My first vehicle was far from perfect, but it usually got me where I wanted to go. That was the first Summer I could both legally drive and have access to a car whenever I wanted.
As a young 16-year-old who had just earned my license in April of 2014, I was driving my sister’s hand-me-down Eclipse. It was far from perfect. People would tell me, “Well, it gets you from point A to point B, so you can’t complain too much.” That was true… most of the time. The thing was if the engine got wet it wouldn’t start until it was dry. For example, that summer I drove to Albert Lea to visit my older brother and when I got there it starting raining. I didn’t think it was a big deal, but three days later after getting a ride back to pick up my car when it had finally dried out, I learned my lesson. Stay home when it’s raining.
That car wasn’t all. Driving through town I quickly discovered that once the vehicle was warm it wouldn’t stay that way for long. If I drove around town for more than five or 10 minutes after the engine was warm, it was getting hot. Really hot. Like boil-an-egg-on-the-side-of-the road hot. The thermostat would slowly and then not so slowly shoot way up. I would later find out from a mechanic that the blower fan was broken and wasn’t able to kick on when the engine got hot. It was safe to drive on the highway. I just couldn’t drive slower than 40 mph without the engine getting a little too warm.
You might say well if you can drive on the highway and live in a small town, those two problems weren’t that big. Well those people would be right, but there’s more. There’s always more with the car my friends nicknamed “death trap.” About a year later one of my friends told me I needed to rotate my tires. Little did I know this would lead to me no longer driving Death Trap. When they put the car up on a hoist, the right passenger side tire fell almost completely off the car. The entire strut mount and shock were broken. There was no driving it that way and at that point it was too expensive to get fixed.
So, sadly, Death Trap laid her final plan and fell in her final trap. It was probably lucky that my friends and I decided to rotate my tires that day because if we hadn’t, who knows what could have happened. A mechanic would later tell me that the strut mount could have given way if I had simply gone over too large a bump too fast. Well, for what it was worth, I made some great memories in that car, some better than others.