Cars I Have Owned

Cars I Have Owned

I have written about cars that I learned to drive in. I have also written about cars that I have rented. I guess that is fitting enough because some of all of that took place before I got my own vehicle.

It was the spring of 1968. I had just moved to Saskatoon and was living with my sister Loretta and her newish husband Dave in a two-bedroom apartment right beside Idlwyld Freeway on 11th St. There was a young woman there that I was determined to further acquaintance with, having been a fellow-student of hers a year earlier at Canadian Mennonite Bible College in Winnipeg. How could you do that unless you have a car?

My brother-in-law was experienced in things automotive and so we went car-shopping. I remember it coming down to a choice between 2 vehicles. One was a redone bronze 1959 Ford Sudan, I believe for $300. It was obviously it's owner's idea of a hot car. It had customized wheels and black sidewall tires which were only beginning to gain acceptance. The most unique feature about it was at that it had a button under the dash that you could engage to make sure brake lights did not operate if you were caught speeding. That way you could slow down and even turn a corner, hoping to lose the cop, especially in the dark. Maybe I was a little leery about that, being the law-abiding citizen that I am. I opted for the black and white 1961 Chevrolet Bel-Air sedan being sold by an older gentleman for $600. It was only a 6 cylinder with a 3-on-the-tree but it had a radio and nice blue interior. My brother-in-law said I was really being cautious; I had the car tested at a garage before I bought it. It needed new shock absorbers, which I shortly replaced. Being a black car with a white stripe down the side, it was not a stretch to name it "Lil’ Skunk", which I at one point painted on the rear with red.

I did have 2 motor vehicle accidents with that car. I was in a hurry to get to class at the University after being at my sister's for lunch with my brother-in-law on one occasion and ran into the side of a car that was approaching from my left at an uncontrolled intersection in the residential area. Because I was on the other vehicle's right, she was deemed to be in the wrong. I ended up against the curb on the other side of the intersection with a flat tire and leaking radiator but limped a couple of blocks farther south to a repair shop. That was only after I had gone to the door of a nearby house to call for help for the lady whose car I had run into; hers was a brand-new 1968 Mercury Montego. The other accident was really very minor. Leaving church one Sunday morning, the left corner of my front bumper met the left corner of another parishioner's bumper on the icy road, but nothing really happened to either car with how they were made in those days.

I did get to date that girl, taking her on many a date with my right arm around her, even shifting those steering wheel column gears with my free left hand as young drivers were wont to do in those days, and in fact we became engaged. However, that did not last, and neither did the car. Two-and-a-half-years later I was in a new relationship and decided I needed a new vehicle. To this day I marvel at how I accomplished that. I was a full-time university student in pre-med science working part-time as a nursing orderly at the (now Royal) University Hospital. It was a unionized position though and I was making close to $400 a month full-time equivalent, which was good pay for those days. Perhaps I had learned something from my sister and brother-in-law's experience with loans and finance companies. Dave was always buying a vehicle. I prepared a budget and went to a finance company, as those were supposedly easier to get money from. To my surprise, I was turned down. I had no option then but to go to my own bank, the Royal. I calmly presented my case and the manager gave me a loan! I believe it was for the entire price of the car, which was $2005. 

I had seen an ad for a Datsun 1200 Coupe, which was a brand-new import in those days. I went out and ordered a powder-blue model. Not long after I got a call saying that they had got a car in, but it was red, did I want it? I never thought about it until now, but my father's first new car had also been red! I said yes, then drove that four-cylinder 96 hp car through 2 major engine jobs until the clutch went in my first year of medicine in the fall of 1978. By that time it had a few small dents and was beginning to leak through the floor if we drove through puddles in the rain. Rust-proofing was obviously not in those days what it is now. Someone had run into the back when my brother was using the car on one occasion and on another when I needed a push to get it started on a very cold Winnipeg winter morning, the tow truck only added insult to injury with the rear end dents. That car went from Burns Lake in northwestern BC to Thompson in northern Manitoba, Ohio in the US and many points in between. My family, friends and I had a lot of adventures in it. Because it was so small and light and nimble we often took it off road. Once, heading back to Winnipeg after having been in Saskatoon for a Christmas visit after moving away from there, the wheel bearing in the front went on it around Yorkton. My friend Peter Froese and I had to spend the night in in ancient small hotel in the cold in Sheho before limping into Yorkton in the morning to get the bearing fixed. We hauled out my trusty old Sharp transistor radio and listened to the usual rundown of the year's hits before the New Year rang in and we retired for the night. There was not even an alarm clock or TV in the rooms in this hotel, let alone a private bathroom. They really could not do the job in Yorkton after all, but packed it well enough so that I got to Winnipeg and got it definitively repaired. I believe it had close to 200,000 miles on it when I actually sold it, to a co-worker if my memory serves me correctly. The customizing touch I used on this vehicle was white Canadian Tire pain-striping tape along the top of the fenders for an accent. When tape players became the rage, I also had a cassette player installed under the dash.

By this time, we were married and expecting a child. I was doing a fair bit of woodworking and carpentry, making furniture for our new home, hauling materials from our local co-op store. That must have been why I decided we needed a station wagon. There were still 2 car dealerships in Gladstone, Manitoba at the time, where I had begun my first medical practice. I took a new bronze colored 1979 Pontiac Le Mans wagon for a test drive and my wife and I drove to the nearer larger center of Portage la Prairie to see what they had there. I settled on a new Plymouth Volare wagon, also bronze, 6 cylinder, 4 door, automatic, with power steering and radio, for $6000. I drove back to Gladstone and returned the Pontiac with the Plymouth salesman delivering my new purchase directly to our home. Another driver from that dealership followed him to take him back. I guess that was a little nervy, using a test drive from one dealership to buy from another, although I did not have that intention to begin with; I just got a better deal, which would not be surprising in a larger center.

We may have also had in mind, buying the station wagon that we could sleep in the back in lieu of tenting when we traveled, as we did that on more than one occasion, even after we had our son. That wagon served us well for 4 years, taking us on a couple of trips to BC during that time. The coldest night in the back of the car was on one of those trips, already in October, and the Icefield Parkway between Jasper and Lake Louise. We had driven too late and found the inns on that route already closed for the season. We were on our way to visit my parents who had moved to Kelowna in 1975 so it was no longer enough just to drive to Saskatchewan, where their last home had been Swift Current. One thing I did with that vehicle was to add an aftermarket cruise control, which we found very convenient.

Four years later, what were then known as utility vehicles, now SUV's, were becoming popular. Anne was away visiting her family in Taiwan with our son, who was going on four at the time. I made up for my test drive of the past by going to the local Pontiac-Buick-GMC dealer and placing an order for a Jimmy S-10. This was the new small version of the older bigger GMC Jimmy. I was still being somewhat cautious and thrifty; I only got a 6-cylinder two-wheel drive and no radio. I knew I could get a good-enough radio/cassette player installed at a lower price from the local RadioShack dealer than what the add-on would be from the car dealer. I had been spoiled with the cruise control I had gotten on the Volare though, so had ordered that. I had also ordered 5-spoke steel wheels with wide rims and large tires; I was doing a lot of country driving to rural clinics. The Volare had come equipped with a roof rack but I added this later on our Jimmy. I often kept the spare tire up there. Obviously, theft was not that much of an issue in the country in those days. I sold the Volare wagon in the community.

I later installed silver reflective coating on the inside of the 2 large rear side windows to keep out the sun. When Anne was learning to drive at one point and we ended up in the ditch, jarring the vehicle so much that one of these windows popped out, because it had that screen on it, I had it replaced with smoked glass courtesy of the insurance company at no extra charge! I had also placed plastic silver red-centered strips down the sides as door guards. The other customizing touch I executed on this vehicle was to place parallel yellow and orange pinstriping along the top of the fender until the back of the front door windows and then up the B pillar.

This was the only vehicle I ordered from the factory. Because I had made all the choices, I obviously really liked it. It was high off the ground, had the V6, and the utility of the rear compartment again for hauling things. However, a year after we got back vehicle, our family had grown to 6! By that time we had 2 of our own children and to events cousins were living with us to go to high school. We really needed a vehicle that was larger and had 4 doors.

The minivans had just entered the market. They were very popular from the start. We had to drive all the way to Killarney to test drive the Dodge Caravan, as there were not even any available in Portage la Prairie, Neepawa, Minnedosa or Brandon! Anne stayed home with baby Anika, but I packed up the other 3 and off we went. I had just paid $13,800 for the Jimmy the year before, and I believe they wanted $16,000 for the minivan. I was not prepared to pay that much more. We ended up driving the SUV until the summer of 1987. By that time, with the number of us crowded into the vehicle's 5 seats, we were also getting tired of the heat.

By this time, Anne had already also learned to drive, with the help of the Driver Education Program run by the local high school. She needed to drive to begin to take our son Ansel to some of his activities such as skating and music lessons during the day when I was at work. We ended up buying a car that fit my definition of being somewhat sporty. It was a fastback bronze colored 1979 Dodge Arrow with a 2 L engine and floor-shift automatic. This car was made by Mitsubishi and I recall reading the popular Lemon-Aid Used Car Guide's report saying that this was one of “the best compacts that Chrysler never made;” it just sold them under their name. That helped with some of the driving issues with all 3 of the older children their activities. We bought back in 1984 and used it well until 1989. It had the radio but no cassette player; I added that later. The only further customizing I ever did with this car was photo-edited from pictures of it. By this time the mini-computer had entered our lives and I also customized the Jimmy further with that type of program.

By that time, we had moved to Brandon, having gotten somewhat stressed out with the increasing demands of being on call in a rural setting after 7 1/2 years. Harry, the male cousin of the 2, had already also gotten his Driver's License and purchased his car, a mammoth 1977 Buick Electra from a gentleman in the community! That helped with some of the family driving too. In 1987, we both got new vehicles. He was going to graduate from high school and ordered a bronze Pontiac Sunfire sedan. All of this was actually paid for by his doctor father of course.

I had meanwhile spotted a very attractive looking white wagon in the sales lot at the local Jeep-Volvo-Renault dealer. It was the 1988 Medallion 4-door, which was being reasonably favorably compared with the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry. I was getting used to the wagon/SUV type of vehicle by this point because I always seem to be carrying things in the back. We also went on enough trips so we needed luggage room. Indeed, when it came to power, interior finishing and design, it was a very comfortable car. It had a Blaupunkt stereo. It came with cruise control, and air-conditioning, a first for us. It was a 2.4 L four-cylinder, but could go up hills without downshifting. My baby brother Steven, who by this time was becoming an accomplished mechanic, said that was European design for you. The dealer added black pinstriping to the top of the fender line before I took it home. Seems the artistic creative side of me always has to do something extra with my automobiles. It is also probably me expressing individuality. Indeed, when I purchased this car, a French import, one of my professional partners commented that taking a chance on a somewhat unknown vehicle reflected my heritage of pioneer spirit. He was an English immigrant himself.

I was sad to see the Jimmy go, but a nurse with whom I worked at the Brandon Mental Health Center really wanted it. He was somewhat of a car nut himself and so I was glad to have him take it. He did not do that much with it. Externally, the most I saw was some checkered painting down the side panels in place of my door guard stripes.

I will mention here a car that I drove for 2 years even though I didn't own it. The CEO of the regional health center where I worked at the time was quite open to working with me on gaining benefits in lieu of increased salary. I was quite happy to take the use of a new the least 1981 Ford Fairlane sedan for a couple of years that reason. I used it for work, and paid back mileage if I used it for anything personal. It was somewhat of a lightweight sedan but a nice enough vehicle with 2 tone light and dark blue paint job. This was arranged because I was regularly going on out of town trips for clinics at the nearby Sandy Bay Indian Reserve as well as to the rural outposts that this 7 Regions Health Center served. On one of those occasions a large truck swerved to miss some Canada Geese that were walking across the highway and dented my front end, as I had pulled out to pass him just before this happened. I never had a worse accident than that with it. A more upsetting episode with it though was when I spun out and ended up in the ditch during one of those ice storms that the Prairie can be famous for. Hardpacked ice on top of the snow from the rain by that time left a linear mark behind the rear wheel on the fender and also damaged the will cover. Somewhere in getting in and out of the car and the tow truck when it came to pull me back onto the road I also lost a good pair of very soft leather gloves. I chose to stay at the local motel in Shoal Lake that night before driving on home in that storm.

It will have become apparent to the reader by now that, apart from both my and Anne's first vehicles, all of our purchases have been of new cars. The main reason for that is that I am not much of a mechanic and so never wanted to take risks with used cars. I am also not really that much of a risk-taker, in my own eyes (ask my financial advisor), in spite of my colleague's comment above. The other reason was that I could afford it. It really wasn't about trying to keep up with the Joneses though. As a Christian of Anabaptist persuasion, I do try to maintain some level of simple living and so have never indulged in getting anything very expensive, luxurious or exotic when it came to an automobile, even if I could afford it. Anne had always been partial to German vehicles because she knew they were well-crafted, and for the longest time opposed to Japanese vehicles, and at one point I even went to a BMW dealership to look at one for her, but that is as close as I've ever gotten to getting anything more than standard type vehicles.

What we did get in 1989 when the Dodge seemed to have run its course was a brand-new silver Volkswagen Jetta. This was Anne's choice. We had often seen it advertised as a good alternative to more expensive German touring vehicles. For $16,000 we got an automatic with stereo, power steering and brakes, air-conditioning and cruise control. Anne/we (both Ansel and Anika learn to drive on this car) drove that car until we decided to downsize to one vehicle prior to moving to BC in 2005. By this time the doors and fender panels had become quite rusty and so our handy neighbor, Don Johnston, replaced them with some maroon doors and right front fender panel. In her simplicity and thriftiness, Anne did not bother to get them painted silver to match the rest of the car. There was a somewhat popular movement among older women at this time called the Red Hat Society. I teased Anne that she was starting the Red-Door Society. She responded that made it easier to find her car in the parking lot versus all those other silver cars. I couldn't argue with that.

We used this on family trips sometimes instead of the Medallion too. I am not sure that we ever took it to BC but we did take it to the Rockies in 1991 when my brother-in-law and his family joined us on a vacation when my father-in-law and their adopted sister came to visit us. We also took it to Montréal when Ansel started university there. He was helping to drive by that time too. The front transmission went on it when we were in Ottawa and so we had a major repair job at Montréal by the time we got there. We never had a major accident with it though. Ansel ran into the curb once and so we had to replace a wheel. One time when we were returning from a cycling outing in the Brandon Hills I had forgotten that we had the bike on the rack on the roof. Needless to say, it met the carport when we turned off the street with the result that there were some residual scrapes and dents on the roof that we never did repair other than to use the factory-supplied silver paint to touch it up. The other notable incident with it was that when I started my psychiatry residency. We had driven it to Winnipeg and parked it in my stall at the apartment I was living in. When we went back down to use the car again, we noticed that the rear quarter window was broken (that's always a telltale sign) and my summer jacket from the back seat was gone. We then realized the stereo, which was one of those you could insert and remove, was gone. We realized we were in a part of Winnipeg that was prone to theft so we did not leave the stereo in again after we got it replaced. As usual, thieves are not always smart: the VW stereo is coded in such a way that it is useless to anyone who steals it.

Anne sold the Jetta to the wife of a former pastor when we moved to BC. She was happy to have it just as it was and I don't think she ever did change the door colors. I had never owned a VW beetle or a bus which were very popular with my generation, but this made up for it. A sports car that I had wanted when I was younger was also a VW, the Karmann Ghia.

By the summer of 2006, the Medallion was looking like it was going to need more repairs than what I was prepared to put into it at that time. I had one accident with it already too. Ansel and I had been going to a family gathering at Crows Nest Pass when we ran into deer even before we got to Virden, at dusk, which is typical. The grille and bumper were somewhat displaced and the left headlight was left dangling. I think the deer was somewhat hamstrung but it disappeared into the bush. We drove slowly into Virden after trying to tuck the light back into place and borrowed some electric tape at the Shell there to hold everything together for the rest of the trip. I was able to get a secondhand bumper, grill and light to replace everything when I returned. I was happy enough to replace the bumper though because on a very cold winter day I had once run the corner of it into a frozen snow bank at Harry's place in Winnipeg when I was staying there attending a conference. The result had been a large stellate crack as a reminder of that experience of not making a tight enough turn into a narrowly-cleared driveway. The important role of electronics in cars by this time also caused us some grief with this car. On more than one occasion it stopped dead on the highway or elsewhere. After a number of visits to the garage and some expenses, we discovered that the problem was a $16 oxygen sensor!

I went car shopping. Ever since my grandfather's Dodge and our Dodges and Plymouths as a family growing up, I have been partial to the Mopar brand. I ended up signing a deal on a white 2005 Dodge Stratus. I got it for $17,000 because it was new but still a year old on the car lot. It had a radio cassette stereo, cruise control, air-conditioning (we had that first on the Medallion and once you have that you never want to do without it, just like the cruise control - how we get spoiled!), power steering and brakes and was a 2.4 L four-cylinder front wheel drive, just like the Medallion. I was going to pay cash for it but Anne had a better idea. She was very much my money manager by this time. We went back to the dealer and put as much of it as we could on our credit card to get the Airmiles! She also felt I had stretched our budget enough at that point and so the car did not get immediately licensed and I continued to drive the Medallion and Jetta while it sat in the driveway. However, when I came home from work on my 50th birthday, the proverbial pink flamingo was taped to the rear deck, although it was a higher-quality straw creation from 10,000 Villages, and the car was licensed. Did I customize this car? Not too much. Just black pinstriping along the fenders and over the slightly raised portion of the rear deck to give it that slightly racy look.

We never had any accidents with the Dodge. It took us on trips from BC, particularly taking Ansel to his first year of university at UBC, to Montréal, taking Anika to her first year at McGill, where Ansel was already enrolled by that time. On that trip our gas tank punctured from a rock in the construction zone just outside of Thunder Bay so we were held up their somewhat while the gas tank was repaired. It gave us a chance to become more acquainted with that town and even attend Sunday morning mass in a nearby largely Italian Catholic Church.

In the summer of 2005, we moved to BC. Anika was home for the summer and she, Anne and I packed up the car headed out on a Friday afternoon. Ansel was busy moving from Montréal to Toronto, ostensibly to have a better chance of finding a job. The moving truck had come and picked everything else up and the house was clean and ready for its new owners, who were incidentally the pastor family whom I and several others on our church's search committee had located. Some might say that was a conflict of interest, but we gave him a good deal.

We were on our 2nd day out, traveling through the heat between Brooks and Calgary when the car died. There are frequently silver linings to clouds if you see them. On this occasion it was the fact that we were barely half-an-hour's drive from my cousin Heidi's farm home at Rosemary. We already had cell phones in those days. We called her and she came and picked up an Anne and Anika while I called a tow truck and went with it in the car to Brooks. Heidi picked me up from there. We ended up having to stay over the weekend. In fact, the car did not really get repaired until we put some pressure on the manager finally on Thursday when we returned from BC. We had rented a van to complete the trip in the meantime, because we had to take possession of our new home. We left Anika in the apartment to begin to settle in. On our return to Alberta we stayed overnight in a motel in Brooks where the Dodge was. I went out and purchased a Consumer Report Car Guide to read while we waited for the car to be repaired.

In any case, with it looking like the Dodge might be in need of replacement, I was eyeing the new Nissan Altima and Mazda 6, both of which featured very nice designs. I was not about to get the top-rated Camry because they were not rated that high for “driving” and one of our best friends already had one. So, with Anne's left-brain opinion being taken into account once she read the ratings, the only other logical, not design-influenced, choice was the 2nd-place Honda Accord. That was really fine with me because it has always been seen as more of a driver's car than the Camry in any case. However, that purchase was not made until we settled into our new home in BC and cleared up a number of financial situations with respect to the pension fund that had accumulated since I had begun to work in health and Manitoba. Then we would be ready to buy the car for cash.

It was thus not until just before Christmas of 2005 that we ended up at the Richmond Auto Mall's Richmond Honda dealer. We had taken advantage of the BC Medical Association's car purchasing benefit to find out what the price should be on a Honda Accord and put that forward as our cash offering. It was accepted.

What we came away with after trading off our Dodge for something like $1200 was a new sapphire blue Honda Accord sedan with a 2.4 L four-cylinder engine for around $28,000.  With respect to color, we had to wait to get a car from a different dealer, but I was not going to have one of those gold, silver, gray or black sedans I had discovered were the choice of the increasingly predominating Chinese segment of Richmond society, particularly in the area where we lived. My individualism again. I chose the extra package with sunroof - now that we were in beautiful BC with its mountains high on every side once we left the Fraser Valley, I wanted to get the most out of the views, steel ("Mag” type) wheels and leather wrapped steering wheel, stopping short of heated leather seats for another $3000. If I had lived without car warmers for most of my career in Manitoba, let alone remote car starters, which were coming into vogue, I certainly did not need heated seats in Greater Vancouver with its milder climate. This was the first car, believe it or not, that we ever had with power windows and doors. We had always been somewhat leery of those in case we ended up in a situation where we couldn't get out of the car because we couldn't get them open. We also had our first CD player along with our radio. As we discovered later though, it was just a little behind the curve so as not to be an MP3 player. Style-wise, I had not been crazy about what I consider the hanging taillights of the previous couple of years of models of Honda Accord but was quite pleased with the large bright wedge taillights of the 2006 model, particularly with their LED illumination, which was the up-and-coming thing in automotive lighting.

When we moved to BC, we chose a place to live from which I could generally walk to work. As a result, even after 7 1/2 years, by which time the average car has hundred and 40,000 km on it, I don't even have 100,000 on the Honda. Other than some small trips down to the US, it has not been outside of BC though. My highway driving days have sure changed. I find myself flying a lot more.

I have had no issues with the Honda. Somebody put a dent in my trunk and a hole in the adjacent light once in my parking lot at work, but I got that fixed. Our dear son backed up without enough due caution on one point in an indoor parking lot and took the driver's side mirror off and scraped the door quite badly, which we again managed to repair. So, we are still driving it and may continue to do for so for some time yet.

As I review this "auto"-biographical note, I see that I have owned 6 cars in 46 years, with the first used Chevy being around for the shortest period of time - less than 2 years. Three of those cars I drove for 9 years, and this last one is coming up to its 8th year. I really can't be accused of changing cars too often. Two of them would have been identified as Japanese, another being made in Japan, one a hybrid French- American (the Medallion, first sold by American Motors, then Chrysler) and only 3 being North American. I have never owned a Ford product. There was the two-year lease to make up for that. Anne's cars she/we drove for 4 years and 16 years for the Arrow (Japanese/American) and Jetta (in German) respectively. She obviously breaks the record in our family with that Jetta.

What might be next? If there is another car, it will probably be a smaller one, perhaps a Honda Civic, and quite possibly also a hybrid. I am not sure the environment will be ready for an entirely electric vehicle for me in my time, but that would be environmentally a good move to make, I think.

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