[Chronological list of cars I’ve owned](#here’s the list in chronological order as best I can remember:)
[Best Car Ever](#26. 2003 Mercedes S430 4matic) [My most Reliable Car Ever](#24. 2003 Oldsmobile Silhouette Van) [My best Car Deal](#7. 1982 GMC Pickup) [My worst Car Deal](#23. 2003 Mercedes ML500) [Fastest I’ve driven a car](#18. 1979 Porsche 928) [Slowest car I’ve owned](#2. 1949 Jeep) [Best car for the money](#22. 1992 Lexus ES-300) [Best Fuel Economy](#27. 2008 Toyota Camry Hybrid) [Worst Fuel Economy](#25. 2003 Chevy Suburban) Car Web Links Page
Stories of cars I and my wife have owned:
Here’s the list in chronological order as best I can remember
1964 Chevy Impala - Bought it very, very used for 35 bucks when I was fourteen years old. I didn’t know anything about working on cars, so I took the engine apart and couldn’t get it back together again. Parted it out for a couple hundred dollars and towed the hulk to the junkyard for $12. My first profitable business deal.
1949 Jeep - Here is a picture of my second car. It is a 1949 Willys CJ 3A Jeep. The CJ stands for “Civilian Jeep”, so it wasn’t a military model. I bought it for 450 bucks in 1978 when I got my driver’s license. I drove it for about two years. It was about the most uncomfortable vehicle ever made - but it was nearly indestructible. Originally it had a flathead four cylinder engine with about 55 horsepower, and four wheel drive. On the highway it could only do about 60 mph with the wind and about 50 against it. You didn’t really want to go faster than that because the brakes were terrible.
About the reliability - I sold the Jeep in about 1981 to a guy for about $500. A few weeks later the guy called me complaining about selling it to him with a crack in the engine block. I wondered what he had done to it, but when we looked at it, sure enough there was water leaking from what appeared to be a crack on the side of the block. I gave the guy his 500 bucks back and reluctantly took the Jeep back. After getting it home, I found that the block had a fist-sized hole into the water jacket that had been covered over with a fiberglass patch and smeared with grease. Apparently it had been this way the entire time I had owned it. We found a brand new later model overhead valve four at a military surplus place -so we put it in. We found out why the CJ 3B models had the ugly tall hood - with the OHV engine, the carb stuck up through the hood - so my stepdad built the homemade hood scoop you see below.
1973 Chevy Caprice - Purchased in 1979 for $500. Only 6 years old, but it had over 100,000 miles on it and numerous body dings. Had to rebuild the transmission, then the engine, then everything else. It had all kinds of luxuries for the time. After I rebuilt the transmission it slipped in reverse, but the forward gears worked right. When I rebuilt the engine I put all kinds of good parts in it and it ran great. My sister drove the car for a few years after I gave it up, and wrecked it up pretty badly. In 1985 I pulled the engine and took the chassis to the junk yard.
1970 Chevy Impala Convertible - My Stepdad bought this car new, and when I went to college the 73 Caprice had many reliability problems so he traded me the Impala convertible for the newer Caprice for my sister to drive. I drove this Chevy for about two years - I loved the car, but it had lots of miles and the body was rusting badly. It had the finest 350 V8 I’ve ever owned. I kept the engine but sold the car. A few years later a guy called wanting the original engine, and I wouldn’t sell it to him cheap, so he left in a huff.
1930 Model A Roadster - My Stepdad died in 1982 while I was in college. He left me his this car and the Graham - neither were all that valuable, but he knew I appreciated them. The Model A was his project car, but was a basket case, and was missing many trim parts. It would’ve taken years and lots of money to put it back together. A guy offered me $2000 for it and needing cash for college I took it, knowing that I would regret it later.
1937 Graham 116 Supercharger - I inherited this from my Stepdad in 1982 also. We had picked it up in about 1975 in pretty rough shape and restored it together. I had done much of the “grunt” work to clean it up, and he paid the bills. He got it running in about 1980, and drove/showed it in several events. At that time it was in pretty good condition. It is an unusual car in that it has a supercharged 6 cylinder engine and was pretty fast for its day. I still own the Graham and it sits in my garage to this day. I didn’t do much major work on it , and after 20 years, it needed another restoration. After an attempt at hiring someone to restore the Graham, and the ensuing financial debacle, I’ve given it to my sister Dana and her husband Greg to finish - hopefully they can get it back on the road soon.
- 1982 GMC Pickup - My first new vehicle, I bought it while I was a student at GMI. I couldn’t really afford it, but it was a really good deal and my other cars were getting eaten up with the drives to Flint, Michigan to and from school. I was still pretty young, and I remember having difficulty finding a dealer who took me seriously as a new vehicle buyer. In 82, GM was having a really down year for sales, so with my GM discount, and a $750 rebate, I only paid $6,250 for it complete. The only options it had were the chrome exterior trim, rally wheels, and a 305 V8 engine. It had a 3 speed on the column, no air conditioning, not even a radio. One of the best deals I ever made, I drove the truck about 2 ½ years, put 55,000 miles on it and sold it for $5,500 - only $750 less than I paid for it! I did put the camper shell on, a step bumper and had to put new tires on it. If I would’ve ordered an automatic transmission I probably would have kept it much longer.
1984 Chevy Camaro Z-28 - I bought this car after I finished my engineering classes at GMI in the fall of 1984. After having driven worn out vehicles, and my simple pickup for several years, and just having finished the grueling engineering program, I convinced myself that I deserved a reward. The car cost about $12,500 (a lot for a new college graduate) with GM discount and it had 3000 miles as a GM exec car. It was black and gold, with T-tops, 305 V8 and an automatic transmission. I was proud as could be in it. After about three months I wrecked it, tearing the whole front-end off. The body shop did a good job of putting it back together and it actually handled better after the accident. My insurance rates skyrocketed soon afterwards, and I got scared to drive the car. It also was a terrible vehicle to have in the winter. A couple inches of snow would leave me stuck in the middle of the road, while other cars drove right past. I sold it a couple of years later with about 45,000 miles for about $8,500. Pretty expensive, but fun.
1986 Pontiac 6000 STE - Another GM exec car that I bought in the late fall 1986 when the winter was coming on and I was dreading another winter with the Camaro. I was still single, but I thought a four-door family sedan would help my insurance crisis. It didn’t work, the insurance company took the opportunity to cancel me altogether - nice guys. This was one of the best cars I’ve owned. It had suede seats, a power sunroof, and all kinds of interesting electronic features - like radio controls in the steering wheel. Kathy and I decided to get married in this car during a long drive to Michigan to a GMI reunion. We got married, and in the summer of 1988 it got wrecked - twice! First, Kathy was driving home from somewhere, had a blowout, pulled off to the side of the road and left the car with the flashers going. A hit and run driver destroyed the entire rear end of the car. I sent it back to the shop that had fixed my Camaro and they again did their magic on it. About three weeks after getting it back, I blasted the front end in a similar accident to my previous one. I was beginning to get really paranoid, and was getting to know the body shop guy too well. We sold the car soon afterwards, and the marriage is the only thing that saved my insurance situation.
1976 Dodge Pickup - I bought this from my Stepdad in 87 when Kathy and I got married and were getting ready to move to our first house (my Mom had gotten remarried again). I paid him about $300 for it, which was probably about right - it was a mess. It had about 150,000 miles on it, a tired, leaking and smokey slant six engine, lots of rust, no power steering, so it was a bear to drive, and a three on the tree whose linkage was destroyed. Finding the right gear was an adventure in double clutching, grinding and searching. To top it off, it had an ugly red paint that had faded to the worst orange drab color possible. It hauled our stuff to the new house alright so I kept it for various errands. Trouble was you had to fix it every time you wanted to drive it, and it never started right if it was cold out.
One day, I was picking up a load of firewood from a guy about 30 miles from home, and after one rick, the bed was only half full. I told the guy to put another on, and he said that the Dodge would never haul it - his ¾ ton Chevy wouldn’t haul that much. I had him put it on anyway, and wished I hadn’t when he got it on - it was teetering on the rear axle, and I worried that it would break the springs. Anyway, I started home, and drove very slowly on the interstate highway, wondering what I would do on a breakdown. As I approached our interchange, a couple of miles from home, the old slant six started to disintegrate. The noise started as a tapping, then, within a quarter mile progressed to a metallic banging. I just knew a something was ready to come through the hood. I was trying to calculate what a tow was going to cost with about 5000 pounds of oak firewood on the back, and decided it would be too much for my budget, so I just kept driving, keeping the RPM’s as low as possible, and a parking place always within coasting distance. Anyway, the truck made it all the way home! By the time we got there, an exploding engine was imminent.
I took the slant six out, took it apart and found out one of the rod bearings was gone! - there was about ¼ inch of play on the rod. I went and bought a junkyard six for $100, rebuilt it, put on a rebuilt carb, a new clutch and a new exhaust, and it ran like new. I never got the transmission linkage fixed, or power steering put in before I sold the truck. It even looked good for a couple of weeks if you polished it up - until the paint faded again. I put a price of $450 on it and left it in my yard for sale. One day a kid came up wanting to buy it, claiming he was related to Elvis, and he needed a truck to haul his band in. It had been sitting for awhile, and wouldn’t start for him to drive. He came back the next day undeterred, and drove the truck anyway. In the end he couldn’t come up with the money, and I sold it to another guy for $400.
1988 Pontiac 6000 - We bought this one to replace the STE after the second wreck. Kathy always complained that I didn’t let her drive it before we bought it. It was a good car, but a little disappointing after the STE model as it didn’t have all of the features. It was another GM exec car, and I think we paid about $10,000 for it with 3000 miles on the odometer. We immediately had to buy new tires, as the OEM Generals were junk - even after the first set was replaced under warranty at 5000 miles, I bought new Goodyears at 8000 miles and vowed to never buy a car with General tires. (I did a few years later, and had a little better luck, but not much). We drove the car until our second kid and mini-van time in 1994. We sold it to Kathy’s parents for a summer car, and they kept it for a few years, but I regret that they had a lot of problems with it.
1988 Chevy S-10 Blazer - I bought this new in 88 to replace the 84 Buick Skyhawk that Kathy brought to our marriage. Somehow I had been relegated to her car after the wedding, and she got mine. The four cylinder Skyhawk wasn’t my kind of car, so we went shopping for something more “masculine”. We splurged on the Blazer - couldn’t really afford it, but I wanted one really bad. It had a 4.3 V6 and all the options. This was before the SUV craze - I don’t think the term SUV was even invented, but I had loved four wheel drive ever since my first Jeep. I drove the Blazer daily with very few problems until 1996 - it was more than seven years old, with about 90,000 miles and was starting to have annoying problems. I traded it for my Porsche 928.
1981 Chevy Chevette - This was one of those dumb things you do sometimes. I bought it off the bulletin board at work for $450 so Kathy’s parents would have something to drive in the summer of 1988 while they were home from Europe. It had about 90,000 miles, but ran good. The paint was starting to fade, and it had a little rust. I put a new timing belt on it because I knew that was something Chevettes had problems with at about those miles.
I also tried to repaint it before Orlan and Sharon arrived from Germany. I went out and bought a gallon of Maroon paint to match, and quickly found that my paint gun was worthless. I started painting on the passenger door, and the bad gun made the paint crackle, run and look really bad. I was so mad that I went out and bought a new Devilbiss paint gun. It allowed me to do a pretty nice job on the rest of the car, but I didn’t have time to re-do the bad door. From then on, that door was the definition of my painting skills.
Kathy’s parents drove the car about 5000 miles that summer, so it paid for itself, but I had made a grave error. The summer of 1988 was one of the hottest on record, and the maroon Chevette nearly cooked my poor in-laws - I didn’t think about finding one with air-conditioning. At the end of the summer, they gave the car to Kathy’s cousin who needed a car for college. I believe she drove it for about three more years and 50,000 miles before the engine gave out. She always complained about the paint on that one door and named it the “bruised banana”.
1978 Chevy Pickup - I bought this from Kathy’s Grandmother after her Grandad died. It was his farm truck and was in pretty good condition. It was a ¾ ton, with a 350 engine, and heavy duty suspension. It rode rough, but had auto and air, and was pretty reliable. It could haul alot, but you couldn’t afford to drive it - it got the worst gas mileage of any vehicle I’ve ever owned. Probably no more than about 8 mpg on average. I never did figure out why it was so bad. After we moved into our second house in 1991, I didn’t drive it too much, so it started having annoying problems from sitting . I sold it to Kathy’s cousin to keep it in the family.
1990 Chevy Corvette Convertible - My favorite car of all time. Black exterior, Red Leather interior, 6 speed trans - beautiful! I bought it in the summer of 92, I had been dreaming of owning one forever, and Kathy had given me the green light to look for a used one. I drove several older ones - both coupes and convertibles. Everything in my price range seemed a little used up, and then I saw this two year old beauty at the Chevy lot. I wanted a manual transmission and had been driving automatics. I took this manual out for a test drive and was hooked. I took it home to show Kathy, and she liked it. I knew I would buy it, and loved every minute I owned it.
Corvettes live up to expectations - lots of torque, very fast - a wonderfully styled interior for the driver - that long, sculpted hood stretching out in front of you… I kept it spotless for 2 ½ years, and only put about 6000 miles on it - but ultimately it succumbed to the budget crisis created when we had our second child and Kathy went to work part-time in 95. My work was going well, but I wasn’t getting very good raises, so it had to go. A very nice gentleman came to buy it and paid cash. I cried the day he drove it away. Kathy promised another one as soon as we could afford it.
- 1994 Chevy Lumina Van - We bought this when Lindsey was on the way, and the second Pontiac 6000 was showing some wear. Kathy wanted a minivan so we looked at all of them. My only requirements were anti-lock brakes, and a V6 engine. Kathy wanted a CD player and integrated child seats. We picked the Lumina because it seemed to be a better value than the others. It was cheaper than the equivalent Chrysler minivans, which were the biggest sellers of the time. Besides, we loved the power sliding door. I didn’t particularly like to drive it, and it was really ugly, but we couldn’t have made a better choice. When we sold it, it had nearly 80,000 miles, and was five years old and ran, and looked like new, thanks to the plastic side panels. We had no trouble other than replacing tires, battery and brakes, and having to fix the power door when certain gorillas thought it was a manual and yanked the cables off track.
- 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee - I needed a vehicle to replace the Blazer as my daily driver in late summer 96. I splurged on the top-of-the-line Grand Cherokee Limited. It is the first vehicle I ever leased, so I’ll got rid of it after 36 months in September 99. I liked the features: memory seats, leather, heated seats, power everything, V8 engine and sunroof. I loved the full time four wheel drive - much better than my previous Blazer, and also much better than the newer Explorers and Blazers I’ve driven as rental cars. It was a little smaller than those others, but I didn’t mind, since I drive alone most of the time. I had a few annoying problems with it - the front axle made noise even after they rebuilt it twice under warranty. A couple of electronic things went wrong with it, and the gas mileage wasn’t too hot - but gas was as cheap as it ever had been. I really liked it.
- 1979 Porsche 928 - I traded my 88 Blazer for this after I got the Jeep. Ever since I read the car magazine raves for these in the early 80’s I had wanted to drive one. A guy had this one on a used car lot and I convinced him to trade for my Blazer plus 900 bucks. It needed a battery, a transmission synchro, had 90,000 miles on it, and had obviously changed hands several times in recent months. The body looked pretty good, it was black, and I really had a burning desire to replace my Corvette from a couple of years earlier.
The price was right - about $5000-6000. I drove it home, cleaned it up, reset the idle, and bought a new battery. It didn’t run too bad - I’ve driven it a few thousand miles in the past three years. It is a very fast car - the engine is a very noisy V8, and it likes to run - I bet it could still exceed the original top speed of 144 mph. When Drew and I were driving it to Michigan to it new owner, I ran it up to 138mph on a lonely stretch of I-69, fastest I’ve ever had a car on the road.
It went through corners unbelievably well. But other than that, it is pretty boring. It doesn’t have much low end torque. You must rev the engine to enjoy it. It has all kinds of luxury features (especially for 1979), but it looks pretty spartan inside. It has none of a Corvette’s driver’s seat styling. You sit in the driver’s seat and see windshield wipers and a flat hood - nothing to get your blood pumping. I suspect this is the German way. You feel like you could drive this car very hard, but you really don’t want to.
Sold the 928 to a former coworker in Detroit - he loved it.
- 1999 Oldsmobile Silouhette Van - In the summer of 99, with our third child on the way, Kathy was beginning to feel like the Lumina van was going to start having problems - it didn’t have any before we sold it, but we could afford a new van and she wanted one. Again we looked at all the vans. Ford, Chrysler, Olds, even Honda and Toyota. We eventually picked the Oldsmobile because it had the best features, similar to the Chrysler Town and Country with a lower price. Believe it or not, that $2000 overhead LCD screen and VCR bit us.
I negotiated with the local dealer for hours on two separate occasions and finally came home with the van. (An interesting side note. The night before the final purchase I was playing with Autobytel on the internet and accidentally submitted a request for bid. After I came home from the dealer the next day, having spent four hours arguing over the price and squeezing the last dollar out of the dealer, another salesman from the same dealership called me on follow up from autobytel and offered the same van for about $150 more than I had just paid. I could’ve saved the four hours of haggling. Next time I’ll go through the internet.)
The Olds van is really great. Much quieter than the older Lumina, and a more roomy interior. It has all the luxury features you could want, including the flip down TV and VCR unit - great for longer trips. The other surprising thing is the fuel mileage. With all the stuff this van has, it gets 27 or 28 miles to the gallon. The tank holds about 25 gallons, so it’ll go about 650 miles on a fill up.
- 1999 Mercedes Benz ML430 - This is my third SUV. When it came time to replace my Jeep Grand Cherokee, I went straight back to the same dealership for a new model of the same thing. Even though I had a few problems with the old one, I liked it well enough to stick with it. The GC’s were redesigned in 99, and the new ones had some things better than my old one, and a couple of things I didn’t like as well. First, they finally got the spare tire out of the back cargo area - but, when they did, they raised the rear floor about four inches, making it more difficult to lift stuff in, and it is a little smaller back there. They did fix the mushy suspension that caused the vehicle to wallow from side to side on the solid axles. But they introduced one more problem I didn’t like. In an effort to rake the windshield further, they lost about another inch of front seat headroom - the old Jeep barely had enough for me, and on the test drive I couldn’t get a position that felt good under the sunroof.
Despite this, I still would’ve bought the Jeep except the dealership, and salesman did a couple of really stupid things. First, I couldn’t get the salesman to talk seriously with me. Here I am, with a three year old Grand Cherokee Limited a month from coming off lease, and I say I want to look at the new model of the same thing and he doesn’t give me the time of day. It doesn’t get any easier than that!!! I tell the guy I don’t have much time to shop, so keep the sales talk short, and let me drive one. After a short drive, I select one from his lot, and tell him that I’ll buy that one that day if he gives me his best price the first time. So what does he do - first, he doesn’t call me back. Then, when I call him back, he highballs me with a lease price $200/month more than the one I’m currently driving even though the sticker price is nearly the same. Then when I tell him that it’s $200 more than my 97, he says they might be able to do better, and all the sudden he keeps calling my with new prices. Sorry buddy, you lost the deal by then. So I shopped. I wanted to look at the ML’s, the Tahoes and the Navigators.
I drove straight to the Mercedes dealer, and the young salesman was completely different. He gave me a good price immediately, he respected my time, and the car was better than I expected. Again after driving, I picked one and told him to get me a price, and he did immediately. These guys acted like they wanted to sell a car to me specifically. I had read all the praise about the ML’s, how everyone said they were the best SUV’s made, so I bought it. Didn’t even look at the other brands much.
Well, as far as the best SUV’s made, I’m still not sure. The ML430, even though it is the top of the line, is missing many features from the Grand Cherokee Limited, including: memory seats, steering wheel stereo controls, and, my biggest pet peeve, automatic headlamps. The interior controls are spartan, and seem out of place if you’re used to driving an American car. The steering wheel sits too far from the driver, and isn’t easily adjustable - you do get used to it after awhile, and there is no way to dim the interior lights - that I’ve found anyway. Even though you couldn’t tell from reading the car mags, the 4.3 V8 is not as powerful as the Jeep V8, even though it drinks much more gas. The torque is simply not as useable, and the thing seems slow by comparison. I think also the five speed transmission is made to not accelerate hard like american cars - you would never spin the tires on this baby.
Now for the good part - I had the ML for three yeas and almost nothing went wrong with it. I’d never had a new car that went ten months without service. I haven’t even had the oil changed yet, because the service system says I can go a few more thousand miles. Next, this thing handles as solid as a rock. The ride is pretty smooth, and it sticks to the road like glue. Even in heavy snow, I had to try to make it slide, and the stabilization program immediately brought it back on track. The other night I was driving in the city through very heavy rain, and when I hit a couple of deep puddles, the water went flying, but the ML stayed straight as an arrow - no pull to the side at all - amazing!! It also feels as tight today as the day I drove it home. I have a twenty foot boat I tow sometimes, and the ML pulls it better than the Jeep, no sweat. Finally, the thing has tons of interior room. The high roofline looks a little like a minivan, but it can hold a ton of stuff, especially if you can figure out how to get the overly complicated rear seats to fold down. Bottom line, it is not as flashy, or powerful as the Jeep. At first I thought I had made a mistake, but over time, it grows on you. This thing does everything pretty well, and the MB “halo factor” is strong.
- 1990 Chevy Corvette ZR/1 - Yes, this is it, the “King of the Hill” Corvette - 375HP, 180 MPH. I don’t know if it’ll go that fast, but it is pretty scary when you open it up.
I bought this car off Ebay from a guy in Florida who claimed to be a classic car restorer and sounded like an interesting fellow. I bought a one way ticket to Ft. Lauderdale to pick it up one Saturday. When I got there, the guy appeared to me to be a sleazy used car dealer. We spent the first couple hours trying to get the air conditioner fixed, because he said “it just quit working”. His “internet car dealership” looked like a pretty normal looking used car lot to me - I bought the car anyway, and have been pretty happy with it. It’s got 48,000 miles on it, but it runs great. I drove it back from Ft. Lauderdale, 1200 miles non stop, and the car got 30 miles per gallon - pretty good for a 180mph car. I stopped for about 5 minutes at the crack of dawn in Bowling Green Kentucky to take the picture in front of the Corvette Museum. I have the original window sticker, where the car listed for $60,000 new. I also have the bill of sale where the original owner paid $20K over sticker, or $80,000! I traded the ZR/1 in for a Mercedes in the summer of 2006 because I didn’t drive it enough. I hope the new owner gets some good use out of it.
- 1992 Lexus ES-300. I bought this in October of 2001 with 105,000 miles on it, and expected to keep it for a year or so. I just needed a nice inexpensive luxury car to commute to work in. As of March of 2008 - six years plus and we still own it. My son Drew drives it about 40 miles round trip to school every day. It has nearly 200,000 miles on it now.
Honestly it now runs as good as the day I bought it. All of the switches and accessories still work. The paint is still shiny. It was sitting in the garage when I took these pictures, but that’s a rarity - it’s sat outside since I’ve owned it - it has no rust and it looks good. I would drive the car tomorrow anywhere in the country and it would get me there in comfort. It hasn’t gone without any repairs, but I think these ES300’s are quite simply the best value in transportation you can get. When my son Drew turned 16, he started driving it, but to be honest, I miss driving it.
Update 4-15-08 - The Lexus met its demise yesterday at a lonely intersection in Carmel, Indiana where an Indian lady in a Lexus SUV blew a stop sign (she says she stopped at the sign, then plowed into the side of Drew’s car) and T-boned Drew and one of his friends as they were driving to Golf practice. Fortunately Drew is mostly OK - he got splattered with glass, which cut up his hand a bit, and he’s very sore in the back, neck, hips and - one bad thing he’s complaining about a scratchy eye, which means he may have gotten a small bit of glass in there. But I think they’re going to be fine. Car’s not though - I don’t think it will ever see the road again. It did perform well in death however, and I’ll remember it as one of the finest cars ever. Have to deal with insurance now …
2003 Mercedes ML500. I bought this when the lease ran out on the 99 ML. It had the 5.0 engine in it, which gave it much more power than the ML430. It also had many options the 430 didn’t have, including NAV system, auto headlamps, rain sensing wipers, climate control, and several other things. But, with all that, I didn’t like it as well as the ML430. The suspension was a little softer, too soft for my liking. And, it wasn’t very reliable. I had several things go wrong with it - mostly minor stuff, but it seemed like the entire time I owned it a trouble light was flashing on the instrument panel. The one thing I loved about this car was it’s towing capability. The engine was a real gem, and it towed even our large heavy boat - which was way over it’s towing limit, just fine. I turned the ML500 in on it’s lease in December of 2005. I can honestly say I wasn’t sad to see it go. I swore I wouldn’t buy another mercedes.
2003 Oldsmobile Silhouette Van - Oldsmobile was going out of business, and we loved our 99 van so much, we decided to buy another one before they quit making them. This one was even better. They were giving pretty good deals on them to clear them out. Kathy has driven it 101,000 miles in the past five years. It’s been reliable, comfortable and economical. It’ll carry all five of us and all our stuff across the country and get 26-28 mpg on the highway.
Funny story - We had decided to sell the van but held onto it for a few extra months to drive it on vacation down to Orlando Florida for spring break. It ran great, and we had a good time, staying in a condo right near disney world. We decided to stay out of the heavy traffic back north by leaving Orlando at midnight. I slept early in the evening while Kathy and the kids got everything ready to go. I woke up a few minutes before midnight - the van was all packed, I dropped the condo key in the drop box and proceeded to rip the front bumper right off the van as I hit a fire hydrant backing out of the parking place!. It made a horrible noise. I got out and the bumper was hanging by the fog light wires - which were still lit. I was so angry at myself. I went to my tool bag got a pair of wire cutters, clipped the fog light wires, picked the bumper up and put it in the van between the rear seats - the kids didn’t like it, but they knew I was angry and didn’t say a word. I was so mad I drove through a horrible rainstorm for the next 8 hours - 550 miles non stop until we north of Atlanta and were running on fumes - everybody slept and nobody said a word. The van looked funny but it drove the same. When we got back I spliced the wires, clipped the bumper back on and polished out the scratches and it looked like nothing had happened. So it wasn’t a complete disaster. One of my many dumb moves.
We I hated to see it go.
- 2003 Chevy Suburban. I bought this 3/4 ton 4x4 Suburban in the summer of 2006 when I needed something to tow the boats and I no longer had the ML. It was only 3 years old, but it had 80,000 miles on it. Gas had shot up to $3.00 a gallon that summer, and these things weren’t moving off anybody’s used car lots. It stickered for $48K new and it languished on Ebay without a bid. I bought it from the Indy Volvo dealer for $18K. It had brand new Michelin tires, and has every option a Suburban can have - including memory seats, a DVD entertainment system and XM radio. I don’t drive it a ton, It now has 100,000 miles on it, but it tows all our trailers pretty well, and it’ll haul all of us and our stuff with room to spare. Only real downside to it is the gas mileage - which isn’t very good, maybe 15 mpg tops.
Sold the Suburban after the brakes lines blew out on me. It cost hundreds of dollars to replace them, and when I found out what a terrible design they were, I had to sell the truck - I traded it on a New Toyota Tundra.
- 2003 Mercedes S430 4matic - I bought this used, in the spring of 2006 from my neighbor who had a high-end used car dealership. I first looked at the Mercedes S cars when I saw a nice looking used one locally. It was a 2001 and turned out to have a few problems. As I investigated, I found out the 2000 to 2002 models did have quite a few problems, but they had fixed most of them by 2003. Still I was nervous - I really liked this car, and it was All-Wheel drive, which I wanted, so I bought an extended warranty and took the plunge. It’s been a fantastic car. I think it’s got to be one of the best looking and driving cars ever made. It’s quiet, comfortable, very stately, and, knock on wood, I haven’t had a minute’s trouble with it. The only problem with it is that it is a bit too nice for me.
Update: Well, the Mercedes was the best car I’ve ever driven, but alas it turned unreliable at 62,000 miles. First it left me stranded at the airport with a dead battery, then the air suspension went out and left me stranded, then an engine emissions blower went out, and when I took it in they said it needed a $1500 “door module”. All that happened in a three month period. I don’t even know what a door module is, but that was enough for me - I got rid of the car and bought two others - a 2002 Lexus ES300 and a 2007 Miata.
- 2008 Toyota Camry Hybrid. In the winter of 2008, as gas prices were heading skyward, I had a business trip in California and Hertz gave me a Toyota Prius to drive. I hadn’t driven a hybrid car, but I was curious, and although I can’t stand the looks of the Prius, I had thought about the Camry Hybrid. Being an old GM man, this is almost sacreligious, but I told Kathy about the car, and in February, when it looked like gas prices were going to shoot up again (they did) I convinced her to go look at one. She did, and bought it a week later. It’s a great car so far, and immediately started getting 35 mpg - as the weather warmed that rose up to 38-39mpg. It has leather seats and a Navigation system and keyless operation and everything. She really likes it, and it probably saves $100 a month at the gas pump.
- 1996 Lexus ES300. When it came time to replace Drew’s wrecked ES300 there wasn’t a decision to make. The maroon ES300 had been such a fantastic car, that I simply wanted to replace it with an identical car. This proved to be a little difficult, as the insurance company didn’t want to pay me enough to replace the car. I finally reminded them that I didn’t really want to sue them, so they should just give me enough to replace the car. They did, and we found an almost identical 1996 model, four years newer and with about 40,000 fewer miles - it only cost a little more than the insurance settlement. And even better it was for sale from a guy I had worked with previously - so I knew he wasn’t a complete scam artist. The only problem was the car didn’t look as good as the previous one. It had a gold paint that had faded to silver on one side - the car looks silver if you look at it one way, and gold the other. It ran great, we had it for three years and about 50,000 miles for Lindsey and Drew. The only problem we had on it at all has been a leaking power steering hose - which I replaced - not bad for a 15 year old car with 200,000 miles on it. You could take that car and drive it anywhere.
- 2002 Lexus ES300. Do you see a pattern here? I bought this one in 2009 when the Mercedes SL430 started becoming unreliable. This had 115,000 miles on it when I bought it. I drove it like crazy and it just kept going - just as smooth and comfortable as a new one. During that time it’s had oil changes and brakes and new tires, a fuse went out and the headlamps needed changing - that’s it in 100,000 miles. We drove this 2,000 miles on a long weekend trip - it went 80 mph all day long with no problems and got 26 mpg, while loaded with 4 people and all their luggage. It’s was more reliable than my 2003 Mercedes was with 62,000 miles and it had 100K more. No it’s not as beautiful, or quite as comfortable or luxurious and annoyingly the stereo isn’t nearly as good, but it works, and works well.
This turned out to be the best single car I’ve ever owned. I drove it for about 100,000 miles over the next 5 years with virtually no problems. It was smooth, comfortable and looked halfway decent. It was a bargain too. I gave it to my daughter Lindsey who drove it in Texas for a few years. The transmission gave out at about 240,000 miles and Lindsey limped it back to Indy and we rebuilt it over a single weekend. She drove it a year or two after that, and something gave out in the cooling system, and she sold it off in Texas.
Funny story: In the winter of 2015 I was working consulting and it was very cold one Monday morning. I had a 7 am flight to catch and on the way to the airport I decided to swing by my office right downtown in the city and pick up some materials and print off a couple things for a meeting with a client CEO in Philidelphia that morning. I had exactly 20 minutes with no time to spare - well I parked this Lexus in a no parking zone at 5 am on the street and it was about 5 degrees outside. I jumped out - without my coat and ran inside the building and up to our office to get my materials. Things didn’t go exactly right and I ran out of time - ran downstairs - still no coat into the cold air - and then realized I HAD LOCKED THE KEYS IN THE CAR!.
I was standing on the street freezing, and had no extra time to call for help or even call for an uber - and I couldn’t leave the car in this illegal spot. I thought for a minute or two decided the fastest thing was to break the window of the car. I ran across the street, picked up a concrete block from some construction debris and ran back and lifted the block over my head and hit one of the small back windows - - and the block bounced right off the glass and hit me squarely in the forehead and almost knocked me out! Adrenaline pumping I hauled off and hit it again and this time it just cracked - two more blows for it to break. I dropped the block and reached to unlock the door.
Then something I hadn’t anticipated - the alarm went off - it was blaring up and down the street in the still cold air - worse than that, it wouldn’t let me unlock the door by reaching in the broken window. The car kept relocking itself before could open the door! I had no idea it would do that. I finally held the lock as I opened the door, grabbed my keys just as a cop car pulls onto the street a few blocks back. I didn’t have time to stop and explain that I’d just broken into my own car. I jumped into the car drove 80 MPH to the airport - with 5 degree wind coming through the broken window - nursing my aching forehead. I barely made it on the flight and I had a huge bruise on my forehead. I was too embarrassed to tell anybody how I got the bruise. I’m supposed to be a professional…
- 2008 Mazda Miata: I traded my Mercedes S for this Miata - it was just a few months old. When I was younger I always made fun of my Dad when he drove a Miata - it seemed like a chick car to me. Well, when they came out with the new ones in 2007, I liked them and drove one, and really liked the way they drove. I bought this one - it’s a stripped down “sport” model - which means it has the cheaper wheels and tires and cloth seats and not even power door locks - but it handles like a go cart and I have fun driving it on the weekends. My goal is to put the top up as little as possible while owning it.
So I didn’t like the look of those wheels and I put some new ones from 949Racing on it:
Looks much better doesn’t it? Those are 17x9.5 inch wheels with 235 40 ZR17 dunlop sport tires. The car sticks to the road like it has magnets on the bottom.
I kept the Miata for 3-4 years, but it didn’t get driven much, so I sold it off. I always was disappointed I sold it though - I liked driving it.
- 2010 Toyota Tundra: I bought this to replace the Chevy Suburban in the fall of 2010. I never trusted the Suburban after the brake lines went out - even though they were fixed. Anyway I called around to various dealers and - even though a Ford was my first choice, I ended up with this Toyota because it was the best deal. Not only did they offer the biggest discount, they gave me a decent price for the Suburban.
It’s a mid level trim 4x4 truck with what Toyota calls a Double Cab - which is not the Crew Cab. Still Toyota makes these with conventional rear doors that open like a normal door, and there’s quite a bit of room in the back seat. I was going to buy the Crew Cab, but when they finally got me in this, I thought it had plenty of room - as much as any mid sized SUV in the backseat. The kids don’t complain about it at all. And that matters, because this truck has a 6 1/2 foot bed, where the crew cab has a measly 5 1/2 foot.
It has an aluminum V8 engine that feels and sounds exactly like the ZR1 Corvette I had (shown above). In other words, it’s not lacking in the power department. It’s also got the coolest AM/FM/XM built in radio that has an USB port that I can connect my IPhone to - not that you need to - it also connects to the phone via bluetooth and it takes and receives calls very nicely.
Update 2021: The truck is now over 10 years old and still runs like new. It’s now got a few bumps and dings, but still no problems. The only thing wrong with it was a problem with the brakes, and I caused it because I put brake pads in that didn’t fit right. Other than that it just runs.
- 1966 Ford Mustang Convertible + 1965 Parts Car
In about 2012 I bought this 1966 Mustang convertible, which was literally a pile of parts in a guy’s trailer. I don’t know why I bought it, but it was cheap, and I thought I wanted to restore it. Well I did over the next many months - it probably took 2-3 years to finish it. I can’t tell you how many hours of fixing, welding sanding and buffing went into that car. I put literally every part together.
The problem was that by the time I got it done, I was a little tired of working on it. I drove it around a few times, but finally sold it for almost less than I had in it for parts. Every single guy who came to look at it picked it apart, because it didn’t have the right detailed parts on it. I got worn down and sold it too cheap - but I wasn’t really sad to see it go.
- 2005 Ford F150 - Drew and I bought this F150 truck wrecked with a salvage title in 2011 for him to drive during and after college. It had the front left suspension damaged, and needed a new fender and door. We fixed it in a couple weekends and he drove it quite a few miles for the next few years. He even fit in when he took his first job on an oil rig in Oklahoma as all the young guys had big 4x4 trucks. He sold it when he decided to go back to school in 2016 in order to get something that got good gas mileage.
The truck didn’t cost much to buy and fix, and he didn’t get a lot of money for it when he sold it, but it was a good and fairly reliable vehicle and carried all his stuff around while he was moving around in and out of college. I think it turned out to be a good lesson for Drew - he’s been very frugal about cars, and he learned to fix things rather than throw them away.
- 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Lexus ES300’s - between 2009 and about 2013 I had a number of Lexus ES300’s. The 1999-2000 cars had a specific weakness in the transmission, which failed at between 160,000 and 180,000 miles. The rest of the car was usually in good shap and very reliable, but the transmissions cost about as much to fix as the cars were worth. Well I figured out what the weakness in the transmission was and I bought several of them and fixed them and then sold them. It was a big job - about 12 hours to get the transmission in and out and a few hours to fix the transmission, but they ran real well once they were fixed. Lindsey drove one of them for awhile and we all piled in it and drove to Texas when she moved down there.
I bought a few more that were wrecked or had bad engines and fixed the transmissions to sell to other people. I don’t recall how many I had - a couple black ones, about 3 gold ones, and one really pretty blue one that unfortunately had been wrecked and wasn’t worth fixing. I liked this black one and drove it for a little while after I fixed the transmission.
- 2004 Lexus ES330 - In 2013 the green 2002 Lexus was getting a few miles on it, and it had been such a great car, I saw this black on for sale for a real great price out of Chicago. Being a fan of the cars, I went to look at it. It was nearly perfect condition with only 80,000 miles on it. The interior was good, it ran good, the outside was good and it had all the options on it. Unfortunately the miles had been turned back! - it had over 200,000 miles on it. I would have never known. I couldnt’ get my money back so I’ve kept it - and put about 50,000 miles on it over the years. It still looks and runs great. I still use it (2021) as a back up car, and even drove it to Chicago and back a few weeks ago. I can’t really sell it with the mileage problem, so I guess I’ll just keep it.
- 2006 Lexus GS300 - We had plenty of Lexus cars - most all of them had done me really well, and then I saw this All wheel drive 2006 GS300 for sale for a great price. I always liked the looks of them, and it’s supposed to be a step up from the ES cars, so I bought it. I drove it for about three years for probably 40,000 miles as my daily driver but honestly, I didn’t really like the car. It was a little smaller inside than my ES330 above and it was not as quiet and had a funny steering feel to it. I think it was supposed to feel sporty, but instead it felt unsteady to me - probably the only Lexus I’ve owned that I didn’t really care for. I ended up selling it off and kept the ES330, because I preferred driving it.
- 2002 Ford E450 Diesel Box Truck - I bought this truck as a project and also thought I could use it to haul around some of my project stuff. It had a few miles on it, and didn’t run - the front bumper was smashed, the windshield was cracked and the rear door didn’t work. I fixed the diesel engine pretty easily - it had a blown up injector - but it was really hard to work on, because there was no room to get to the engine. I had to contort myself inside laying on the floor and still there was very little room to work. I used it some - it could haul about anything and the nicest part was the walk in side door with steps. It also had a moving ramp in the back. it was a nice truck, but was a little too big for my needs, so I sold it off after a couple years.
- 2016 Lexus ES300H - Kathy put about 150,000 miles on her 2008 Camry and after eight years, we decided we needed to replace it. She liked the Camry Hybrid so much that she wanted another one just like it. Well she ended up buying this Lexus ES300H hybrid instead - it is basically a gussied up Camry, but it’s a lot nicer than one. So far we’ve had it five years and 70,000 miles without a single problem.
- 2001 Porsche 911 - A few years without a sports car and in the spring of 2016 I got the itch again. I saw this 2001 Porsche 911 Carrera for sale at a good price. It was the base model car, and one of the least desirable Porsche models. At the time was starting to get some age on it. It had a few little things wrong with it which I fixed pretty easily. I had the car for a couple years and drove it sparingly. Unfortunately the 911 is a car that needs to be driven at illegal speeds to be fun, and it’s getting harder and harder to do that. I sold it in the spring/summer of 2019 for about what I paid for it.
- 1936 Graham 116 Supercharger - Another interesting story. My 1937 Graham above had been apart for about 10-12 years, and my brother in law decided he didn’t want to put it back together. I took it back but couldn’t figure out how it went together and I hadn’t been able to find another car to look at. This car showed up in the fall of 2017 at the Auburn auction. I had seen it sell at the auction for a lot of money many years before - maybe 15 - 18 years prior just after it had been restored. It was very pretty then. Well now it was showing some wear. Plus it didn’t run right. I’m underneath the car taking pictures of the suspension when Greg says “Eric why don’t you just buy this car” - well it went really cheap, so I did.
Fast forward a couple years and my son Drew is getting married. He asks me if I can get that red Graham going for their wedding. I said sure. So I set out to make it run right - something just wasn’t working right in the engine. I ended up taking the engine apart three times, and I finally found out the problem was the spark plugs! Well I got it running just well enough to make it through the wedding. I polished it all up before hand so it looked really nice - even though it didn’t run exactly right. Well here’s the funny thing - the driver in their wedding is my friend Rick. Rick was the best man in my wedding and drove my 1937 Graham way back when…
Rick driving Drew and Cassandra in 2019
Rick driving Eric and Kathy in 1987
- 2016 Lexus RX350 - I bought this car in the summer of 2019 to replace the sold Lexus GS300. It’s fairly new and was in excellent condition. I liked the blue color. I’ve driven it for about 18 months and it’s been perfect.
- 2004 Dodge Sprinter Van - Another kind of whim buy. I’ve been watching all the videos of people converting sprinter vans into campers and I had to have one to try. I bought this one - not running of course, and got it running fairly easily. So far though I’ve put a lot of work into it just to make it reliable and still have more to do - one of the gears in the transmission slips - so I have to take the transmission out and work on it. I have a plan - we’ll have to see if I get it done. It’s really big inside - I drove it to Florida to take some things to Drew when he moved into a new house.
- 2017 Mazda Miata - In the summer of 2020 Kathy and I decided to go on a few trips. One of them was to Gatlinburg Tennessee and the Smoky Mountains. I decided I needed a convertible car and started looking at various cars. First I looked at a Porsche 911 convertible - it was too old and needed work. I finally started looking at Miatas, because I really liked the one I had 10 years ago (see the silver one above) - but the ones like it were either beat up or high priced. Then I saw this one - a couple years old - only 5000 miles on it. It was a couple hours away I looked and couldn’t tell it from a new one. We bought it one day and drove it 500 miles to Tennessee the next. They are a little small, but we found space for all our stuff and we had a great trip. We had to put the top up a few times because it was horribly hot, but most of the time we drove with the top down. It was a wonderful trip and I think this might be my favorite sports car of all time. It really is nice in every way.
