End of an Era

It was the summer of 1998. I was a college sophomore preparing to return to school. And I was about to get my first new car. My dad and I trolled the car lots weighing the pros and cons of the Chevy Cavalier and the Pontiac Sunfire. I wanted red of course and a sunroof and CD player would be a nice bonus. After the requisite back-and-forth dealing, we finally drove away in my cute little Sunfire. I was most impressed with how the Sunfire logo glowed red in the back. Also as part of the promotion, I had a trunk full of two-liter diet Coke bottles. Life was good.

It was a stick shift and that caused me much stress and frustration in the beginning. I clearly remember my friend in the tiny backseat and my dad in the passenger seat as I stalled out over and over on the big uphill near my house. "I can't do it!" I cried.

My dad calmly reassured me, "Yes you can." And though I revved the engine obnoxiously and stalled a couple more times, I finally crested that beastly hill.

I think of that moment often when I feel like something is insurmountable.

A few weeks later, I drove the Sunfire 500 miles to Columbia, Missouri. That was the first of many journeys. It traveled to Iowa, Florida, Tennessee, New Orleans, El Paso, Oregon, California, Seattle, and all the states in between. I had a lot of fun in that car, but it recent years it had started to fail me.

The brakes started to crap out. Then the air conditioning. The clutch got loose and wobbly. The check engine light and ABS light started to blink on periodically. It got close to overheating a few times.

Still we clung to it, determined to squeeze a few more miles out of the vehicle before returning to the reality of car payments. Then I was stuck in traffic last week, staring at the warning lights on the dashboard, forced to turn on the heat to keep the car from overheating. I thought This is not going to be fun in August when I am seven months pregnant.

So this weekend, I parted with my beloved first car. We traded it in, and now I am driving a 2011 dark gray Toyota Camry. The air conditioning is blissful, and I am savoring the crisp new car smell and shiny perfection of it.


Still I will always have a soft spot for that trusty Sunfire. I hope it finds a good owner in its second life.

--MM