I’ve spent a bit too much time on planes in the last few weeks, which means I’ve been reading more than usual. Luckily, reader Roger S. recently gifted me a copy of Ed Milich’s Bottom Dead Center
Let’s go back to 2004. I’ve finished my first trimester at USC and realized that Los Angeles is a horrible place to be without a set of wheels. So when I go back home for winter break, I decide I’m going to drive my car (a 1990 Acura Legend) across country so I can have some wheels when I need them in LA. Before I fly home, however, my dad’s car got t-boned so he bought my car with some of the insurance money and told me to use that money to buy a car for my time in sunny California. I decided said car would have to fit two criteria: manual transmission and a drop top. The easy answer was a Miata but I didn’t want rear wheel drive for New England winters (if I only I knew I was never going back!) I ended up with a Honda del Sol. Like any teenager with a Honda, I lowered it and threw some aftermarket wheels on it (at least I had the taste to go OEM+ with some “Fat Fives” from an Acura Integra). I’ll give you some time to make fun of me here.
Back at school, a lot of my friends appreciated that it was a manual transmission and they wanted to learn how to drive a stick – I told them I’d teach them but not on my car. So a few friends and I bounced around the idea of buying a beater so that everyone could learn how to drive a manual. As it goes with these kinds of things, years went by and nothing concrete had happened. As senior fall rolled around I realized it was now or never, so I figured I’d try something goofy – trade some of my stuff for a car. As a bit of a tech geek, I had some hardware that I was rarely using, specifically a LCD projector. I went on Craigslist and began sending out a firestorm of emails. Anyone offering a stick shift car for less than a grand got a copy/paste email from me. I got some responses you’d expect…
as well as some responses you might not expect…
After approximately 400 emails, I was about to give up. But then…I somehow got a yes. A security guard in Glendale had (of all things) a 1989 Toyota MR2 that needed “minor work” that he was willing to trade for my projector. His email response was so casual with regards to the trade:
I dropped everything and had a friend drive me over. I couldn’t believe it – the only thing that didn’t work were the high beams. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the car, but it looked a lot like this (just not as nice):
from http://bringatrailer.com/2012/01/06/1-owner-supercharged-1989-toyota-mr2/
I drove it back to my apartment and that night one of my buddies asked if he could borrow it. I asked him if he could drive a stick and he said yes, so I threw him the key and didn’t think anything of it. 3 AM rolls around and my girlfriend and I are woken up by the sound of a car in the alley behind our place – it sounded like it was idling at 4k. Get a knock on my door, and I open it to hear “I think something’s wrong with your car.” Turns out my buddy did NOT know how to drive a manual, and had worn through what was left of the clutch in one night. As you probably know, the MR2 is mid-engine/rear wheel drive, and a clutch job requires pulling out the engine. I did not have the time, tools, or ability to fix it, so I called a scrap yard to pick it up the next day.
After an argument and a few weeks of silence, my buddy gave me a laptop as compensation. I did the logical thing and went back on Craigslist. Eventually, a nurse at Hoag Hospital said he had an old Dodge D200 that he wasn’t driving because of the terrible gas mileage, but he needed a laptop.
Off to Newport Beach I went! As you could probably guess, it wasn’t in great shape – the passenger door would open itself during a hard left turn, there was no gas pedal (just a metal rod) the seatbelts were worthless, and rust had created 2″x2″ hole in the floorboard of the cab (it was originally an Army truck that was from Virginia).
Who needs a gas pedal?
Or for that matter, door locks?
So it had some issues, but damn if that Slant 6 engine didn’t fire up every time. But it didn’t matter what the flaws were, because I fell in love with it instantly. Forget that a heavy truck with no power steering (or power anything, for that matter) was a terrible learning platform for people – I wanted this old truck!
Weirdly, that’s pretty much how the story ends, because almost no one was comfortable trying to learn how to work a clutch when they struggled to just turn the wheel. I didn’t care. My girlfriend named it Daisy, but she didn’t like riding in it because she felt I was needlessly “killing penguins with the emissions” every time I took it out. She probably wasn’t wrong. I kept it for about 8 months, during which every driver in Los Angeles would give me a wide berth as they probably assumed I didn’t have insurance. Daisy opened my eyes to the world of truckin’, and she was the perfect vehicle for all kinds of events, like drive-ins:
Perfect drive-in movie vehicle!
Unfortunately, I had to sell it when I graduated because my new place didn’t have enough parking. Even still, I miss that Dodge every day. So if you’re selling a classic truck, give me a call – I’m sure I’ve got a laptop I can give you for it!
