Automania

I think he is obsessed with vehicles.  I just wanna get around.  We are gathering up so much negative equity that the total cost of a vehicle, if we got one today, would probably be more than 50% composed of interest, taxes, tags, and negative equity, and less than 50% actual price.  That's an optimistic guess.  The reality is probably much worse.

Before we got married, we each had pickup trucks.  He had a dinky li'l ole Toyota whose main advantage was that it was purchased and then promptly put into storage while he went overseas.  So it was paid off before it accrued any mileage to speak of.  On the other hand, I had an Isuzu 4x4, and regularly ran it through woods and over dunes, and never waxed it.  It was tough as hell but ugly as sin.  My fault.

Anyway, we were planning to start a family rather quickly, so we sold the trucks and got a Ford Explorer.  We shoulda stuck with that.  It was nice, it was new, it was rugged.

It was a two-door.  His parents and aunt flew down for the wedding, and his aunt had a broken foot, so she got the front seat.  Watching his parents trying to climb into the back of that vehicle broke my heart.  Not that they are feeble or anything, it's just that parents shouldn't have to put up with that kinda thing once their kids grow up.  And getting back there frankly was a huge pain in the ass.  For anyone.  Eventually we got fed up with that and hit the dealerships again.

This is where the negative equity started to accrue.  I mean, I think we had the first Explorer just a year, so we barely had a dent made in just the interest owed on it.  The only Explorer we could afford wasn't new.  Two years old, but by god it was a four-door.

We drowned it.  Flooding.  The engine sucked up a lungful and seized up.  Insurance got us a new engine, but it turned out later something was wrong with it.  

We began a long trip, but had not even left the state when there was a noise under the hood.  This was a concern so at the next city we got a motel room and took the thing over to the nearest dealership.  The engine got a clean bill of health and we were told to ignore the noise.

Halfway through Oklahoma, the engine blew.  In a snowstorm.  In a rural area.  Thank God for the off-duty cop who saw my husband walking down the lonely highway, else we all might have frozen to death.

Cost of repair was too high.  Whether insurance would cover it or not was a very sticky question.  We took a look round the lot, and settled.  For a Contour.

Ok, Will did NOT settle.  He actually liked the damn thing.  I shudder to think of it now, but I am having to think of it, cuz he wants one again!!!  But I get ahead of myself.

Now some folks like a vehicle to coddle them, make them feel like they are in the womb or something, make all their decisions for them, pat them warmly on the back and rock them smoothly to the next destination.  Fuck that.  I wanna drive the damn thing.  I am the master in the car/driver relationship.  I decide when the gears get shifted.  I decide how fast or how low the window is gonna get rolled down.  I do NOT like to be cocooned so tightly I can't bend my knees.  On the days when I have to play passenger, I do NOT like to insert my legs into a deep but narrow well in order to be seated.

Apparently he loves all that.

Well, he finally discovered that the Contour doesn't have a whole lot of room.  But here, as always (except with the engineless Explorer) I was willing to put up with whatever vehicle we had.  I had long ago resigned myself to the fact that I would never be head-over-heels in love with another vehicle like I was about the Isuzu ever again.

He picked me up from Reserve drill one day, tossed me a set of keys.  1996 Mercury Villager.  Yes, folks, that's a minivan.

Oh how low we have sunk.  A minivan. The ultimate in domesticity.

Actually the damn thing grew on me.  Lots of room, easy to drive.  More power than you'd expect out of a four-cylinder.  Payments are a bit painful, and the gas mileage, while better than most minivans, is still worse than what a car would get.

So.  Now he wants another vehicle.  He says it's cuz I hate the van, but I don't hate it.  I think he believes in perfect auto love.  That if you don't love every little thing about a vehicle, then you shouldn't own it.  In fact, all the other trade-ins (again, except for the second Explorer) have been because I didn't like this or that thing about the vehicle we had.  What makes me angry is that I was willing to deal with it, whatever the "it" was at the time.  But he always got revved up about some other one that would solve the problem.  And when he gets excited, I can't say no.

We test drove mostly Ford products, cuz Ford holds our lease (yeah, LEASE! I gagged too when I found out.) so our price range kept us to used Escorts for the most part.  We debated and argued.  He wanted another Contour.  When it got down to numbers though...

Right now we have eight thousand dollars worth of negative equity.  If we live out this lease, we'll have over nine thousand postive equity.  We are stuck with the van for now.  That one figure woke him up.

Good.  About goddamned time.