Das Autos

I don’t know why I thought a catalog blog of the cars I’ve owned and still own is necessary, other than I haven’t blogged in a while.

Like most of my friends in High School, I did not receive a car to drive, during school nor after graduation.  In fact, I didn’t take driver’s education in high school, and didn’t actually get my driver’s license until my senior year of college.  In High School, I was on the cross country and track team, so I was running every where – no need for a car.  Plus I had at least two friends who would drive us places we couldn’t get to via bicycle.

In college and grad school I used the trains, buses and subways to get where I needed to go.  Anything around campus, was walking distance or others where driving.  The impendence to get a license was the summer between Freshman and Sophomore year of college, when I needed to take some summer courses.

Looks just like my first car, color and styling

 

The little Jetta served the family well and lasted about two years after the divorce, so I had the car for 9 years and 198,000 miles, with no engine rebuild!  I finally sold it to a guy who was looking for an inexpensive weekend racecar – fried the engine on the second race!

My in between car was a 1993 Chevy Corsica.  It was mostly blue, about half of the paint was coming off – it was on of those that had the bad primer and just wasn’t worth redoing.  It, however, did have a rebuilt engine, so it ran very good.  I kept that car for well over two years and the frame had 190K plus on her.  Sold it off the front yard for $200.

Same color as my Corsica, but with a full paint job!

What I replaced the Corsica with was my all time favorite vehicle, a 1988 Chevy S-10 Blazer.  She was white on top with grey rocker panels and a red pin stripe.  Full aluminum running boards and a steel skid plate.  I got her cheap and had to have the engine rebuilt, but all that power from the 3.6 V6 was great, auto locking, lever controlled 4×4.  I took that truck deep into the woods for some serious bird hunting.  That little truck also eventually came with my best buddy, Wingnut!  He and I drove every where.  I had to get the bottom half of the truck repainted every other year to pass inspection, but it was worth it.

Pin-stripe is right, but mine was white and grey

After the tired old S-10 Blazer reached 250K, it was time to move on.  Cycling one morning I spied this great green behemoth, and it had a bowtie on the nameplate, it was a full sized 1993 K-Blazer.  Green, with a light grey interior and 80,000 miles on the original engine.  She had a few dents and stains on the carpet, but I took the boys done to test drive with me.  The big captain’s chairs and two rows of bench seat were and immediate hit with the teenagers!  I like the massive 6+ liter V-8 engine.  This truck had power out the ass and on the fly push button 4-wheel drive.

93 Full Sized Blazer, same color as my beast!

My oldest boy wanted a car in the worst way when he got his driver’s license, so since I was barrowing money from my 401k anyway, I grabbed a little extra and purchased a fun little green 1999 Mazda Miata.  I enlisted the help of a friend to help me drive it from Massachusetts, as I hadn’t driven a manual shift in many, many years.  I quickly remembered and had tons of fun blasting around Central Maine in the little green machine.  I still have her today, only got 185K on the odometer, but is in need of another new top!

This could be my Miata, as I purchased her, she is wearing new wheels these days.

The K-blazer was great fun, until I suffered my first, and only epileptic seizure while driving.  Luckily, I was entering a parking lot and only smashed a Honda Ridgeline and a brick flagpole box.  Some serious fender work and the driver’s side axle broke, but the insurance company won’t pay to put her back on the road.  After a year, with a suspended license, we were back in the market for a truck.  The Miata was a great car, but useless in the snow.

Well, by this time, the full sized Blazers were out of production – fucking CAFE standards and EPA imposed MPG fleet rates killed a great truck.  So I opted for the next best thing, the 2001 4-door Tahoe, green again, with the third row seating.  This truck got me through tons of Fencing tourneys, where I transported people and equipment; the remainder of my child support days and the last of my dog transport day.  I loved this truck.  Command of the road, a full frame (one of only two passenger vehicles that were still build on full frames – the other being the Suburban, and aforementioned Full-sized Blazer having saved my life), comfort, gas was cheap, so who cared about MPGs.

One of my favorite vehicles of all time, same color and look.

I had to trade in the Tahoe after Obama’s second term started.  His lack of oil drilling and ever increasing CAFE standards raised gasoline prices near $4/gallon and only making 9 mpg was killing the wallet.  So off to the dealership to off load the only vehicle I hadn’t driven into the ground, nor made it to 180k+ miles with (125,000 was a good round number and gave me good trade in value).  Next up for me was my first ever pick-up, the Chevy Colorado (a 2010 model, in Darth Vader black, binged out with silver accents – the perfect Raider’s fan truck!).  I’ve had Darth for just about three years, purchased with less than 15000, I now have over 60K miles on him.  Not bad, considering driving is split time in the spring, summer and early fall between the Miata and Darth.