car screamed way more than a car of its gifts should have screamed. Mom and Dad had installed an aftermarket stereo, so I could crank up “Drop Dead Legs” and “Panama” without fail.

This was one of the most aerodynamic cars of its time. For some reason, looking at it now, I think it's hideous.

Even with front-wheel drive, the car was related to the legendary Audi Quattro Sport, so Mom’s wagon stuck to curves like my son’s goober-slime does to my dress shirts. By God, I even had a sunroof. But still no girlfriend.

It was not all bratwurst and Hefeweizen with the Audi 5000. If you’re a ridiculous car dork like me, you’ve heard about the 5000’s “unintended acceleration” problem. I swear up and down this wasn’t always a matter of the pedals being too close together and stomping the gas when you intended to mash the brake. Just once, when I was leaving school one day, the RPMs shot up to 4,000 and the Audi laid several feet of rubber in the parking lot. At least the brakes still worked after I had finished cleansing my own colon, helping me avoid a Plymouth Acclaim waiting for a break in traffic.

There was also the time my father drove the car to work one day and, with the keys in his hand, the engine tried to turn over. Apparently, there was some kind of short circuit in the electrical system, which essentially sent my parents three or four mortgage bills that month.

Put mildly, the car was fun to drive when it wasn’t in the shop. There’ve been no Audis in my family since then, and unless someone hits the lottery or I finish and publish a best-selling novel, that won’t change. I drool my own ocean every time I see an RS4 or an R8, but I know, deep down, even if I could afford it, I’d pay for the car several times over. My guess is the simple, four-cylinder A3 and A4 models are the best value and less like a Dorito-crumb-covered roommate who never pays his half of the rent and eats all your groceries.

1990 Volvo 240 DL sedan. Before I went 50 miles down the road to college, it was apparent I could not take the Audi, or any other car our family had. So, in the last few weeks of my senior year, my father chose for me a 1990 Volvo 240 DL sedan. I would have preferred more say in the matter, but he held the purse strings. So, back I was in a Volvo 240, dreadfully slow and as sexy as Warren Christopher. But it was a safe car, and that kept the girls lining up for… nope. It was dark blue with dark blue, cloth interior. This must have been the Silken Meatball Edition, as it had a decadent, 120-mph speedometer and heated seats (which did not work), and the previous owner had installed a Boston Acoustics sound system. I’d moved away some from Van Halen into becoming the world’s most rabid U2 fan, and “The Joshua Tree” sounded damn good on that stereo. Also, I did not have the wagon stigma anymore that assigns you automatically a pocket protector, acute asthma and a Dungeons and Dragons all-time high score (do you have scores in that game?). In true 240-owner fashion, I plastered the rear of the car with pinkocommie bumper stickers, including a “Celebrate Diversity” sticker, which attracted the opposite of the attention I wanted. You could have teleported me and that Volvo from Southwest Virginia to Ithaca, New York, and I would have fit in perfectly.

Headlights the size of Mick Jagger's open mouth. Deer wouldn't be "in" these headlights, they'd be vaporized by them.

Regrettably, my entry on this car is short, as its time with me was short. It incurred a massive repair bill when it blew a head gasket at 123,000 miles, 14,000 miles after we had purchased it. About 120,000 on a Volvo is like 15,000 on any other car. Say what you will about 240s (and I’ve said my share), they are damn reliable. Some have been driven past 1,000,000 miles. But reliability endures only if the owner takes care of the car. It seemed the previous owner did not do that. My buddy Shaun and I pulled over when we saw smoke billowing out from behind the car, and, unable to start it, we had to walk along a shoulderless, four-lane highway to the closest place with a phone: Bucko’s Pantry. After we phoned a friend to pick us up, the proprietor pulled up in her Ford Windstar, and screamed, “No loitering!” We explained our situation, and her response was, “No loitering!” What happened next was surreal: she got back into her Windstar, cranked up NPR so loud you could hear it across the parking lot (NPR!), and drove up and down the highway for several minutes. She came back, parked, and barked, “No loitering!” I wonder if she said that when she got home and saw her husband and/or kid sitting on the couch. “Good night, honey!” “No loitering!” The car was towed the next day, and my parents decided not only should I get a cell phone, I’d better get a new car, too.

The first car I owned which I enjoyed driving... in a straight line.

1997 Nissan Maxima GXE.Around 2000, my sister and I both had a bit of money we’d inherited from various great-uncles, so it was foreseeable I could get a non-Volvo. Hooray! Perhaps years of romantic/sexual frustration would be at an end (or maybe I was just a dork who rarely left his dorm room… eh, it’s up for debate)! After test driving a Ford Contour (crap), a Dodge Stratus (Crappus severus), and a Chrysler Cirrus (deus ex crappina), I chose a ’97 Nissan Maxima with 49,000 miles on it. A dealer had added wood trim and leather to the interior, and it still stank of new car. Then I pressed the pedal on what Ward’s still considers the best V6 in the world, the Nissan VQ. I was in heaven. That car growled like a 14-year-old boy cut off in the buffet line. I timed 0 to 60 several times, albeit crudely, and the engine was broken in enough to get me there in under seven seconds. Acura’s 307-horsepower TL has to strain to manage that. It wasn’t the fastest car in the world by any means, but it was the fastest I’d ever owned. I loved it.

I put about 75,000 miles on the Maxima. I owned it for the rest of my college years, and well into my first “real” job as a police and courts reporter for a daily newspaper in Southern Virginia. When you’re a reporter, you drive everywhere. Not once did I ever have a serious problem with this car. Not once did I have a regular maintenance bill that killed my bank account (when you’re a reporter, your bank account is already near death). Even when the car was seven years old, it still drew compliments. Sometimes, I wish I still owned it. My current commuter car is rather embarrassing (I will reveal make and model in a different post… I think I might lose all three of my readers if I mention it too early), and beating up that Max in Northern Virginia stop-and-go nonsense would be much more fun.

That is, until I remember how it handled. Many Maxima enthusiasts will threaten to stab you with their gelled-up hair and decapitate you with their upside-down and backwards golf visors if you refer to the Maxima as a family car and not a “four-door sports car.” But undeniably, it is a family car, and that’s very apparent when you take to a road such as the Blue Ridge Parkway. While my Max was bliss in a straight line, it was not happy when cornering. This was thanks to front-heavy weight distribution combined with front-wheel drive (if I get a chance to pilot a 2010 Maxima, I’ll be looking for this, because the layout has not changed). Imagine buying a brand new carton of ice cream, and as soon as you get home, trying to shove the scoop into that ice cream. Kinda like going at marble with a cotton swab. Same thing here. You can feel the whole car wobble through the turn, even if you’ve braked hard just before, and once it’s outta that corner, it’s like unbuttoning your pants after Thanksgiving. “Whew,” the car seems to gasp.

If the cornering issue exists still, Nissan had better consider making this an all-wheel drive car if it wants to compete with the dazzling, new Acura TL and the near-perfect BMW 3-series, the latter of which has spent nearly 20 consecutive years on Car and Driver’s 10 Best List and may be one of the best cars ever made. Nissan has already cut off one ball by making a continuously variable transmission the only option (though it does have paddle shifters). There’s no need for the company responsible for the Z and the GT-R to make a light beer car.

Autophiles said the front end looked like a cheshire cat. Clearly, the CVT engineering came from the Mad Hatter.

2003 Nissan Murano SL AWD. I left the newspaper industry in hopes of breaking into TV journalism. That didn’t work out, but that’s another story. I started graduate school at Syracuse University to study broadcast journalism. Syracuse is famous for lots of things: Dinosaur BBQ, Ernie Davis, and snow. Lots and lots of snow. So my parents and I thought I should trade in the Maxima for something with all wheel drive. I looked at the Subaru Forester XT, the Land Rover Freelander, and finally, the new Nissan Murano. I bought the sunlit copper-on-black Murano about two months before leaving for New York. I picked the Murano for its uncanny cornering, Maxima-ish acceleration (thanks to a 0.5 liter bigger version of the VQ), comfortable seating, and great sound system. It also had what I thought at the time was awesome: a continuously variable transmission which adapted to my driving habits for optimal performance and fuel economy. My dad got behind the wheel two days after I bought it, and it was hard to get the keys away from him.

Driving it back from the dealership was one of the most memorable drives I’ve ever had. No one had a Murano in Southside Virginia. No one. Not that I saw, anyway, and I spent my days driving all over Henry, Pittsylvania, and Halifax counties, and down into Caswell and Person counties in North Carolina, gathering news stories. So on that drive and many others after, this car stopped people dead in their tracks. Its “sculpture in motion” design won over many, and also drew the ire of a few as well (they were mostly four-cylinder Accord and Camry drivers, so I ignored their opinions). It was sensationally quiet inside, and had a light exhaust note that reminded me of its premium cousin, the Infiniti FX35.

In the nuclear winter cold of Syracuse, often well below zero, the Murano always started. It busted through snow and did fairly well on ice (though even a Hummer H1 with studded tires is no true defense against the dangers of ice). Regaining control in skids was a cinch.

I kept this car for more than five years and over 100,000 miles. My wife and I went on our first date in this car, I drove to our wedding in this car, and I carted around our first child in it. If it hadn’t started to misbehave, it’s foreseeable I might still own it.

The CVT was the first thing to go. You’d step on the gas, and nothing would happen for several seconds. Then the tires would chirp and the car would take off. Just a liiiiiiitle dangerous. The most inexpensive estimate I got for repairing this was $5,500; this was never repaired. The CD player stopped accepting CDs. The oil pan started leaking. Parts inside started to fall off. My wife found the back seat stupidly uncomfortable. We couldn’t fit in the growing amount of baby debris we schlepped around when traveling from our home outside Washington, D.C., back down to Southwest Virginia to see family (the 2009+ Muranos have even smaller trunks!). The cost of replacing the 18” tires skyrocketed. I felt like I was driving a car made for a National Lampoon movie. I fell pray to its sexy design and performance, and had forgotten this was the first year for the Murano, and it was filled with more bugs than Windows ME. I should have sprung for an ’04. Click and Clack would have smacked me “upside the head.” Interestingly, one of my motoring heroes, Jeremy Clarkson, loves the ’03 to ’07 Muranos (there was no ’08), and I thought he would have branded a car like this something like “Hector.”

You can’t ignore the fire the Murano lit. It was the first crossover people wanted. I’d wager the Pontiac Aztek was the first crossover, technically, in the way we think about them today, but that car was as appealing as a snot smoothie (as was most of Pontiac’s lineup at the time). You got the utility of an SUV with the driveability of a car. Now nearly every car company worth its salt has a crossover. But not Smart. I think Smart and the fools who poisoned this country with that mobile casket should stop now and not develop anything else, not even a crossover. Sorry. I had to bring to the forefront my total bias against that miserable, motorized ladybug.