Model	Photos
(Internet photo)	1948 Ford Deluxe, two-door with flathead V8 and three-speed on the column. This was never intended to be my car. The car was worn out when my dad bought it for $100 in 1960, when I was 16. He hoped to find a friend to cut the body off and make a dune buggy out of it, like the one below. But I fixed it up and started driving it. For three years I drove it back and forth from San Diego to college in Riverside, to summer camp near Idyllwild, and to my girlfriend's house in Los Angeles. Because it overheated in the summer, I often drove it up long grades with the heater on and the windows down. When the oil pressure dropped to zero on my way home one day, I sold it to a high school student, who rebuilt the engine, did body work, and painted it in school shop class. When it was finished, he drove out the driveway in front of the school, right in front of a car, and totaled the Ford with less than a tenth of a mile on it. (Photo is from internet. My car was not this nice.)
(Internet photo)	1961 Pontiac Tempest, 2-door, 4-cylinder, rear-wheel drive, front engine with manual transmission in rear. Lime green bottom with white top. After driving Buicks and Chevy station wagons (1956, 1957, 1961) during the 1950s, my dad bought this car when I went to boarding college and he no longer needed a five-passenger car. It was the only new car I ever knew him to buy (except for a pick-up truck or two after I was out of the house.) In 1964 he gave me the Tempest as a wedding present. These cars had a short life span due to the flexible drive shaft that joined the front engine and rear transaxle. I am sure there is not one on the road today. I sold the car after driving it less than a year. (Internet photo)
(Internet photo)	1963 VW, red with cloth sunroof, exactly like this photo. As soon as I unloaded the Tempest I bought this one-year-old car from a distant relative and fellow student at La Sierra College, Gary Blount. He had picked it up at the Los Angeles dock for about $1500 and sold it to me for $1300. This was the first car I ever bought. The first summer I had it, friends at Pine Springs Ranch borrowed it a couple times to hunt rabbits -- shooting from a standing position with the sunroof open. My wife and I made three trips across the country in this car, and it was our only car for two years in Michigan. These cars usually needed a valve job every 30,000 miles of hard driving, and this one was no exception. During the winter in Michigan I mounted snow tires in the back and carried perhaps 50 pounds of books behind the back seat for weight on the rear tires. The big American V8s were still more stable on icy freeways. But it was a fun and reliable car.
(Internet photo)	1967 Ford Fairlane 500, 289 V8 with automatic transmission, 2-door hardtop, red with black vinyl top and black vinyl interior, exactly like this photo. Ok, I had finished college and seminary and in a couple weeks I would arrive at my first full-time job. But I needed a grown man's car to pull a trailer to Washington state and to do my pastoral visitation. The associate pastor from Berrien Springs, Mich., had urged interns to follow his example: buy the biggest 4-door Buick with the lowest amount of chrome. Always get battleship gray; that way you will have a great car, but no one can accuse you of pride. But there was another theory floating around among some pastors: forget what you like, or what other people think. As a pastor you will buy a new car every year so buy one that you can sell quickly at a good price. The latter theory meant one had to drive great-looking cars, so I adopted that view. About a week before leaving the seminary in Michigan, I bought this, my first new car ($2400). I mounted a trailer hitch on it, put air boosters in the rear springs and pulled all our belongings to Seattle. We drove this car until we moved to Texas in 1974. I sold it for $500. Brakes never worked entirely right.
(Internet photo)	1971 Ford Pinto. 2-door, four cylinder, stick shift on floor. Red. During the two years that I pastored full-time in Bellevue, Washington, the Fairlane 500 was our only car. But when I became Oregon Conference youth director -- a job which required me to drive all over the state, often staying over night -- we needed a second car, ideally one that got good gas mileage. My employer had a fleet purchase arrangement with the local Ford dealer so I bought this Pinto at a dealership in Portland for $1600. I think they cost about $2,000 retail. These cars were known as gutless slugs in California, but in Oregon, where there were no air conditioners or smog controls to drain power from the engine, these cars were actually kind of fun to drive. It reminded me a little of my VW. I sold it a year later for $1600. Shortly before I sold this car, the steering column collapsed for no reason. When I looked for a good one in a wrecking yard, I found about a dozen cars and all but one had a collapsed column.It was actually pretty clear that no matter where a Pinto was hit, just about everything collapsed from bumper to bumper.
(Internet photo)	1972 Ford Pinto 3-door hatchback. Red. By 1972 the corporate fleet price of the Pinto had increased to $1800, but about six months after I bought it I sold it for $1750, so it was still nearly free for me. This one had the new hatch-back rear, which was more convenient, and it had some kind of sport package with wide tires. During steady rain in the Southern Oregon mountains I got a ticket for going around a 35 mph corner at 70 mph. I am serious, the Oregon versions of this car, with stick shift, were not horrible like their California cousins.
(Internet photo)	1972 Datsun 240Z. Silver. In 1972 my serious wheeling and dealing started. 1971 was the first year Zs were made but my first one was a 1972. Here is the deal: in California the waiting list for these cars was about 6-12 months and dealers asked large premiums. The number of 240Zs shipped to dealers was based on the total number of all Datsuns sold by each dealer. In Oregon the demand was only slightly less, but one Oregon dealer had a serious surplus of 240Zs. Because of a fleet deal for Adventist employees, pastors came from five northwestern states to buy Datsun 210s and 510s from Wayne Dean Motors in Tillamook, Oregon, so he had more Zs than he knew what to do with. I bought the first one for $3800 in Tillamook, Oregon, and sold it six months later -- the day the ad appeared -- for $3800. So it was free for me. In Oregon there was no sales tax, and licenses were $20 for two years. And I spent nothing on tires, battery, etc. Great car, and free! These cars came with 12,000 mile factory warranties, so I sold them when they reached 11,500 miles. That assured the buyers they had 500 miles to discover any problem and have it fixed.
(Internet photo)	1972 Datsun 240Z. Silver. In the middle of 1972 I bought my second 1972 Z-car, another silver one. Again, I bought and sold it for $3800. I advertised it in the Sunday edition of the Portland Oregonian, and sold it to the first person who looked at it. I made no changes in either of these cars, driving them with the original factory wheel covers as shown in this photo from the internet.
(Internet photo)	1973 Datsun 240Z. Green. In late 1972 Wayne Dean, the Tillamook, Oregon, dealer, informed me that the 1973s had arrived at the dock in Portland, so I quickly advertised my second Z-car in the Portland Oregonian, sold it the day the ad appeared, and expected to drive to Tillamook the next day to pick up the 1973. But before any cars were delivered to anyone, the U.S. government declared that the 1973 240Z did not meet new air quality standards. The dealer loaned me a Datsun 510 which I drove for several months. I went out to the Port of Portland several times a week to see if any progress was being made on modifying the cars. When I finally took delivery on the 1973 240Z I found it to be a very good car, but the throttle was not smooth because the new standards required a different butterfly valve in the carburetor. In January 1974, when I became Texas Conference youth ministries director, my wife and daughter and I drove this car to Texas. The car had cost $4200 and now I had to spend another $600 to have air conditioning installed. After a few months I was informed by the Tarrant County Salvage Pool that I was high bidder on a Porsche 911, and I had only a couple days to come up with the cash. So I drove this Datsun to a used car lot in Ft. Worth and sold it to the dealer -- bald tires and all -- for $4200. So I had lost the cost of the AC. Most people in Texas had never seen a 240Z. People turned their cars around and gawk at this sleek sports car. "Wow, the speedometer goes to 160 mph," one college student exclaimed to his friend.
(Actual car)	1971 Porsche 911. Sportomatic. According to the Tarrant County Salvage Pool, this car had been stolen, then recovered after insurance had already replaced it. They said my bid of $4200 tied with another bid, but mine came in a day earlier. It had 40,000 miles on it and ran great -- most of the time. These cars are basically bullet proof, but it did take me several months to sort out a problem with silt in the gas tank and the CD (ignition module) died. My territory was most of the state of Texas, and I had been spoiled by the Datsuns which cost me nothing and never broke down. I had been buying a new car and warranty at least once a year. So I sold the less-than-totally-reliable Porsche. Across the rear deck of this 911 was the word, "Sportomatic," which meant that it had a manual 4-speed transmission, but a torque converter and an automatic clutch. It actually worked quite well. There was no clutch pedal. When you touched the gearshift lever with your hand, the manual clutch automatically disengaged, then re-engaged when you removed your hand. The rate of engage-disengage depended upon your rate of acceleration. I should note here that it was in this car that I grew accustomed to driving at triple-digit speeds for hours at a time. It felt a lot like down-hill sking. As I accelerated I could see the nose pressed lower and lower for a true road-hugging experience.
(Internet photos)	1975 Datsun 280Z. I had skipped the problem-plagued 1974 260Z (they often stalled and refused to start because of vapor lock), and jumped now to the 1975 280Z. It was more expensive (close to $6000, I think) but could cruise for hours at triple-digit speeds, where the front end on the 240Zs got light above about 80mph. This difference was due to a redesigned front end, including a heavier bumper and a front air dam. For one person driving hundreds of miles per day on two-lane roads this was truly a great touring car. When I moved to Oregon at the end of 1975, I sold the car to a friend in California for about $5000.
(Actual car)	1949 Ford Dune Buggy. Flathead V8 engine with 3-speed stick shift on floor. This dune buggy was built in the early 1960s by Jim Potter. At the time, hundreds of these roamed the Southern California deserts on weekends. Jim removed the body from a 1949 Ford panel truck, then cut the frame in half and shortened it enough so you could reach from the inside of the front wheel to the inside of the back wheel. The drive shaft was shortened to about 24 inches. When he made a second one, he sold this to my dad, who used it in the deserts for several years before it quit running. While I was in Texas I talked my dad out of his broken dune buggy. The old flathead V8 did not work, so I bought a wrecked 1966 Ford Fairlane 500 with 289 engine and paid a local shop to weld supports to mount the newer engine and automatic transmission. It never worked very well because the automatic transmission was longer than the original, so I had to shorten the driveshaft to about 12 inches, which made the universal joints bend too sharply to deliver much power. But I used the buggy as a utility vehicle at summer camp. When I moved back to Oregon I took the buggy with me. When I moved to California, I left the buggy at the Gladstone campgrounds for Bj Christensen to use. Before I got it, it had been licensed in California, but I was never able to transfer or renew the registration.
(Actual car)	1970 Oldsmobile 98, 2-door hardtop. White with blue vinyl top. When we arrived in Texas in January 1974, my wife needed to replace the Ford Fairlane 500 we had sold in Oregon, and she wanted a real car, a big one like the Texas people drove. Our dentist sold us this Oldsmobile. It probably had about 100k more miles than he said it did, but after we replaced the brakes and the head gasket and rebuilt the heads, it gave us lots of service. Lower photo: to get to the H.E.B. Foundation Camp in central Texas (Uvalde) you have to drive a mile or two up the Frio River. Stones placed on the solid rock bottom act like buoys to help drivers avoid deeper areas.
(Actual car)	1976 Audi Fox, 2-door coupe. Tan, 4-cylindar, AC, 4-speed. During my 2 years in Texas I had formed the habit of driving one or two hours at a time on the open roads at triple digit speeds and I figured I better buy a much slower car when I got to Oregon or I would end up in an Oregon jail or without a driver's license. This 4-cylinder Audi Fox seemed like just what I needed. But I soon found that it also performed very well between 90 and 100 mph. But, of course, I did drive it a lot slower most of the time because there are too many cars on the road in Oregon and California for those high speeds to ever be safe -- for me or anyone else on the road. I put about 100,000 trouble-free miles on this car, before selling it to a friend at the office.
(Internet photo)	1974 Super Beatle. As soon as we arrived (by air) back in Oregon, we needed two new cars. I bought the Fox for business travel, and my wife bought an early 1970s VW Super Beetle, I don't remember which year for sure. It was just like new and ran great. When we moved to California nine months later we took the Fox and the VW with us. In the 1977 divorce settlement she got the VW and I got the Fox.
(Actual car) (Identical car)	1966 Corvette Coupe. In California I quickly became a good friend of Arlington youth pastor, Geof Park. He said to me one day "You know how you said you would like to have another sporty car some day? I have a friend who restores Corvettes. He needs to quickly sell one that has all the engine and main body work done, but needs many details. So I bought it for $4700 and had a lot of fun finding all the little pieces at the Pomona swap meet. Once it was all done I had mixed feelings about it. It was fun to have everyone look at it, but after the Porsche and even the Datsuns, it drove like a truck. And I began to worry that the "new" was beginning to wear off, so I sold it for $7000. Wish I had it now. The two photos at the top are my actual car; the car at the bottom is an identical car I saw recently at the vintage races on North Island in San Diego. My car had the correct 1966 wheel covers. The North Island car has the more attractive but incorrect wheels from a 1967 Corvette. The original engine in this car was a 327 cid, but that had been replaced with a 350. But the exterior of the 350 block is identical to the 327, so I used original 1966 heads, valve covers, carburetor and all accessories and trim pieces. Inside the car, I even refinished the seat belt buckles and the gauge needles in the dash board. I guess I never caught on to just keeping a car like this in the garage to take out to shows on weekends. I have always treated every car as a daily driver. I suppose if I somehow magically found this car in my garage tomorrow, I would sell it again, but this time for about $40,000 to $50,000.
(Actual car)	1975 BMW 530i. When I sold the 'Vette I didn't go back to Pintos. I bought this BMW at the Tustin dealers' auction. I added the gold wheels, and Geof painted the areas under the bumpers, which someone had previously painted black. This was a very nice car except for two things: the suspension was Buick soft, even with new KYB gas shocks, and the power was limited. On a long level road in the desert, one time, I planted the accelerator on the floor to see how fast the car would go. Ninety was about the top. I kept this car for two or three years, which for me in those days, was a very long time. I sold it soon after I paid Adam's Motors in La Sierra to replace the cams, which had developed flat spots..
(Actual car)	1977 Triumph TR7. Well, I was at the auction and this car looked like fun, so I bought it. It was a lot of fun to drive but it was also a piece of junk. The engineers and company executives responsible for building and selling this car should have been jailed for fraud for the un-repairable headlight brackets and the inadequate electrical components. When TR7s were still on the road there was at least one company in Los Angeles whose full-time business was installing Ford electrical systems in them -- mainly heavier duty voltage regulators and wires.
(Internet photo, but may be same car.)	1963 Plymouth Sport Fury. 2-door sedan. It was white when I bought it. About 1979 or 1980, when I was single, I decided I would like to learn to do body work like Geof did. At the auction Geof and I saw this ugly, beat up, off-white 1963 Plymouth Sport Fury. He said it had everything it needed to be a beautiful car. So I bought it for $300. At home I removed all the chrome in preparation for new paint, and I worked a little with Geof on straightening a long crease along the right side. Then I got engaged and lost interest in the old ugly beast (the car, that is). I offered the car to Geof for $200 if he would have it removed from my garage by the time I got back from my 3-week honeymoon. He refused the $200 offer but paid me $300. When I got back, the car looked EXACTLY like the one in the photo at left. After he showed if off for about 6 months, he sold it for $11,000. It is worth a lot more now. Oh, well; if I had kept it it would probably still be ugly and white.
(Internet photo)	1963 Ferrari. This 12-cyclinder car was never mine. It was Geof's, but he stored it in my garage for perhaps a year and asked me to drive it once in a while to keep the battery up. I remember driving it to LA once because neither of my other cars was running.
(Internet photo)	1977 Porsche 924. I am a Porsche fan, but this 924 was still junk. Geof and I bought it jointly to make a profit. I was to do the mechanical work and he would do any painting needed. It didn't need paint, but we could not fix the mechanical failures fast enough to sell it before the blue book dipped below what we had paid for it. For the record, the 1977-1/2 was supposed to be a better car.
(Internet photo)	1975 Corvette. I was still a single parent and looking for a way to make a buck. Geof and I jointly bought this, fixed it up and sold it after about a year. Had what was called the Gymkhana suspension and it handled like a go cart -- perfectly flat. But it didn't matter much because in the battle between clean air and performance that raged in the 1970s, performance had gone down for the count. In California all 1975 Corvettes had automatic transmissions and what felt like about 95 horsepower. Squeaks, leaks and rattles.
(Actual car)	1975 Jaguar XJS. V12 engine, automatic. White. This car was smooth, elegant, quiet and felt like a jet taking off. It gulped gasoline. At best, for example when I drove it to Palm Springs on a date, it averaged 12 mpg -- much less in town. This was another joint venture with Geof. We sold it for $12,000, which the new owner paid in $20 bills. That is 600 $20 bills.
(Internet photo)	1978 Datsun B-210 Honey Bee. As you can see from the background, this is where I enter the gray period of my life, automotively and otherwise. In 1981 I got re-married. My wife already had this car when me got married. Reliable, but not often useful for a family of five. I think she kept it for a couple years. We used the BMW when we needed more space. The car looked exactly like this photo, though being only a few years old and a California car, it looked much nicer.
(Internet photo)	1979 Datsun 210. In 1984 realized I was 40 years old, had done nothing but youth ministry my whole life, and needed more money to take care of my three kids and very expensive wife. So I accepted a job with Adventist Health. We sold the yellow Datsun and the BMW (which was becoming too expensive to maintain) and bought this basic (but larger) Datsun 210 (for me) and the Pontiac Lemans wagon, below, for my wife to drive most of the time. The 210 ran well and got good mileage, but was boring and embarrassing, especially after an Arizona driver dented the passenger side door. Times were tough. The car looked exactly like this photo.
(Internet photos)	1980 Pontiac Lemans Wagon. V6 engine. This was a nice, clean, boring car that held our family of five and could (and did) carry a canoe on the roof. The problem was that it seemed to have about 25 horsepower. On a hot day I am sure I could have stood in front of the car and stopped it from moving. Several mechanics tried to fix it, but nothing helped. Still, we just drove it and drove it. Then one day, my wife saw the red oil light shining brightly in the instrument panel and decided to tell me about it when she got home. But, as she described it, the engine got noisier and noisier, then quit, and would not turn over with the key when she tried to restart it. By the time I got there with fresh oil, the engine was cool. I added five quarts of oil and it started right up and ran fine. In fact, it was no different than before the little mishap. Just for good measure, though, I sold it a few weeks later. The car looked exactly like this photo.
(Internet photos)	1977 Fiat 124 Spider. Just because I was married and poor didn't mean I couldn't have a little cheap fun, so I bought this Fiat at a very low price when I was at the auction with Geof. Though you rarely see these today, it seemed like there were millions of these on the roads in the 1980s. It was sort of fun to drive, but not a great handling car. These cars had front suspensions that were prone to breaking. I had to borrow some spring compressors, remove the front suspension, and have cracks welded in the cross-member and other major parts of the frame. But it was fine after that.
(Internet photo)	1977 Chrysler Cordoba. Almost everyone agreed that the Cordobas, with their long snouts and short trunks had great styling -- and my wife wanted one. So I bought this one really cheap at a public auction in Phoenix. Big mistake. The car was worn out, smelled bad and didn't run very well. Just a couple weeks after I bought it I took it back to the same auction and sold it. The car looked exactly like this photo, but with about 100,000 more miles.
(Internet photo)	1983 Ford Thunderbird. V8, automatic transmission. Sport suspension and tires, bucket seats. This car turned out to be as good a deal as the Cordoba was bad. Geof came over to Phoenix to try the dealer auction. I bought this car there and drove it for several years. The tires were kind of expensive because they were not 14" or 15" or 16". They were 390 millimeters, and only one company made tires that size, Michilin. After I had moved to Newbury Park, I drove this car to Geof's house in Orange County. On the way back, an oxygen sensor failed and by the time I got home the entire engine and crankcase were filled with carbon, clogging the oil strainer. I sold the car to a mechanic who cleaned the engine and mildly customized the car. The car looked exactly like the one on this magazine cover.
(Internet photo)	1981 Oldsmobile Cutlass. Adventist Health provided a car allowance for their executives. This had been the president's car, so it was loaded with everything GM offered, and was perfectly clean. This became my wife's car, while I drove the Thunderbird. The combination certainly beat the two Datsun 210s we started with! For some reason, these cars -- whether with the Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, Buick or Pontiac badge, became the official car of Hispanic immigrants in the Los Angeles area. After our divorce, I got this car, and I think I was the last non-Latino to drive one of these. That fad has almost entirely passed now, and you rarely see anyone of any ethnicity driving them. That is probably because the smog system (the air injector rack on the engine) fails and is horribly expensive to replace. I had to do it once before selling it to another employee at the Adventist Media Center where I worked. It looked exactly like this photo.
(Actual car)	1978 Porsche 911 Targa. With that marriage behind me, there was Geof again with another friend who had a great car in a distress sale. This time it was my dream car, a 1978 Porsche 911 Targa. Many Porsche owners loved the color and asked me exactly what color it was. It was supposed to be "Petrol Blue" but it had been repainted with something more like General Motors Blue. It did look nice for a few months. But the car soon needed to be re-painted. One thing led to another and we (Geof and I) ended up cutting the Targa "basket handle" off, painting the car red, and installing a factory convertible top. Read more below next to the photos of it in its second life as a red convertible. When I bought the car, the story was that it had sat in a shop for a couple years with the engine out because the transmission was bad. But when I later did a valve job on it, the mechanic reported that the cylinders were all installed backwards -- rotated 180 degrees -- so the bump on the cylinders was where the low spot should have been. But it didn't make any difference. I put about 100,000 miles on those backward cylinders before the valve job (and engine rebuild).
(Actual car) (Internet photo)	1956 VW Beatle. Custom. My son, Brian, went through many cars in his teen years, all with my name on the title. For some reason, I spent more time on this one than he did. We bought the car from Geof who had bought it for resale. Soon after Geof bought it someone stole the engine, wheels, seats, rear deck (with the big "W") and a lot of other stuff. Brian and I replaced all those with parts from the Pomona swap meet. We did the best we could on the wrinkled roof, then took it to Geof for paint. Unfortunately, the roof needed many hours of professional work, which Geof provided, forever putting me in his debt. We sold the car at the Pomona swap meet to some men from Japan. They were buying all the old Beetles they could for sale at much higher prices in Japan.
(Internet photo)	1988 Chevy Beretta. V6, 4-speed on floor. Third time with marriage is a charm. She had this car when we got married, but we soon sold it and bought the Explorer shown below. Was actually kind of fun to drive on mountain roads. Kind of.
(Actual car)	1978 Porsche 911 Cabriolet. Porsche made this Carrera model without significant visible changes from 1978 to 1988, though they didn't make a Cabriolet (convertible) until 1983. The later 1989 to 1992 models, with their fat molded bumpers, were kind of ugly. So when I updated this from a 1978 Targa to look like a 1988 Cab, it looked as nice as any Porsche on the road. I installed 1988 top and interior, including power seats, 1988 Carrera tail, 1988 front valance and fog lights, dashboard, steering wheel, sun visors, and on and on. Hundreds of parts. I moved the 7" rear wheels from the back to the front (replacing the stock 6" wheels), bought 8" turbo wheels for the rear, and had all four of them chrome plated. I drove the car for 16 years (including its early years as a blue Targa). Had the engine rebuilt at Rusnak Porsche in Thousand Oaks. Installed oversize pistons, so it changed from a 3.0 liter to a 3.2 liter. It was a fun car and wonderful for navigating the LA freeways. Had no air conditioning.
(Actual car) (Internet photo)	1991 Ford Explorer. I spent most of the summer of 1961 (when I was 18) driving an old military Jeep, clearing brush and dragging wooden sleds at Pine Springs Ranch. So when my wife and went on honeymoon to Ouray, Colorado we rented a Jeep and drove the dirt roads over several high mountain passes in the area. We decided that when we got back we would buy a four-wheel drive vehicle and explore the roads and deserts of California and neighboring states. This Explorer was our answer. For an SUV, Explorers are quite capable off-road. We drove it on quite a few roads in the Borrego Springs and Joshua Tree areas, and elsewhere. Unfortunately, Explorers are basically junk, mechanically. The hubs had to be replaced so I installed Warn manual front hubs. But there was no replacement for the electronic unit that controlled the transfer case -- which loved to shift into all wheel drive at any random time. The door handles all broke. The rear ABS brake unit fell into the rear differential, I never replaced it. The list went on and on. The most expensive and frustrating problem occurred when my son drove drove through a dip on a Thousand Oaks city street in the rain. Water splashed into the air intake -- which is in the grill just BELOW the headlight. The water went into the engine and bent a rod. Because I documented that this was a problem known to Ford, and because the vehicle was only slightly beyond warranty, Ford paid half the cost of a new engine. We sold the Explorer with nearly 250,000 miles on it. I would never buy another one.
(Actual car)	1986 VW GTI. 2.0 liter, 5 speed. A classmate of mine from the 5th to 8th grades bought this car new for his kids. He had lots of money so he ordered it with every option, including leather seats and electronic instruments. My wife says this was her favorite of all the cars she has owned. We drove it and drove it and drove it -- to keep the miles off the Porsche. This picture was taken to show front end damage. After I took the photo I replaced the front end with a European one with round headlights. Eventually we sold it to my wife's son and bought an Acura with fewer miles.
(Actual car)	1991 Acura Integra. My wife's boss bought this car new in Thousand Oaks and it had never been more than about 30 miles from home. I soon replaced the steel wheels and wheel covers with Acura factory alloy wheels from a 2001 Intergra. I bought them on eBay and drove to San Diego to pick them up. The car has about 175,000 miles on it now, so we will probably replace it before long. It still runs great, and is inexpensive to maintain. This model of Honda Civic or Acura Integra has almost no suspension so it rides rough and noisy, and you do feel like you are sitting on the ground. But, for those reasons, it does dart in and out of traffic, which is why kids love them. Because of the huge back window it was unbearably hot before we added limo tint to glass.
(Actual car)	2002 Jeep Wrangler. When we sold the Explorer we said next time we will get a real Jeep. This was a Dollar Rent-a-Car vehicle. I bought it at the Fontana Dealer's Auction. These things are somewhat unstable on the freeways, due to the short wheelbase, and they use a lot of gas, but they are wonderfully fun off road. I had both the hard and soft tops, and both the high and low doors. I felt more like the true "me" in this car on a dirt road than in any other car I have ever owned. I hope to get another one -- but this time with locking differentials, in other words, a Rubicon..
(Actual car)	2001 BMW 330ci. 3.0 liter, 5-speed transmission, sport suspension and wheels. I sold both the Jeep and the Porsche to buy this from my son when he moved up to a BMW 335 coupe. A wonderful vehicle in every way, though a little expensive to maintain. It does everything I appreciate -- except offroad.