Every car has a story. A list.
I have been reading The Autopian since it was founded. Really, I’ve been reading David Tracy for years, and he and his fellow wrenching enthusiasts have been sort of the gateway for me into caring for cars that Tony Bourdain was when it came to travel–a sort of acknowledgement that it’s a fine thing to do, wrenching, that normal, non-mechanical people can do it, that cars are machines, and every machine breaks now and again, and even if you can’t solve it, it’ll be okay.
Anyway, David Tracy put out an article this week about all of the cars he’s bought and sold, and it made me wonder if I could compile a list of the cars I’ve owned (including the ones Kelly and I have owned together). And here is just as good of a place as any to catalog them.
1979 Oldsmobile Cutlass Salon. My first car, inherited from my stepmother, Mary. When I earned my driver’s license in 1997, the car was 18 years old, but to my teenaged self, it felt 118. It was, admittedly, a car from another era. Its small block V8 ought to have provided tremendous power, but because it came from a time of fuel efficiency, it barely coughed up more than 115 horsepower. Mine was gold with a beige fiberglass top. Actually, gold is an exaggeration. The car I drove was dull brown. It consumed oil as greedily as it did fuel, which I thankfully could purchase for $0.95/gallon in those days. When I worked and saved and had enough money for a replacement when I graduated high school, we put the Olds in the front yard with a “for sale” sign in the windshield and a price of $800. A couple came by to test drive it and stole it. Later, we found it in a pay-by-the-week motel in Statesville. Mary felt so bad for the couple (who had apparently lived in the Oldsmobile for a while with their kid) that she just let them have it.
1984 GMC Jimmy (S-15) Sierra Classic. I was really proud of this thing. I cannot remember how we found it, but I bought it from someone in west Iredell for (I think) $1,500. Mine was two door and two-tone, dark blue and creamy white. The truck was modestly lifted, giving it a somewhat aggressive profile, but its underbits weren’t up to any heavy lifting. Its 2-liter, four-cylinder engine made 83 horsepower. Mine had a five-speed manual transmission. Even so, I was excited to take a proper (looking) off-road car to college in Cullowhee, where visions of snowfall and mountainous, back country roads filled my head. But I had to downshift into fourth (and sometimes third) gear to make it up Black Mountain on I-40. I drove the truck quite a bit, including on family vacations to the Florida panhandle, and I really liked it. As any teenager would do, I upgraded the stereo and ignored most everything else. The summer before my senior year, the truck began overheating–it was losing antifreeze, and I was slow to realize the culprit was a failing head gasket. The Jimmy’s engine expired on East Broad Street just past the Statesville Country Club in a massive eruption of coolant-converted steam. I parked it in the Food Lion parking lot and never drove it again.
1990 Pontiac Grand Am. Might have been a ’91. Inherited, again, from my parents in the wake of the Jimmy’s untimely death. This one was burgundy and gray, four door, cloth interior. I hated it, but I had no other choice. It, too, suffered seemingly unpredictable spikes in operating temperature–a pain in the ass at the time thanks to regular construction on my way to and from college that would halt traffic and frequently bring the engine to boil–all of which turned out to be a failed cooling fan that Carl helped me replace. I referred to the car as the Grand Dammit. Once, while driving to the school where I student taught on an icy January morning, I spun the thing around a full 360-degrees on a slick bridge in Canton. Eventually it went to my brother, who upon taking possession claims he found a sink faucet and corset under the seats. I have no recollection of those items. It died on his watch.
1993 Mercury Grand Marquis. By spring of my senior year of college, Kelly and I were married, and as such we shared custody of this land yacht, which I brought back to Cullowhee to finish my last semester. It was massively long. It was inherited from Kelly’s mother, Dianne. Carl had painted the car to better satisfy Dianne’s preferences, but something didn’t go quite right, and instead of a grayish-tan with a pearl shine, it ended up a vague shade of pink. It had a keypad on the driver’s side door that allowed you to punch in a code an unlock the car or pop the trunk–among the fanciest options I’d ever had in a car. Even with its pink sheen, though, it was frequently confused with an unmarked police car (the Grand Marquis shared a body style with the Crown Victoria), which meant people often slowed to a frustrating pace whenever I approached behind them. We gave it back to Carl and Dianne.
1989 (or ’90) Chevrolet Caprice Classic. Sitting next to the Grand Marquis at one point was a brown Caprice, another inheritance from the Williams family motorpool, and one of several Caprices Carl had owned and repaired. This one had been in the family for years before we ended up with it, and I remember it had hilarious malfunctions from time to time, including once when we could not get the car to shut off. It simply kept running, even after we turned off the ignition and removed the key and walked away. Kelly mostly drove this car–cloth interior, but if I remember a good air conditioner–until its replacement arrived, which was a…
1991 Pontiac Bonneville. This was a literal inheritance, this time from Kelly’s great aunt, who passed the car along to Carl, who immediately turned it around and gave it to us. It had barely been driven and was fully, delightfully, mechanically functional. The tradeoff? It was dull gray, and given it was the last of the H-platform eighth generation (they’d refresh the Bonneville body style in the 1992 model year), it looked like it belonged squarely in the 1980s. Kelly loved it, though, and she was its primary driver, so it stayed in the collection. It performed incredibly well, and we kept the car until roughly 2012. By its end, Kel had adorned it with a bike rack and a growing collection of stickers. I sold it for cash on a Sunday afternoon in the cul-de-sac in front of our house, signing the title over without a notary present.
2003 Nissan Altima S. Our first-ever new car purchase. The pride of our early marriage driveway. It was sea foam green, sported a beige cloth interior, and performed like a dream. Kelly and I admired the Altima since our college days, which in hindsight seems absolutely on brand. It happened to be one of those deals where we began with the notion to buy a used car and ended up with a brand-new one. I cannot remember what we paid for it, and I don’t have the feeling we got hosed on the deal, but we were certainly young and susceptible to the glamour of a shiny, new off-the-lot car. And if you love a car a lot, why not replace it with…
2007 Nissan Altima SL. Sparing the details of why it all happened, I eventually ended up trading the ’03 Altima in for an upgraded ’07 edition. This one was nicer–my moronic, mid-twenties self craved nice things but really could only afford mid-size imported sedan with fake leather nice–and sported one of the first continuously-variable transmissions on the market. It was dark blue with a tan leather interior, Bose stereo system, and (in a first for me) dual-zone climate control plus a moon roof. It sported a keyfob-enabled push-button ignition. I thought it was a pretty cool car. When I drove it to work the morning after picking it up, a student in the parking lot shouted “Hey! I like the wheels! It’s like… a cool Mom car!” Never before has my ego been deflated so quickly. It turned out to be a terrific car, though, and the only one I’ve ever owned that was in an accident. (A lady in Davidson hit me on a snowy afternoon.) I would later adorn it with a vanity license plate–a WCU tag reading CLWHE. It earned unbelievable gas mileage numbers. I eventually sold it to a Davidson colleague’s boyfriend. Altimas have a different rap these days, but I really liked mine.
2011 Dodge Grand Caravan Crew. At some point, Kelly’s Bonneville began feeling long in the tooth, and we (at least, I) began feeling guilty hauling our precious kiddo around in it. We had taken a trip to visit my grandmother in Florida and rented a Dodge Caravan, and very quickly we understood why parents drove minivans. Our need for one came when Kel found she was pregnant with Thomas. The problem: Kelly hated minivans, and she loathed the idea of driving a van that looked like a million others. The solution? We bought an orange minivan. Technically the color was mango tango, but gracious, it stood out. We bought it used from CarMax, and we purchased a Grand Caravan because we could afford a newer-used car with more features, like sliding doors, power lift-gate, and a touch-screen radio and back-up camera. It had stow-and-go seats that made its cabin insanely spacious. (I literally carried an uncut 4×8′ sheet of plywood in the back with the gate closed.) But this minivan carried mechanical curses that frequently haunted Dodge vehicles of the era, and ours spent regular time in the shop. There was an annual (or at best, biennial) parade of failures. Meanwhile, our increasing flock of children soiled and destroyed its interior. Kelly put more than 100,000 miles on it before we sold it in 2020 to a couple of hippies from Asheville who intended to turn it into a camper van. They gave us $4,000, and we gave them a lot of uneaten snacks under the seats gratis.
2006 Acura MDX. My first entry into “nicer” cars. I bought this one from my uncle Dave after they moved to Davidson. It had been my aunt Lisa’s car, and she was getting a new Cadillac SUV, and my uncle kindly sold it to me with a Kelly Blue Book family discount. I was almost made whole selling my ’07 Altima. The MDX wasn’t as well appointed as the Altima, but it was bigger–it was a three-row SUV, and there was more than enough room to cram two car seats into the back. Our two-kid family was threatening to become a three-kid family, and it made sense at the time. Plus, the world was moving into its SUVs are the only cars stage, and it was time that I joined. Or rejoined, given my college days in the Jimmy. This car was meticulously maintained, and even though it came with 120k-plus miles on the clock when I bought it, it reliably ran for nearly 50k more before I sold it. In a different world, I’d have kept it and made it my “rough” car. Instead, following my own tradition, I ended up buying an…
2015 Acura MDX SH-AWD. …another MDX. I’m still driving this car, which I acquired used with just about 30k miles on the clock. I love it. It’s a nice car. It’s of the “chrome beak” era of MDXs, complete with an outdated GPS. It’s all-wheel drive, 3.5-liter V6 (making 290 horsepower), power all the things, maroon exterior with beige leather. I’ve clocked in excess of 50k miles on it, and at this point, I suspect this will be the car that Julia inherits from me. That is a humbling thought, even moreso when I consider the 1979 Oldsmobile at the very top of this list. She’ll be eligible for a driver’s license in 2027, which would make this car 12 years old when she gets the keys. Somehow that seems a million times newer than the 16 year-old Olds I drove. I cannot help but wonder how Julia perceives this car. It still feels new to me.
1987 AMC Jeep Grand Wagoneer. This was the first time I ever purposefully bought an old car, and it was also the first time we ever bought a car that we didn’t intend to regularly drive. It was a hobby car. An extra. And damn, it was incredibly cool to look at. There’s a whole story about how our family came to own Woodrow (the car’s name, but also its vanity plate). For me, though, this was a big step. Here’s a car I can reasonably expect will strand me somewhere some day. I am mentally prepared for that. I will have to call a tow truck. I will have to get it fixed. This is just how it will have to be, I guess. And that’s okay. Because I really do love this old Jeep. It’s the only car I’ve ever owned–and you’ve got the entire list here, folks–that people go out of their way to compliment me on. People point and wave. It’s wild. We bought it with 199,961 miles on the register, and I’ve babied it all the way to not quite 204k. I need to remember to put transmission fluid in it next time I drive it, though.
1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee. This was a short-timer in our collection, and strangely enough, it wasn’t anything I set out to own. In fact, it was Carl’s Jeep for a long time–he bought it for a song from a couple who couldn’t figure out what was the matter with it, and then he fixed something remarkably cheap/simple, felt bad about giving the couple so little money for it, sought them back out, and paid them a little more cash. Then he used the Jeep to haul things around that he didn’t want messing up his other cars. It was a terrific tow vehicle–Carl’s single-axle garden trailer was a dream to maneuver with the Jeep. Then one day, I learned Carl was going to sell it. In fact, he had a deal that kept falling through, so I offered to buy it from him, and he deeded it to me for zero dollars with the agreement that he could keep a key, keep it running, and use it as needed. I’d pay the registration and insurance. It still had plenty of issues, and I only sparingly used it, but it came in handy a handful of times. When we moved to Cullowhee, it wasn’t reliably running, so we left it at Kelly’s grandmother’s, and eventually Carl sold it. I made sure he kept the proceeds.
2021 Honda Odyssey. At some point, the mango tango Dodge began to have too many problems for my comfort, so in the middle of the pandemic, we picked up a white Honda minivan. It was slightly soul destroying for Kel, who had grown accustomed to driving a one-of-a-kind kid-hauler around Statesville. A white Honda? Dime a dozen. This one was nice, though–tech package, leather interior, lots of nice touches, including a family-first: adaptive cruise control and automated driving. Not long after, Kelly adorned it with graphics for her company, My Zero Carb Life. Later, I added a TEAM MEAT vanity plate. It’s still parked in our garage.
That’s 14 cars in total across 27 years of driving. That doesn’t count the cars Kelly drove before we got married, which included a 1977 Chevrolet Monte Carlo nicknamed Cyrano (wrecked months after taking ownership), a fire-engine-red 1989 Pontiac Firebird (which died in the Sylva McDonald’s drive-thru in college), a 1990 Ford Taurus (also pinkish, also of the Williams family fleet), and a 2002 Saturn SL, Kel’s first brand-new car, purchased in Hickory, and returned a few weeks later with a tremendous dose of buyer’s remorse. I loved it. Kel couldn’t stomach having such a nice car.
What are we looking for in the future? Thomas is all-in on electric cars these days, and he’s desperate for something like a Rivian SUV or Hummer EV. Both of those are rather expensive, but they’re also kinda awesome looking. Me? Maybe another MDX. Or maybe something stupid and fun. Dad’s “fun” car for several years now has been a 2006 Corvette Z06, which sports a massive, naturally aspirated 7-liter, 505 horsepower engine. It screams. Maybe one day I’ll get to spend some time in its driver’s seat.
What’s more likely is that I’ll end up with the kind of car I see lots of friends driving–the ones who have kids in college, who are trying to pay all the bills and keep the lights on, the ones who don’t really have a lot of time to think about what they’re driving. It’s a certain mid-grade, nothing flashy kind of car, easy to lose in the grocery store parking lot, but even easier to make payments on. As much as I appreciate cars, based on the list above, there’s a reasonable chance that’ll be me in a few years.
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