#longlistofproblemswithmycar

I have a van that hit its 20 year old birthday recently.  It has been in my family for all of those 20 years.  It is on its last legs.  Well… I probably would have considered it to be on its last legs for the past 10 years.  So who knows, really.

It does have a litany of problems, though.  Here’s a list of all of them.  Indulge me.

-The frame for the left side mirror is dislodged—the mirror works fine, but the frame just sort of hangs on by a thread.

-The driver side door’s lock sometimes does not want to actually unlock. 

-The left window takes its sweet time rolling back up—sometimes it gets stuck.  This only happens in the wintertime, which is good because that’s when I want my windows down the most.

-The top of the dashboard rattles when idle.

-The van is supposed to make a ringing noise when you turn the van off and forget to turn off your headlights.  Now it just rings all the time.

-Sometimes the rear lights stop working.

-The rear lights flash red when you brake.  Sometimes they don’t like to turn off even when you’re not braking.  Sometimes this causes the car battery to die.

-Sometimes the overhead light doesn’t turn off when you leave the car.  This results in the car battery dying.

-There are cracks in the windshield.

-Air conditioning doesn’t work.

-The tape player doesn’t work.  This is the single greatest travesty of them all.

-The windshield wipers don’t work *that* well.

-The rear windshield wipers USED to just not work.  Now it just broke off, dangling by the cord that is still attached to the van.

-The side door’s interior wall completely fell off.

-Sometimes the side door just doesn’t want to close.  There’s a trick to this, you see… but only I know it.  And it’s difficult to explain sometimes.

And today, I heard sounds coming from my engine that sounded something like the car coughing.  Which hopefully is just due to the inclement weather.  (It’d be really nice to blame everything on the inclement weather, really.)

But I guess you could argue that these flaws just add to the van’s character.  These aren’t particularly enjoyable flaws, of course, but they don’t stop me from getting to point A to point B and C and Z.  Which is what impedes my inevitable purchase of a new(er) car—since I probably won’t be able to afford anything but a used vehicle, I’m more comfortable just sticking to the car I know (flaws and all) than picking up an entirely different car with a whole history of problems that I don’t know about. 

Also, it’s *my *car.  I grew up driving in this stupid van, and I inherited it as my first vehicle.  Then abandoned it when I went off to college—only for it to welcome me back into its loving, rusting arms when I needed it again.  I have a lot of history with this heap.  I couldn’t just break up with it THAT easily, you know.

My main problem is gas mileage.  I’m lucky to hit 17 miles per gallon at the moment, and I have been privy to the slow and steady decline in the amount of usage it gets per fillup.  All of this could probably be treated and nursed to better mileage by someone who knows what he or she is doing, but it’s never going to be a vehicle that gets a whole lot out of its mileage.  I had come to terms with this.

…until yesterday, when I was in the vehicle of a friend’s when he stopped to fill his gas tank up.  I noticed that the pump stopped around 7.5 gallons, which is a little less than 10 gallons less than my car.  I asked him how many miles he got on that tank of gas.  He said he got about 350 miles.  With a tank that holds around 8 gallons.   My car holds 17 gallons.  It’d be lucky to get 300 miles.

This is the point where the image from the film Scanners of the man’s exploding head should be envisioned.

Is such a thing even possible?  A car that has THREE times the gas mileage of my old heap?  I mean, I had heard rumors about such beasts, and it would make sense that in an age where gas prices are continually rising that vehicles would be better designed to conserve fuel.  But now—I’ve seen it in the flesh.  It is real, and it is beautiful.

Obviously I need one of these.  Of course, I can’t afford one, so step one is finding additional sources of income.  Or perhaps I could just cease all spending and buy just ramen and rice for the rest of the year.  Or perhaps someone in town has a spare room in their house/apartment, and they’re so desperate for it to be filled that gosh darnit, they’re going to let me live there for free.  That is a thing that happens, right?  I could be someone’s surrogate son.  I’m good at mooching and ultimately being a disappointment.  I’d fit in with anyone.

My van?  Eh.