(This is part 16 of a multi-part series. If you wish to start at the beginning, click here)
To be a young adult is to be:
brash,
impatient,
scared,
overly confident,
financially insecure,
vulnerable,
idealistic,
misguided,
and acutely sensitive to the world around you.
It was 1999, but we didn’t party like it (in reality, I was pretty sick of the Prince overplay by the end of that year). mrs. gokstate and I were playing the young married musical number, trying to figure things out like: Budgets: Can we afford that new sheet set from Bed, Bath, and Beyond? Should we get a real Christmas tree for our first together in the apartment? Figure out how to pay off the credit card bill each month. Garage sales, Marshall’s, and clearance racks on many weekends for entertainment.
Time was as short as money: Go to this and that wedding, department or school holiday party, spend which holiday with whose family. Work and study, repeat. It seemed a regular life. Y2K was in the air and those who had material wealth (not us) fretted about possible global meltdown. Going through the Sam’s Club checkout on Dad’s membership card that Fall, I recall stacks upon stacks of bottled water plus a gas generator on the flat cart of the portly fellow behind us (No t.p., believe it or not).
Despite making our means on one teacher salary, we probably lived higher on the hog than we should have during those early years. Student loans were what made it possible. For an extra $100/month beyond the surrounding market, we resided in a local “Melrose Place” apartment with 2 bedrooms, a pool (we used once), one hot tub gazebo per two buildings (also used once), and an exercise room with a Nautilus machine, treadmill, and stair climber (this we did use).
The treadmill was usually occupied by “Snotty,” the mrs.’ nickname for a twenty-something prissy blonde who would without fail commandeer the small overhead TV when she arrived. “Mind if I watch ‘Fri-e-e-ends??’ (she would barely glance in our direction, half-sneering while screeching out the question).
Depending on how you divided it, student loan money was used to not just cover some of my educational expenses, but also several living costs….and maybe a wedding ring (I’ll say my summer job went to pay for this for posterity)….and a honeymoon….and other items that a responsible adult would look down upon, but we probably just considered living. There was a bit of logic to this. I felt my employment prospects post education (and the subsequent repayments of student loans) were pretty solid. Of course, in the late 90’s, we could never fathom seismic events like “dot com meltdowns,” “9/11,” “Great Recession,” and “COVID.”
Though we were usually frugal, I found vehicles an area difficult to cheap out on. In my grand but flawed scheme, I believed we could parlay our aging vehicles (’93 Talon and ’91 Mustang) into cash and buy two newer, gently used but reliable vehicles to carry us 5 more years into the future, where hopefully two working young people could then afford replacements, if needed.
Of course, now we have the benefit of time to know what the sensible choices for used would’ve been in the late 90’s. Camry or Accord (oh wait, that’s still the sensible choice today). Sensible doesn’t define me in my mid-twenties. I was alive, and I wanted cars that were alive too….for about ten thousand dollars.
I didn’t devote a lot of time to following the car market in the nineties. I knew of good cars, but there were too many other time demands and interests to be a car insider. I would have definitely picked differently in hindsight, but at the time, I was also riding a wave of patriotism. Some of the American offerings looked good, had FWD (essential to me for 4 season driving as we had to get to work and school), and seemingly better value than the import scene (comparably priced American used cars were typically 1-2 model years newer). We had rented a ‘97 Dodge Intrepid in the past year on a long road trip, and I was smitten by the spacious cabin, grunty V6, smooth suspension, and stylish good looks. My favorite Intrepid iteration was black over silver underbody.
The ’98 model body style had porked up and lost some of the angular chiseled handsomeness, so I believed a gently used and depreciated ’97 would make a good choice. We were also starting to think about cars ergonomically conducive to baby seats in the back…just in case.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a good ’97 within budget. This was at a time when there were actually Chrysler/Plymouth/Dodge Pentastar dealerships around (with Neons, PT Cruisers, and yes, I remember seeing new Prowlers on the lots—a headscratcher even then). With persistence, I did find a maroon ’96 ES (V6) Intrepid in the classifieds with about 30k miles on it that looked about right.
I bought the car for around $11,500 (a fair, but not steal price at the time). My cashier’s check quickly disappeared (as did the Pizza Hut-cum-used lot the following year).
The car was mostly ok. It had an “auto-stick” feature, a then-novel automatic transmission feature allowing one to flick the shifter for manual gear shifting. It felt gimmicky, and I hardly ever used it. Besides, Intrepids are more boulevard cruisers than sports cars. Reliability was average. One of the power windows in the rear quickly failed and I think something else failed of a minor variety. It was a ho-hum experience, not exactly inspiring nor depressing. It lacked the fun of the Talon, and it didn’t seem as lovable as I remembered our cross country rental being. I think I started calling it, “A piece of Dodge,” but maybe that wasn’t totally fair.
Next goal was to replace mrs. gokstate’s Mustang. It too had a few mechanical foibles, thankfully sorted out by the angelic Value Auto Clinic, previously praised in part 15. Approaching 90k miles, we scrubbed that car inside and out, working her hand held dirt devil vac along with other cleaners to make the red interior velvety smooth. A Latino father met us with his daughter in my school parking lot one evening after responding to our classified in the paper. He said his daughter needed a car she could drive back to Mexico. They were impressed with the cleanliness of it, and he peeled off about thirty 100 dollar bills to take the car, the keys, and the title on their way.
Her replacement is coming in part 17: “Student Loans Are Still for Buying Cars.”
Vehicle: 1996 Dodge Intrepid ES
HP: 214 hp @ 5850 rpm
TQ: 221 lb-ft @ 3100 rpm
Curb weight: 3,420 lbs
0-60: ~8.8sec (depending on source; hard to believe it was this slow)
Soundtrack: Harry Nilsson – Coconut
Interesting side story: Following the sale of my wife’s Mustang, we often joked about it living its next life somewhere south of the border. Like any car, you always try to picture it, wondering how it was getting along, if it was still running. A little less than a year later, we were driving the Intrepid down Interstate 35 along the edge of Kansas City, KS, when a white Mustang LX went screaming past us in the passing lane. We had but a second or two to catch a glimpse, but it looked just like her old car with a dark haired young woman sporting a mischievous grin as she roared past.
We were pretty convinced it was her old Mustang, not in Mexico after all (at least not that day). That was the last suspected sighting of her car we ever had. However, after all these years we still have the license plate that adorned it when she was in college.
