Intro
What started out as just a quick trip down memory lane has turned into a series of posts. Our car stories do have a way of telling our life stories. So much revolves around our cars, from family trips, to what car we drove to the hospital for the birth of our kids. If you’re even a little bit of a car buff then the stories have even more meaning. We picked a car for certain reasons and features at the time and it is fun to remember.
1991 Dodge Conversion Van
I had always wanted to take a trip in a van. Back in my youth a buddy and I had plans to take a cross country trip that never materialized. My wife and I had taken a number of cross country trips in cars but never in a conversion van. This particular van was silver, and a low top to save a little money. It was beautiful! Our first trip was from Philadelphia to Glacier National Park, in Montana. My wife was pregnant. Like all our trips we camped to save money. But after all our tent camping trips the van, with its built in bed seemed like real luxury. And with Glacier’s bears we were glad for the hard side.
1996 Dodge Conversion Van
In 1996 we upgraded to a really fancy Dodge Conversion van. It was gorgeous! White and a pretty green hi-top. It had thick woodwork and luxury everything. We really couldn’t afford it but bought it anyway. No idea how we were approved for the loan.
What I remember most about that van was a trip to Utah with my 5 year old son. The van had a TV and VCR (a big deal at the time!) My son watched “How the West was Fun” with the Olsen twins over and over all across the country. I think I memorized the words from listening to it (we eventually hooked up the headphones for him.)
1999 Mitsubishi Eclipse
The Eclipse was a second car, and a treat for Dad. This was during the Dot-Com boom and we had a little extra money so we leased the Eclipse. It was a fun sporty little car. I got a stick shift, and it was peppy and still great on gas.
2002 Misubishi Montero
When the Eclipse lease was up we got a Mitsubishi Montero. My wife loved it. Great SUV except for the turning radius, which was huge, to the point where getting into a parking spot required planning. It was rock solid however, and probably saved my wife when a hit and run driver plowed into my wife one morning on the way to her job.
2003 Dodge MiniVan
This minivan ended up being a replacement for the conversion van, which by this time had gone through two transmissions. The conversion van looked great but was getting expensive to maintain.
This minivan was fairly plain, but boy was it practical. We could fit two kayaks in that thing, with the rear door still closing. Amazingly I think it had more usable space than the much bigger conversion van.
1994 Ford Taurus
This was after the dot com bust and money was very tight, but we needed a second car. I picked it up for $2500 with about 90,000 miles on it. Ended up fixing a lot of things on it, including brakes, a new radiator, and a weird electrical problem. This wasn’t all bad because I did all the work myself, with my teenage son helping. So my son also learned something about working on cars which is always a good skill to have. After keeping it for about 5 years and another 40,000 miles we sold it for $2200!
2010 Mitsubishi Lancer
The Lancer was a small sporty compact from Mitsubishi. It was fun to drive and we liked it a lot. We let my son use it to commute to college and unfortunately he had an accident that totaled it. It was a close call. He was on a date and skidded on some gravel and hit a telephone pole, hitting on the passenger side, but avoiding a full frontal crash. His date ended up with fairly minor injuries.
This takes us to the second decade of the 2000s. We’ll save that decade for another post in the series.
Again, if you have interesting car stories please share!
