In typical late Sunday night fashion I wonder around aimlessly on the Internet finding interesting things. I go to youtube.com to check in on mysteryguitarman and as usual I find his new video. At the end he mentions the BBC's TopGear TV show which is premiering tonight. Anyway TopGear, is holding a competition to find the best "my first car" story. So, why not blog about my first car.
So my first car, which I still have and probably will have for quite some time, is a 2004 Chevrolet Caviller. The family got this car to replace the old 1993 Ford Aerostar (I have plenty of stories with that car too) after we moved from Texas to Maryland in 2003. Dad drives a lot of miles a day to work something around +50 miles a day round trip. So we bought it brand new an he put 120,000 miles onto it before I bought it from him. I spent about 2/3 of my learners permit miles in it (The other being the 1998 GMC Suburban we up till recently owned) and took my drivers test in it. I also took a picture of the 100,000 miles when it rolled over to that. So far since I have owned it (January 2008)(actually I don't have it under my name just yet, but it is mine anyway), I have put almost 7,000 miles on it (only like 200 miles left ) and probably more before I owned it.
On a side note, we name our cars. The '93 Ford Aerostar was called Whitey (because it was white), the '98 GMC Suburban was Blue (also because it was blue) and we had it till January of 2011, my Cavalier is "Cal" (short for Cavalier), the 2009 Jetta is "Jet" (also short for Jetta), the 2011 Chevy Suburban that replaced Blue is "Tiny" (because of its not-so-tiny size that dwarfs Blue who was large himself), and our travel trailer that our suburban(s) tow is Bob (no pattern for this one).
I remember being with dad looking for a car for me. I wanted a Subaru Outback Legacy with a manual transmission. Really, I would settle for any car with a manual transmission. This was during the middle of the oil economic crisis so anything under $5,000 was non-existent. So what ended up happening was that I would buy the car from my parents and they would turn around and use the money as a down payment for a new 2009 Volkswagen Jetta Turbo-Diesel (I love his VW, btw). I remember sitting down at Red Lobster for my 17th birthday and my parents told me that they were going to sell the car to me. The first thought was disbelief because I wasn't even considering getting that car at all since it was (and still is) in great condition.
So I bought the car for a total of $2000 and after the first few gas tanks after getting it. I noticed my MPG was down at 20mpg, which is horrible for that car. I did some routine maintenance with dad to try to bring back some mpg. I remember checking the air filter and discovering so much pine needles and other leaves that a bird could build a nest with it. It was hilarious, and the mpg shot back up to the (almost) 30 mpg that it should and still gets.
So it has all original parts, except for both bumpers, and with each bumper, there is a story: Only a week after having my drivers license I went to a meeting and came back and this was sometime when it was dark out. I was rather cocky at that point in my driving career and I decided to back into the driveway, when it was dark out. My driveway is 4 cars wide and we share it evenly with the neighbor. The neighbor's driveway/house/property has a wooden retaining wall. Somehow, and I still don't know how to this day I remember looking back and not seeing anything and then all of a sudden hitting something, I pull forward and park, still shaking. I run around the car looking for any damage, and not finding it at first. Then I finally found it and told my parents who thought I was joking at first. I didn't get in too much trouble, thankfully. The bumper got replaced with a repainted one off of a black Cavalier in a junk yard.
My front bumper was the next victim. My friends and I went to the opening night of Iron Man 2 last year. So, two of my friends and myself went to the movie theatre and back. I was using my GPS to get to and from. Well, at the first turn out of the theatre the GPS wants me to turn left into a mediam that was now there. So, I decide to turn right instead and turn around. Between my best friend in the passenger seat and I, I decide to to a U-ie around the median once it ended. A combination of going too fast, the tighter than usual road, and the dark resulted in Cal getting stuck on the curb for a brief 5 seconds (with cars coming both ways, but far off in the distance). I had to quickly back out of the curb and keep driving off to a incomplete road. I checked the damage which, like the back bumper was, merely cosmetic. The bumper was badly crumpled in on the side . The wheel and the steering was uncompromised, thankfully. The following day my dad was coming up for a school competition in which all the freshmen engineers had to build a bottle filling and capping machine. After the competition, I told my dad who wasn't upset. The bumper was replace over this summer by an OEM bumper bought on ebay and painted since we couldn't find one in the junk yards.
I love my car. I will probably keep it till at least well after I graduate college. The best things about it is that it is simple and all manual except the transmission, so nothing breaks, it has an awesome tight turning radius (which is why I thought I could make the u-ie around the median), and it get good gas mileage for its age.
I say this because the car has a 4 speed automatic with no overdrive. If I had a more modern transmission or at least an overdrive I could consistently do +35mpg. As far as a little history about the car, the cavalier was produced from 1982 to 2005, it was one of the best selling cars in the US throughout its life, I see them everywhere (ie. even my ex-girlfriend had a '93 and my neighbor has had 2 '98's) because they are reliable and inexpensive. It was replaced by the Cobalt which was produced a few years before the GM bankrupcy so the quality of these cars were horrible (I know people who had one who said that the thing fell apart as soon as it left the lot ,as well as buying them years after they were first made and the thing basically blew up). The Cobalt was from 2005 to 2010 and is being replaced by the new Cruze. So what I'm getting at is that older cars are of better quality, so keep them, and maintain them till they die a decade later (which is basically what our family does).
I think I have blogged enough. So, post a reply about your first car stories, PLEASE :D, and follow the blog!
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