After Selling My Mini, Reflecting On The Cars I’ve Owned

Kind of sad today. I sold my Mini. Make that my beloved Mini. I shouldn’t be so sad, as I’ll be getting a new one when I get to the “other side” next week, back home to California. Still, some cars have souls, and I’ll really miss my baby. And that got me thinking about the cars I’ve had over the years. Some were special; some got me by — lots of memories with all of them.

I’ve heard it said many times that especially for Southern California, you’re defined by what you drive. Perhaps. For my first cars there, I drove things more out of circumstance than choice. But that, of course, did define me. Not much money and picking up whatever I could afford or get handed down to me.

My very first car was a 1972 Ford Pinto Wagon. If most of my possessions weren’t waiting for me in the Port Of Long Beach right now, I’d scan an image of her. She was a her — Elouize, as I eventually named her. I know, silly. But she made a kind of wheezing sound, and my friends and I took to calling her “weezy” for short. Then I found the personalized plate of Elouize wasn’t taken, so I grabbed it.

I think I paid about $600 for Elouize, all earned while working in high school in a Carl’s Jr. for $3.35 per hour. Eventually, I saved enough to buy some type of car. My father went with me to check out some at a local dealer. It came down to a choice between two. I can’t remember what the other one was. We went for the Pinto because, as I’ll never forget, he said “I can probably fix anything that goes wrong with this.”

Things did go wrong. All the time. And he did fix it many times, which is another story for another time about a son and father who were never very close at least bonding to some degree through this car. See, the rule was that if he was going to fix it, I was damn well going to stand there while he did it. I stood for a long time, never pointing the flashlight in the right places but picking up a few things about auto repair. Just a few. I even carried a toolbox for years in the various cars I owned, for small repairs I could do. But he was a natural mechanic while machinery to me still is largely a magic thing where repairs are better left to the pros.

At one point, she was out of commission for several months after I ignored the red engine warning light that was flickering. Something went wrong with the oil system, and I burned the engine out. More saving to buy the new engine; more waiting by my father as he and a friend eventually got it in. Along with actual gauges to show me oil pressure and temperature, rather than “idiot” lights that an idiot young teenage boy had ignored with all his “rippin’ and a runnin’,” as my dad used to say.

Well, me and my friends did go everywhere in my car. Late night drives; out to lunch during school breaks; ski trips to Big Bear; trips all over the place. It’s a miracle I’m alive, I think, looking back. I can remember passing another car on a trip back from the mountains but not really having the power to overtake it. Suddenly, we were side-by-side while an oncoming car went past me on the other side. Or the time I unknowingly drove through a red light, through a busy intersection. I count my blessings.

Elouize had these wood panels that probably looked great when she was new. They’d faded out over the years. But I’d make them all look new again for a few days by spraying Endust furniture polish on them. And I’d wax what remaining paint was left on her, to make her look good. She was beat up, old, but she was still mine.

Elouize had soul. I had many, many good times with her. I even lost something in her, cliché as it is, I know. But oddly enough, I lost track of what happened to her in the end. Around my second year of college, she started having problems again. I took her home and started driving my stepsister’s car, which she’d left when she started driving something new. I think my dad eventually sold Elouize to someone else. I’d be surprised if she was still going today.

Still, I’d stepped up. Now I was driving an Audi Fox. She was a sweet little car with a sunroof. A sunroof! Plus, my stepsister had left No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom in the cassette player, so I had really good tunes.

The Audi had a big problem, however. Everything electrical started breaking. The starter switch went out. The electric engine fan when out. Assorted other things broke down. Eventually, I rewired both the starter and the fan. To start my car, you’d put the key in to unlock the steering. Then you’d push a button to turn the engine over (and when the button broke, I’d just tap the two bare wires together). Then you’d flip a rocker switch to turn the fan on, so the car wouldn’t overheat.

Once I loaned the car to a friend of mine. I forgot to tell him about the fan. He headed out and a short time later had steam coming out of the radiator. Oops!

Finally, the Audi died altogether. I remember having a company come to my apartment complex to tow it away. And it was on to another hand-me-down, an old Chevy Chevette that my dad used to drive.

I think the unique feature of the Chevette was how the passenger side door has been bashed in an accident (not mine!). It shut, but there was a small gap at the bottom, where you could see the road as you drove along. I once did an interview and lost all my notes because of that hole. The notepad slid off the seat and managed to drop through it!

The Chevette didn’t last too long — maybe about a year. The clutch went out at one point while I was driving, causing me to discover that the theory about being able to shift gears based on the engine revs was something you could put into practice. Another time, one a trip with a friend out to Tahoe, we broke down out near Placerville. With my father nowhere near, I discovered for the first time the liberating feeling of paying someone to fix your car. I found the part we needed at an auto shop in town. They installed it for like $60 while we ate breakfast. My days of holding flashlights largely ended then.

Still, the Chevette’s time had come. I was no longer in college. I had a real job working for the LA Times, and it was time to buy a new car. My first new car. Being a child of the oil crisis (you know, the 70s oil crisis), I thought we’d be out of gas by the time I was able to drive. So, I was relieved gas was still available, but I wanted to have the most mileage I could get. Plus, I still didn’t have much money. So I went for a Ford Festiva, a tiny little thing that got like 50 mpg.

If my first car was freedom, the Festiva was even more so. I was liberated from having to worry about car repair for the first time since I’d been driving, about 7 years at that point. I no longer needed to have a toolbox in the trunk. The car simply did not breakdown.

Probably my best memory of the Festiva was when my wife and I drove her to Alaska. We didn’t need a 4×4 to navigate the Alaskan Highway. The Festiva was so small that she drove around the holes!

Having gotten married, eventually we needed a second car. And that brings me to the same feelings I’m having about selling my Mini today. See, my second car was a Honda Del Sol. More sporty-looking than a sports car, it was still great. Just a two seater, with a roof you could remove and store in the trunk. And even when you did that, there was still room in the trunk for camping gear.

I simply loved that car. Taking the top down and shooting along PCH, shooting up the freeway, going along the coast to Big Sur. It was all great. Plus, it was a Honda. If the Festiva was dependable, the Honda was bulletproof.

It broke my heart to sell her when I moved to England. I was saying goodbye to Southern California, and I was saying goodbye to a car that was so suited to Southern California. I really, really did not want to give her up.

Over in England, life quickly changed with our first son on the way. Moving from London after about a year from arriving, we needed a car — and it couldn’t be a two seater. The Honda CRV was out, a 4×4, but an economical one. It seemed a perfect choice. And it was.

The CRV was dependable. And being out on the Salisbury Plain, I’d even occasionally take it off-road. In fact, one of my best memories in that car was when there was a huge traffic jam on all the roads in the area, due to an accident. The boys and I went cross-country to get to nearby Amesbury, me following some of the tank trails and being tilted at 45 degrees at some points. The Honda plowed on.

About three years ago, we traded the Honda in for a Volvo XC90. The best I can say is that it was economical and we often did use all seven seats. But ours had many mechanical problems, never really felt it had a soul like the CRV, and I wasn’t sorry to see it go.

Aside from the 4×4, we eventually needed a second car. The new Minis had been out for about a year or two by then, and I had my heart set on one. So did Lorna. And it was so close, until I showed her an article about a remake of the Citroen 2CV. Here’s what those used to look like, an old French car with a fabric roof that you’d roll up. The remake was the Citroen Pluriel, a convertible. She’d been in the 2CV as a little girl and got nostalgic about wanting the remake. And so we got it.

I never got over not having the Mini, though. To console me, I was given no end of Mini products. Hats. Remote control cars. A book about them. Nothing helped, and I grew to hate that Pluriel more and more. It was a plasticky thing with no power, no personality, just bleech.

One day I joked again about how we should dump that horrible car and get a Mini. “Yeah, we should,” she said. I was on the web by the time we got home. I’d found a Mini at a nearby dealership, and within a few day, she was mine. She fit like a glove.

My best times in the Mini have probably been driving very fast on the small, awful roads just around our area. They’re barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other, and this being England, the concept of roads going in a straight line only happens where “modern” roads intersect with those the Romans built 2,000 years ago. But we do have a nice long straight stretch where I could really open her up on. Plus, the Mini suits the curves here. She feels right on them. And over the past few weeks, the barest tap on the accelerator would make her jump for me. It was like she was saying, “Let’s go for it.”

OK, maybe overtaking an unmarked police traffic car a few weeks ago wasn’t the best idea. But at least we went out in style. I’m going to miss my baby, driving her on the road here. In the US, a Mini Clubman awaits me. I know I’ll love it, too, but I’ll miss my first Mini and driving her on the roads here just as I missed driving the del Sol when I left California.