Car Talk

I bought a new (used) car last week! It's the 4th car I've owned in my life, and definitely the nicest one. I'll give the details on my new toy in a bit, but first I thought it would be fun to chronicle my automobile history. To start off, a brief timeline:

April 2004: I turn 24 years old, and a few days later I graduate from BYU.

May 2004: I get my first cell phone.

June 2004: I buy my first car.

That's right--I made it all the way through college without a cell phone, and all the way through high school and college (more than 8 years after getting my license) without my own car. It's obviously possible to do this, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Tired of riding the bus to my job on Marie Osmond's radio show (I was no longer eligible for a student pass, and I still had to walk 12 blocks from the bus stop anyway), I set out to find a car I could afford on my meager budget. I stopped by the ad board in the Wilkinson Center on BYU campus, and almost immediately saw a posting for a car I knew was destined for me.

Some guy was selling a 1993 Ford Tempo for $1000, and he only lived a block away from me. I drove my mom's '91 Tempo all the time in high school, so I knew those cars better than any other make and model. I snatched it up quickly, and for the first time in my life I was a car owner!

Less than two weeks after buying it, while driving to the aforementioned radio job, I was rearended, and my car was knocked into the back of the Jeep in front of me. The double impact left my "new" Tempo with the rear bumper detached and hanging down on one side, and my hood tented. Amazingly, it started up right away and drove normally. Not surprisingly, though, it was totaled for insurance purposes, and I got a check for about $950--meaning that my car had basically paid for itself.

My neighbor/good friend David also drove an old Tempo, a family heirloom that he and three other siblings passed from one to another. We always thought it was hilarious when they ended up next to each other in the parking lot. The two of us had a years-long email chain going with several other friends, and once I was so amused by the twin Tempos that I actually wrote the following, way back on July 26, 2004:

For a few hours our Ford Tempos were parked next to each other. On my way to work, my car went into detail about the wonderful evening they spent together--warning lights coming on at inappropriate times, rear bumpers falling off, fluids leaking, and all that good stuff. (I have no idea what this last part means, but I think there's a lot more innuendo in there than I intended. Sorry.)

I'm clearly very mature. Anyway...the hood would've had to be removed to be repaired, and I wasn't about to shell out hundreds of dollars to fix this clunker, so I planned to drive it until the registration expired and then get rid of it. It died about one month short of that goal, though, perhaps because when you don't open your car's hood for 11 months that means you can't change the oil or check any other fluids during that time. I sold it for about 50 bucks to a junkyard.

I was without a car again for almost two months before taking a trip to a big used car dealer to look at a car I had seen online. That car had been sold, but I test drove a similar one, and soon was driving away the "proud" owner of a '97 Ford Taurus.

(Quick aside: I mostly love the Internet, but it's frustrating when you can't find a video you really want to use on your blog. There's a comedian who, in his Comedy Central stand-up special,  joked about wanting to move up from a Tempo to a Taurus, but that segment isn't online. Inexplicably, a full transcript is online (check out 11:17-11:57), but no video. Here's a clip from another performance where he's doing the same material, but there's a clear edit at 1:52--right where that joke would've been, if you compare it to the transcript. Curse you, Internet!)

It wasn't a great car. (Even car thieves think so. Check out this list--and note #4, because we'll be getting to that later.) A month or so after I bought it, I tried driving up to Boise to do an improv show. I pulled off the road in Tremonton with smoke billowing out of the exhaust, and a puddle of transmission fluid forming beneath the car. It turned out to be a relatively minor problem, but we weren't off to a great start.

I gave my Taurus a name a year after I bought it. I took it in to renew the registration, and since I had made some repairs just a few weeks earlier, it passed all the inspections and no additional repairs were recommended--the only time that's ever happened to me. As I started it up to drive away from Jiffy Lube, "Happy to be Stuck With You" came on the radio. It seemed fitting--if I could afford a better car, I would've got one--and from that point my Taurus was known as Huey.

About two and a half years after buying Huey, I got a work assignment that would require me to move to New York for a few months. I was planning on just leaving my car parked in front of the Provo duplex I lived in at the time. But a few days before I left, I was home teaching, and at the end of the visit we asked the standard "is there anything we can do for you" question. One girl asked if we knew how to fix cars. I told her no, but that I had a car I wouldn't need for a few months that she could use. She was surprised that I was sincere, and I was probably equally surprised that she accepted. (See, we home teachers DO mean it when we ask that question!)

I remember well getting a call from the girl a few months later, while at a Valentine's Day party in NYC. She told me she had been in an accident. She was kind of freaked out that she had wrecked my car, but fortunately nobody was hurt. I had already been leaning towards moving to New York permanently, and I took this as a sign that I should. A few days later she called me with more information: the other driver was at fault, my car was still drivable (only body damage) but was totaled for insurance purposes. My friend knew someone that did the repair for a great price, apparently, because I ended up profiting over $3000 when all was said and done. I didn't have to do anything besides sign a form and cash the check.

I returned to Provo that spring long enough to settle up my affairs, pack my things and move back to New York. A guy in my ward liked to offer people $500 for their junker cars, figuring he'd lose his money on some but get good value on others. I sold him my car, and moved back to New York. Later I found out Huey lasted him about six months. The money from the insurance and sale of my Taurus was a big part of why I was able to stay in New York as long as I did without having steady employment.

This is already pretty long, so I'll cover cars 3 and 4 in my next post. Stay tuned!