Adventures with Used Cars.
Thursday, July 8th 2004 at 11:15PM
My friend Dean has never owned a new car in his life. Not because he can't afford one - he just can't see the logic in it. His reasoning is why take five or six years to pay off a car loan at a high interest rate when all you're going to wind up with in the end is a five or six year old used car that isn't worth even close to what you just finished paying for it. It makes sense.
For as long as I have known him, he has bought used cars from whoever happens to be selling them. His Dad, some random person he knows at work, or via classified ads in the paper or online. They usually end up being boring cars, like a Mercury Sable, or an old person car, like a Caprice Classic.
He usually spends around a thousand or two dollars for the car, drives it into the ground over the course of a few years, and then starts over with something else boring. Except this time.
My good friend Dean is now the proud owner of a bright red 1986 Porsche 944 Turbo. This car is so very far from boring I can't even begin to describe it. I love it, and I want one. Sure, its a used car, but man...what a used car it is.
The 944, however, is not the subject of the story. Dean figures that to keep the 944 running in tip-top condition, he needs to let the experts work it over, and he's found those experts at a shop that specializes in Porsches. Being that the car is nearly 20 years old, he accepts the fact that it is going to need work. And once that work is complete, he wants to avoid any possible situations where the car could be damaged, such as driving it in the rain or snow. For this, he'll need another car, because the one he has now (the aforementioned Sable) is on it's last leg. So much so, that I drive to lunch every day now for fear of it stranding us somewhere.
Dean has decided that he should get a truck. That way, if he needs to haul something or tow something he can, because you obviously can't do that with a bright red 1986 Porsche 944 Turbo. And, God forbid, he might actually have to tow the 944 at some point.
So Dean did some searching and found a 1987 Ford Ranger and decided to buy it. The asking price was about $700.00, so you can well imagine that the truck isn't going to win any beauty contests. But, thats ok - he's got a bright red Porsche 944 Turbo as his main car.
Dean dropped his Porsche off at the shop so they could decide what needed fixing on it, and headed out to meet the owner of the truck some twenty miles away.
If you don't live in an urban area like we do, it probably wouldn't take you a terribly long time to drive twenty miles. In the Washington, D.C. area, however, that distance is practically a day trip. Two hours after dropping off his 944, Dean arrives in the general vicinity of where he is to meet the truck's owner.
But the Mercury Sable, whom I've already told you is extremely unhappy about being driven, has communicated that displeasure with Dean by belching and frothing steam from beneath it's sun battered hood. Dean, ever confident in the dependabilty of American cars and his own temerity, pats the car on the dash and says a few words of encouragement.
The Sable, however, is in no mood to be comforted, and makes its point by refusing to acknowledge the existence of it's transmission. Dean is made aware of this when the car begins to slowly roll backwards down a hill.
Somehow Dean manages to slip the car into the parking lot of a grocery store, and calls the gentleman who he is trying to meet and informs him of the situation. Fortunately, he is not far away and agrees to come to Dean.
As it happens, the guy is a mechanic and is not at all surpised that the car's transmission has gone to wherever transmissions go when they die. In fact, he informs Dean that he is lucky the transmission has lasted as long as it has, as those particular models are well known in mechanic circles to do just this sort of thing.
So, now Dean is stuck several leagues from home, without a working vehicle and unable to contact anyone that can come and pick him up. He decides to buy the truck, if only to extract himself from an increasingly desperate situation.
After the requisite exchange of tags, titles and cash, the owner of the truck agrees to have Dean's Sable towed away for him, compliments of one of his mechanic friends, and Dean is off. Dean thanks the man for all of his help and pulls out into the busy rush hour traffic.
The truck drove admirably all the way home, and thankfully the traffic was significantly lighter than it had been on the way out. As Dean nears his home, the truck begins to sputter and complain. As the truck's engine cuts itself off, the former owner's parting words, which he had forgotten nearly as soon as they were spoken, returned to him:
"The gas guage ain't workin', so yer gonna wanna fill 'er up before you leave. I don't recall the last time I did...just reset the trip meter and when it gets up around 300 you'll know you need to fill it up again."