[Billfred]

My first car was, quite literally, my grandfather's Oldsmobile. It was a 1988 Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight Regency Brougham sedan. I found the window sticker in the trunk (and just now pulled it out of my drawer), and its sticker price as it left Wentzville, MO for Osborne Oldsmobile-GMC was $21,268. We bought it for about $2,000 from my grandparents, who by the time I was of driving age were just not fit to drive. Over the time they owned it, they were of the Sunday driving persuasion, so the car was only in the mid-30s on mileage.

I enjoyed driving it; it was in great shape, droopy headliner aside, and one of the last GM vehicles I really liked for a long, long time. (My employment aside, the current crop of product is starting to change my opinion.) Plenty of oomph for my size, plushy ride and interior (despite having the FE2 "Firm Ride & Handling Package", a $30 option), and room for six if two of them were skinny. It was a big ol' American sedan, pure and simple. (Heck, I even parallel parked the thing on my first try at the driver's test, back in May of 2002.)

Not long after I got my license, I was driving home from an academic team meeting when the car stopped. This being an Oldsmobile of that era, all I had was a speedometer, a Check Engine light, and a feeling of dread. We looked it over and found out there wasn't any coolant. We added some, drove it, and found it gone again. Turns out it was a thermostat issue, which was about $600 to fix at the dealer--but we paid it. After getting the car back from the dealer (a different one, I'll note, from the one that signs my paycheck), the AC wouldn't work. This was South Carolina in July, so the absence of cold air was intolerable. They "banged on it with a wrench" and said it might not last. We turned down the offer to replace the compressor (for $100-something) and drove away. Not a bad call; the AC worked fine for the rest of the time I drove the car.

It was around the first of September that I was driving home from my job at the time, bagging groceries at the Irmo Piggly Wiggly, and noticed flashing blue lights from behind. Conventional wisdom among students at Irmo High School was that if you crossed Irmo PD, you were toast. I knew I wasn't speeding--the map light was on in the absence of instrument panel illumination--but I was still scared out of my mind. Turns out that my tail light was out. Now, the Ninety-Eights of that era had one light for everything. If I applied the brake, it'd light up. If I hit my left turn signal, it'd light up. If I turned on my hazard lights, it'd light up--but tail lights were a no-go. I was given a warning to fix it in ten days.

We looked at it, the auto class at Irmo looked at it, and finally Mom (who was having her own car troubles after a knucklehead student hit her car in the school parking lot) offered to take it in to a place to look at it. It was September 12, 2002, and she picked me up from school. In the driveway was a 1999 Honda Civic with everything of mine from the Oldsmobile migrated over. I wound up driving that car for the rest of high school before passing it to my brother and taking on the Honda CR-V you've seen me traverse the country in.

We sold the Oldsmobile for about what we had in it to an older couple; I'm not sure what happened to it after that. I do miss it, mostly for sentimental reasons, but it just wasn't meant to be.