Cars, Cars, Cars

1/21/07 -

Found my new car last Friday. I love my cars, or at least every one I’ve ever picked out. Interestingly, the only one I grew to hate was the one my dad picked out for me. Wonder what that says? Not counting that one, which, for the record, was a 1970 lime green Plymouth Duster that drove like a truck, I’ve owned only 4 other cars until Sat. My nearly new Chrysler PT Cruiser is my 5th car. I have owned:

1975 med. blue Datsun B-210 - bought brand new

1976 med. blue Datsun B-210 - bought used 3 years after the previous Datsun got creamed 3 months after I paid it off

1986 red Honda CRX Si - bought as a yearling, but with only 900 miles on it, some rich dude’s toy

1991 teal Honda CRX Si - bought off the internet in 1997 after getting the settlement from my mother’s estate. The ‘86 was gonna start needing some work and I unloaded it.

and now I own:

2006 black Chrysler PT Cruiser GT - another rich man’s toy. It has 4700 miles on it and 2 yrs left on it’s warranty. I got a hellava deal!

As I said, I love my cars to death. I buy them, pay them off and then drive them till they’re nearly dead. Cars are a personal statement for me. I sticker them up. I fill their insides with personal momentos to decorate them. I also take care of them. Except for the 1st B-210, which met an untimely death, all my cars have ended up having over 100M miles on them and were running great when they were sold. Or, in the case of the second B-210 donated, because it was nearing the end of it’s useful life and then it was stolen, found and was in much worse shape for it.

The current CRX is still in very good shape with *only* 127M miles on it, but there are several reasons I want to get another vehicle. The CRX is a hard car to carry the dogs around in. We are going to get a truck to replace Eddie’s Mazda 626 and we’ll need something else to drive besides a truck all the time. I’m tired of sitting so low in traffic and also how dangerous it is because the big, honking SUV’s don’t see you. Related to that is updating to a car that has more modern safety features like airbags and ABS brakes.

The PT Cruiser is incredible! It was some rich private pilot’s toy that he bought last Jan and traded back in this Jan. for a truck. It only has 4700 hundred miles on it. It has all the bells and whistles but weirdly enough no seat heaters for the leather seats. It has the Turbo engine, too. In short, it has nearly everything I would have wanted if I’d been picking it out. I say nearly, because I almost didn’t even bother to look at it because it’s black. Not my favorite color for a car. I had also wanted to go to an automatic after a standard tranny for over 20 years. But ce’ la vie. It was such an incredible deal for such an incredible car that I couldn’t let those minor issues stand in the way.

See some pics of the new auto-mo-bile at the Flickr link, to your right--->