So I wrote a story (two stories, actually) about my humorous relationships with cars. I write on the side but never had a place to post. This is kinda lengthy but hopefully you get some humor from it.. Mods, I looked at the rules and there is nothing about swearing. There is some profanity in this story so I apologize in advance if anyone is offended by some of the language. Anyway, enjoy...
The Baron and The Beast – My Love/Hate Relationship with Cars
My first car was a 1986 Chrysler Le Baron. Yes, you read that right, Le Baron which I can only assume means, “The Baron” in English. Barons are some sort of royalty in England but you kind of felt the opposite driving this thing. Maybe it was Chrysler’s cruel joke, “Do you want to feel like Royalty? Well, don’t drive this car” or perhaps, “Chrysler Le Baron, reasonably priced so you can afford to pay for sex because you will have to.”
When I got this car, it had more miles on it than any American car should have. It’s almost like my parents had this inside joke where they bet one another just when this thing would die. “He’s going uphill in 100 degree heat!! Pay up!!” Thanks guys, I’m filling out your application to the worst nursing home ever, as we speak.
I remember I went to see Braveheart in the theatre with a buddy. For those who don’t remember, that’s when Mel Gibson was kicking all kinds of ass with a Scottish claymore the size of porn star mutton dagger. This crypt-keeper of a car had a transmission the like that of a teenage boy about to lose his virginity. It would go through all 4 gears in a matter of seconds. KMN. Here I am, trying to merge onto the highway and this POS is going 35 MPH in overdrive. I don’t know who was more pissed, me, my buddy in the passenger seat who insinuated that his grandmother drove faster (whom was dead), or the people in the right lane trying not to smash into me like some demented game of whack-a-mole. No bets were won that day as no respecting person would want their car smashed by The Baron. The Baron is the comparable to the Ebola Virus with a hint of Swine Flu, a dollop of Herpes rounded out with a nice au jus of Cholera; a veritable petri dish of awful.
After the Braveheart incident, I renamed The Baron, Le Cockblock because I was convinced that my parents gave him to me to ensure no woman would ever sleep with me. “Is that a Le Baron?” “Why yes it is!” “Ewww, I can hear my vagina closing up…Yep…There is a sign and everything, ‘Closed for Business, opening as a convent in the near future…’” Awesome. My best friend and I went on a double date with two girls we went to HS with. One of them was his cousin whom I was really in to and the other was her friend, a grenade if there ever was one. She, the friend, was a nice girl when she wasn’t talking but quite obnoxious the moment she decided to say, well anything.
We decided to get a bite to eat and then to a movie. Halfway to the mall, we hear this clanging noise. “WTF is this… Not now. Damn you, Le Cockblock. You’d rather destroy yourself than let me have just an ounce of time with vagina!” We pull over and my buddy looks under the car. Lo and behold there is a piece of metal that appears to serve no discernable purpose except to drag on the ground like some pouting toddler who can’t have every toy in the toy store. “Do you want me to kick it off”, my best friend says. “Umm, no, let’s see if we can tie it up with a rag.” So we do and make it all of 15 feet when we hear more cacophonous clanging of cheap Chinese steel on gravel. Wonderful. To make matters worse, the car’s rear end is now swaying back and forth so badly, you’d swear it was drinking the stuff dad saves for when the Raiders lose or he needs some lacquer stripped off furniture. Le Cockblock has upped his game to Steroid-Era Barry Bonds level. Nothing gets a woman out of her panties like a car that is literally falling apart while it’s being driven. We decide to turn around and drop the girls off. I hate you, Le Cockblock. I want to push you off a cliff or volunteer you for Monster truck fodder. I get Le Cockblock to my house and see that the steel bar as loosened even more. I get the brilliant idea that instead of finding a new one and having to shell out some absorbed amount of money, I will fix this with the following items: duct tape, a piece of molding, a coat hanger and some PVC pipe. If Le Cockblock wants to act this way, he’s getting the Milwaukee’s Best of car repairs. Suck it, Le Cockblock.
My old man sees this and says, “You can’t fix that like that. Are you crazy?” “Crazy like a fox, dad.” He rolls his eyes and decides to call the junk yard. Apparently the vehicular death that would have been associated with my MacGuyvering of Le Cockblock was the least viable option as far as my parents were concerned. Ok, mom and dad, I won’t put you in the WORST nursing home ever. Safe to say, Le Cockblock never stonewalled me again. He was sent to the scrapyard for the equivalent of two cases of Coca-Cola and a box of Twinkies. My only hope was that he was inevitably melted down to some low-grade steel used to make some spoiled kid’s jungle-gym or a piece of a subway car that the bums love to pee on…
The Beast
When I got my first real job out of college, I decided to buy myself a car. Not ANY car, mind you but a fast car. Long gone were the memories of the The Baron and the nasty aftertaste it had left in my mouth, I was ready for something new and fun; a car that I could show off, look good driving and be something that I actually cared about owning. If you can’t read between the lines, that’s code for ‘Vagina-Attractive’ or at least, ‘Vagina-Adjacent’ for those that are aware of my, ahem…game.
The Beast was a 1999 Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX in silver with an all black interior. For 1999, it was the top of the line Eclipse with a turbo and all wheel drive.
It started innocently with bolt on mods like a high flow air filter, boost controller and then a new, larger exhaust. The next step was fuel management, a new turbo and bigger fuel injectors. For those that don’t know, modifying cars is not cheap and it’s almost a way of life because of that fact. Thankfully I decided to make a rule and never EVER purchase car parts with a credit card. Sadly, the last round of mods – the most expensive – did my poor Eclipse in and I bit off more than I could chew. I was so determined to do as much as I could in terms of my own labor. I learned a lot, I smashed my fingers a lot, but I learned a great deal about cars.
In 2007 I decided to sell the Eclipse. I had such high hopes for it as the last round of modifications were supposed to put the car around 500 HP which was a far departure from the stock 215 off the manufacturing line. I had bitten off more than I could chew in terms of mods so I decided to sell the car as was.
Selling a car in pieces is tricky. You can gamble and sell it for parts but that can take forever with you inevitable left with some carcass like the Thanksgiving turkey that everyone has picked over. I put the Eclipse on Craigslist and low and behold, this kid wanted to buy it. This kid was the oddest looking fellow I had ever seen and I suspected he was a drug dealer so from now on, I will refer to him as Scarface-Ginger. This poor bastard got stuck with bad genes, to the degree of prematurely balding, stunted growth and teeth even the English would turn away at. He reminded me of that little shit from the Problem Child movies but only after he had a bunch of experiments done on him. I imagined him being strapped into a roller coaster and they were trying to fine-tune just how fast they could make it go without the masses throwing up. My mind wandered to other areas like death ray testing or those psychological weapons where once a certain frequency hits your brain, you shit your pants. The brown note, I believe it’s called.
SFG came by to look at the car. He owned a non-turbo Eclipse that had apparently been the victim of an unstable telephone pole that crushed his car’s roof. Truth be told, us turbo owners looked down at non-turbo guys with disgust and shame. I’m not proud of it but I did it. SFG wanted to step his game up to replace his bake-mobile (That’s what I assumed he did in it) which is what brought him to my door. He took a gander; told me he would be back with his old man to give it a look and ensure there was no damage or red flags.
When SFG and Poppa-SFG came to my place, two things occurred to me. 1). SFG was specimen #4 (where the perfected model is #15 or something) grown in the lab somewhere and his “parents” couldn't have kids but couldn't afford to adopt either. Voila, Craigslist provides again. 2). Poppa-SFG had hit the drugs hard at some point in his life, and not those swanky designer drugs, no, P-SFG had done some stepped on, cut-up and reprocess drugs that you wouldn’t even find in some Chemistry major dropout’s basement.
The two of them looked over the car, asked me what I wanted for it and gave me a cash deposit. That cash deposit was, yes, you guess it, a nice fat gangster-roll O’ Benjamins. We agreed on a price, and they came and got it a few days later with a flatbed.
The whole ordeal was bittersweet for me. On the one hand, I wanted that car gone. It was never the same as when I first bought it because so much had changed. On the other hand, we had some great memories together. Before the last round of mods, the car was a beast and definitely got me where I wanted to go in as quick of time as possible. I guess you can call the relationship with the Beast like a marriage that you don’t want to let go of but desperately need to because it’s killing you.
No, I refuse to end a story on a sad, introspective note like that. Let’s fast-forward a week after the Beast left me. One of my good friends, who also had an Eclipse GSX, called me up. His name was Rick and we all called him Slick Rick, Da Rula…I shit you not. Rick was the epitome of the alpha-male but he was more into racing motorcycles than cars. Rick calls me up and starts the conversation off like this,
Rick: Matt, guess where I am?
Me: I don’t know Rick, where are you? Hopefully prison because I don’t want to look at you anymore, much less hear from you…
Rick: Yeah yeah, real funny, asshole…Seriously, I am standing in front of your car
Great, last thing I want to do is talk about my departed beast, especially when it is in the possession of someone else. Wait a minute, WHY was Rick there, he didn’t know SFG nor his crack-addict father.
Me: Rick, why the hell are you where my car is?
I demanded. Apparently, P-SFG couldn’t get the car put back together so he sent it out to a shop to get it taken care of. You see, P-SFG was an old muscle car guy. He loved Chargers, Hemi-Cuda’s, Camaro’s and all those other 60’s and 70’s behemoths that I didn’t give a rat’s ass about. No wonder Rick was sent in. The problem was, Rick had never taken his own car apart because he was Mr.Motocross guy. So what does Rick do? That’s right, Rick calls me up to help him fix my car that he was tasked to help fix. Got that? I was now a proxy-mechanic on my own fucking car that I sold. Half of me was like, “Shit, the Beast either really misses me or is the Devil’s spawn and wants to ruin my life.” Thankfully, it wasn’t anything major and I sent Rick a list of things to check and then to get back to me.
I fully expected to hear back in a day or two but all was silent on the Beast front…That is until about a week later. I was sitting at my desk at work, minding my own business when I got a text. Remember back in 2007 and camera phones were just starting to get popular?
You hit the shutter button on your camera phone and it took so goddamn long for the picture to actually take? I mean, Congress has passed laws quicker than these phones took pictures but we all thought it was so cool, right?
So, I get Rick’s text message with picture and all I can see if a shot of a guard rail and some gravel. Captioned on the text was “This is what happens when you don’t listen to Rick…” Da fuq? So my first instinct to to text Rick back and say, “Dude, that’s a guard rail...What are you talking about?”, but decided to call him instead. Boy, am I glad I did because it is the goddamn best stories I have ever heard. You, reader are probably thanking Jesus because we are finally at apex of this story.
Rick answers immediately and he sounds really cocky. He tells me that after we spoke a week ago, they finally got my car back together. Rick and the mechanic were driving down Interstate 90 doing some wide open throttle pulls to see what the car could do.
First, a little back story. Remember when I said I had kind of bitten off more than I could chew with those last round of mods? Well, in total, all that was somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000 in parts. Some of those parts were gauges and a really fancy engine management system. You can monitor all kinds of sensors, change fuel maps and also get a pretty accurate horsepower calculator.
Ok, back to my conversation with Rick.
Rick: So we are going down I90 and the car feels really good. I mean, REALLY good. It’s throwing me in the seat when <mechanic> mashes the gas. The turbo sounds great! The exhaust sounds great! This thing is really putting some power down.
Me: Man, that is awesome, all those mods are doing what they were supposed to. I am so glad it’s putting that power down. What does <engine management system> say?
Rick: Power output is around 500hp at the crankshaft.
Me: Holy fuck!! That’s awesome!
Rick: I know! I did notice that we were pushing too much boost through and we had to back it down. So I told <mechanic> to pull over and make the adjustment. <Mechanic> stops the car, pulls over and turns the boost down or so he says! We get back on the highway, driving eastbound when we see a Nissan 300ZX.
Sorry, more backstory here. A Nissan 300ZX is the older brother of the 350Z/370Z. Back in the day (early to mid 90’s) this car was the bee’s knees.
Rick: <Mechanic> sees the car and gets off at the next exit to turn around and catch him. I noticed we are still putting way too much boost through the car and tell <Mechanic> that we are in some serious trouble here. <Mechanic> does not listen and goes full bore after this guy. I throw my hands up and just let this all play out.
Me: Holy shit, What the fuck was he thinking? Oh my god, what happened?
Rick: We are getting there, let me finish. We are going 130 down 90 trying to catch this guy and finally blow by him. I’ll admit, I got wood in my pants. And that’s when it all went to shit.
Me: Um, what?
Rick: No sooner do we pass this guy, then BOOM! The engine explodes and you can hear what sounds like a ton of silverware in a garbage disposal.
Me: Oh fuck…<laughter>…<LAUGHTER>…Holy shit!
Rick: Yup, you guessed it. So we pull over and there is clearly a fire under the hood of the car. <Mechanic> undoes the hood latch, and lifts the hood. There is a fire in the engine bay. <Mechanic> brilliantly takes off his shirt and starts to swat at the flames…Like that is going to do anything. Idiot. No sooner does he fail at that, a volunteer fireman sees this and pulls over as well. He’s at his regular job as a DHL delivery truck driver. “Woah,” he says, “I’ve got some fire extinguishers in the back.” This guy comes back and starts shooting the extinguisher at the engine bay which does nothing. I am telling the guy, “Spray here, spray here!” but you can’t tell these guys anything. They think they are saving the world and no one knows better.
Me: Damn, how bad was it?
Rick: When the engine exploded, it coated the entire underside of the car with oil. I told him where to spray but he didn’t listen. I just threw my hands up and walked away.
Me: Jesus Christ!
Rick: So the cops see this and pull up behind FDNY-wannabe’s truck and see me standing there. They ask me if this is my car and I say, “NOPE!”. Then BOOM!! And BOOOOM BOOOOOM!
Me: What!?
Rick: 3 of the 4 tires explode because of the fire.
Me: Holy shit!
Rick: It gets better. We get a ride back to <Mechanic>’s shop. I get on my bike to go home but not before I see SFG with a big box of parts in his hands.
Me: That idiot. I guess he had more parts to put on the car. OOPS!
Rick: I took off and went home. Matt, the car incinerated on the side of the road. It’s gone. It looks like background to the original Terminator movie.
Me: This is awesome and the best news I have ever heard.
Rick: Why?
Me: Because I don’t have to see SFG driving my ride around town, I know all the parts I spec’d for this thing work and no one will ever drive this car EVER again.
Rick: That’s cold, but I get it.
Dear reader, we are not done yet. Fast forward another week. I the the most obscure email from SFG’s mom. Have you ever read something that was written so poorly, it was almost undiscernible? Sure, we all have. Well, add on to that someone who is beating around the bush with what they are trying to ask because they are ashamed. I like this to reading something in Spanish when you have never read Spanish nor understand it and then had every vowel shifted one letter over.
This woman wanted me to tell her insurance agent that the mods that were on the car were purchased by her son and not on the car before I sold it to her. I told her I would be glad to talk to her insurance agent but I would not lie. Poor SFG, all he wanted was a fast car and now he’s got jack squat.
That is my love/hate relationship with cars. Sure they are fun and have given me a lot of knowledge but goddamn, they have wreaked some havoc, too!
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Originally Posted by Paul77
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