#dodge d50

They would pay a pretty penny for this back in the Ozarks, I thought as I attached the ratcheting come-along to its flimsy shipping hook. Maybe the College of Bad Cars would want to feature the Storm in their museum of misses. It belonged there, I believed.

I heard a crack of discarded trim panels underfoot, and turned to look behind me. It was Houston Mare, a rival automobile archaeologist from the college on the other side of the tracks. And he wasn’t alone.

Flanked on both sides by German car mechanics carrying tools I could barely recognize, he tilted his head back and laughed in triumph. I had done all the work, he explained. I had led him right there. He wanted me to turn over the Wagonback, to leave with my life.

But if you had done all the work yourself, you wouldn’t have made the mistake you made, I explained to Houston. As his face contorted in confusion, his fellow mechanics gripped their triple-square sets tighter and began looking for potential exits. Too slow, motherfuckers.

As the 4G63-swapped D50 on the other end of the come-along did a savage peel-out at the hands of my research assistant, the Wagonback bowled them over with impunity. I leapt into the Geo’s smashed passenger-side window as it tore past, and hoped that the now-dented front fenders would interchange with the coupe model.

I looked into the rear view mirror to see Houston Mare latched onto the roof rails for dear life, screaming in some half-breed mixture of German and Creole profanity. The only thing he got in response was my shit-eating grin as I violently countersteered the Storm, engaging the steering column lock, and sending him directly into a pile of recently-returned EJ25 shortblocks.