A Note About Cars Past

I'd like to take a few moments to muse about some cars that I've used recently and am now forced to give up.

I've somewhat recently removed from my line-up a '96 Ford Windstar that I used as my daily driver for the past 9 or 10 months due to the fact that I had to haul my drums on a regular basis, and my other daily driver didn't have the ability to fit them all in as will be noted later in this post. This minivan sucked horribly, like a cheap hooker, but it had a few redeeming qualities. Clearly, these redeeming qualities didn't outweigh the crappy points, so it was relieved of its duty among my ranks. The things I liked about it are as follows: The overall size on the road was the same as the Sable I had been driving, for obvious reasons of sharing the same platform, but that caused a near seamless transition between the two cars. It didn't have the body roll of the Dodge vans I've used in the past few years. The cargo room in the back, behind the farthest seat, was the perfect space for fitting my drums which left the middle area for people or other crap. The overall shape of the van made me frequently want to do J-turns with is, but these were only allowed in Winter due to the obvious traction deterrents that made it far more effective and fun to do with people in the van. The snow tires where awesome as well, but the front ones were balding pretty bad. Which leads me to my final point, the 3.8L V6 with the Split-Port Injection had massive amounts of power, and the torque could light up the front tires liberally, at will. This made for fun driving especially when you're stopped next to punks and the light turns green.

The next car to leave me queue of driving options was our '98 Dodge Caravan, driven from June '09 - October '09. This van all around sucked. There were no redeeming traits to this van other than the fact that it didn't randomly die like the Windstar. We despised driving in this van, but I drove it because I had to. The cargo area wasn't as convenient as the Ford. It basically knelt every time your went around a curve. It burned oil. The brakes were hell. It had one cylinder with low compression, so less power than my K-car (and that had 95 hp!). It was uncomfortable, and ergonomically challenged for the driver to do anything. I drove some people to IA about a month after we got it, and weather stripping started flying off from everywhere as we drove. OK; I'll give in. It had three good qualities. It gave us some interesting stories that summer, it had two sliding doors, and it came with new tires. End.

The final car for this post is my favorite and self-proclaimed Best-Optioned First Generation Taurus, my '91 Mercury Sable that couldn't haul drums, and so we had to get rid of it. This car had everything! It had cloth bucket seats, fake wood molding, console, floor shift automatic, four-wheel disk brakes, keyless entry, fully digitized dash board and heat control, moon roof, premium sound with an aftermarket head unit (I also added new speakers in the front doors, but they came back out now for resale and will go in my Mom's '98 F-250), and the best part was that it came with a 3.8L V6. Granted, it didn't have the torquey Split-Port Injection that was on the van, but it still liked to roast the hides every now and again. That car was so much fun and handled so well; I always said that if it wasn't a Mercury, it would be a SHO. From the first months of driving it, I wanted to beef up the suspension, drop in a stick, and road race it. I loved that car. I had thought to myself years before that the finest design of Taurus, in my mind, was the '90 and '91 Sable. It was almost my Dream Taurus, but I wouldn't admit it because of the high amount of Tauri I had used in the past and how I said I didn't like driving them. One week driving my Sable, and I was brought back into the pen. This car was so sweet, but yet I had to give it up because of my drums. That and almost every sports/muscle car are lost to me because of my drums. I can't wait for the time when I can keep two cars for myself and store them in the same place while not being harassed for cluttering up someone else's driveway. Then I'm buying a Mustang, and I'm gonna make it sleek and fast. But until that day, I am stuck looking at pretty pictures of cars I can't afford and posting online about what I wish I could...