O O Ø O O O O
Cars
Barfegnugen
It started with the Brown Barf. The Barf was a ‘77 Plymouth Volaré originally owned by friends of the family. I inherited her as my first car, and like all good first cars, she was on her last wheels even before I took over.
The Barf was my first—and unsurprisingly, not my last—Flintstone car. She had a hole in the floor, just under the driver’s left foot. If it hadn’t been for the carpet (and the limits of non-cartoon anatomy), I could have stopped the car by dragging my foot on the road.
The hole in the floor led to one of the Barf’s most legendary features—an array of plants that used to grow out of the carpet at exactly that spot. Apparently, 1970s-era Plymouth carpet was ideal for root system development. As a pacifist, I didn’t have the heart to uproot my little auto-ecosystem.
The Barf’s other legendary feature was the incredible array of smells that filled the passenger compartment as I drove—a consequence of the car’s incredible ability to leak and burn every fluid that was put into her. Surprisingly, it wasn’t a fluid issue that forced her to the great car-lot in the sky—it was an axle issue. $1,200 worth of repairs is just a little much for a first-year university student to swallow, so the barf was relegated to the parts bin, and I went back to riding the bus to school.
‘Stang
The second of my brown ‘biles was a 1980 Ford Mustang, also inherited from the folks. Though possibly the easiest car in the world to work on (she had a ludicrously underpowered 2.3 litre engine in an engine bay that could easy take a 5L monster), the Mustang was eventually totalled by a seven-year-old.
It was early afternoon. The Mustang was parked in an alleyway, backing onto a park. Children were playing. Sun was shining. All was good—until a young Mario Andretti decided to take the family car for a spin.
The car was parked in front of mine. I guess Dad was picking the kids up from the park, and had left his son in the passenger seat while he coaxed his daughter off the monkey bars. Seeing the coast was clear, the little guy slid over to the driver’s seat, and slammed the car into reverse. The car was just far enough ahead, and the wheel was turned just right, so that it managed to execute a 90 degree turn, clipping the front passenger side headlight on the way by, and coming to an abrupt stop as the back end of the car encountered a large poplar tree. I can only imagine what went through the little guy’s mind as he looked out the front window and saw my poor little Mustang, tee-ed up perfectly:—
“Cool…”
He then slammed the car into drive, and T-boned my beast into retirement.
Right Turn Only
Three years later, I had scrimped and saved enough to buy myself my very first car—$400 worth of 1979 Honda Civic. Truth be told, I never really expected it to last the year; though miraculously, it managed to pass the British Columbia insurance inspection on the first try. Of course it started shedding parts almost immediately thereafter. Within a month, it had dropped the muffler (and most of the rest of the exhaust system) while parked outside the office. Within six months, I could not turn left under acceleration for fear of losing the CV-joint (forcing the use of the classic three-rights-make-a-left navigation technique). By the time the year was up, the car had more driver-side hole than it had floor. It was later abandoned in a parking lot, registration papers tucked under a wiper blade, and $40 in the glove box to pay for the tow. (I later heard that my landlord, unable to coax it out of the parking lot under its own power, eventually opted for the latter option.)
Primer
I had vowed to take better care of my next car. It was a 1982 Volvo, purchased from a friend of mine. The Volvo managed to keep driving for a few years. But once again, events conspired to ensure nobody else would want the beast. It was early spring, and I had finally decided to put some money into repairing her. Though the engine was still going strong, the car had spent a number of years on the coast, and was starting to rust—badly. I managed to convince a local body repair hobbyist to take on the task of fixing her up. I don’t know if it was my spectacular sales pitch, or if the hobbyist had spent too much time inhaling paint fumes. In any case, six months later, he threw the keys back at me in disgust, asking only for money spent on materials—in this case, $800 worth of bondo and primer.
The car would never again see paint. The cost of un-doing his handiwork far outweighed what it would have cost to do the job right in the first place.
As if to add to the poor thing’s humiliation, the car was broken into shortly therafter, depriving me of a driver-side window, a gym bag worth of dirty laundry, my $10 hockey stick, and the entire glove box, which had been locked shut (the key long lost) since the day I first brought her home.
Realizing her fate, the Volvo eventually convinced me to let her go. I was just leaving my office in downtown Calgary when the driver’s side tie-rod let go. If you’ve never had the experience, it is a fairly spectacular one: the tie rod is pretty much the only thing keeping the wheel pointed in a given direction. Free of its shackled existence, the wheel started to flap left and right, alternately screetching and howling. Had I been travelling with any speed at all, I’m fairly confident the wheel would have simply popped right off. As it was, I managed to wrestle the car under control and off the side of the road. There we waited for a tow home.
Two months later, I traded the car to the Kidney foundation. They gave me a $50 tax receipt, a free movie rental, and a medium pizza in return. Somehow, I think I got the better end of the bargain.
Epilogue?
The reason I bring this up is I’m currently around 1200km from home. I’m staring out the window at my current car—a 1992 Volkswagon Passat. It looks to be in good shape. I was even considering selling it at some point in the future. But will the universe allow it?
If you haven’t heard from me in a few weeks, you’ll have the answer.
kj
August 29, 2006
OOØOOOODCCLXXI
August 29th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
I seem to recall several years of engineering scavenger hunts where you tried to get some free tires for the Volare, too.
August 31st, 2006 at 1:37 pm
Darn tootin’. “Tires for a ‘77 Volaré” was a fixture on the annual engineering scunt. Sadly, the only year they ever got close was the year I caught them trying to steal mine…
September 1st, 2006 at 1:11 am
Heh. I’ve never driven a car into the ground (although my first car, a ‘74 Celica was pretty far gone when I sold it for $400. Saw it about a year later and it had been in several accidents by then).
My lot in life seems to be to buy new tires for a car then sell it less than a year later. It’s happened 3 times now…
The wife’s cars have faired worse. First one totaled. Second one she got $100 for a trade in and the promise that they would come tow it away (I couldn’t even push it downhill on the driveway with my feet on the hood and my back up against the side of the house)
August 15th, 2007 at 1:20 am
I remember Barf. You left it uninsured and parked in the alley way in Victoria, and all the neighbours tried to get it removed. It somehow lasted the whole work term until you came back, and actually had time to change the flat with the spare and actually get it started and drove it away. A neighbour even came to offer advice and a hand with changing the spare (and giving a push perhaps?) to encourage it’s removal from the neighbourhood.
Congrats on the ‘92, perhaps once you finnish the Ph.D. (and you run the Passat to it’s final driving days) you’ll be able to save up for something from the new millenium. Already a 2000 is a not-quite-but-almost-totally-unlike-a-near-end-of-life car.
~psheep