Sam changing the alternator on "Bianca."
Why we love our ghetto cars:
Sam’s (’92 VW Passat)
The stereo turns off when you push the brake (but it HAS a radio/CD player, unlike mine), or it goes off and on with the blinker
The side paneling fell off the first time Sam was teaching me how to drive it (stick shift)
A tire went flat the first time I drove it alone
It gets way better gas mileage than my car (31mpg on a good day)
It gave me my first experience riding in a tow truck on one of our earlier dates (Lesson learned from that and many other experiences: It may or may not run it if it’s been raining.)
You can only unlock all the doors from the passenger side, but sometimes not the driver’s door
Sometimes the driver’s door won’t open from the outside
You always know when Sam has arrived—his car is as loud as a motorcycle (we decided the previous owner must have a put a “sport muffler” on it)
Amber’s (’88 Toyota Camry)
There's a trick to opening the trunk (and I just found out that Sam's is even trickier to open, especially when the battery is dead)
The key can come out of the ignition while the car is running
It will suddenly die (or just not start) if it is too cold (within the first few minutes of driving) or at other random times
It hesitates (and occasionally dies) when you step on the gas fast (occasionally leading to a near panic attack when making a left turn)
The trunk fills with water when it rains (I thought I’d found the culprit and sealed it, but apparently not—it was soaked when I checked on it after the last rain)
It has almost 275,000 miles on it and hasn’t broken down on me for over a year!
It has failed SmogCheck/Emissions three years in a row (until various problems were fixed)
You can only unlock all the doors from the passenger side (Same as Sam’s)
It has a sunroof (same as Sam's)
It smells like apricot; it’s worked great to make apricot fruit leather (dehydrating the apricot pulp on a sunny day). . . until the pulp spilled down the back seat. . .
We really are grateful to have working cars. And to have two--because so far, if one's not working, the other one is. Knock on wood...
