This one goes out to the Malibu

At some point I would like to regale you with the tale of my first trip home. However, I am currently trying to figure out how to be funny about my family without getting myself kicked out of it, so I’ll have to get back to you on that one. In the meantime, plenty of other things have been going on in the last ten months or so that we can chat about. Like cars, and how it all went down when I finally bought one. First, a little background.

 I bought my Chevy Malibu when I was 19 years old, I paid it off when I was 24, and despite Taylor constantly trying to convince me to buy a new car, I swore I would drive that Malibu until it refused to go another mile. It was a darling little thing that never asked for anything more than the occasional oil change; we were very happy together. I loved that stupid car and its stupid electrical problems that caused it to tick randomly (easily silenced by jiggling the hazard light button) and sometimes refuse to roll up its passenger window (including the time I was at Bear World, in the pouring rain, surrounded by, well, bears). I loved the little crack in its bumper that we had ghetto frankensteined with bright pink zipties, and I loved to promptly correct people on the fact that it was NOT brown, but CHAMPAGNE in color. It ran like a dream, had the comfiest seats, the quietest ride (other than the aforementioned, occasional ticking), and had provided transportation to and from many of my favorite memory making events over the course of my early twenties and then some. Then, Delaware happened, and our relationship had to come to an end. It was nearly the most distressing part of my massive relocation and continued to be so for quite some time, since finding a car to rival the charms of my little Frankenstein was nothing short of a nightmare. 

I’d given hours of my life to searching Craigslist and various dealership websites, looking for something to fill the Malibu sized hole in my heart. After considering and rejecting several options over the course of two months, someone pointed out that maybe, just maybe, I was being too picky. To this I simply snorted and reviewed my list of qualifications, finding nothing unreasonable about any of it:

1)   It needed to be automatic. I can drive a stick shift like a boss, but that doesn’t mean I want to. I live in a college town now, which means there are crosswalks like every ten feet. I’d never get out of second gear. Too much clutch work.

2)   No heinous colors. If it can’t be the colour champagne, then dark blue or slate gray would also be acceptable. I especially don’t do red or silver cars, and ever since an admired co-worker informed me that getting a black or white car was a waste of colored paint potential, those were definitely out.

3)   It couldn’t be brand new because first of all, I don’t wanna choke on that kind of payment, and second of all, that’s the biggest waste of money I’ve ever heard of. However, I could only accept it having ONE owner before me. This was the case with the Malibu and I’m convinced that this is why our relationship was so long and fruitful.

4)   It was a Toyota, Honda, Subaru, or nothing. While I got lucky once with a Chevy, I wasn’t young enough to make that gamble again.

5)   The interior could not be black, nor could it be leather. (Leather and humidity? No, thanks.)

6)   The vehicle had to be able to handle its own lighting situation. For eight happy years I never turned my headlights off or on, because my car was smart enough to do that by itself according to whatever lighting situation I drove it into. If a 1999 Chevrolet can handle that kind of responsibility, I expect any car younger than that to do the same.

7)   I wanted a V6. When someone would attempt to block me from switching lanes because they assumed my little granny car couldn’t keep up with them, I would simply hit the gas and let the V6 whisk me away to any lane of my choosing. There is no going back to a 4-cylinder after that kind of magic.

8)   Both the exterior and the interior couldn’t have too many straight lines – I needed nice, rounded surfaces, rife with comfort and pleasing to the eye. After all, driving mini Frankenstein with the window stuck down in a rainstorm gets you accustomed to a certain standard. 

9)   The cruise control (and preferably volume control, but that was negotiable) had to be accessible from the steering wheel (not from a stick coming out of the side of the steering wheel like a blinker – it had to be ON the steering wheel). Both side view mirrors also had to be electronically adjustable from inside the vehicle.

10)                  I wanted all those things and maybe a moon roof, and I wanted it for less than $10,000. Considering that I started out with a limit of $6,000, I felt that I was being very flexible. (Also, I feel like Delaware doesn’t HAVE cars for less than $6,000, at least not ones that run all the time…trust me, I looked.)

Here’s what I think: I wasn’t being too picky, I just wanted what everyone else wanted, and they were beating me to it. I would spend hours tracking down the perfect specimen, only to arrive at the car lot to find it had been sold. This would be followed by whiny suggestions from the salesman about how the nice little Oldsmobile on the lot sounded like just what I needed. I refused to dignify these suggestions with a response and chose instead to get back in the truck, nose in the air, waving the salesman away so I could shut the door and sulk in peace.

After the fifth or sixth disappointment, I was getting weak. I was tired of getting up at 6:30 in the morning to catch a ride with Taylor, tired of waiting around until he got off work, and tired of having to meekly ask people for a ride home when he was otherwise engaged. So one evening, disappointed again upon hearing that the Honda Civic of my dreams had sold a few days ago, I ended up walking around the lot of Porter Nissan, halfheartedly listening to the salesman’s other suggestions. He suggested a 2008 Malibu, but it was silver and the lack of zipties just wasn’t cutting it for me. Then, as I turned to go, I came face to face with a dark blue Subaru Legacy, sedan style. “Oh heeeey”, it said, with its sultry little headlights. So, I drove it. And it was awesome. It was automatic. It was dark blue. It only had one previous owner. It was a Subaru. It had ivory-colored, cloth interior. It turned its own damn lights on and off as necessary. Any straight line on the body of the car was perfectly placed amongst subtle, eye-pleasing curves. The cruise control was accessible from the steering wheel and both side mirrors were entirely at my mercy with the flick of a switch on the door panel. It even had a moon roof. You may have noticed, however, that I didn’t mention anything about a V6, because it didn’t have one. Like I said though, I was feeling weak, so I considered overlooking this imperfection if the test drive went right, and it did, except for two teeny, tiny problems. They wanted $11,000…and the brakes were shot.

I informed Mike, the salesman, of these two issues and asked him what he was going to do about it. He said he wasn’t going to do anything about it, so I said I was leaving. He changed his mind and asked me what I wanted to pay for it. I said $10,000, and that certainly didn’t include me fixing the brakes myself. He informed me that, as a car lot, they were trying to make money off their cars. I informed him that, as a consumer, I could pay some other weasel $10,000 and not expect to rear-end someone on my way out of the lot. He proceeded to invite me inside after asking me if I really even wanted the car. I didn’t like Mike.

Once at the desk, he went about drawing up some numbers, presenting me with a sheet of paper that listed the car at $11,000, as-is. I repeated my demands, so he excused himself to the manager’s office. After a fair amount of time that I assume was meant to keep me on the edge of my seat, he returned and said “Okay, I’m going to talk quietly so no one finds out I’m doing this for you”. I looked around the showroom at the only other person in there (another salesman, playing an intense game of candy crush on his phone), rolled my eyes, and said “Go on”. He then presented me with a purchase price that was $1,100 lower, but still “as-is”. I wish I could say that I backhanded him or something equally heroic, but, I made the mistake of going in there hungry, and I was starting to feel swayed. I started thinking that, since Taylor was now working at an auto shop, we could just fix the brakes for cheap and I could stop setting my alarm for 6:30 in the morning…and more importantly, go get something to eat. Fortunately (though I didn’t think so at the time), Taylor chose this moment to be strong, and started to say that he just didn’t think buying a car with bad brakes was a good idea. Perfectly reasonable, except that I’m anything but reasonable when hungry.

I should mention here that I had been harboring some unkind feelings towards Taylor regarding this whole need-for-another-car situation. When I couldn’t find something wrong with a car, Taylor could. I would put blood, sweat, and tears into finding the right one, and Taylor would crush it with a simple “That’s way too big” or “Those cars are rustbuckets”. Once he was almost murdered after simply saying, “You don’t want that car”. I frothed at the mouth for a while and then shrewed around the house, going on about how he just thought he could tell me what I wanted and didn’t want because he was a man and I was a woman and he was a sexist pig. Then after letting him explain whatever asinine reason it was that he thought the car was a bad choice, I would decide (on my own, dammit) not to buy it.

As an aside, adding to my frustration was the nightmare of trying to figure out how to title and register the car, should I ever get one. Apparently, I wasn’t allowed to register the car in Delaware because I don’t have a Delaware driver’s license. This is fine with me since I don’t want to deal with all their rules about inspections, anyway. Also, I had just paid Idaho for an 8-year license because I was going to be living in Maryland but going to school in Delaware, I didn’t know if I would be living in Maryland the whole time or moving to Delaware eventually, and I didn’t want to go through the process of getting an ID in another state once I finally figured out where I’d be settling – I’ve heard horror stories. However, in order to register the car in Idaho, I had to be there with an ID, and the car had to be with me. Oh, HEY BRICK WALL, my face must really LOVE YOU. My only option was to buy from a dealership and pay them $300 to title and register the car in Idaho for me, because I guess they’re allowed to do that (but only after I went through the trouble of personally tracking down a police officer to do a VIN inspection on the car, per the Idaho DMV’s request, which I finally accomplished one night at 9:00 after approximately an hour of arguing with the secretary at public safety about the fact that it was indeed necessary that I speak to an officer).

And finally, to the point: I was furious with the situation as a whole and therefore decided I was furious with Taylor for trying to stop me over a minor issue like bad brakes. So what if I hit a few people, have you seen how overpopulated the east coast is??

So, I fixed him with a look that could have turned a lesser man to stone, and informed him with a hiss that I was sick and tired of having no transportation outside of his schedule. Mike backed away and said he was going to give us a minute. Taylor explained to me in a soothing voice that if I was willing to pay $10,000 for a car, I had a lot of options, and I didn’t have to let this guy bully me for some extra commission. It was a reasonable argument and I wanted to go eat, so I grabbed my purse and stood up. Apparently, in a car dealership, this is all you have to do to get anything you want. The heretofore un-budging Mike swooped down on me, sales manager at his side. The sales manager introduced himself and shook the tips of my fingers (do you ever notice how men have a tendency to do this when shaking hands with a woman? It’s like I’m wearing a flowered muslin dress and toting a little parasol, exclaiming about the heart flutters I get when dealing with men’s business), and asked what he could do for me. I explained that we didn’t think we should have to pay a tenth of what we bought our first house for on a car with bad brakes. He said he understood perfectly and that here, at Porter Nissan, they have a motto: No car goes out the door with a need for reconditioning of any kind (maybe Mike hadn’t had time for that training module yet), and that he would pull that car into the shop first thing in the morning and do whatever it took to make those brakes hum. I shot a smug look at Mike and told them I would be looking forward to their call. We then searched out the nearest restaurant, where I stuffed my face and then apologized to Taylor for my hunger-inspired attitude. He’s used to this and accepted my apology with grace.

The response I got when I made to leave the dealership without making a purchase had me feeling a little cocky, so when I went back in the next day, I decided to see how far I could push my luck. They presented me with the work order for the fixed brakes, followed by a purchase order listing the promised $1100 lower price. “Weeelll”, I said, “I just hate that $300 fee I have to pay to get it titled…perhaps we could just knock that off the purchase price and call it even?” Mike must have decided the night before that he didn’t like me any more than I liked him because a new salesman was helping us that day. Meanwhile, Mike was making good use out of the spinning chair in his cubicle. This new one, Terrance was his name, said he didn’t think the manager was going to go for that. I told Terrance he could probably ask anyway, and that if we couldn’t work it out, it was no big deal because I saw a little Subaru at a lot down the road that was quite fetching. After conferring with his manager in the typical “Who wants to make a deal” style (i.e. manager is in the tower with the darkened windows so no one can watch him do the important things), I got my extra $300 discount. Terrance was less than gracious about this but I didn’t let that dampen the mood and made sure to sashay out the door as I headed out to my new, 4-cylinder darling.

More on Terrance: He’s a little crabby, but seems soothed when you ask him about his tattoos, so I make sure to do that when I want something from him. Since nothing will ever go right for you when you’re trying to title and register a car out of state, I had to talk to Terrance a lot in the weeks following my first date with the Subaru. I called him one day about my title and I don’t think he’d had his morning coffee yet. “Terrance”, I said, “what’s up? You seem crabby today” and he said “I’M TIRED”, so I said “How did your tattoo appointment go last Wednesday?” and he perked right up and told me all about it. Approximately two months later, when I hadn’t seen my new license plates yet, I went to see Terrance. Apparently, my VIN inspection had been rejected by the State of Idaho for some lame reason or another, and I said “Terrance. Why didn’t anyone call me? I’m a little disappointed” and he said, “Well, I noticed a few days ago that there was a problem, that’s why I had someone call you right away”. I said, “Terrance, no one called me, that’s why I had to come in today and ask you what was going on.” Keeping with his stone-faced expression, he said, “No, that’s why I called you, because I saw something was weird”.  So I said, “TERRANCE…let’s take a look at that new tattoo.” After showing me what I think was a sailboat and maybe someone’s name, he said “Sorry no one called you about this, I’ll make sure we keep in touch if there are any other problems”. Thanks, Terrance, that would be great.

So now I have a Subaru with a “Famous Potatoes” license plate that everyone here loves to hate and we’re (the Subaru and I, that is) slowly developing a bond because you know, life is short and there are a lot of cars in the sea. Considering that you all know how I feel about driving in the east, I assume you also know that I have some excellent and terrifying stories to tell you about the adventures that the Subaru and I have taken together. I also have a lot of other things to tell you but being a graduate student is kind of like being a prisoner (but a mostly happy one…depending on the day) and I have to get back to the lab (i.e. prison) before it becomes obvious to someone that I’ve been sneaking extra time in the rec yard (i.e. my couch). I’ll write you more stories on my cell wall (i.e. in the margins of my lab notebook) when no one’s looking.