And, for the first time in my life, I feel like i'm turning the corner on my sordid car history and, you know what, it feels really really good- especially since the Mini Cooper has been on my personal bucket list of cars for awhile now.
(For the Record, my personal car bucket list is as follows:
Subaru (any)
Subaru Baja (don't know why I love these, but I do. I think they look cool.)
Jeep Wrangler (two door preferred- but would settle for a four door. And don't care if it's hard/soft top)
Toyota Tacoma (the double cab-primarily because of this. And because I think they're the perfect size for a pick-up.)
Range Rover Evoque (marginally less achievable, but sexiest SUV I've ever seen.)
Lotus Evora (my ideal mid-life crisis sports mobile- again, I know- keep dreaming!)
An Aston Martin (any of them really- they're just sexy as hell.))
But, speaking of my sordid car history: I haven't had the best of luck with cars.
My first car: a beat up Chevy Cavalier. My roommate at the time was heading to Japan to teach English for a year and wanted to unload his car. I was moving to Minnesota for Grad School and needed one. $500 later and I had one new car. It was exciting but within a month, I had added $800 of work to that car. New brakes, rotors, drums, solenoid gasket and the damn thing would never retain coolant. I spent a small fortune on antifreeze and, of course, living in Minnesota, the damn thing absolutely hated the cold. It had this tendency, usually in January (when Minnesota was the coldest) of starting up fine- but bizarrely, the electrical system would never kick in. Which left me with the unenviable choice of holding my breath while I drive or driving with the windows open. Needless to say, this car went to the salvage yard.
Second car: a Buick Cutlass- named Rocket. A hand-me-down from the Missus' family, Rocket was a dream. It was an older car, but it was in immaculate condition and lasted me a couple of years with no real problems until we decided to trade in and get a couple of cars to help the Missus and I get to our respective jobs at the time, which brings us to...
The Third Car: A Hyundai Elantra named Kimchee! We actually doubled up on the Hyundais this time around- the Missus loved her Tucson and I loved my Elantra. I think about this car a lot and I'd be totally open to getting a Hyundai again. This was a good car with decent gas mileage and a nice bit of giddy-up of under the hood. But the Missus went back to school and we wanted to save money, so we went down from two cars to one which brings us to...
Susie Subaru! I've always been a big fan of Subarus- we had one growing up for awhile- it was actually the second car my parents purchased after moving to the States (we had a Blue Pontiac, first). They're roomy, gas mileage is decent and they're so, so, so reliable (the damn things last forever) and she's still around today- and honestly, I think we're going to drive that thing until it drops dead, we love it that much.
We went back up from one car to two last June when The Cigarillo arrived and we snagged a 1996 Chrysler Cirrus for $750 and that barely limped through the winter. We were going to see if we could fix it up and ride it out until we got Susie paid off, but a peek at the brakes revealed way more damage than we could fix ourselves and I wasn't going to pay someone $1200 to do it. So, that's how we ended up with the Mini.
I am officially loving life, bombing around in my sweet ride and seriously considering going to the Parentals House to steal their copy of The Italian Job- the real one with Michael Caine (coincidentally, he's the one we named the Mini after) not the Hollywood Travesty with Mark Wahlburg that was called The Italian Job despite having pretty much nothing whatsoever to do with fucking Italy.
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