1989 Dodge Colt

Picture sourced from click here

This is what mine looked like, but imagine this car after a drive-by-shooting

This is the Mitsubishi sister car - nice paint swishes

Oh, how the mighty have fallen; it was the fall of 1999 and I was a freshman in college at Park University and not a four-wheeled-internal-combustion-engine to my name. My school year started  back in January and got myself to and from class on either on my trusty blue steed with pedals, completely frozen in the winter months, or caught a ride with some nice kind, caring person. This was a fine way to get about, but now with the addition of a girlfriend who lived exactly 183 miles from my door to her's and I wasn't going to cycle all that way.

The maintenance-man at the Heartland Center was fixing up two old cars for his son and said that one of them was coming up for sale if I was interested. It was a sliver 1989 Dodge Colt, with a four speed manual transmission. I should have said "No, I'd rather keep my sanity" but I really wanted the freedom of having a car: common sense always looses to passion. $800 later I was the proud owner of one dented silver bullet or grocery getter as my American compadres liked to call it.

After the Dodge Colt (re-badged Mitsubishi Colt for the US market) was fixed up, it was pretty reliable, well at least $800 worth of reliability. Except for one or two minor oddities which I discovered the first night the car was in my possession on my first 183 mile, each way, trip to my girlfriends.

The first wasn't too bad: when I put on full beams, the engine cut out. So, I just didn't use full beams, ever. DWS, Driving while squinting, became a terrible habit.

The second was a little more worrisome. Sometimes after coming to a full stop, like at a gas station in Macon, Missouri, at midnight, the car refused to start and I had to jump start it on the fly. Luckily enough, the Colt didn't weight too much and with time I found I could push her, jump in and needed no help.

When I began hearing a funny noise while turning the wheel, and after a few ill-advised midnight trips to see the girlfriend, I took the Colt to Bob at Northland Auto, . He replaced both CV joints and found  I had a bad battery connection and that's why she was cutting out at a stand still. He fixed the CV joints and I found that by rocking the car back and forth, the battery made a good connection and I could be on my merry, scholarly way, never late for school again.

Then the key got stuck in the ignition, so I left it there and carried another in my pocket. Then I had to take her back to Bob at Northland Auto and he put in a new CV arm. That day as I drove it back home, the new CV arm popped out and I had it towed back to his shop.

I collected her the next day, as I had a big date with my girl and I was really excited to spend the whole weekend with her. But just a few miles further than I'd made it the day before, the accelerator pedal stopped working as I was approaching an intersection. I pulled over and popped the hood, flames three feet high attempted to burn my eyebrows off.

I grabbed anything of value out of the car, my school books, my tapes and CDs and I had my blue steed strapped to the rear, so I flung her off into the ditch and stood back waiting for the silver bullet to implode! But a very helpful young off-duty police officer, pulled up along side and casually dosed the flames with his fire extinguisher and called the Fire Department just in case.

Once again towed back to Bob at Northland Auto. A bunch of money later, car rewired, new throttle cable, I was back on the road, but my short lived love affair with this car was over and I had my eye on another.

A friend from school was in need of a cheap car and for a few hundred bucks, I handed over my woes to her with full knowledge of the past few months history. Grocery getter begone!