Insomnia + Wireless = Post on Cars!

It's nearly 5am. I've been tossing and turning since about 3:40, and I finally decided to say, "Fuck it," and get up. So I've got some time to kill between now and when The Geej comes and crawls in bed to "snugguh," so I give you: The Kars of Karla May!

[All the photos are grabbed from Google image search, so no, they're not the actual cars of Karla May, but they're close enough.]



Car #1: 1984 Buick Skyhawk


This photo looks a lot like my car, actually. It was white with a navy interior. I freakin' LOVED this car. My stepdad had some business associate whose son was shipping off to join the Navy or something, and was no longer going to need his car. So my mom and he bought his gently used Skyhawk (it had about 8,500 miles on it) and presented it to me in November, 1985--3 months before my actual 16th birthday. It sat in the driveway taunting me. I wanted to drive it SO badly, but since I didn't have a license yet, I was limited to jaunts around my neighborhood and the occasional trip to the grocery store for mom. Finally she relented to my whining, and I got to drive it to school. God, I thought I was cool.



For my birthday that year, my dad installed a bad ASS stereo--complete with new speakers and a power booster/equalizer. My Van Halen tapes sounded so damn awesome. My license plate was 185 RJP, so my car became known as the "Rockin' Jammin' Princess." Yep, I'm a dork. My dad also eventually tinted my windows and had some custom pinstriping done. In other words, he pimped my ride. I drove the SHIT out of this car. I was almost always the one who drove when my girlfriends and I went out on the weekends during high school, then I took it with me to college, so it logged many miles on the Longview to Austin (and back again) trip. When I traded it in for my next car, I actually cried. It was like saying goodbye to an old friend. But it was time to let her go so that I could move from coupe to sedan. And get a sunroof. And cruise control.


Car #2: 1990 Mitsubishi Galant LS

My dad got injured on the job, sued the company whose machinery he was working on when he was injured, got a $200,000 settlement, and in true white trash, never-had-money-before fashion, started spending it like a maniac. First, he bought himself a red corvette. Next, a house. And then me, a car. You have to understand how crazy this was: My dad was not the generous kind generally. Yes, he would do stuff like pimp my ride (as he did with car #1), but that was more because he was into cars and stereos than it was about giving me anything. So for him to even offer to give me a downpayment for a car would've floored me. But no--he went to the lot with me and paid cash for a brand new, totally loaded vehicle. I nearly shit myself. We bought it in Shreveport, LA while I was home on Christmas break in 1990. It was the end of they year, he was paying cash, and he was a hardcore negotiator, so he got a damn good deal on it. I can remember driving it back to Longview and into the driveway at my mom's house, and her being pretty blown away at house nice it was. It was seriously cool--dark navy, with a navy interior (again, the photo above looks a whole lot like my actual car). Top of the line stereo. Sunroof. Every bell and whistle available at that time.

I drove it back to Austin after the break, and the very first weekend I took it out and parked it near 6th street, someone keyed it from the front bumper to the back. Awesome.

Aside from teaching me that I never wanted another dark car with a dark interior while living in Texas, this car was the bomb diggity. Very reliable and comfortable. It saw me through the rest of college, through my underemployed slacker years, and on into grad school. I eventually put over 100,000 miles on it in 7 years. It was looking a little rough when I traded it in on car #3.


Car #3: 1997 Mitsubishi Mirage LS



What I really wanted was another Galant. But I couldn't afford one--unless of course I went for the base model with no bells, zero whistles. I'd become spoiled by my LS, so I wasn't willing to skimp out on features. So I downgraded to the Mirage, but was able to get it fully loaded. I got in in white with a grey interior. It was a cute, fun little car. And the biggest deal was it was the first car that I bought for myself. I mean, I went in and negotiated for it by myself. I made the car payments by myself. I (eventually) paid for the insurance by myself. I felt all kinds of grown up with the Mirage.

The week I bought it, I accidentally rear-ended some redneck in a 1964 Dodge Dart that had "I (heart) my Rottweiler" and Confederate flag bumper stickers. I was going all of 11 miles an hour when the accident happened, but it managed to bang up my front end. His tank of a car was fine, but he claimed he'd injured his neck. Whatthefuckever. State Farm gave him the "Oh no you DIDN'T" smackdown, and he crawled back to his trailer park in Irondale. But still: my brand new big girl car wasn't brand new anymore. It sucked. I eventually took the Mirage with me to Chicago where it took its fair share of city abuse, and then it came with me when I moved back to Austin. It was a good car--again, reliable and comfortable--but I didn't love it nearly as much as I did car #4.

Car #4: 2002 Volkswagen Jetta V6 Wagon

Holy God. After spending my entire car owning life driving 4-cylinder vehicles, the V6 Jetta was nothing short of a revelation. What a kick ass car. A real driver's car. And it was made in Germany--not in Mexico like so many Volkswagens now are--so it rolled off the same assembly line as the Audi Quatro, and it felt, well, German. I got a helluva deal on it: It had been a dealer's car, so it had 800 miles on it, and also, I bought it at the end of the model year, so they were willing to deal. Basically, I got the totally tricked out version of this car for the price of a used base model. Amazing stereo. Wood grain and chrome interior. Leather, heated seats. I wanted to totally make out with this car, I loved it so much. But alas, The Geej came along, and the backseat became terribly small (now that her big ass carseat was in there), and it was also terribly low and hard to get in and out of, so in late 2005, I (rather impulsively) traded it in on the current car.

Car #5: 2003 Nissan Murano SL
"Family car" is right. It was a lease-return vehicle with about 35,000 miles on it. Not as many bells and whistles as the Jetta (no sunroof--which I miss more than I thought I would, no leather interior, lame-ish stereo, missing cargo cover). But it's comfy, and there's plenty of room for two adults with actual human legs to sit in the backseat along with The Geej's carseat. One thing that bugs me though is that these cars (especially the silver ones like mine) are EVERYWHERE. They're so ubiquitous it's almost comical.

So there you have it. Now you can sleep more easily knowing what I've driven all my life.