Bear with me - this will be a long one.
My parents and I moved to states in 1999, with $8800 to our name - $8000 to theirs, $800 to mine. I was the first one to get a drivers license, and I was the only one that required a car to get to work, so although my parents bought this one, I was the primary user.
We bought a salvage title 1996 Ford Escort station wagon in appliance white. The car ended up working perfectly for 4 years, but then check engine light came on. My mom was driving the car then, so we just bought her a new one a sold the Escort on craigslist.
What did we want to buy? A Thunderbird from the same seller - same story, salvage title, but he couldn’t get it repaired soon enough. In hindsight, Escort was a better car, but that Thunderbird was like a space shuttle for me, after moving here from the world of Yugos and old Opel Asconas.
Soon enough, my mom needed a car as well, and I was making a ton of dough - $2200 per month back in 2000. I was delivering furniture for American Furniture Warehouse, and I worked some crazy hours and had no time to spend any of that money. So, I went looking - I was a bit of a Ford fanboy at the time - and I found a 1991 Ford Taurus SHO with 80K miles for $4k. Leather, alloys, power everything, 220hp from that awesome Yamaha V6 and those intakes....hgggggggggg they still make me... you know what.
I have photos of it on my desktop, but wife is working in the office, so here it is - same color and wheels as what I had.
I loved that car, until it shit its clutch cable at 91k miles and it cost me like $900 to have it fixed. So I decided I’m done fucking with old cars, so I went to Toyota, and traded this for a
2000 Toyota Tundra V8 SR5 Access Cab.
It was platinum metallic, and I loved everything about it. But, it was my second choice - what I really wanted was another Ford, an Explorer SportTrac.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, based that I switched to reliable Japanese cars), local Ford dealership wouldn’t finance me. Toyota did, to the tune of $600 per month for that Tundra. I was still flush with cash so it wasn’t hard to pay for it.
I did own another vehicle at this time - 2001 Honda Shadow Ace 750, like this one, but without any add-ons
I loved the truck for 2-3 years, but then import bug bit me, and I decided to buy a new car. What I really wanted was a 2003 Honda Accord Coupe
Unfortunately, they were brand new and they only had V6 models on the lots, so I ended with a
2003 Honda Civic Si, the shoe-box Ep3.
I like that car a lot - I bought a set of cool wheels, curbed them, sold them, bought another set of wheels and never curbed another one since then. I seriously researched importing Type-R kit from Japan or England, but they were so damn expensive. Then I seriously researched HPF parts when they came out, but my love affair with a small, slow import was vanning, and I wanted some German luxury, so I got another used car again
2004 VW Touareg V6
What I really wanted was the V8 model with height adjustable suspension, but those were way out of my budget.
That car made me never want another VW again - it was in the shop for electrical gremlins constantly. They day it turned 48 months old and warranty expired, I traded it in.
Somewhere around this time I bought a 1997 Suzuki TL1000S, owned it for a little while, but had to sell it to buy a car for my (now EX) wife
What I really wanted was a 2006 Mazda MazdaSpeed6
I had the deal worked out - price, financing, and the car was supposed to be a dealer trade as I wanted the base model and dealer only had a loaded one. I was driving to the dealership after work when they called me to tell me they sold the base model and couldn’t do a trade.
Good thing that happened, because I bought a baby monster that turned so large, a sedan wouldn’t cut it
He started as a cute little 8 week old pupper, ended up as fur shedding 100lbs machine. So, we bought a 2008 Subaru Outback 5sp manual 2.5i Premium
It provided enough space for the dog, and power was adequate with a manual. What I really wanted was a few grand out of my reach
2008 Outback XT, with that glorious turbo and top mounted intercooler
I drove that for a few years, and then bought the worst car I owned
2010 Outback 2.5i Premium CVT
Combination of size, low HP and CVT made for a slug-mobile, but it moved us and the dog to many hikes, so I guess it did its duty.
What I really wanted was the 2010 Forester XT, but again, a few grand too much for the budget at the time
Around this time, I bought another bike, and my dad bought a matching one in blue, with 3pc luggage kit
I sold it after a year or so as my dad didn’t get into riding as much as we hoped he would. We almost bought 2x BMW R1200GS but they were 4x the price of V-Stroms
I traded the Outback late one night for a 2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee with the Laredo X package with 20" wheels and 5.7L V8 Hemi
It has these wheels - 20" in dark gray, but the Jeep was silver. I hated it after a few months - 13mpg, felt like it had an anchor in the front with that massive engine... and it wasn’t what I wanted anyway, which was
2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee TrailHawk V6
But the dealership wouldn’t budge on the price on this one - they gave me 10k discount on the Laredo X, but only few grand on the trailhawk.
So, around 5-6 months later, I decided I didn’t want the huge payment on a car I didn’t like, and I had two dogs at the time, so I still needed space, and I got a 2013 Honda Pilot EX (not the more common EX-L)
That car made me realize I never want another black car again. It did it’s job admirably, but it was boring. Very boring.
So, when the lease was up, we got something a bit faster, but still room for dogs, and wife an I both got new cars
2016 Forester XT - one white, one Graphite
In the meantime, I decided to get a new car as well, as a fun mobile
2014 FIAT 500 GQ edition, which I converted into full Abarth with OEM Abarth exhaust, steering wheel, badges, plus I added Magneti Marelli wheel in black in 16". I loved this car, but we decided to sell it and both Foresters and to lease two WRXs to lower our monthly payments.
So, we got 2x 2017 WRX base manuals, one white and one silver.
What I really wanted was an STi, but... wife is building up her practice, so once she is making what she potentially can, we’ll buy what we really want.
Both of these are leases, I got the 2000 Tundra from above back as my dad got a 2018 Tundra SR5 TRD Sport, so now I have a vehicle for dog duty and I can drive whatever.
So, when our lease is up in 2020, wife wants something a bit taller - maybe Ford Edge Titanium, and I will probably get another Abarth as I loved that car more that any other car I over owned.
Thanks for reading!