I had other cars, sure. I remember back as a highschool junior, the first van I drove was eliminated early as I was merging on to the interstate - the grill of the truck behind me is still perfectly imprinted on its trunk. But this car, this '92 previously-owned-by-old-people naked interior, is the first one i felt was truly mine. I whipped that dirty grey piece of metal through the decomposed roads of the 50' til the steady click-click-click-clack of my steering torqued hard enough to fishtail off of Carolton on the way to rugby practices. It is the same car I straight used as a college sophomore with parking garage hookups, drunkedly busing friends to downtown adventures and extensive roadtrips to Lafayette and Slidell. I lost this machine of freedom one night last summer, driving to LSU pick my own mushrooms. My friends and I had tested formula to know when the boomers were ripe for picking- the morning after a rain. It had rained that morning so we set out on our hour journey.
The mission was a fail. The fields were waterlogged and preventative of growth. Having wasted my time, I sped the entire way. Crossing the spillway, I heard a pop and the sound of metal being scraped across concrete. I heard a pop and sparks flew from the bottom of my car as I saw something shoot off. "Hope I didn't need that," I laughed it off. Then my steering locked up. I inched over to the side of the road and popped my hood to find it on fire.
Long story short, I had left the overdrive on and it burnt out my cooling fan which overheated my engine causing a cylinder to burst off and through the engine itself. It was awesome. But also not awesome.