Cars, Cars, Everywhere are Cars...

Recently I have come across a couple of posts which mention the authors first vehicles. Crazy Aunt Purl had a VW Fox, and Frema (in her gig over at Parents.com) mentioned her Chevy Cavalier. Neither vehicle was apparently long for this world.

My first vehicle was a Toyota Corolla sedan, and I think it's still being driven around my hometown. My father still reports the occasional sighting. It is fairly easy to identify, especially from the driver's side, where the rear passenger door stands out due to a poor paint job from the factory, which was not fully corrected by the dealership when it was first discovered. That and the strange mud brown paint color. Not red, not brown, but somewhere in between. Mostly I tried not to describe the color, and when I had to select a color for some reason (parking applications, etc.) flipped a coin to decide if I was going to check red or brown.

It was not new when I got it. It was the true old-lady car, driven only to the grocery store once a week (or less) for the last couple years before it came into my hands. How do I know this? It was my grandmother's car. She bought it new in 1980, with no dealer-installed options. It wouldn't have had heat if it hadn't come standard with it from the factory. To my grandmother, a car was a mode of transportation only. It was not a statement about her in any way, shape or form. Except maybe that she was cheap, and that she smoked. When I started driving it in 1993 or so, it had less than 10,000 miles on the odometer.

My dad borrowed the car from his mother to teach me how to drive. I'm not quite sure, but maybe he had planned that I would get the car all along. I started driving it off and on after I got my license, it "lived" at my grandmother's apartment and every so often I could "borrow" it. My Senior year of High School I signed up for an AP class which started early (before the regular class schedule), and it gave me a valid excuse to drive the car almost exclusively, with my grandmother having it on the occasional weekend. At this point she really wasn't physically up to driving, she didn't have the strength to turn the steering wheel (no power steering upgrade, remember) so it was more of a token thing for her to have it available.

The cigarette smoke odor eventually cleared and at some point I installed a radio/tape player and speakers. Funny for something which was so important back then I can't remember when exactly I made the upgrade but it must have been in the fall of my Senior year because I remember listening to the radio on those early mornings driving in on the interstate and on the late evenings coming back from playing in the band at football games. Also, my grandmother moved into a nursing home and the car transferred into my parents name (maybe this happened, and then I could put in the stereo?).

After my Freshman year at college it came to school with me off and on so I could get back and forth and to internships and such. One year in the week between Freshman move in (which I came back early for, along with the fun of hanging out with my friends without any work hanging over our heads) and the start of classes, a friend and I drove the forty or so miles to the closest amusement park - and I got that little engine that could running with traffic at 80MPH on I-95. Chug, chug, chug.

My junior year of college I was driving home for Thanksgiving when the oil level kept dropping. Thinking I was smart(but knowing that I was tempting fate, and really, really not wanting to have to wait for my parents to come and pick me up from school), I just kept pouring in oil and hoping that I would make it home before something bad happened (apart from losing the oil cap at a service station I had stopped at dozens of times before on trips back and forth and having to catch a ride over to the auto parts store with the attendant - I am so naive I'm not sure how I've lived this long without getting into some serious trouble).

I got within 15 miles of home when the oil light came on for good, and I heard a bad noise. Maybe you know it, it's a clunk, a metallic grinding, a noise that the engine has never made before. Luckily I had my cell phone (the Motorola flip phone weighing 1/2 a pound, and measuring 3"x6"x4" when closed!) with me...and it was charged up; so no scary interstate walking for help for me or scary people stopping and offering "help", just my first ride in a tow truck, thanks to AAA. The end result was a thrown connecting rod when the family mechanic at the garage started it up for the last time. Enter discussions on whether to replace the engine or get a new (used) vehicle. Decision made by my father - a used engine found by the mechanic. The car was mine again, with many threats and warnings about what to do if the oil light ever came on. Lesson learned.

Fast forward a couple of years. I've graduated from college and have a real job. The little Corolla and it's (new)used engine are still running just fine, but I'm ready to no longer be sticking to vinyl seats without a/c in the summer. My living expenses are stable and I've got some extra money each month, so I decided to look for another vehicle and sell the little car that could just keep on going. That car search is a story in itself, so I won't go into that now. Maybe later. The Corolla ended up going to a girl who was a junior at the same High School from which I had graduated (and driven the car to those early morning classes) , so the little car that could was, in a sense, returning to it's old stomping grounds.

I would guess that it is now considered a classic - and nowadays I'm really missing the gas mileage of that little four cylinder engine and lightweight body. But I'm hopeful that it is still helping some other teen satisfy that need for the open road and their own set of wheels as it did for me all those years ago. Live long little Corolla, live long.

***I wish I had some really good stories about the car, but I don't. No make out sessions in the back seat steaming up the windows, or drunken driving for this good girl. The front window got smashed in one time by a drunken frat boy while it was parked at my grandmothers, but I wasn't there, so it's not really that exciting a story. I had a couple of minor fender benders, one included straddling a narrow concrete median while attempting to avoid someone who pulled into my lane without seeing my car, another my inattention to the fact that the person ahead of me in the right hand turn lane had not actually kept going into the street onto which we were attempting to turn, but no full out accidents to report. It was dependable transportation, and in no way exciting enough to incite additional excitement.

What was your first car, do you miss it and/or do you have any interesting stories in which the car plays a integral part?