This is a true story.
The Saab is still running. A blessing and a curse. I don't do what I'd do without it, yet I know that I could do without it. The Saab is sort of a novelty, here in the great Northwest -- they don't see many rust buckets. I would let it go if I could. I can't.
Life is better with two vehicles. Even if one of them is a rust bucket. It runs. It should. I've pumped a lot of money into it, so that it's reliable on the freeway. Reliable enough to get me a ticket for going nearly 100 miles an hour in the 70 mph zone. That's reliable. I feel safe in the Saab, and that's the problem.
Other cars that I've owned have tried to kill me and nearly succeeded. They were evil. Cars are cars, you might say. But that's not so. There are good cars and bad cars. Once I resuscitated an old Austin Healy Sprite from my father's backyard. It had been sitting so long that there were weeds growing out of the carpet in the back seat. It took some tinkering to get it running again. The tires had rotted on the rims. Oddly enough, the tires off my old '53 Chevy fit on the back rims of the Sprite. This gave it a nice forward tilt. The first thing that happened was that it tilted itself into an intersection on a green light - only to have the whole front-end clipped off by a speeding pickup truck. I was left sitting with my feet exposed to the elements were the motor used to sit. Having experience in these matters I jumped out of the car and secured witnesses that would say I had the right-of-way. The pickup truck driver tried to run. Difficult at best with an Austin Healy Sprite motor wedged under your bumper. Insurance monies repaired the Austin Healy Sprite. It lived to try and kill me again.
The Sprite tried to kill me for the second time on a northbound freeway. I was minding my own business driving home just after dark and enjoying the radio. And a cold beer. As luck would have it I was just returning the cold beer to my lap after a healthy swallow when I noticed the Buick Electra 225 that was pulling off the shoulder just ahead of me. Being in no hurry, I was traveling in the slow lane. This gave me plenty of time to glance in my mirror and turn on my left turn signal to get in the center lane. However, as soon as I cut the wheel there came a loud honking! Some fool traveling at high speed in the show off lane was ducking into the middle lane to swerve around a slower vehicle at the same moment that I was trying to merge left out of the slow lane. No problem. I elected to stay in the slow lane. Unfortunately, when my gaze returned to the roadway immediately in front of me it seemed the Buick had come to a complete stop. With my legs extended on brake and clutch I rear ended the Buick. Because I was decelerating the nose of the Austin Healy Sprite almost went under that giant Buick Electra rear bumper. But not quite. The transmission came up through the floor, my knees contacted the dashboard and my beer bottle contacted the windshield. But it didn't break. I was able to take one last swallow before I pitched it as far away from the scene as possible.
Bloodied but not broken I was able to climb out through the driver's side window. As I approached the Buick the power window went down and a lady glanced at me while shaking her right hand in front of her as though it were wet. "Oh darn, I think I broke a nail!" That was the extent of the damage to the Buick and it's driver. The Sprite was totaled. My right knee has never been the same.
"Lady, why did you pull off the shoulder and then stop?"
"I couldn't get the darn radio to stay on the station!" Like I said, that Sprite was trying to kill me. Unfortunately, or fortunately, after that experience it didn't get another chance. That's okay, I was to own another evil car.
Cars are not evil just because they're cheap. I can think of seven or eight cars I bought for under $500 -- some for as little as 25. Only one of them tried to kill me. I can think of one brand-new car I owned that was evil, so evil that I got rid of it before it had a chance to try and kill me. This was a Mercury Cougar XR- 7. A car so evil that it spent more time at the dealership than it did in my driveway. I was probably lucky for that although I didn't realize it at the time.
I owned an evil Mazda. The Mazda actually only turned evil near the end. Before that it was a great $500 car that I had bought with only 125,000 miles on it. I drove it night and day for over two years and 80,000 miles before it turned evil. Entropy tried to save me from the evil Mazda. It nearly rusted away to a small pile of metal filings before it tried to kill me. Much like the Saab, the Mazda was held together with cable ties, or tie wraps. It wasn't the tie wraps that nearly killed me. It was a get even thing. Whereas a pickup truck had neatly clipped the front-end clip off my Austin Healy Sprite, the Mazda T-boned a pickup.
Before it turned evil the Mazda survived an impact with a telephone pole. I wasn't driving it at the time. The telephone pole became intimate with the radiator. The radiator became intimate with the fan, when the engine jumped off the motor mounts. I was able to lever the motor back onto the mounts with a handy baseball bat thereby removing the fan from the radiator. I drove the car home that way making it one of the few air cooled Mazda's ever to traverse the streets of Hammond, IN. The Mazda became evil after it got the new radiator.
After spending the better part of an evening raising my spirits and lowering my bank balance by giving pool lessons at a local tavern I decided it would be a good idea to get some sleep before I had to return to work. I was thinking so hard about sleep I didn't notice that I had passed my exit sometime ago. I also didn't notice the pickup truck until the Mazda was firmly embedded in its side.
The cops were administering a sobriety test while the EMS guys were wrapping my head. I asked the cop if I was going to pass? He shook his head. Then he allowed that I might already have enough problems, and walked away, after only ticketing me for not having a license. The evil Mazda had nearly succeeded. I banged the same knee. I lived to do some community service. Evil Mazda.