The Holy Grail

The barn find, what every car enthusiast hopes for……

Well maybe an old Mercedes diesel isn’t exactly what you think of but it was awesome to me. This car was owned by a friend of mines family, I bought it from his grandfather, a man I affectionately call Daddy Bob. Daddy Bob is an old time southern man and is truly a trip to be around, he tried his best to talk me out of buying the old beat up car, as he put it “the damn brakes don’t work, I tried to have them fixed and they couldn’t figure out why they didn’t work so I parked the POS!” he did that six years before I came to see the car. Daddy Bob continued and proclaimed “it would take me 3000 dollars to get that thing runnin, cause mercedes are expensive.” With that comment I convinced him to let me buy it for what it was worth in scrap, 350 dollars. Long story short a fresh battery, ten dollars worth of farm diesel, courtesy of Daddy Bob, and a couple hour later I had a running Mercedes diesel, I waved bye to Daddy Bob and I drove it home that day. The brakes turned out to be a 45 dollar master cylinder and a simple tune up. And don’t let the picture fool you, this is how it looked later that day.

Pretty good eh? I used the merc for my first year of college here at UNCC, it never once failed me, a harrowing trip to krispy kreme at 1 in the morning with no lights of any kind led me to replace the alternator belt. The car left me for 2500 dollars with a little over 1200 invested, its not to say I regret selling the car, but I do miss my small schoolbus. To me a barn find does not have to be a rare classic worth thousands of dollars, it can be as simple as a car that brings you joy for pennies on the dollar.

The First Car

It used to be that teenagers all over the U.S. would wait with bated breath for the day they would get their license, the day would be even greater with the addition of their very own car. While it would be a fantasy to get the newest Mercedes or mustang, to many that wouldn’t be necessary, four wheels and a running engine were more than enought to supply what we all wanted… freedom. I say used to because several studies that i’ve recently read said that most teenagers would just as soon walk or ride a bike than drive a car, also that many teenagers aren’t even getting their license’s untill a few years after their sixteenth or eighteenth birthday. This to me is astounding, I couldn’t wait for my license and I enjoyed every second of choufering my mother and father around, they could’ve slapped a funny hat on me and called me Jeeves for all I cared, driving was what I had lusted at for years now.

Specifically the thought of driving one vehicle, an ’83 el Camino with faded blue interior and paint and every teenage boys dream, a V8 engine! We’d bought the truck two years prior to me getting my license from a man named J.B. Woodard. J.B.lived in a town 5 miles away bought the truck brand new from a Rocky Mount dealer in 1983, and drove it until the day he sold it to my father, although he didn’t drive it much as it only had 70k miles on it. Needless to say I set off tinkering right away, although my father would call the tinkering needlessly breaking things, but where I had a mild automotive itch before this truck turned it into a full blood obsession. I still own my truck and have no intentions of selling it, a truly stupid amount of my fathers and my money has been put into my little elco, from a full paint job, a full interior redo, custom gauges, and many other things. Its currently sitting at right around 110k miles on a very tired 305 that in even in its hayday made about as much power as a small motorcycle, but plans are in the works to swap in a late model chevy truck motor to liven things up a little bit!

The Daily Driver

The Daily Driver, a staple in everyone’s driving diet, mine is a 2003 SVT Focus. A car that Ford brought to the US to compete with the indomitable Honda Civic the focus was loved in Europe and did well in the US. In 2002 Ford decided to let the Special Vehicle Team have a go at it. A sport tuned suspension along with a six speed Getrag manual transmission and a 170 horsepower 2.0 liter Zetec engine (40 more than the standard focus)  the SVT Focus was a front runner in the “hot hatch” market for its three year run. Quicker around the track than its main competition, Honda’s Civic SI, and could out turn the more powerful Volkswagen Golf GTI, and boasting a highway mpg rating of 26mpg, more like 30 in my experience, these things combined with its sub 20,000 dollar price tag led the SVT to be highly praised in many automotive presses. Sadly the SVT was replaced in 2005 with the facelift of the Focus line.

Autmotive lust

Welcome to my little automotive blog. Some people want the newest Iphone, or the freshest close, for me it has always been old cars.

Most of my automotive experience is based around my buying, trading, selling on several cars for myself and with various friends. I also have personally kept many for my personal use before selling them. I gained this automotive lust from my father, Dad has owned close to 50 cars throughout his life and he currently owns 7 cars (my sisters and my two are in his name, however this is just for our time at college) and at one time we had a total of twelve cars at our house.  The cars in my family are nothing special to other people, but mean the world to us. Vehicles like my fathers ’69 el Camino are not high on most people desirable classics list but this truck is special to us. It was bought by my grandfather in 1979 with a caved in fender and a blown up motor for 300 dollars. Since then it has had two more motors and logged countless miles as my grandfathers and fathers workhorse, daily driver, and now play-toy.