cars

When I was 18 years old I was a freshman in a Southern California College. I did not have a car.

Being a California college student without a car is like being a Sherpa without a mountain. It's like being Benihana without a knife.

I bought my first car from the guy across the hall in the dorm for $200. I guess I should have been a little suspicious of the deal. He smoked so much marijuana it leaked around the edges of his doorway into the hall. He smoked so much, he liked the food in the dining hall. He said the car was a classic. In fact, it was an old Corvair. Corvairs were Chevrolet’s experiment in the compact car market. It had a rear engine that was air cooled and used about as much motor oil as it did gasoline. I drove it for six months and then sold it for $50. I figured I got out cheap, without having to buy a controlling interest in Pennzoil. And without having to prove that Ralph Nader was right and it was unsafe at any speed.

My second car was an AMC Gremlin. Automobile industry rumors claim that AMC was desperate to enter the small car market quickly. So they chopped the back off of the Rambler and voila… they had a Gremlin. Although it looked a little funny, mine was orange with black stripes, it had plenty of power and drove me everywhere I wanted to go for two years. In 1974 while driving back to college with my friend John, I felt a little sleepy and asked him if he would drive. He was eager. Maybe a little too eager. We got back on the freeway with a bit more energy than necessary. Rather than merging into the right-hand lane, we slid like a skater on the ice, through the first lane into the second and third and fourth. We were hit once and spun, then twice and spun again, then three times…and by then I stopped counting. The miracle was nobody was killed. Nobody was even seriously injured. I banged up my right knee, said goodbye to the Gremlin and counted my blessings.

The third car in my trifecta of disasters, was a Ford Pinto. I know what you’re thinking: he had a death wish. No I just didn’t have any money and these were the cars Americans were eager to unload. Oddly enough I drove the Pinto for five years. No explosions; no fiery deaths. Once again I consider myself blessed. By the time that Pinto and I were finished with each other, it refused to climb hills going forward. Do you know how embarrassing it can be to say to your date, “we need to turn around here so I can back up the hill”?

I’m grateful to have survived my first three cars. My brother teases me saying ‘when it comes to Ron and his cars, the color is more important than what's under the hood’. Can you blame me? Who wants to die in an unattractive car?