My First Car

I bought my first car when I was a freshman in college. Although I had always had access to a car during high school, this was my first shot at actually owning a car in my name, and I was excited. I purchased it from a friend and neighbor for five hundred dollars cash, and predictably, it was an absolute piece of garbage. It was a run down hatchback 1988 Chevy Nova whose poop-colored paint job could in most places still be discerned despite the gaping rust holes in the body work. The previous owner, who was a bit of a do-it-yourselfer, had welded together a huge roof rack made out of what I can only assume were construction grade steel girders, and had bolted it to the top of the car by drilling several six-inch bolts through the interior ceiling. While this rack would probably have been great for transporting military equipment or jumbo jets on the top of the car, it was not terribly conducive to good gas mileage, or any kind of aesthetic sensibility. Regardless, it came with a sound bill of health from said previous owner, and additionally, he promised to help me do whatever repair or maintenance was needed on the vehicle.

I bought the car when I was home on spring break, and took it back to college with me. It made the trip without a hitch and I was immensely happy with my purchase. I thought nothing more of it, until one rainy Sunday afternoon when I decided to make a trip to the public library to do some research for a paper I was writing - ironically enough - on clean fuel options. I walked out to my car, got in, turned the key, and nothing happened. Literally nothing. No sound whatsoever emitted from under the hood. I panicked and called my the guy who sold it to me.
“Eric, my car won't start.”
“Is it raining?”
“Well, yes, but what difference does that make?”
“Well, sometimes it has a little trouble starting in the rain. Give it a little gas when you turn the key.”
“Eric, a little gas is not going to do the trick. There is no hint that the car is even thinking about possibly trying to start. The engine isn't even making the sick car sound.”

He told me to give it twenty minutes and try it again. It still didn't start, regardless of how much I cursed at it and called it names and talked about its mother being a dump truck. An hour and a half later, and I was disgruntled, disheartened, and still behind on my research. I halfheartedly called the car a couple more dirty names and went inside.

A few days later, on a whim, I decided to see if I could get the car going. It started immediately, with no trace of it's prior angst. I was disgusted but also relieved. Perhaps it was just a fluke – one spot of bad luck for an otherwise good car. But of course that was not true. Over the course of the next few months, without fail, every time it rained, the car would flatly refuse to turn on. It got to the point where if it was raining when I woke up, I would call my work and let them know I was going to be late. And god forbid I were driving the car when it started raining, because it would turn off on the spot. On more than one occasion, the car actually stalled in the middle of an intersection, resulting in me pushing it, by myself, through the rest of the intersection and out of traffic. I'm not exactly sure how many of you have pushed a car by yourself, but it requires pushing from the driver's side with the door open while you simultaneously steer the car. Verdict: it fucking sucks.

During the life of the car, I took numerous trips to the auto body store in an effort to remedy this problem. I took the alternator out and had it tested. It worked perfectly. Starter? Check. Fuses? Check. New plugs, cap, and wires? Check on those too. I eventually got tired of wasting money and stopped buying new parts, but after only a few months, there was no fix under $100 that I hadn't tried.

This alone would have been bad enough, but the really messed up part was that while all this was happening, other stuff was breaking or going wrong with the car as well. The rear struts were old and crappy, and if I went around a sharp turn, especially during colder weather, they had a habit of getting stuck in the compressed position. They would stay stuck that way for anywhere from a few seconds to about twenty minutes, then hammer back into place with a terrifying suddenness that would almost cause the car to swerve off the road. The felt interior ceiling was falling apart, so I ripped it out and replaced it with a bolt of fabric from a craft store, which I stuck on with an exorbitant amount of carpet glue. Fuses blew regularly; with such a frequency in fact that I kept a stock of spares in my glove box in case one happened to go while I was on the road. For a while, the fuel mix (yes, it had a carburetor) was set too lean, so the idle speed would sometimes drop too low and the car would stall. I took it to a mechanic to have the mix tuned, and it drove the gas mileage through the floor. There was no middle ground; either no acceleration or terrible mileage. One day as I was leaving work, my car started with a horrifying roar, of the sort that might actually wake the dead. This continued all the way home, where – upon further inspection – I found a baseball sized hole in the muffler. Shortly thereafter, my brakes started making a hideous screeching noise (imagine: velociraptor crossed with terrible freight train accident) and when I took it to the mechanic he told me that I had inadvertently worn down my brake rotors to the point where it would be almost impossible to fix them. This shit kept happening and happening, and the expenses kept adding up. Over the course of three months, I put more money into parts and repair for that car than I have put into my current car in three years.

As you can probably imagine, I got fed up with this, and pretty quickly decided to sell the car. And by that I mean I got laughed at (literally) when I asked my mechanic how and where he thought I should sell it. His answer: “If you can, drive it to a tow-away zone and leave it there. That way you won't have to pay someone to take it away for you.” I ended up donating it to the “Boys Ranch” so they could scrap it for parts. They towed it away for free, and I got tax credit, and the removal of what had amounted to a huge pain in my ass. I consider that a success.