(This is part 15 of a multi-part series. If you wish to start at the beginning, click here)
The second act
of college was about as entertaining as the first, although it’s kind of like the ending moments on a roller coaster: There’s still a few fun loops and turns, but you can see the unloading platform ahead and the sign that says: “Back to the real world!”
The future mrs. gokstate and I enjoyed dates in college and beyond with Talon transport: Spreading a blanket in the city park on a warm sunny afternoon. Long drives on the outskirts of town. Fanciful trips to Burger King, where I learned some people prefer to eat their fries last, and that is not an invitation for the other to help myself to them. Movies. Going to the Student Union Theater on Friday night and being stunned by newly released “Pulp Fiction” —the tension mercifully cracked to raucous laughter when someone yelled out “I FELT THAT!” after Marcellus Wallace shotgun blasted Zed in the crotch. Blowing off studying for other not so good movie nights, like the forgettable Brendan Fraser homeless Harvard story “With Honors.”
More summer jobs. More late library sessions. And through it all, the Eagle Talon TSI. It made getting anywhere a mini adventure. There were some real adventures, too. In 1997, K-State played in the Cotton Bowl, at a time when getting into a “New Year’s Bowl Game” actually meant something. It was the school’s fifth ever bowl game, and the first New Year’s. Of course we were going.
Loaded up the Talon with a long weekend’s worth of clothes and caravanned with friends. Someone thought to bring along walkie-talkies, allowing diversion to shorten the multi-hours drive, and warnings: “Watch out, you’ve got a fast mover on your six!”
Don’t let me forget the joys of air conditioning. Oh goodness, going without would never seem thinkable again. The future mrs. also got in on the action not too long after with a ‘91 4cyl Mustang LX replacing her dying Ford Escort (a stick and A/C, if only the V8…).
The Talon was pretty reliable over several years.
Not Toyota reliable, but very decent. The worst mechanical issue that befell me could’ve been catastrophic: One college afternoon I was driving around a retail section of Manhattan. Went to give the Talon a gentle nudge on the gas when the engine suddenly died. As amazing grace would have it, managed to coast into a local mechanic service station. Hopped out, went inside, and said, “It just died on me!” The mechanic, a helper, and I pushed it into a bay. After some diagnosis, the mechanic called me and said, “Your timing belt broke, but boy are you lucky. These are INTERFERENCE. That could’ve destroyed the engine. It looks to be ok, though.” Interference engine? Timing belt? What the hell are those things?! The repair bill seemed expensive to me at the time, though looking back was actually quite reasonable for a timing belt, and of course, miles from an engine replacement.
The only other Talon negative was failing paint after about 4 years of ownership. I may have had a hand in fostering this. See, the car was never garaged. I didn’t mind washing my car occasionally to keep it looking good, but being an ignoramus on car care, I thought, “What does store brand car wash have that common, on-hand kitchen dish soap doesn’t? Plus, that dish soap really removes the dirt! Wax? That just doesn’t make any sense. Goop something from a silver tin all over the car? How does that help anything? Nah, I’ll take the cheap and convenient route.” Then, like a monkey’s uncle, the red paint started to fail: first by the proximal hood, then around the top of the lift gate. Over the next year, I watched the small spots get bigger from exposure and car washes. Though this was the early days of the internet, there were some online reports of AMC/Eagle (along with other car companies) having premature paint failures attributed to the nineties EPA mandate to switch over to water-based paints. I called Eagle corporate, but the car was 6 years old, out of warranty, and in essence they told me to pound sand. By this time, I was a year and a half out of college, in my postgraduate program, and newly married to mrs. gokstate. There wasn’t going to be any money to divert to a paint job.
The car was also approaching 98k miles and as I referenced in the last post, there was still an era stigma about cars over 100k miles, leading to precipitous drops in value once the odometer threshold was crossed. The early paint failure, the 100k mile mark. I started to panic. Maybe it was time to sell this car and get into something else that I could squeeze a few more years out while I continued to traverse higher education (and no income).
Then another problem popped up. No idea why, but about half the time I was driving it the car would lose power under acceleration.
It started to buck and stutter, especially if one was aggressively pushing on the throttle. A slow acceleration seemed to mitigate it. No warning lights or anything came on, but here we were: a car that seemed to soon need a paint job and now possibly expensive engine work. At the time, optimistic book value on a 100k ’93 Talon in no-nonsense condition was 5-6k. mrs. gokstate and I had some worried conversations about cars that start to cost more to fix than they’re worth.
We decided to throw it up as is, in a classified for $5000. It gained a little interest from the younger crowd. I had a guy test drive it and I prayed the whole time he’d be easy on the gas and not notice the random bucking under acceleration, while also feeling ethically challenged that I wasn’t being forthright on the car’s condition. It managed to hold up on his test, but he never followed up. That weekend, we put the shiny Talon in a high visibility Kansas City (where we were now living) parking lot. A young couple called and we came out with the keys. I said another prayer and handed the keys over, hoping they would take it easy. About 6 minutes later they returned, tossing the keys back, and the girl saying, “Man, that car is fucked up!!” I sheepishly said, yeah, I don’t know why it’s doing that. I offered meekly, it doesn’t seem to do it all of the time. We stood there in an uncomfortable silence, then the girl looked at us and said, “Would you take like $2500 for it?” I felt guilty for wasting their time and compromising my values, and said no, at this point I really just needed to take it into the shop and find out what was wrong. Told ‘em I’d call if I got it fixed right. We brought the car back to our apartment complex. The funny thing was, I actually called their number later that evening and left a message saying if they really wanted it for $2500, I’d sell. They never called me back.
The next week I took the car to a shop some friends had recommended as reasonable, The Value Auto Clinic. The guy who ran that place is a saint. He came through for this strapped couple several times when we needed it most. After looking over the Talon, he diagnosed a rather simple problem: a vacuum hose around the turbo system had come loose (iirc). They replaced it. Problem fixed. $20, please. Stunned disbelief.
With a now fully operational Talon and a lesson learned on ethics in selling, I felt clear selling with only having the paint fade disclosure. A week or so later, a young man of around 19 or 20 came to look at the Talon. He fell in love with this as his dream car, even at 98k miles. As if in a dream himself, he agreed to the full asking price of $5,000. That Saturday, we met up with him and his grandma (who cast several mistrustful looks in my direction for devilishly separating her grandson from his hard-earned $5,000) at their credit union where a cashier’s check and title were exchanged. I watched him drive off with a huge smile on his face. I hope it treated him well.
Coming soon...Part 16: “Student Loans Are For Buying Cars, Right?”
Vehicle: 1993 Eagle Talon TSI (remained bone stock)
HP: 195
TQ: 203 ft-lb
0-60: 6.3s
Top Speed: 143mph (never attempted by me)
Soundtrack: Jane’s Addiction - Three Days
Interesting Side Story: I don’t recall ever getting a speeding ticket in the Talon. Important since money was tight and insurance expensive after mrs. gokstate and I married in ’98. She working, I in postgraduate school. Once, while driving through the neighborhood of Westwood Hills in KC toward home, I approached the island as seen in the picture below. There were (at the time) inexplicably two stop signs at each end of this island, 10ft apart. I slowed, rolled through them (the street was empty), only to be pulled over by a cop on a motorcycle. He’d been hiding just off in a parking lot. I was given two moving violations for slow-rolling through each stop. Cost at least two hundred dollars. The City of Westwood is tiny. This double stop sign was the cash cow funding their small PD (saw another pulled over same spot later that week). I was fuming, but this isn’t the end of the story. A few months later stopped at a nearby red light, I saw the same cop/motorcycle pull up beside us in the right turn lane. He blew through the red light worse than I rolled the signs. I started yelling to mrs. gokstate—“LET’S GO GET HIM! CITIZEN’S ARREST! YOU BASTARD!!!” Yeah, you know I didn’t.
