In the summer of 2000, feeling rich thanks to my Transit job and my Engineering Co-op work term during the winter, I decided to buy myself a car. I'd had enough of asking my parents for their car every time I wanted to go anywhere, and I'd had enough of not being able to go places if I couldn't borrow a car; several of my friends lived in Richmond while I was in Vancouver. If I wanted to go to Richmond, taking the bus really wasn't a feasible option. ...Of course, it wasn't so much those reasons and it was the desire to own my own car that caused me to buy a car.

While I was on co-op in Thunder Bay, I'd really gotten to like the looks of the second-generation Mazda RX-7. They had around 150hp, a high redline, and they looked cool, so I started looking for one. Over a month I scoured most of Vancouver and Burnaby's used-car dealerships (dishonesty, deception, and pushy salespeople were the norm, though I did come across a few trustable dealers that had no RX-7s in their stock), as well as several in Surrey. I'd been to a dozen people's homes (several all the way out in Surrey, one in Langley), only to find disappointments. Overpriced Rexes in poor condition, properly-priced Rexes in poor condition, poorly-maintained Rexes in seemingly-acceptable condition (one of which died, or at least stepped in its grave while I was test-driving it, due to the belts never having been maintained...)... All disappointments (thanks to Darren at Transit for pointing out problems that were common to old Rexes). Then in the Buy&Sell I came across an ad that I'd seen posted two weeks earlier for $500 more than it was now being sold for. So I took a look at it; the owner was living in a fancy apartment building near the Tinseltown Mall, so it was easy to get to. The body was in excellent shape (only one small ding, no rust anywhere, paint was shiny...), there was a stack of maintenance records, it was a low-mileage car (only 128,000 km on a 1988 car), it had a ski rack, the interior was in excellent shape, it had a CD player with a volume-control *knob*, and it came with a set of snow tires (two of which were bald). Darren checked it over, and agreed that it was in excellent shape mechanically.

So I bought it. I offered $500 less than the asking price, and the owner basically handed me the keys (I was expecting that he'd make me a counter-offer, but he didn't; I'd gotten myself a really good deal, or so I thought).

It was stylish, a nice maroon colour, it had been repainted five years ago after a hailstorm (or so the owner claimed), and it was *mine*. It drank a little gas, stayed at high-idle for a bit too long, and when idling it had a slight nervous shiver to it... But boy was it ever fun to drive!

The next day, the power antenna broke (I wasn't particularly bothered, though, since I was only using the CD player anyway). Two or three weeks later, the clutch started to slip. Then, on my first rainy day in the car, I learned that it was quite sketchy in wet weather, as I rounded a slow corner at UBC, while at the speed limit, and my rear end started to slip. No problem, I thought, as I steered the other way *and* depressed the clutch. "Oops, should'a just done one of those actions," I realized as my back end whipped itself around the other way, so that I was sliding down the road while facing perpendicular to it. It was amazing how long it felt-- I was slowing down, my front end hopped up onto the median (it seemed to be an amazingly-smooth transition!), and I was almost stopped, when crunch! I smacked into a tree. The damage didn't look too heavy, and I'd missed any important parts, so I drove home. Turns out to have been worth almost $3000 at Gordon's Autobody in damage. (I think that I was taken for a ride there). The car never quite seemed to be the same thing-- it still handled well, but not *as* well as it had previously; it seemed to enjoy following the ruts in the road, wherever they might take me...

...And I had to get the clutch fixed-- though I got a good deal on it through Vancouver Auto Parts on Commercial Drive; the price on the clutch was as good as I could get from other parts stores using my Transit-employee discount at those stores, and they installed it for a bargain price, too! I've been back to VAP several times since then for other miscellaneous small parts, and I can't complain about them. Thanks guys!

As winter came on and my gas mileage dropped to 11-12 MPG, I started to realize how many little things I *didn't* like about the car: it had hardly any torque at low RPMs, which made it a pain to start from a stop (it was a standard-transmission car); it had some occasional electrical problems, nothing that made the car unusable, but annoying nonetheless; it was a fuel-hog, with a 70 L gas tank that cost me a good $45 to fill every 2-300km; it took forever to warm up and until it was at normal operating temp it didn't behave quite right; despite being the 2+2 model (a 4-seater), it was tiny inside and if ever I had passengers they complained horribly if they were stuck in the backseats; it was too low to the ground, making it tough to get in and out of, and making visibility in the rain scary; it was sketchy in the wet weather, causing me to learn how to drift the car or deal with an otherwise-sliding car; the ski rack could *barely* accomodate my standard-sidecut skis; and sticking one bike inside was a squeeze... When it came down to it, I'd decided that the RX-7 was not the car for me; it was too small, too quirky, and drank too much gas.

So in March, I put it up for sale (advertised in the Buy and Sell) for $1300 more than I'd paid for it. It sold in a week and a half. I had about 4 people come to take a look at it, including one guy about my age from Poco. I ended up selling it to him for $4600, $200 less than my asking price. Given the maintenance I'd put into the car, I was up about $200 over what I'd spent on the car. Considering that I'd crashed the car once, I was happy with that selling price! ...And boy did it ever feel good to sell that car! I liked the way it looked, and it was fun to hear the rotary engine wind up to 7000 RPM and beyond, but I was happy to be rid of it. While we were in the process of transferring the title on the car, I took a bunch of photos. Following are the only photos I've got of my nice little 1988 Mazda RX-7 GXL:

So there I was, car-less after only 6 months of owning my own car. While in the process of selling my car I'd been looking out for a replacement car. I'd been looking at all sorts of cars, from Nissan Maximas (did you know that in the mid-80s there was a Maxima station wagon? It looks just like an old Subaru!) to Saabs, to some old Merceded diesel cars.

On April 1, the bus strike began. Fortunately, I'm a cyclist! For the first couple weeks, it was easy to ride on the main streets, because the trolley buses (I'm faster than they are!) really slow cyclists down... Then traffic began to build, and biking on the roads during busy times was downright life-threatening. During this period, I realized that there wasn't the slightest chance that I'd be able to operate without a car of my own; my dad was suddenly very defensive about the use of his van (well, he always was in the past, so I'd just use my mom's car...), and my sister had now claimed my mom's new Jetta to be her own, so I was effectively without a vehicle. One day while at a used-car dealer, I took a look at a Ford Taurus SHO. It's an aluminum-engined V6. That was all I knew at the time. The car was well out of my price range, but the styling was decent, it was *very* comfy inside, and there was plenty of space.

So I started to check into the Taurus SHO on the web. A good reference site is SHOTimes website. Taurus SHOs were built from 1989 to 1999. From 1989 to 1991 they were available with a 5-speed manual transmission, a 3.0L, 220HP, DOHC, Yamaha-built-and-designed engine. "SHO" stands for Super High Output, and seems to have led to some confusion with people about it being supercharged. Unless somebody has gone to the trouble of getting a Vortech supercharger installed, the SHO is *naturally aspirated*; no turbo, no supercharger. 220 HP of NA, smooth-revving action!

I was intrigued by the Taurus SHO, so I kept my eyes out for one. They're really hard to find, since fewer than 10,000 of them were made every year, compared to roughly 300,000 "regular" Taurii per year. In a month of searching, I was only able to find three. Yep, three. All were priced at $5000. The first was at a dealer on Marine Drive in Burnaby. It was in poor shape-- the rear wheels were badly out of alignmnent, the paint was in poor shape, the body had some dents, it had 270,000km on the odometer, the clutch had about the tightest recoil tension I've ever felt, and the steering was vague. But boy, when I stomped on the gas, did it ever pull! I think I freaked out the salesman pretty good; I doubt he'd ever been in a SHO before. The second SHO I found was a personally-owned car being sold by a salesman at the Ford dealer in the Richmond Auto Mall. The body was in poor shape, but mechanically the only problem that I could find with the car was that the engine mounts were worn out, and likely one was torn. Otherwise, he had a stack of receipts for work done on the car recently. Hindsight says I should've bought that car. Oh well. The third car was at a dealer in Maple Ridge. It had previously been owned by the manager of the Kal Tire next door. 160-some thousand km, a recent clutch-job, tires in good shape, handled great, struts needing replacement in the not-so-distant future, slightly shaky brakes, a tear in the side of the driver's seat (but otherwise the partial-leather interior was in good shape), body in good condition with the exception of a ton of rock chips on the hood, and rusty side-stripes which the dealer pointed out that he'd covered over in electrician's tape. Everything seemed to be in order, so I bought it for $4600. On the drive home I noticed the temperature gauge never got off the cold needle. Oh well.

Of course, one week later I'm driving to a friend's place and it seems not to have much power. Step on the gas, and power feels almost intermittent, like it's pulsating on and off. As it get closer to Nick's place, the car develops a bit of a shudder. At Nick's place, I pop open the hook, and my heard immediately sinks-- a clear, oily-feeling fluid was running out of the plug well seals, collecting on the front bank's valve cover, and then pouring off the side. Darn, something's seriously wrong. Drive home, as I'm getting closer, when I start my car from a stop, I get loud popping sounds coming from the front of the car, it sounded. I check my oil, and there are some tiny bubbles on the dipstick. I look in the coolant reservoir, and it's pretty murky-looking. I should've had it inspected before I bought it-- fearing the worst, I started calling a couple dealerships and some local mechanics to find out about the cost of replacing a blown head gasket. I figured that with the malfunctional temp gauge, it must've been run far too hot for too long.

The estimates that I'd been given by both dealers and two local mechanics were all about $2000, so I figured I'd just take it to a Ford dealer. The closest one was Coastal Ford. I was immediately impressed by their service managers' knowledge of SHO problems, and I was relieved to see that another SHO owner trusted their SHO to that dealer (evidenced by the green second-gen SHO in their service department parking lot). They suggested it might not be the head gasket, and they wanted to do some diagnostics.

A couple days later they call me up on my cell. The head gasket was fine; they figured the (tiny) bubbles in the oil were from condensation (rather than from coolant), and the murky coolant as due to a lack of maintenance. They figured the fluid that I'd seen drooling out of the front bank's plug well seals was due to old, cracked spark plug well gaskets (the SHO has a Hemi-style head, with spark plugs that go straight throug the valve cover). I'd picked up an aftermarket thermostat the previous week in order to cure the problem of being at high-idle for ages, so I had them install that, in addition to a whole host of other preventative-maintenance types of items.

$1300 later, I had my car back. It was screaming-fast, just like it used to be. With the new thremostat, it dropped out of high-idle in only a minute or so, *and* the temperature gauge happily moved off the "cold" peg and partway into the "normal" range! My bank account was hurting now, but I'd managed OK. So I picked up a new set of front speakers to replace the stock speakers (which sounded like somebody was spitting into them). I dropped my car off at ShortStop to have them check out my brakes. Turns out that a reason for the crappy gas mileage I'd been observing was partly that my rear calipers were seized; they wouldn't retract, and would push out against the rotor when you pressed the brakes. So I effectively always had my back brakes partly applied. $600 later, I was screaming around again, ready to go on a trip to Moab, Utah with a few of my mountain biking friends.

While on that road trip, I got a few shots of the SHO:

Some observations about the SHO: it's nice and big, all five seats are comfy, none of my passengers have ever complained about them; the car accelerates faster than my RX-7; it generates absolutely no police attention; it's got 50% better gas mileage than my RX-7 did; traction in the wet is VERY good, and exceptionally predictable; it's got LOTS of space inside, and the trunk nicely hides stuff out of sight. Downsides: bikes don't fit particularly well in the trunk (one will fit, though); The car has one rust spot, which hasn't progressed at all since I bought the car; the hood's got lots of rock-chips, which I've touched up to prevent rust; the rear springs are old and sagging, and it needs new struts; the (4-sheel disc) brakes aren't quite as throw-you-through-the-windshield strong as my RX-7's were; it doesn't have a CD player.

To say the least, I'm happy with my SHO. I have a feeling that if I don't keep this car, my next car will also be a SHO. I do, however, think that I will be holding onto this car for some time. It's been 9 months already, and I still really like it!