For those of you bored out of your minds when I lapse into bouts of car-related mudanity, this is the only time I’ll do this, and is mainly just so I can have the whole thing compiled somewhere. If there’s one thing I have endless stories about, it’s cars (well, and Europe), and I’ve always been on the fence about whether I should uncork that part of my experience in here.<\/p>\n
But as I’ve been meaning to do this for quite a while, my car history:<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/old\/old\/mycars\/twinkie.jpg\")
Twinkie<\/b> (’96-’02): My first car. A 1982 Toyota Tercel, called Twinkie ostensibly because it was sort of Twinkie-shaped, light brown with white stuff inside (yeah). It’s the only time a car of mine has been nicknamed and it stuck. The nickname was so apt, actually, that for a time Twinkie was more well-known in my social circles than I was. “Oh, you’re Twinkie’s owner,” was a phrase I heard on more than one occasion.<\/p>\n
The car saw me through everything. It knew more about me than literally anyone. And it was the epitome of faithfulness: Over the six years and ~75K that I owned it, it broke down exactly once, when the timing belt snapped northbound on I95. Even then, $45 and two hours repair at a local gas station later, it was back on the road, running as well as ever.<\/p>\n
I could go on for hours with the stories, but I’ll just share this one. When I moved to Florida right out of college (winter ’02) and got my first real job with the boatbuilding firm, I knew Twinkie was nearing the end of its time with me. The paint was fading, the wheels were darkened and the rust spots here and there were growing, a situation not helped by the hot, salty climate in St. Augustine.<\/p>\n
With the acquisition of the white Supra (see below) a month or so after I arrived, I started looking for a new owner for Twinkie. As luck would have it, a coworker of mine, Bob (incidentally my favorite person in Florida), needed another car. Bob was a ponytailed, chain-smoking ex-hippie who lived in a trailer that looked as if he had constructed it himself entirely of plywood sheets. He had an assortment of farm animals in the backyard and even kept two or three peacocks. He was handy with tools and had built his own catamaran when he lived in Clearwater, on the Gulf side of the state. His family was the most functional imaginable; his beautiful wife and two boys were beyond polite and hospitable. <\/p>\n
As it turned out, he was also a VW Beetle enthusiast, with around a dozen rusting Beetle carcasses in his backyard along with some other projects like an old MGA roadster and a Triumph motorcycle in his shed. He drove an orange Beetle to work every day, but complained regularly about how hard it was to start in the mornings. He mentioned offhand to me how nice it would be if he owned a car that would start for him every morning. I told him I was selling Twinkie and we struck a deal.<\/p>\n
It was hard to watch him drive away from my apartment in the car that had borne me on so many adventures, but I knew it was in good hands. The ultimate confirmation of that came a few days later. Walking from my usual parking spot into work, I passed Twinkie sitting in the lot and did a double take. Bob had completely cleaned it up. The rust spots were gone, filled in temporarily with some putty awaiting a sanding and respray. The wheels had been cleaned and polished. The front speakers, the little paper cones I had meant to replace for years, Bob had yanked and put in new 4″ Sonys. And the whole car had a nice coat of wax and was shiny and beaming. I knew I couldn’t have passed it on to a better new owner.<\/p>\n
Black RX-7<\/b> (’99-’00) (picture N\/A; identical to the red RX-7 below except black and much less shiny): Acquired mid-October ’99. My first real project car. Also doubled as my first eBay purchase. On a whim while at the State Fair in Raleigh that fall, I decided to really go for this car. Aaron owned an ’86 model, the first year of the 2nd generation and a very different machine, albeit with the same “heart” (rotary engine<\/a>). I bought it in the days before eBay had a separate section of their site devoted solely to cars, so killer deals (read: bad listings) could be found by trolling the search fields regularly. Aaron happened upon the listing for this car and tipped me off to it. There were no pictures and a very terse description of the car.<\/p>\n I won the auction with a bid of around $500. The car was in Shrewsbury, Pennsylvania. I talked my friend Jonathan into driving up there with me to retrieve the car. It wasn’t that difficult, seeing as how a friend of his (and unbeknownst to him at the time, his future wife) attended Messiah<\/a> college nearby and he was eager to visit her. We drove the family minivan north through the night, stopping only for dinner at a roadside Blimpie’s. I left him at the college and drove back down the highway to a motel near Shrewsbury, intent on picking up the car the next day.<\/p>\n The following morning, after a few wrong turns I found the house and the car. The actual owner of the car (a student) wasn’t present, so I did the title transfer with his parents, who were a little perturbed at having to sacrifice part of their Saturday morning to get rid of a front yard eyesore.<\/p>\n Paperwork squared away, I turned my attention to the car. It hadn’t moved in a year or so, but started well enough and ran, at least until I got the car about 50 feet out of the driveway, at which point it went completely dead. No cranking, no dash lights; nothing. I panicked for about 10 seconds and set about trying to solve the problem. I wasn’t keen on having to tow the car from PA to central NC, so there certainly was a sense of urgency. I knew it was an electrical problem so I rooted through the minivan to see what I could find to aid diagnosis. After some searching I came up with a spare taillight bulb and a pair of twist-ties. I rigged these together to function as a test light and poked around the engine bay of the RX-7 looking for the break in the system. Turns out a fusible link, one of the main fuses protecting the electrical system, had broken from the strain of not having had current flowing through it in some time, so I twisted the two halves of the link together, tried the car again and it fired right up. I drove the minivan back up the highway, picked up Jonathan from Messiah, and we were back in Chapel Hill with the RX-7 that night.<\/p>\n It was another eBay purchase, spring 2000. This was still before eBayMotors came along and the listing for this car was beyond terrible. Two lines of text and no picture, but the kicker was that it was located just down the road in Greensboro. Having a little extra saved up, Aaron and I made the hour-and-a-half trek to check it out. <\/p>\n When we arrived we couldn’t believe our eyes. Except for a blown engine, the car was pristine, cherry, perfect. The owner at the time worked in an automotive paint shop and had painted the car himself with loving attention to detail. However, aside from his artistic sensibilities with a paint gun, he was a stereotypical American auto enthusiast who, “didn’t know nothing ’bout no rotary engine.” Thus, when the engine blew, he was baffled. Aaron and I, being buffs of this alternate arrangement<\/a> of the Otto cycle<\/a>, saw opportunity. We thanked him for his time and returned to Raleigh, intent on scooping this one up.<\/p>\n And I did. No one else must have driven out to see the car since my bid was less than $300. The owner delivered the car the following week on a flatbed trailer, visibly bothered that his eBay sale hadn’t gone as well as he had hoped, but a man of his word.<\/p>\n So the plan was hatched. Between the black RX-7 with its strong engine but rusted-out northern chassis and the red RX-7 with its blown engine but sound body, I would make one complete and perfect little sports car. My dad was less than optimistic about my chances of success, having never attempted something as involved as an engine swap, but his skepticism just spurred me on. To shorten the story, I learned a lot, made a couple of time-consuming but non-terminal blunders along the way, and by early August, after about a month and a half of work, I fired up the good engine in the red car for the first time. That was an experience unto itself since the car had no exhaust but the manifold at the time and rotary engines are deservedly notorious for their disproportionate ability to create an unearthly racket. Not only that, but I had squirted some automatic transmission fluid into the combustion chambers to lube the seals pre-startup, and the ensuing cloud from the burning ATF completely blanketed the cul-de-sac. But it ran, and ran well. I was ecstatic.<\/p>\n So where is it now? Why didn’t I keep it? The reasons sounded much more plausible at the time, but today I wish, oh how I wish I had reconsidered. After having the car for a few months and enjoying it thoroughly, the good engine blew for easily-preventable reasons (technical: one of the apex seals disintegrated due to detonation brought on by an overly lean A\/F ratio caused by the fact that I didn’t rebuild the carb after installing a high-flow exhaust). Being in college at the time and in a bit of a temporary financial pinch, I somehow decided the car must go. So in a fit of misdirection I put it up on eBay and sold it, with a blown engine, for $1500. I probably made money on the whole ordeal, but I still regret it.<\/p>\n Datsun 240Z<\/b> (’01-Present): No picture available. Click here<\/a> and imagine it in blue with faded paint. My dad’s car and my college graduation gift. He bought it new in 1972 just out of college and passed me the keys at my graduation party. Together he and I are officially Original Z Owner #129<\/a>.<\/p>\n I’ve gotten more “nice car” comments driving this one than any other car I’ve owned. It’s a fantastic car to drive, elemental and it makes great noises. I took an avid interest in it after I sold the red RX-7 and within a few weeks had given it a full tuneup including re-synchronizing the pair of SU carburetors<\/a> (incidentally little technical masterpieces).<\/p>\n Where is it today? Sitting back at the house in Chapel Hill, awaiting a full restoration. 34 years have taken their toll and the passenger side floor pan is completely rusted out. It needs to be completely stripped down to the metal and built back up, and the engine along with it. More driving in its current state would only exacerbate its condition. Someday…<\/p>\n I miss it very much. I have fond memories of driving it along A1A beachside at dusk with the targa top<\/a> removed, stereo cranked and enough heat directed at my feet to keep me warm. It was a perfect trip car, with wonderful seats and enough power to pass at will and cruise effortlessly at 75 for hours. It might be an odd thing to miss, but the instrument layout in particular appealed to me. It was a Toyota, and as such there was a clarity and precision<\/a> to the instrumentation. The needles were thin and seemed to pivot along their arcs with a reassuring accuracy.<\/p>\n I bit off more than I could chew, or was willing to chew, in modifying this car. Aside from the odd repairs it served me well for over a year when I decided it needed more power. I pulled out the tired existing engine (whose turbo seal had failed) and through divers transactions (all legal) acquired a Japanese-only, never-imported-to-the-US twin turbo engine that had about a third again as much power as the original and was much more responsive to upgrades.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/old\/old\/mycars\/rx7.jpg\")
Red RX-7<\/b> (’00-’01): I pine for this car. Another eBay purchase. This is the car on which I cut my teeth mechanically. Before the red RX-7 came along I congratulated myself on being able to change a starter unassisted; afterward I would tackle almost anything with little hesitation.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/old\/old\/mycars\/supra.jpg\")
White Supra<\/b> (’02-’04): Really the only “modern” car I’ve owned. Power everything, twin cams, distributorless ignition, batch fuel injection, double-wishbone suspension were just some of its features. Smooth, powerful, agile and a class act. I felt confident taking this car on dates. I purchased this sight-unseen in St. Augustine. The car was in Atlanta and I bought a one-way plane ticket, flew up, got the car and drove it back down to Florida.<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/old\/old\/mycars\/audi.jpg\")
Audi<\/b> (’04-Present): Current car. Purchased on a whim (notice a pattern here?) in January of ’04. It was either this or a motorcycle–I had already purchased a helmet–and the car won out.<\/p>\n![Click here<\/a> and imagine it in blue with faded paint. My dad’s car and my college graduation gift. He bought it new in 1972 just out of college and passed me the keys at my graduation party. Together he and I are officially](\"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/old\/old\/mycars\/240z.jpg\"){kind=link}
![targa top<\/a> removed, stereo cranked and enough heat directed at my feet to keep me warm. It was a perfect trip car, with wonderful seats and enough power to pass at will and cruise effortlessly at 75 for hours. It might be an odd thing to miss, but the instrument layout in particular appealed to me. It was a Toyota, and as such there was a clarity and](\"http:\/\/www.ma70.com\/bishop92t\/pics\/p\/tealandpearl.jpg\"){kind=link}